Lars and the Real Girl

Friday night Breen and Patrick came up to celebrate my birthday a little early - we had dinner and went to a Van Wagner concert. I somehow had the impression it was going to be a regular concert, but it was a fundraiser for the Lewisburg class of 2010 prom and senior trip, being held at the middle school gym. Basically it was a bunch of high schoolers flocking up around the stage, while 30 feet back, B, P, and I sat in folding chairs with the parents of the high schoolers, serving as unofficial chaperones. So, the venue was unusual (we usually listen to Van at the Selin's Grove Brewery), which put a bit of an absurdist spin on the evening. But the music was still excellent, and we also got to hear Robert's (teen from church) band, which was the opening act (and was quite good!).

Given the crowd, the concert finished a lot earlier than expected, and the night was still young, so we picked up a movie: Lars and the Real Girl. This is my new favorite movie - so well written, so well acted, so well put together all around (I'm now firmly of the opinion it should have won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay over Juno). Double bonus points for taking place in northern Wisconsin during winter, and featuring a positive portrayal of Lutherans (how many movies can you say that about?!)

Lars is an incredibly shy and socially awkward fellow, so much so that he gets flummoxed even around his brother and sister-in-law. He ends up ordering a "real girl" - a silicone sex doll named Bianca - and is of the delusional opinion that she is real. He talks to her and believes she talks back to him, creates a whole life story for her, and considers her his girlfriend (though they are both very religious, so she sleeps in his brother's house). Bianca functions as a buffer for Lars' shyness, and becomes a conduit through which he begins engaging the people around him. Lars' church and community indulge him in the delusion and treat Bianca like a real person because they see how it is drawing him out and helping him to mature.

That's all I'll say, so that I don't ruin the details and full plot if you haven't yet seen it. But you really should - it's poignant and funny in an absurd and imaginative kind of way, while avoiding tempations to become melodramatic or crass. And it's a beautiful portrayal of how the small town and/or small church cares for its eccentrics - not that everyone does it perfectly or manages it all the time, not that the eccentric doesn't still irritate or creep people out sometimes, but on the whole, there is an abundant and benevolent grace that watches out for those on the fringes - I've seen it time and again in the city, in the suburbs, and in the country; in the Midwest, on the West coast, and right here in PA. Would that we'd have that kind of patience and generosity with all people at all times.

I do have to say, both Breen and my liturgical nerdiness came out during the church scenes, as their hymnals were not the familiar green LBWs. They looked like the new cranberry ELWs to me, but Breen thought they looked more red, like the old SBH. See, confusion like this is why Hollywood needs to hire me as their resident expert on Lutheranism. Heck, I don't want to deal with the traffic in LA, so I don't need to be a resident, I'll telecommute. And I'll even research and serve as a consultant for nitpicky details regarding other traditions at no extra charge. All I ask is a modest salary and the chance to go to a few premieres a year. . .come on Hollywood, you can't afford to pass this fantastic opportunity up!

Peace,
C.

PS - The good thing about all that time spent downloading stuff last week is that the updated Safari interfaces much better with Blogger (I can now put things in italics!). As I have time, I'll try to spruce up older entries written when I lacked such capabilities.

The iPod Saga

All I wanted was a less cumbersome way to carry music when I fly.

So I asked for an iPod for Christmas, and Dad and Brenda gave me one. It has a lot of storage capacity, so, thinking he was being helpful, he burned all his music onto it, because it would be cool to have all of his music and all of mine.

After a few months, I finally get all my music ripped onto my hard drive and go to hook up the iPod. I find out you can't combine two computers worth of music on an iPod - it wipes the old memory and loads whatever music is on the computer it's currently docked to. That in itself was fine with me, except. . .

Dad has a PC. I have a Mac. Because he docked the iPod to his computer first, it's now formatted for a PC, my Mac won't recognize it, even to restore factory settings. I consult with Apple tech support, who tell me to find another PC with iTunes, so I can restore it to factory settings, so it can be formatted to my Mac.

So last night Breen and Patrick help me to do this on their PC. Today I plug it in to my Mac, which still doesn't recognize it. Call Apple tech support again, who walk me through re-formatting it via disk utility - once that is done, it should automatically start synching.

Except I need a more recent edition of iTunes for this iPod. So I go to the Apple page and download the newest iTunes, which takes 1/2 hour, even though I have DSL.

I go to install that, and am told I need an updated version of my operating system to support the new iTunes. So I go back to the Apple web page, and download the newest update for the operating system, which took OVER THREE HOURS (which is why I normally don't do upgrades, because they take multiple hours to complete, and if I start them and walk away from the computer, it falls alseep and the download stops, and I generally don't have 2-3 hours to sit around keeping this thing awake).

But I've got a trip coming up and I want to get this done, so I hang around the computer until the thing downloads, and then wouldn't you know, it won't install. After a few attempts, it's back on the line with Apple tech support, who I told UP FRONT that I have a Tiger OS and that I had downloaded the Mac OS 10.5.2 upgrade, which won't install. After ANOTHER HOUR on the phone (half the time spent on ignore) the guy helping me finally realizes that I don't have Leopard and that is why this Leopard upgrade won't install (you'd think they could have put a warning on it before you start downloading, for computer idiots like myself, saying "This will not work if you do not have Leopard"). I SHOULD have downloaded Mac OS 10.4.11, which works with Tiger and will still, allegedly, support the latest iTunes.

So I go to download 10.4.11, and my computer tells me it will be another 2 hours.

I just about pitched the whole thing out the window at that point.

I know I shouldn't complain because this is really the first problem I've had in the three years I've owned this computer. And all the calls to tech support finally justified purchasing the Apple Care extended warranty. And generally, Apple products are much more intuitive and user friendly for the computer challenged, which is why I decided to go with a Mac and an iPod.

But this constant upgrading IS frustrating - last fall, MAD TV did a spoof of the Feist iPod commercial, changing the lyrics to the song so they were all about how quickly the technology goes out of date after you purchase it. Too, too true, and from my techno-illiterate mind, an unecessary irritation. I had a lot of other things I needed to get done today, but have instead wasted the day tethered to my computer, all because I wanted a less cumbersome way to carry music when I fly. . .

Ah well, at least blogging my frustrations are a good way to kill time waiting for the blasted update to download. :)

Peace,
C.

I Love the Smell of Democracy in the Morning

I just spent the past couple hours out canvassing for Obama. Nothing too threatening - knocking on the doors of registered Democrats and encouraging them to vote on Tuesday, reminding them where their polling place is, asking them if Senator Obama can count on their vote. It's a beautiful spring day here in central Pennsylvania, and 99.9% of the people you meet are friendly and gracious even if they don't support your candidate, so it's not a bad way to spend a morning. I don't know why more people don't get involved in the political process.

Seriously, I am never more proud to be an American than on days like today, when I am exercising my freedoms to engage or serve the body politic. Makes me wonder what patriotism would look like, what this country would look like, if everybody was willing to make a similar commitment. I don't mean a turn your life upside down commitment, and I have no delusions of reaching some democratic utopia.

But I can't help wondering what would happen if, instead of abdicating our responsibilities or relegating our involvement to those who make a career out of public service, what if every citizen, every resident of this country, invested one to two hours a week engaging the matters of how we will live together as a people? What if every person within our borders gave just an hour or two a week in some service that promoted the greater public good?

Like I said, I'm not fool enough to imagine it would eradicate all of our problems, but it sure sounds like a path toward a more perfect union to me. . .

On Bitterness and Elitism

"A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is."
- Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disuptation

I can't believe Hillary is still playing up the elitism spin on Obama's comments. Today in the middle of the 5 pm news, a commercial ran, approved by her, showing "random" Pennsylvanians on the street talking about how offended they were by the comments.

For the record, here's what actually shook down (as reported in the Washington Post):

Obama's comments came at the end of a lengthy answer in which he rejected the notion that voters were passing him over simply for racial reasons, saying instead that his campaign of hope and change was having difficulty in "places where people feel most cynical about government."

"Everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class . . . don't want to vote for the black guy,' " Obama said at the fundraiser.

"Here's how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism."

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.

And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not," he went on. "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Here's me again:

First, he's actually doing what Luther advises in his explanation to the eighth commandment (in the Small Catechism)- he's trying to explain his neighbor's words and actions in the best possible light, trying to understand WHY there is an apathy and bitterness and distrust toward government in many places in rural America.

Answer me this: how is trying to understand where someone else is coming from, and trying to explain that to someone from a very different background, being elitist? On the contrary, to me, it is the epitome of compassion (literally, "to suffer together" or "to suffer with").

Second, what he said is true. My right to say that is a little sketch, as I am a non-native "outisder" who's only been living here for three years (though I would contend sometimes the gift of outsiders is they can see things natives can't). But if you don't want to take my word for it, Andy and Meg are native central Pennsylvanians (Andy a pastor, Meg a social worker for the foster care system), and they were not only not offended, but agreed with Obama's analysis. So did Robert Reich.

Because the hard facts on the ground are, people here HAVE been beaten down by the economy for a long time - everywhere you go, you see old factory buildings that are shut down, often because the company moved overseas. And that is not just ancient history - three years ago when I moved here, La-Z-Boy had bought out one of the last major local factories/employers, Pennsylvania House Furniture, and shut it down to move operations to China. It is TREMENDOUSLY offensive to people that the furniture still bears the name "Pennsylvania House" when it is no longer made in Pennsylvania, especially since it is being made by "foreigners."

They have also, to an extent, been beaten down by, or at least lost opportunities to, "outsiders." The highest percentage of my parishioners do or did work for "Chef's" - Chef Boyardee, which became American Home Foods, which became (and is now) ConAgra. One of the most revealing conversations I had was over a year ago, with someone retired from Chef's, who told me the company has a strong policy of non-fraternization between management and regular worker bees. Additionally, when they first started working for the company, regular workers who showed potential could advance up to management, but then policy changed - to be a manager you had to have a college degree. All of a sudden, they had to answer to all these outsiders schooled in management theory but with no organic knowledge of their particular plant, and you had to do what they said even if you knew it was incorrect. And there was no getting to know them as a real person inside or outside the workplace.

[A whole lot of tumblers clicked into place after that conversation. It helped me understand the vibe of resistance and suspicion I felt in the congregation when I first arrived (and still feel on occasion), because there I was, an overeducated outsider with no organic knowledge of the particular context, being placed in a "managerial" position in a system and a culture that defers to the pastor - even when they do so grudgingly.]

Now in Lewisburg, you've got Bucknell University added into the mix, which only serves to underscore the disparity between those who have (again, mostly coming in from the outside) and those who are working hard just to scrape by. Bucknell estimates a price tag of $43,380 for the 2008-2009 school year - when the median income in the borough is $30,137, and in most of the surrounding county is $37,000ish. Many of the students drive nicer, newer, fancier cars and have more disposable/discretionary income than people in two-income homes in the community. According to a few sources, in the week between finals and graduation, the students head down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where it is not uncommon for parents to plop down thousands of dollars renting beach homes and sponsoring a week-long drunkfest for their children. That's an egregious waste of money any way you slice it, but is especially abhorrent to someone who makes minimum wage with no paid vacation, or who had to work an entire year before they earned a week of paid vacation.

Add to this the horrendous inefficiencies of the Pennsylvania government. An example: when I went to register my car here, something that would have meant one stop at the DMV in MN, I had to go to three different offices to complete the process. I went to the DMV to get my driver's license, then had to go to a place called Tri-County Tags to transfer my title. Talk about bitter - you know Marge's sisters on _The Simpsons_ (hostile, chain-smoking, DMV workers with NO interest in helping you whatsoever)? It's like Matt Groening based them on the employees of Tri-County Tags. But what's worse - they are not an office of the state, they are subcontractors. $50 of the fee you pay goes to them directly, and all the paperwork says clearly that, as subcontractors, they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for any mistake the state may make on your application. So if the state office makes an error, you have just flushed $50 down the toilet, which you'll have the priviledge of paying again when Tri- County Tags resubmits your application. THEN I had to go to yet a third place to get my vehicle "inspected" - which has nothing to do with emissions, but is supposed to test roadworthiness (I could maybe get behind this if it was ever enforced, but it isn't - there's a person in the community who drives a hunk of junk that failed inspection and everybody knows it and everybody knows someday this is going to cause a horrible accident that might even kill somebody, but they never get picked up and cited for failing inspection).

By the end of that day, I was so frustrated by the whole experience that even I, the Progressive pseudo-socialist Midwesterner, was pounding my steering wheel and muttering "No wonder people here hate and distrust the government!" And the irony was not lost on me that my frustrations were all with the subcontractors, which were not actually government offices. But that left me even more frustrated and confused as to what kind of messed-up government subcontracts out those kinds of public services, why the DMV couldn't have handled it all.

All of which is to say, as I believe Barack himself was trying to say, there are some good reasons for people to feel bitter and disenfranchised around here. And it's a great temptation, when you are bitter and disenfranchised, to start scapegoating other people for the overwhelming problems you are facing - whether that scapegoating happens in relation to your next door neighbor who looks just like you (and believe me, this is a culture that can hold a grudge) or in relation to a group of outsiders not at all like you. It's a great temptation to start thinking of the world in terms of black and white, us and them, it's hard not to listen to the people who drive the wedge further in, who play off your fears and resentments, who promise a substitute security or a false sense of power and control over your own livelihood and/or salvation.

The sad thing is, Obama's getting raked over the coals when he's the one brave enough to call the thing what it is, to call the government on its neglect, to call the people on their apathy and anger. The sad thing is, he's the guy who truly wants to empower the people to work together toward a more perfect union, to bring voices to the table that have long been ignored, to disenfranchise the corporations that have so long set the rules to their own advantage and screwed the people in the process. But once again, the fear-mongering powers that be are working like mad, using sound-bytes and wedge issues to convince people to vote against their own best interest.

Running on 3 Hours Sleep

is why I'm getting too old for these youth retreats. I just don't recover as fast anymore.

Every year the dynamic of the confirmation group is different, and this year, they are good kids, but the are SO SQUIRRELY. And they don't know how to whisper. We discovered that at the January retreat when the girls were talking in cafeteria voices well into the night, and when we asked them to quiet down and start whispering (we even modeled the decibel level for them), they only took things down to a dull roar. It was only after threatening to split them up that they finally calmed down.

So this time Breen and I slept in the hallway/stairwell outside the fellowship hall. Close enough to be available if they needed anything and to hear if they got into trouble, but putting a concrete wall and a thick wooden door between their noise and our ears. Even so, after an hour I got up, opened the door and said "Ladies, just because you don't have to be uber quiet doesn't mean you need to yell all night long." That got them to quiet down until I got back into my sleeping bag. :)

Turns out our location was strategically well-chosen, because the boys got it in their head to pull a sneak attack on the girls to scare them. Patrick was sleeping in the hallway, blocking their most direct path, and rather than chance waking him, they went down the back stairwell, cut across the basement, and were going to come up the stairwell we were in - thinking they were bypassing the pesky adults that might foil their plan.

But they didn't know we were in the main stairwell. I was sleeping closest to the stairs and suddenly at 2 am I heard voices in the basement and saw flashlights and shadowy figures at the bottom of the stairs. So I shouted "What are you guys doing? GO TO BED!"

Which they did, and that was all we heard from them. But then half an hour later, the girls are standing in the doorway, "Pastor C., there's a strange car in the parking lot."

Which is a frequent occurance at our church. It's really weird, but people pull into our parking lot all the time, at all hours of the day or night - they'll eat lunch, swap vehicles, race remote control cars, take a nap, sit and talk, make out - we're out in the middle of nowhere and I've never known a parking lot to be as hopping as ours.

But I digress. I figured it was just a couple looking for a place to park, but got up to check it out. The girls had turned the lights on and were freaking out because they thought someone was walking around outside - they were seeing their own reflections in the window! So we turned out the lights and went to look - the car was gone.

But they were spooked, and now there was loud thunder and bright lightening to boot. So I spent a while trying to talk them down, reassuring them all the doors were locked, Pastor Patrick was in the entryway, Pastor Breen and I were next door in the hallway, and it was probably just somebody who needed a break from driving in the rain, or a young couple looking for moochas smoochas - that thought got them laughing, which calmed them down. I offered to sing - collective roll of the eyes. I offered to preach them to sleep (we'd just talked about Paul and Eutychus earlier in the evening) - no to that too. But that elicited a few more laughs, relaxed their fears a bit more. I told them to come get me if the car came back, then finally went to bed.

Today was alright - I can usually push through the next day on little sleep - it's the day after that that's the worst. Tomorrow morning is gonna be painful. And we're due to have a lot of visitors in worship thanks to a family reunion. Uff da!

Grace Makes Beauty Out of Ugly Things

So this week I'm finally reading Christian Scharen's One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God (only two years after Mary asked me to take a look at it - d'oh!).

The book is fantastic, and kind of ends up being an accessible little theological primer in itself, in addition to being a reflection on the theology of U2. In the first section, Scharen covers several Biblical forms of communication (thanksgiving and lament in the psalms, wisdom, prophecy, parable, and apocalypse), then in the second section covers the theological categories of faith, hope, love, and the now-and-not-yetness of our existence. In each chapter he first summarizes the form or the theology in question, then discusses how U2 expresses or exemplifies that form or idea in their music.

So there's my plug for the book as a whole. On a personal note, my jaw about hit the floor as I was reading today, because Scharen shares a story from his time in the parish, when someone informed him he was personally going to hell and accused him of leading his flock astray.

Why? Because "I was willing to say that God would have mercy and offer love and forgiveness to anyone. They [the accusers] desperately wanted to draw up lines with some in and some out. Because I didn't draw lines, I was clearly permissive, liberal, and probably loved sinners."

My jaw dropped in shock because I have, word for word, endured almost the exact same situation here (my person never went so far as to say to my face that I was going to hell, they just strongly implied there was a special place in hell being reserved for me, because I was leading my flock astray, because I had the audacity to preach and teach God's scandalous grace).

As Scharen notes, pastorally it puts one in a ugly spot, because at the same time that you are striving to defend God's graciousness, you are also struggling internally with a surging lack of graciousness felt toward your attacker.

On the one hand, it's kind of a relief to know I'm not the only pastor who's gone through this experience. On the other hand, it's kind of sad to know how many people out there have such a narrow and dictatorial understanding of God. And unfortunately, they seem to be the ones who talk the loudest. As Matt would say - no wonder so many people hate Christians.

Thank God for the grace that makes beauty out of ALL our ugly things.

Three Degrees of Lutheration

A bit of housekeeping. . .

I keep trying to get this picture added to my profile, but I'm having a hard time of it. I've followed the directions in the Blogger Help section, but it's still not working. If anyone more technically savvy has words of advice, I'm all ears.

I also finally put some favorite movies, music, and books up in my profile today - then tonight discovered that if I click on one of those titles or names, it will show me who else on blogger listed that as a favorite.

I was a little surprised only 4 people in ALL of Blogger blogdom put _Lamb: The Gospel According to Christ's Childhood Friend Biff_ down as a favorite book. Although. . .it is rather irreverent. To fully enjoy it, it helps to have a slightly warped sense of humor, and you've absolutely got to be comfortable with a teenage Christ being, well, a teenager. But it's hilarious and insightful in a midrashic kind of way.

I was also surprised, when I clicked on Storyhill , the first name to come up was Scott Johnson , who was a year ahead of me at the seminary. Even more surprised to learn he had changed calls - last I knew, he was up in NW MN, but he's now a campus pastor in Ames, IA.

Further down the page was Meta Herrick - another fellow seminarian and Mary Hess advisee, who also happens to be an Ole, who also happens to be from the same home congregation as Breen (I think Breen may have taught Meta's confirmation class! - you know, "way back" in the 90s), who also happens to have preceded Jeni at the internship site in Sierra Vista.

Ah, what twisted webs we Lutherans weave. . .

Gettin' Old for a Whippersnapper (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Generational Mindset)

This winter has been crazy with youth retreats, some of which were (in retrospect, foolishly) planned on back-to-back weekends (trying to cram them in before Lent started). After nearly killing ourselves with this schedule in January, Breen and I decided we would no longer try to hold our own joint confirmation retreat AND have significant leadership roles in the synod-wide jr. high retreat in the same month - next year we'll still help lead the jr. high retreat for the synod, and just require our confirmands to attend.

Today she called to finalize plans for our spring confirmation retreat this weekend, and then said "I've been thinking. . .what if next year we require the synod-wide retreat instead of our winter retreat, and then, instead of our spring retreat, we schedule a couple days of service - one local, and one down in Baltimore - we could go help Lutheran World Relief or something."

C: "Ok."

B: "Really? Wow, that didn't take much convincing."

C: "Dude, I'm getting too old to sleep on the floor of a church basement."

She busted out laughing, and added "I know what you mean."


Then tonight I was talking to Sarah (who is probably one of the youngest people working in her office), who recently had a co-worker ask for help in interpreting a text message (figuring she must text all the time, and must know what the abbreviation in question meant, since she's so young). Sarah's response?: "I've sent, like, six text messages in my life, and it took me twenty minutes to figure out how to do it."

She went on to say Rob was recently talking with a co-worker who had been watching _My So-Called Life_ with his 12 year old. This is one of Sar's favorite shows, and she and Rob had also been watching the whole series on DVD this winter. Rob asked what they thought of it, and the co-worker said his 12 year old found it really weird because nobody was carrying cell phones, iPods, Nintendo DS's, etc - as in, this 12 year old could not FATHOM how life was lived without these gadgets "way back" in 1994. The co-worker asked what Rob thought of the show, and Rob answered "Well, that show was set in high school when _I_ was in high school, so it didn't seem weird to me. That's what it was like."

It's funny, most of the older generations see us as oh so young, but to this younger generation coming up, we are clearly old, old, old, because we didn't grow up with cell phones and a personal computer and DVD player in every home and high-speed internet and MP3 players and all that. I can still remember touring St. Olaf, and the tour guide talking about how everybody had their own e-mail account and it was kind of a cool new way to communicate with your friends and professors. I remember thinking "That's neat, but I probably won't use it very much."

It sure doesn't seem to me like it's been _that_ long since I've been out of high school and college. But clearly it has been, when the kids who were born in those years cannot imagine how people possibly survived in those "archaic" times.

Alright, I'm logging off before I start telling tales about walking to school in hip-high snow drifts, uphill both ways. :)

Peace,
Catrina

PS - On a related note, the Beloit College Mindset List is worth checking out - gives insight into the general generational worldview of those entering college this past fall.

Good Reads

The Open Space of Democracy by Terry Tempest Williams. A collection of essays originally published in Orion, accompanied by some beautiful paintings by Mary Frank. I found the third essay, "Engagement," the most compelling. In it, Williams documents and reflects upon her own town's formation into true community in the face of shared crisis. Beautiful writing and beautiful truth-telling of the lived experience of democracy and its power to shape and unite us in spite of the forces that would divide.

A sampling: "In my private moments of despair, I am aware of the limits of my own imagination. I am learning in Castle Valley that imaginations shared invite collaboration and collaboration creates community. A life in association, not a life independent, is the democratic ideal. We participate in the vitality of the struggle. This has not been easy for a town of self-defined renegades and recluses. Disagreements behind closed doors has been common. . .We are all having to move beyond what is comfortable. Patience is stretched. Personalities get in the way. Egos provide points of obstructions. It is never easy. We are learning to listen. We are learning to forgive. We are learning to go forward, believing what binds us together as a community is stronger than individual bickering points. And we are having a great time."

She's speaking of civic communities, but I think her words ring as true for and are as applicable to communities of faith.

Incidentally, take time to read the notes at the end - not merely citations, some are detailed stories or reflections in themselves. One (in which Tempest Williams deduces that Fellini was simply a documentarian!) recounts a sumptuous meal she and her husband were invited to while living in Italy - it's like something out of Babette's Feast, but the power to build community around a communal table is just as potent in real life as in fiction.

The other book I just finished is Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis, which is an excellent contemporary apologetic. Bell has a real gift for analogy and metaphor, for making all this faith and discipleship stuff come alive in a genuine and relatable way. AND he's got some paritcularly great things to say about the Bible - how its story is our story, and it's a story that isn't over, a story that's living and active, a story that reads us as much as we read it, a story we're called to engage and wrestle, a gem that we need to keep turning because every turn reveals something new. He never puts it in these terms, but I hear him saying, essentially, that the Bible is a living immersive story world, and I whole-heartedly concur.

For my pastor friends, "Movement Four: Tassels", also has some insightful things to say about the pressures of the life of ministry, and the damage many of us do to our own souls in our attempts to be "superpastor."

Finally, I also happened to watch Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium last night, and highly recommend it. It's just a fun movie in itself, but would also make a good discussion piece for church. It tells the story of one's ending and another's beginning, of a doubtful "disciple" who is called to use their own gifts to carry on the work of the "master" (which, serendipitously, fits well with some of the reflections on discipleship I was reading in Bell's book today).

Peace,
Catrina

Salt in the Wound

Better to see Johan as a Met than a Yankee.

But did ESPN's art department really have to include a picture of BOTH Torii in an Angel's helmet AND Johan in full Mets gear in their opening day web graphic?

Certainly, other major trades happened in the off-season, they could have put any number of players pictures up in that graphic. To include both of Minnesota's major losses just felt kinda mean.

Some of us are still grieving, ya know. . .