Here and Now

Today is the first day of school for Rachel - and every other kid in Bethel Park... It's our first time at a bus stop with other kids... We see the little girl (and her mom) across the street come outside, so we start heading down the hill. We chat a little on the way down, busy summer, first day of school stuff... A mom and daughter are already at the bottom of the hill (where they live) with a dog. Rachel and Elie go to the dog. Nothing like a beagle to make instant friends... A dad and his son sit on the opposite curb. I wonder why they aren't coming over... A couple other moms and kids and another dad and kids show up. There's a lot of catching up. We're not the only new family at the bus stop. What I do in moments like this is withdraw into myself...I kind of get why the dad and son are sitting on the other curb, I guess. Lori talks with the moms - the kids sort of play together. Rachel really hovers around Lori - the beagle attraction being very brief. There'...

This week we're kicking off a new series: Get in the Game. This week: Monopoly:Success and Significance. I just spent about two and a half hours working on a sermon - about two pages of a sermon, anyway, fact-checking and quoting...and I realize now that I can't use it. I need to save almost all of it for another sermon a couple months from now. Well, the truth is I COULD use it, but it'll fit way better in October, and it's really not the direction that I was planning to go this week anyway. But it's frustrating. I mean, two and a half hours for two pages really isn't that long, I guess. I know that I'll be spending a lot more. And it's fair to ask, "If that's not the right sermon for this week, why did you keep going?" Fair question. I guess it's because I was in the middle of it - I was fitting ideas together and re-wording sentences and...it's a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees. It wasn't until I stepped back an...

I happened on this http://www.freerice.com/index.php And if it does what it says, then it's great. If not, well, it's still fun to see what words you know or can figure out (and if you miss them, they come back...so you might get go learn a few new words, too).

I've been reading U2 By U2 for quite a while now in drips and drabs - and I'm still only up to the recording of Boy (a great debut album which everyone should own). But I'm also reading The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss which is more biography than the U2 book (which is more, I guess, memoir/interview). A couple things struck me this morning about U2 and Dr. Seuss. Both create a certain type of art, not appreciated by all, but excellent in its own way and both developed devoted followings very early. Interestingly, at least to me, neither Theodor Geisel nor the musicians in U2 were particularly good at their craft in the beginning - but they had passion and vision and drive - even in the face of rejections and missteps. It seems to me that visionary and creative people are a special breed. Why is it that of the dozens of bands in the Dublin area in the mid-seventies that U2 rose to the top? Seriously, they admit that they weren't very adept musici...

"The Body of Christ broken for you on the cross..." The words rest in my ears, familiar yet powerful. The bread rests on my palm. It weighs nothing. I close my eyes and I can't tell it's there. I have to press down on it with my thumb to sense it. And somewhere else in the building I hear - children crying - hammers pounding - a phone ringing Life and hurt and rebuilding and the normalcy of today goes on and on around me...and I can't feel the presence of the Body of Christ in my hand. I hold Christ too lightly, too easily. I have to make myself aware. Until... Until I eat the juice soaked bread. Until I eat the Flesh and drink the Blood... And I can't ignore it. And I can't refuse it. And I must pat attention. For Christ is inside me. And I am not the same...

As I'm sitting here in my office, getting ready for Sunday Night worship, the band is rehearsing Switchfoot's "This Is Your Life" and it sounds amazing. "This is your life...are you who you want to be?" That's a great question. And, really, it's deeper. This is your life...are you who God made you to be? Is there a difference? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Lori and the girls are visiting my in-laws today, so Lori came to church last night and "are you who you want to be" is an important question right now. Lori's passionate about music - and gifted musically. But what she heard me say last night (you know, I'm not sure I even said it...but it was a God thing) was that "your purpose is not necessarily your passion." Abstractly, I believe that to be true...I'm just not sure I said it... But Lori is really drawing some direction from that because she's been wondering about purpose and passion and calling. She ta...

Double Tuesday But Brief: Buy This Book I think it's amazing - 30 stories that are 30 of the best sermons I've ever heard...erm, read. But these are not your parents' sermons...trust me... Seriously, I got it at Ollies for like 4 bucks... Story by Steven James

I did a quick search for a story that I thought about using for staff devotions today and I came across this blog post from a think tank, I think . Of course, using an image from despair.com puts you pretty high on my list to begin with - and then she's talking about "we've always done it that way" (which was not going to be the focus of what I wanted to say, anyway...but there's some good stuff on this post anyway). But I love her closing statement Make two columns and keep track of your patterns over the next week. Label one side ‘innovative’ and one side ’stupid’ and see if you can break some unproductive, recurring, unoriginal habits. I’m going to give it a go. Yeah, I'm going to give it a go, too...hmmm, I might even keep track of 'em here... Yeah, maybe not - I can't for the life of me figure out tables...argh...

Living in a new house has brought its share of pleasant surprises. One (admittedly very minor) one for us has been having a garbage disposal in the sink. For a while we had been calling it the "sink monster" but the girls decided that the sink monster needed a name - so, our disposal is named Frank (sorry if you're reading this and your name is Frank - if it's any consolation, they named Lori's car "shiny lunch"...) Naming the disposal has made for some interesting conversations at our house: "Do you want the rest of this corn?" "Nah. Frank it." "Hey, I'm going to Frank this banana, it's pretty brown..." And so on. Yep, Frank is a verb in our house now. Got something unidentifiable in the back of the 'fridge? Frank it. A scoop of mashed potatoes left from dinner. Frank it. And we have other "code" words at home, too. If you know us well, you know about roses...and there are other words and phrases that ...

Last week I needed to replace an outlet in Rachel's room so I went down to the electric panel to shut off the power to her room...and the breakers weren't labeled... So I spent part of the afternoon with every light in the house turned on, computers and TV off, switching off a breaker, running through the house to see what lights went off, running back to the breaker box. Repeat. And repeat...and repeat... So, I never did figure out which breaker the computers were on. I thought I checked the light on the printer (which I left plugged in and turned on) every time...but I missed it on one of the runs... And tonight I was trying to rescue a harddrive (a story for another time) while the girls were watching a movie and Lori wanted to vacuum the dining room... That's when I found out "the hard way" which breaker the computers are on... Not the way you want to find out... But, all was not lost. The computers are as fine as they were before they lost power suddenly, the...

This week is about Transformation. Once in a while, when we wax nostalgic, it's easy to just gloss over the bad stuff. And sometimes, when we're in a bad place, we dwell on the bad stuff in our lives. God is all about transformation. There are things in my life that I would have done differently if I could - "if I knew then what I know now" - embarassing things that, frankly, I hope no one ever finds out about. And we all have those moments, I think. But those moments are part of what makes me, me. I may be a little more compassionate because of something painful in my past, a little more forgiving because of someone who has forgiven me, maybe a little more patient because I've tried the patience of others. I may be able to understand what you are going through because I've been through it myself. Yeah, I've been embarassed, frustrated, hurt - and I've embarassed, frustrated and hurt others, too... And God doesn't make all that go away. Yes, I'...

Elie and I were driving home from church tonight and she was playing a Ninetendo DS game called Cooking Mama. She "made" me a pizza on the way home and then she announced: "I'm making you coffee, Daddy." "Okay, I don't put any cream or sugar in mine." "Well, I'm going to put a little something in it, but you won't really taste it." "Um...okay." "Just...it will make it taste like hot chocolate, Daddy. I'll just put a little shrimp in it, and it'll taste like hot chocolate." "Okaaaaay..." Boy am I glad she wasn't really making me coffee - can you imagine it? Coffee with a little shrimp...bleah... Worship can be like coffee with shrimp in it sometimes. Here's what I mean. Everything is flowing, everything is going just right...and then, bam, something happens. Maybe it's a technical thing...a mic isn't on or something...maybe I say or do something that distracts from worship...

I was looking at my car (Honda Pilot) as I walked out of the church tonight and I should have taken a picture (heck if I know how to get a picture off my cell phone anyway...). You see, the back end of the Pilot is sitting really low - the front end is popped up - because I put about 10 or so boxes full of books in the back of it on Thursday and I've been riding around with them since. These are books that will fill the shelves (woo-hoo to the Jim and Larry and the Tuesday Morning Guys for getting my office together and getting extra shelves put up!!) in my office - and I INTENDED to take them in on Thursday...and on Friday...and today... But you know how it is - life gets busy, stuff comes up, and the books stay in the car. Just like my spiritual life sometimes - I can carry around these burdens that weigh me down but I'm just too busy to do anything about it. Life is busy (I love those "life comes at you fast" commercials...'cause it's true, and, um, they...

This Sunday we'll be talking about connectedness. Scott Phillips is a great singer/songwriter - and I highly recommend his newest album (I believe I've said that before here...lemme check...yep...) so go to iTunes and get Next Stop Willoughby or check out http://www.scottphillips.com/ . One of my favorite songs on the album is called "It All Comes Down" and it's about connectedness - or the lack thereof: It All Comes Down Well I’m up and I’m down and I’m all around But I’m okay if you ask me ‘Cause we don’t really have the time to care like we could I could trip, I could fall, you won’t know at all ‘Cause your busyness is blinding And we don’t really take the time to love like we should Chorus:And it always comes back down To the way that we love And it always comes back down To the way that we love I’m in a hurry to grow, to grow up so fast Just to miss my youth and to chase my past If I keep looking forward to the day that my ship comes inI ’m gonna work ...

Yesterday my in-laws stopped by to celebrate Elie's birthday. We did a little running around, but ended up at Half Price Books. Now, I've said before, I'm cheap. So cheap books are a great thing in my eyes... I scored Only You Can Save Mankind (the first of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy by one of my favorite - oh, sorry, he's British - favourite authors, Terry Pratchett) for like 3 bucks and The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss - a biography of, yeah, Dr. Seuss - for about 10 bucks. Love cheap books.

Well, my stuff has been in Bethel Park for one week - so, even though we went back to Warren last weekend, we've kinda been officially here a week... Highlights... Um, Home Depot is getting to know me by wierd request, if not by name... Best Buy got a big chunk of our "stimulus" check...HDMI is still a bit of a mystery to me... The internet here at home is flaky (or my computer is flaky - it's Vista, so...) We have a boat load of boxes in our house...and about 1/3rd are unpacked. The bedrooms are up, the kitchen, the living room (sort of). We can do laundry, but we can't get in our back door (!!) The church has been wonderfully welcoming. The morning we arrived to watch the movers carry in our stuff we were welcomed with a big basket of great stuff - breakfast foods, bread, peanut butter, a dozen roses, stuff for the girls to play with - and a list compiled by the staff of places to eat, get our hair cut, doctors, dentists, etc. It was really great. We have...

In 36 hours I'll be heading home. Not that I'm counting. Well, not much... Got a call from the movers today - we will be loading all the stuff of our lives on Wednesday. Boy that seems really strange. I don't like packing - I have too much stuff. Rachel and Elie have been reluctant to throw or give anything away. I kind of get that. A lot of the stuff that we accumulate through the years has STORY attached to it. We have an ugly green lamp in the basement that we bought to light the attic. When we moved to Warren, there was only a tiny pop-up to get into the attic. We put in a drop-down ladder and floored the attic so we could, yep, store more stuff up there. Steve Beach and Erik Larson helped me put the flooring down and for about three years after that there was a perfect size 13 crack in the plaster of the ceiling of our bedroom. Story matters. And, to some extent, that's why some stuff matters, too. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't really have...

Believe it or not, we did NO work today at the Pittsburgh Project. There was a miscommunication and our homeowner wasn't home today - and the work we need to do on her house is INSIDE. So, we watched another group do siding (actually, we helped a tiny bit) and I took the kids out to lunch at Permanti Brothers (the ORIGINAL). They were unimpressed. So, today was kind of a complete waste of time. Now, I'm not bitter about it, just a little annoyed. I really don't like it when plans fall through. Now don't get me wrong. I know that stuff happens all the time and I have absolutely zero control over it. And sometimes the stuff that happens is really, really, I mean REALLY great stuff. Last night Lori and the girls surprised me and showed up here at the Project. It was awesome! We hung out for like an hour and half and then they came in to worship with me for a little while. I was really feeling blue yesterday and that really took the edge off (I don't do away from my fam...

I know I've been quiet for a month now... Sorry. Getting ready to move - and still pastoring - is really time consuming... Spent most of last week at Annual Conference. For our non-Methodist friends - that's the once a year meeting of all the United Methodist pastors (and lay representatives) in Western PA. It's held at Grove City. Except for an unscheduled drive to Warren, I had a great half-week at Grove City. Nothing really earth shattering took place. But I was taken aback, again, this year by how quickly and...un-messily we pass the budget. I mean, it's ten million dollars - yeah, that's a one with six zeroes after it. And we spent about 15 minutes talking about it - and THAT was only on a tangental issue... I'm not complaining, per se. It's just hugely shocking to see that kind of thing just go by with barely a nod. All in favor, wave your green card (yeah, I know how weird that sounds...but that's what we do...) So, now I'm at Pitt...

My good friend Steve borrowed my copy of Kansas' Point of Know Return CD a couple weeks ago - which caused me to pull out all my Kansas stuff (yeah, I have just about all of 'em) and start listening again. I had Point in the CD player in the car and was listening to it when Rachel got in. "What's this?" "It's a band called Kansas from when I was a kid." "Is that a violin?" "Yep." "This is neat." Rachel has a very open mind, musically. Yeah, she loves Hannah Montana (bleah) but she also likes classical and some singer/songwriter stuff (like Scott Phillips) and, well, Kansas now. She sings along with me (heh, she doesn't know the words yet - and sometimes the lyrics on old Kansas stuff can get...um...obscure, so it's fun listening to her sing) "How far...to the point of know return...to the point of know return?" Of course, when I showed her this video yesterday she thought they were all wearing wigs - ...