The Coffee Hour

Late Winter Cold Edition

Not cold outside. Cold in my nose and chest that's been hanging on for better than a week now. Never gets better. Never gets much worse. But it saps my energy and is the latest reason for the derailment of my intent to be a better blogger.

But while I've been running at half speed or less, the world has gone on without me--a salutary realization, no doubt. I'll skip most of the things I had intended to blog about and stick to just one. (That's all my energy's going to be up for.)

Some of you may remember that a while back I was regularly linking to David Plotz's posts on Slate called "Blogging the Bible."  Now he has come out with a book based on that experience. Called Good Book, it was published on March 3. I haven't read it yet, but I intend to. (Note, it covers only the Old Testament. Plotz, a non-practicing Jew, decided to stick with his heritage, but that doesn't take away from some of his marvelous insights on what the OT contains.)

I haven't read the book yet (the "marvelous insights" comment is based on the Slate series), but I intend to.

Fair Warning: Based on this Plotz quote from via Andrew SuIlivan's Daily Dish blog,  don't expect some happy conversion story here. But sometimes the folks who don't see the same things we see are the ones who still can teach us something.

That's it. More antihistimines and offline now.

Coffee's on Again

Long time gone, but back, at least for the moment. Found this on the Innerwebs this morning, and it's too good to pass up. Christian salt? Please.

Hey, these days anybody that can figure out an honest way to make money is okay by me. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. But this strikes me as a bit silly. And good Lutheran or not, I'm still using my kosher salt.

And another thing: There's a new "social media" site called Twitter, and pressured by the folks at work to be hip, hot and happening (all in an effort to keep our numbers up and our advertisers in the fold--no easy challenge these days), I have a Twitter account. I'm still not totally convinced it's more than one more way to waste time on the Internet, but I'm giving it a try.

If you want, you can watch my efforts. There are two ways to do this. At the bottom right of the Coffee Hour home page, below all the book and CD pix, there is now a little gadget where my Twitter posts appear. They're all short--part of the deal is that no post can be longer than 140 characters (that's characters, not words). If you click on one of the "tweets," (yes, that's what they call them), it will take you to my Twitter page. You can sign in for an account (it's free) to "follow me."

Just remember, all this technology is fun and it's your friend.

...and another thing

This just in my email from the church. The Census Bureau is hiring for the 2010 census. Applications are being taken at Bethel every Saturday morning from 9:00 on, starting tomorrow. These are well-paying part-time jobs. If you know anyone who might be interested, spread the word. Here's the full details: Download Census employment.

Friday Morning Coffee and Hopefulness

A sunny Friday. A warming trend in the works. By Sunday afternoon, we'll be seeing grass. It'll be brown and ugly, but it will be grass. And have you noticed that even though it's been cold, the sun doesn't go down until after 5:00 now? All hopeful signs.

But not an excuse to start talking about gardens--although the Valentine's Day Dance will benefit the Courtyard. I want to talk about hopefulness in another context. Consider what follows as a riff on a mantra that Pastor Matt has been chanting nearly since he got here, one which may be getting a bit louder. I'm coming at this from a sort of backwards direction, so bear with me.

As you no doubt heard, our brothers and sisters down at Holy Name Cathedral had a bad fire the other day. In more troubling news, somebody deliberately vandalized and set fire to All Saints, Saint Anthony's  in Bridgeport. Scary and sad? Sure. But the good news is that while the damage at the cathedral is serious, it's not fatal, and the damage at at ASSA is "minor." Holy Name held mass yesterday and Cardinal George is expected to say mass today. No word yet, but I have no reason to believe that the parishonors at ASSA won't have mass in the next day or two as well.

Meanwhile, there's a gaping hole in the budget at Bethel. Membership numbers are stubbornly static. Folks whisper in grim tones about the church's future. Not so fast, I say. There's another fire story I want to share. I found it in a comment to a post about the Holy Name fire on Street Prophets. (Scroll down to the fourth or fifth comment.)

St Paulus Lutheran of San Francisco has been around since before the 1906 earthquake. (The picture below is of St. Paulus in 1899). The church's long and sometimes difficult history is here. What's germane to our discussion is the fact that the church was destroyed by fire in 1995. At that point it looked like the church was done. But God and its members thought differently. In 2007, the church made the decision to leave "the safety of its church facility, the old elementary building of its closed day school, and become a 'church without walls' in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, learning once again the importance of ministry in the streets, in the neighborhood, and in the lives of those who are not part of the church community. For the next three or four years the congregation will experiment with such ministry, and develop a sense of identity which
does not rest on the security of a building, but on the ministry of Jesus in the world." [From the church's web site.] 

As Pastor Matt keeps saying, "Death and Resurrection."

Is this a model for Bethel? Yes--not necessarily in the sense of selling the building and moving elsewhere--but in the sense of reminding us that churches can survive way worse things than a budget hole. Will St. Paulus' experiment work? Who knows? Is this St. Paulus what the German immigrants who founded it had in mind? Probably not. But going forth in hope to do what we are called to do--feed the hungry, care for the sick, do justice and preach the gospel--seems like a much better plan than giving up.

God doesn't abandon his people because of a fire or a budget hole. We need to remember that. 

Just sayin'.

" 

She's Ba-a-a-ack!

Been a bad blogger lately. The Big Book of Successful Blogging says you should post at least once a day. Sorry. Until I get a sponsor who will pay me to do this full time, ain't gonna happen.  But I will try to do better than once a week.

In my laziness and busyness with other things, I've missed some important holidays. Chinese New Year (Jan. 26), Mozart's birthday (Jan. 27), Emanuel Swedenborg's birthday (Jan. 29), the death of Bonnie Prince Charlie, (Jan. 31), Super Bowl 43, and, of course, Ground Hog Day.

But life goes on. Way more important stuff than the events listed above are going on. The Valentine's Dance is, oddly enough, on Valentine's Day at Bethel. Living Faith's celebration of Black History Month, including a gospel choir concert, is Feb. 28. Both events are at the church. See the church web site for information on both. Note: Both are call-ahead events. Phone numbers are on the web site.

Note to non-Bethel readers. What follows is insider baseball. You can skip the next couple of paragraphs if you want. Sunday was an important day at church. If you missed it, you missed some good stuff. A great sermon and a secondary follow-up "sermon" during the annual meeting were worth the price of admission. Yes, there's a big hole in the budget, and that's scary, but the important message from Pastor Matt and others was that, while that may be reason to be concerned, it's not reason to be fearful. We've had budget holes before and gotten through. And God does not abandon us just because of a budget hole. If we are faithful people who trust in the message of salvation, we will trust that no matter what happens, we are not abandoned by God. We may get tired and frustrated. We may fear some of the changes that will have to be made. But God will never abandon us.

Just as another reminder, next Sunday's first reading is germane to this point. Look up Isaiah 40:21-31 . Think on it and pray about it this week. It will help put things in perspective for you.

A couple other things that might help come from my favorite online pastor, Dan Schultz over at Street Prophets.  He's pastor at a small, rural Wisconsin parish, so some of his church's struggles are similar to ours.

He has two posts on the subject of conflict in churches, which I think are important to keep in mind as we move forward discussing issues such as worship renewal. The first one is, I think, based on the sermon he gave on Sunday. Read it here. The second popped up this morning. It's more on the subject of why conflict is not always a bad thing and how to disagree and still make progress. Worth the read.

To those of you who weren't at church Sunday, please don't take the above to mean that we are in any way returning to the Bad Old Days of nasty disagreement at Bethel. Sunday's meeting went very smoothly and nobody said anything mean or outrageous. But the fact is that facing the future, we are going to have some disagreements about the direction we're going to take and what we're going to do. Nothing wrong with that. It's how we handle those disagreements that will matter. That's where Pastor Dan's posts become instructive. There are good ways and bad ways to disagree. Let's start aiming for handling our inevitable disagreements in a good way.

Now back to our irregularly scheduled blog post. I regular check out the UK papers since my daughter lives there now. England got hit Sunday and yesterday with its worst snowfall in nearly 20 years. It was like a giant national snow day. (click on the slide show link for cool pix.) Because the UK doesn't ordinarily get this much snow or cold, traffic was a mess. The airports were closed. The trains weren't running. We hearty Chicagoans can all laugh. It seems funny when you're used to dealing with snow and you discover that a major metro area can't cope. Some of the comments on the news articles also sound a good deal like what we hear over here when the snow plows aren't out.

It's a little hard to figure out exactly how bad it is. First, remember that the UK uses centigrade, not Fahrenheit to measure temperature, so 0 is 32 over here. Basically, the temps are in the 20s and teens, but that's cold for the UK at this time of the year. And, as is often the case here, the snow falls vary enormously. A work colleague who lives in Harrietsham, Kent, reported about 2-3 inches. Other places are saying up to 10-12. And there's more to come.

Jen says it took her more than 10 hours to make the train trip from Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire to Glasgow, Scotland, a trip which ordinarily takes only 4, and she never saw more than about 3-4 inches. This is what the BBC is reporting now.

The moral of this story is that, while you may be getting tired of looking out at all the white stuff, there are other folks in the same boat or worse. And for you political junkies, the PM over there, Gordon Brown, who, like most global leaders, is under fire for not fixing the world economy right away, may find himself remembered as the Michael Bilandic of the U.K.

Seems like people around the world tend to feel the same way about some things. We'll tolerate a lot of screw-ups on the part of our leaders, but fail to clear the streets after a snow and you're toast.

That, of course, remains to be seen. The Lord Mayor of London seems to be catching the most flak right now because he grounded all the buses, meaning a lot of people, including those charged with clearing the roads and running the main train stations, couldn't get to work. Can you say domino effect?

But politics is a funny business. And when folks are cranky anyway, they lash out in all directions at once.  Right now the outrage seems to come down to the question, How can the people who beat the Luftwaffe fail to cope with a foot of snow. Be interesting to see how this plays out after the snow melts. 

Now I've broken another rule of Good Blogging and gone on too long. See you next time.