happy haiku friday!

grandparents dying

parents in a.a.r.p.

time to be a man

i realize that this isn't much of a haiku, but it clearly reflects my current state of mind.

overheard...

"we learn to praise God not by paying compliments, but by paying attention. watch how the trees exult when the wind is in them. mark the utter stillness of the great blue heron in the swamp. listen to the sound of rain. learn to say 'hallelujah' from the ones who say it right."

~Frederick Buechner in Beyond Words

some days are essays, others incomplete sentences

today is one of the latter. thus, instead of a complete unit of coherent thought, i am going to share a couple of fragmentary thoughts and reflections.

i don't know whether it's the 32 ounces of equal exchange coffee pulsing through my veins or the faint scent of innovation, but for some reason i am interested in my job once again. when our company was recently sold from one brother to another i thought that business would proceed as usual. as is often the case, my assumptions were far from correct. someone up top is shaking the tree and coconuts are falling all over the place. we are in the process of reconsidering how to do everything from site design to spam, er..., i mean newsletters in a more effective way. for so, for the first time in this department their seems to be room for innovation. consequently, for the first time in months i am not tempted to drool on my keyboard. good times...

for the moment, my homiletical paralysis has abated. over the past four months i have had the damnedest time developing sermons. early on, i considered my condition a result of my spiritual apathy and context of transition (i.e., married eight months ago, new homeowner, fairly new job, sex change (just kidding), etc.). however, i have realized that my condition has abated when i write first person narrative sermons. thus, in my current three sermon series on the prodigal son, my narrative sermon from the perspective of the elder brother went swimmingly, my deductive sermon on the prodigal absolutely sucked and my narrative sermon on the role/call to be the father is developing quite nicely. i don't want to discount the influence that the small, yet distinct spiritual renewal that is taking place in my life and community is having upon me, but i think that the primary cause of the paralysis is a stylistic shift that is taking place in my preaching. i'll probably discuss this in more detail at a later date.

i've realized, once again, that one of the great temptations of church leaders is to exert power over the lives of the members. i thought that by checking out of the institutional structure i would have lessened this temptation, but i couldn't have been more wrong. in relational ministry there are constant opportunities to guide people towards personal decisions or commitments that would apparently serve the best interests, or lessen a burden upon the church, but would not be the best choice for the individual. i must constantly recommit myself to searching out what is best for that person and for the community rather than what appears to work best with my vision for our community. i am rambling and probably making little sense...but there is a big issue buried in there.

shit. this post is less a record of fragmentary thoughts than it is a collection of uncompleted essays. nonetheless i am going to let it go.

blessings upon you and yours.

oooo sweet nectar!

first he blessed us with clerks X. now, he has revealed that he is working on a sequel, the passion of the clerks. all hail kevin smith!

and that other kevin, the one that lives in the sticks of a swing state, better be ready for my visit. i ain't gonna to see this one without you. snootch to the nootch!

yet another sign that the wheels are falling off...

if i was pitching like kyle farnsworth, i'd try to injure myself as well. this has been a tough year on the north side, with more bizarre injuries and underperforming aces than you can sneeze at. hell, even wrigley field is falling apart.

i hope that the cardinals get to play the (barely) walking wounded in the playoffs. the cubbies have consistently been an easier mark than the giants and there will be nothing quite as gratifying as seeing nomah implode in october (you might love him now, but you'll hate him when the games really count...mia can't hold his hand when he's hobbling towards a ball in the hole).

good words on marriage from lauren winner

when i heard that books and culture was producing an issue on marriage, i winced. because of my geographical location as well as my occupation i have heard evangelicals proclaim that 'the sky is falling' on good, godly, traditional marriage one too many times. fortunately, books and culture upended my expectations by publishing this excellent article by lauren winner.

i assume that, on occasion, you find 'excerpt entries' quite annoying. i know that i do. however, one of the purposes of this blog is to keep a record of insights, excerpts and websites that i find interesting. so, even if you hate excerpt entries, i hope that you'll bear with me now and again. now, without further qualification, let's hear what winner, one of evangelicalism's finest young writers, has to say...

"And, yet, marriage is meant to be communal as well as couple-centered both in its means and its meanings. At the most practical level, it is our friends, our brothers and sisters in the church, our aunts and uncles and colleagues, who can remind us why we got married in the first place. It is this community that, when we lay our marriages bare before them, are able to hold us accountable, and also celebrate with us...If we Christians want to get our divorce rates down below the national average, rendering our marriages visible to our communities—opening ourselves up to our friends' support, prayers, questions, and rebuke—would be a good place to start.

But recalling the communal dimension of marriage is not merely a strategy for sticking it out and navigating the rough patches. It is rather an assertion of God's purposes for marriage. Our surrounding society tells us that marriage is a private endeavor, that what happens between husband and wife behind closed doors is no one else's concern. But in the Christian grammar, marriage is not only for the married couple. Insofar as marriage tells the Christian community a particular story, marriage is for the community. It reminds us of the communion and community that is possible between and among people who have been made new creatures in Christ. And it hints at the eschatological union between Christ and the Church. As Catholic ethicist Julie Hanlon Rubio has put it, "marriage consists not simply or even primarily of a personal relationship. Rather, it crystallizes the love of the larger church community. The couple is not just two-in-one, but two together within the whole, with specific responsibility for the whole. … They must persevere in love, because the community needs to see God's love actualized among God's people.

The inflections of community are important because they get at the very meanings of marriage. Marriage is a gift God gives the church. He does not simply give it to the married people of the church, but to the whole church, just as marriage is designed not only for the benefit of the married couple. It is designed to tell a story to the entire church, a story about God's own love and fidelity to us."