A Two Goal Lead is the Most Dangerous Lead...

I was roused from a wonderful little nap after I did a bunch of hospital visits by the doorbell ringing over and over and over and over. Outside it was Kenneth, the young man who always comes to church looking for money of some sort or another, always with some excuse as to why his life is upside down and not altogether. Today he woke me up and when I went down to see what he wanted I also decided I need to make a trip to Target to get some food, read Starburst , for my office. So I off and walked to Target with Kenneth, talking about life, people, church and all sorts of things. Kenneth seemed to know everyone in the skyway , and said hello to everyone, it was fun. When we got to Target, he and waled around the food section, and every step we took was monitored by a policeman or a Target guard , twice an alarmed Target employee raced to the aisle we were in, eyes wide, out of breath, stared at us for a moment and then walked away. Kenneth was quite unfazed by it all, and miracu...

I wung it for the sermon today, no text, so I was a bit shaky and don't have a text to post here on the blog. I first have to apologize to my 8AM crowd, I was so shaky I didn't know what was going on, sorry! I came around for the 10AM service which felt better, but man I was ugly and bad at that 8AM service. Here is the gist of my sermon from my notes to help guide me through it without going for hours on end, oh, and the texts are below as well: Jeremiah 1:4-10 Psalm 71:1-6 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Luke 4:21-30 My thought process for the sermon was to go at the Epistle first, about love, Paul writes so well about Love all the time and it is the wedding reading that everyone picks because it is so fluffy and nice, but really its a impossible and crazy hard way to talk about love and what love means to us. Following the Epistle, I got permission to talk about myself a bit and how I grew up as a kid at Ascension with cool folks and families and how amaz...

Tonight we celebrated the life of Kimi Hara, who died last Sunday. I didn't know her too well, although she was quite an amazing woman in the history of MN, read this article to get a taste of who she was. I realized in the middle of the service that one of my favorite parts of the moring each Sunday morning was the arrival of Tom and Kimi, wallking with them to the Church, holding the door open, welcoming them inside, seeing her smiling face, experiencing her light heartedness. She was fun and as folks talked about her tonight, extraordinarily generous. Godspeed Kimi, keep watch over all of us. Be well, A+

Mark Cuban is owner of the Dallas Mavericks and he keeps a blog that I occasionally read, www.blogmaverick.com . He has some interesting posts and is quite an outspoken person in the NBA and other aspects of life. He won some Blog Award that drew me to his blog. I really like his current blog , and I think he is right on. Why are suits such an important part of our culutre and aren't there a million things people could spend their money on, like making a pledge to Church??? Tee Hee. His last few paragraphs about what it takes to boost our confidence in this day and age is interesting. I never feel all that comfotable wearing a suit jacket, or a sport jacket, heck it has only been recently that I have gotten used to wearing t-shirts, the white ones sometimes known as "wife beaters". And that was so I didn't ruin my expensive clergy shirts. Anyway, I don't think I will be able to give up wearing nice clothes and what not, as, unlike Mr Cuban, I don't hav...

I stumbled across this little photo, with the caption, "Agnus Dei" on it. I laughed pretty hard. Do we praise God for Beef? Or do we just praise God for the auction? I guess we will never know. Be well, A+

Today was my first day back in the office since Eliot was diagnosed with Leukemia. It was quite a day, a bit odd to be gone, a bit wierd to leave everyone there. It was made only more wierd when I went to check my messages, I had 7, which was a lot less than I expected, but all of them were on the 18th and 19th of December, then nothing after that. It was odd to think that A. the word spread that fast about Eliot and B. there is like two weeks that have been completely lost and are absent in some way, during my time at Gethsemane. It is like the Church hung in suspended animation all that time, sitting, waiting patiently in no rush to do or finish or make anything happen. I guess that is what you have when you work at a 150 year old Church... We shall see how things go from here! Be well, A+