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Showing posts from March, 2007

Ah, the good old days...

Holy Week begins in three days. I have about 8 services to prepare yet (for which I should count myself lucky - I know pastors who have close to twice that because they serve larger parishes or multiple point charges). I have stuff I should be doing. But, tonight, I just spent an hour reminiscing and playing Oregon Trail . The same exact version I played in third grade every day. Sure, there are newer versions. But none can compare to the one I knew and loved. I made it to Oregon with food to spare, but I did manage to lose one of the members of my wagon. Alas!

The Family Tree

Earlier this month Jay at Only Wonder wrote about a site called Geni .com that helps you make your family tree online. It is also somewhat of a social networking site, because as you add member to your family tree, you can insert their email addresses and invite them to see your tree, and on and on, with the idea that eventually you could see how you were related to people you never realize you were related to. Their tag line : " Everyone's related." They are still in 'beta' and have some features yet to be added that I hope they get soon. But Jay's post inspired me to check out Geni and get back to an interest I haven't spent time with in a long time - genealogy. Genealogy, quite appropriately, is an interest that runs in the family. I was pretty passionate about genealogy around sixth and seventh grade. Then, my interest (and ability) consisted more in copying down available information that other family members could give me. My paternal grandmoth

Just Griping

Who knew? I certainly didn't think of it before I became a pastor. Who knew that there is a whole subgroup of junk mail and telemarketing just for churches and church leaders? Ugh. I get so much church-related junk mail every day it is ridiculous. And I just ran frantically through the church trying to get to the phone in time only to hear a sales pitch for some "inspirational gifts" that my youth group could sell for a fundraiser...

Pastors and Working Time

John recently linked to this article ( via this post ) about the recent study on how pastors use their time and how much time pastors spend working. Of course, a common joke is that pastors work only one hour a week - the worship hour on Sunday morning - but most(!) people know pastors work more than that. But how much more? And what exactly are they doing during that time? Interesting questions, even for those of us who are pastors. What are we doing with all our time? I usually don't keep specific track of my hours in a week, but I do occasionally do a tally just to see how and when I am actually spending my time. I would say my weeks aren't very consistent from week to week. Some weeks I spend more time on worship than others, some weeks I seem to be frequently at the hospital, some weeks it seems all my annual conference responsibilities are scheduled in one five-day stretch. I suspect that this is typical for many pastors. How do you who are pastors spend your time? Do

Reflections: Ecumenical Advocacy Days, Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post , I've been in DC this weekend at the Ecumenical Advocacy Days . Advocacy Days "is a movement of the ecumenical Christian community, and its recognized partners and allies, grounded in biblical witness and our shared traditions of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Our goal, through worship, theological reflection and opportunities for learning and witness, is to strengthen our Christian voice and to mobilize for advocacy on a wide variety of U.S. domestic and international policy issues." (from the website.) This year the theme was "... and How are the Children?", so all of our work looked at how critical issues for people of faith and people of politics impact children. Attendees get to choose a 'track' to focus on for the weekend, and I chose the Eco-Justice track , as environmental justice is a particular passion of mine. After an unintentionally scenic last half-hour of the drive into DC, with almost driving

Review: Macbeth, from Perseverance Theatre

I've been such a delinquent blogger this week. How quickly the days are flying by! This weekend I have been in Washington, DC, attending the Ecumenical Advocacy Days . I will be writing more about that in the next few days, but today I want to highlight something else I got to enjoy as part of my time away. Friends of mine from college live in the area, and they told me about "Shakespeare in Washington," a several month long festival in DC of celebrating Shakespeare and his influence on culture and entertainment. They'd looked over events that would coincide with my time in DC, and found out the (fairly) new National Museum of the American Indian would be hosting the Perseverance Theatre's production of Macbeth . Perseverance Theatre is based in Juneau, Alaska, and focuses on working with Alaskan artists and showing work that highlights unique Alaskan experiences. This production of Macbeth was done in the style/context of indigenous Southeast Alaska culture,

Bertha Holmes

First, thank you to all of you for your comments and prayers about Grayer . I appreciate your kind words. Monday I went to the funeral of Bertha Holmes. Bertha was a member of Rome First UMC , the church I attended from sixth grade until the time I was appointed to St. Paul's. Bertha was a widow of a United Methodist pastor, mother of four sons, and just wonderful person. She was 95 years old. If you had asked anybody at Rome First who they would call a "saint," I'm betting a good 85% of them would quickly say "Bertha Holmes." She didn't see that in herself - she just saw herself as someone trying hard to be faithful. But to others she was a daily living example of how to live as Jesus called us to live. I remember taking Disciple Bible Study with her when I was in high school, and I was amazed that though she knew the Bible so well already, she put her all into this study, and said how much she had learned from it. She was inspiring. When I was in coll

Goodbye, Grayer

I’ ve never been a ‘cat blogger’. I am a cat-lover, and my cell phone camera boasts mostly pictures of my godson and my cats, Grayer and Ella, but I don’t usually blog about them. I have to make an exception though. I can’t share it all as eloquently as John did when his rabbit Inlehain died , but when I came home after being out for the evening on Thursday, I found that my cat Grayer had died. He was only about three years old, young for a cat, and hadn ’t shown any signs of being ill, so I have no idea what happened. Quite a shock. Grayer was named after the little boy in the book The Nanny Diaries. I didn ’t like the book. I didn ’t like the name Grayer when I started reading it. But the name grew on me. I would never name a human that, but the name grew on me and I gave it to my cat! Grayer was a good cat. A sweetheart cat. I love both my cats, but Ella is definitely the naughty climb-the-Christmas-tree cat and Grayer is the "pet me, I love you!" cat. I got Grayer short