overheard: welcome to heritage u.s.a. II!

i just clicked over to stltoday.com to check in on the happenings in jupiter and was blessed to see that brother jim bakker is celebrating the dedication of heritage u.s.a. II! brother bakker has long since repented of his embrace of the prosperity gospel, but fortunately god has still seen fit to provide him with another sprawling ministry center which not only features affordable, god-breathed real estate, a beautiful enclosed shopping center that features "italianate store facades and condo balconies" and a magnificent chapel from which the word of god will be gloriously transmitted six times a week!

anybody interested in splitting a heritage u.s.a. II lifetime partnership with me? i've heard that for only $1,000.00 we can stay at one of the new italian style condos for up to four weeks a year!

seriously, i hope if/when the sulfur o' sodom falls, heritage u.s.a. II is ground zero. this wonderful new work of god makes me sick to my stomach and ashamed to be an evangelical christian. read some of the testimonies in stltoday's article of the former "lifetime partners" who lost $1,000.00 in forfeited "lifetime partnership" dues when heritage I collapsed, yet are all fired up and eager to invest in bakker's new work. i suppose one will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of bible belt christians. grrr...

on writer's block

blood from a stone
needle on bone
accessible yet so damn allusive

advocate, proclaim and preach
of things only abstractions can reach
mistake scribbles for substance

envy engineers, architects and tailors
who rely not upon words as savior
trading substance for sustenance

words, words, words
flimsy constructions
pointing to hope, promising destruction

musing...

throughout the lenten season i have not been able to escape images of the desert. throughout the past week, on inumerable occasions, my mind's eye has fixed upon mental pictures of the sand swept desert, Jesus wrestling with temptations, the ravaged red rock of sinai.

but, for all my musing, when the time came to enter into my own desert, i almost missed it.

on monday i was jostled out of my normal routine by a scheduled, yet completely forgotten, job coaching session at a you haul storage facility. the assignment was to simply to observe a client's work and report on her activities to the supervising manager.

yet, as i stumbled around in that unheated storage facility, interupted only by the scratch of a broom and the need to take an occasional note, my anxious breathing slowed, my feet froze and i was confronted by the silence i often take great pains to eschew.

in that silence, in the midst of my lenten fast, one of my temptations was revealed. namely, i am constantly tempted to ignore the service opportunities that constantly present themselves in order to fixate on the ideal context and perfect position wherein i can properly perform the accompanying, teaching and preaching that is at the heart of my calling. God forgive me for the times when my idolatrous dreams of being a resident theologian and preacher-teacher in a church obscures both the work and the people you have placed in my path.

if you are participating in a lenten fast and have wrestled with your own temptations in the midst, feel free to share your reflections below. for those of us who are fasting during this season, my prayer is that we can sustain the fast so that we can more fully keep the feast.

in celebration of pitchers and catchers...


i'd like to confess that i am currently sitting on a brick of 23 bleacher seats for the cardinals/cubs tilt on sunday, may 4th at 7:05 p.m.

so...if you have recently received a st. louis oriented "save the date," will solmenly swear to respect the game by refusing to bat beachballs/participate in the wave/display poor cell phone etiquette and you're willing to forward me $25 cash, submit your name for consideration..

judge not, lest ye...

she crushed the pop-top of a chevy conversion van in 1986

he never let her forget about it.

she continued to tangle with immobile objects in the years since.

he scoffed and suggested an assault on a moving target.

he tried to cram an 8"8 wheelchair van under a 7"6 clearance sign.

she has yet to hear the story.

he has finally realized that reciprocity is a son-of-a-bitch.