a sense of mystery, a sense of humor...

...that was a line i read out of a book on preaching this morning, it was referring to the worship service and the message that comes within it.

I like that idea, that our worship should be accompanied by awe and reverence because we are in God's presence. But also should be accompanied by a mood of absurdity, that we should be allowed even to be in the same room as God. It should be conducted in a sense of hilarity that though we are trying to be reverent and respectful, we are in fact deeply flawed, irreverent, fountains of disrespect. Worship (and the preaching) should carry a slap-stick joy that though the guy up front has been called to this task and is even wearing a white robe, he's really quite a wreck as a person, hardly qualified to be taken seriously... and the people he's talking with, though playing the part of the willing listeners are secretly doing their best to escape the weekly "time of transcendence" as un-changed as possible. This incongruity should make us laugh at ourselves openly and freely, which i think somehow is necessary for reverence (or awe or mystery)

A sense of mystery AND a sense of humor, no worship service should ever happen without both. What do you think?

equipping to share

to all my readers (all 2 of you :)) out there in blog land, especially those of you who are local, lend me your eyes for a minute.

St. Matthew has a great workshop happening here on Sat Nov 4th called "equipping to share" it's a way to help all of us speak sincerely and respectfully about our hope in Christ. It's not a method driven, obnoxious thing. it just helps you be YOU and share what is important to you in an honest, authentic, effective way.

Anyway visit the main page on this st. matthew site and click the little "equipping to share" icon in the bottom left corner of the homepage and register soon! I think you'll be glad you did! thanks :)

are you kidding me?

i've been dreading winter this year in a bad way. I'm not sure why. I think last winter was hard on my soul. Winter (for me) is the time of year that you just hunker down and work and eat all the time and miss seeing that strange yellow ball in the sky that used to make things a lot prettier...and warmer.

winter is also a season of heavy workloads for a pastor. the obvious peaks of christmas and easter bring a lot of extra work (yes it's usually STILL winter here for most easters!) and with the short daylight hours i feel like i'm working my life away. Winter makes me feel like i'm regressing phylogenically (if i believed in evolution), my back gets more hunched over and i feel the urge to let my hair grow and to grunt rather than speak in articulate syllables.

but the part that might bother me most is the loss of human contact.

People don't go outside as much in the winter- for obvious reasons. I don't ever run in to my neighbors during winter. People aren't up for a quick parkinglot conversation when it's 20 degrees outside, that's pre-windchill. there are not the lasting voices of kids playing outside. and if they are out there, i can't hear them over the roar of my furnace and the sputtering of my humidifier... the plastic i put on my windows isn't helping either. Winter is accompanied by this dull mechanistic hum that sounds a lot like the sound scores of all those weird, "the earth is a wasteland because of nuclear war", futuristic movies.

yeah, so winter is not my friend, it seems to be the enemy of humanity, the henchman of isolation and loneliness.

So i was REALLY bummed out to see that yesterday, october 12, 2006, we already had our first snowfall...

adieu humanity, see you in may- hope we make it!