random stuff and saturday song: steeler nation rise

some thoughts on this sleepy saturday morning:

--vbs is over, and was a wonderful (if exhausting) experience, not only as a pastor, but also as a father, whose children absolutely loved it and couldn't wait to go each night.

--my kids are currently watching mr. roger's neighborhood on pbs.  i didn't realize it was on anymore (it wasn't on in new jersey) and mr. rogers, after feeding his fish, just showed us how fortune cookies are made in picture picture.  such a great show. 

--yesterday was seriously like new year's day for me, as a steeler fan.  it's so exciting.  after vbs i came home last night and watched every video i could from the steelers website and the local news outlets, and read every blog and every report.  it is steelers time, baby!

--how am i supposed to read books about dinosaurs to my kids when these paleontologists have named dinosaurs things like "tuojiangosaurus" and "eustreptospondylus?"  that's just ridiculous. 

--we're going camping next week, so i set up our tent yesterday just to make sure it was all good and to air it out a bit.  the kids loved it.  they immediately went in the house and brought out all their pillows and blankets.  even thought it was mid morning and the thermometer was climbing.  then they wanted to eat lunch in there.  i love kids: so impractical but so in love with life.  i need more of that in my life. 

--and so today, for your saturday song, i'm sharing with you my FAVORITE steelers song (there are more to choose from than you might think, though most are pretty awful).  this song is by a guy named joby harris, is called "steeler nation rise," and is just full of the energy and passion that comes with being a fan of the black and gold.  enjoy!

infected

i've been feeling it come on the last couple of days, getting stronger every day.  at first it was just a tingle, and i wasn't sure if it was just something i ate or lack of sleep, but by the third day, i was convinced that i was infected.  yep...i got it.  i tend to get it around this time each year.  it starts off gradually but eventually builds to a  full-scale sickness.  it causes irrational obsessions and out-of-control fascination with all things black and gold.  that's right...i got it....steelers fever. 

it's been getting worse and worse, but i waited until today to tell you because, well, today is the day when the players report to camp, lugging all their stuff with them to saint vincent collage for a few weeks of hot competition and practice, setting the table for what will surely be an interesting season of adversity for these pittsburgh steelers. 

if you were to spend some time with me today, you would surely hear me humming to myself, "it's the most wonderful time of the year..."   what with baseball climbing towards its fall pinnacle, and football camps just beginning, it really is the perfect time of the sports year.  i'll be showing my support by being out at latrobe to watch some steeler practices next week, so come and meet me there if you'd like!  just remember that i am considered highly contagious and you will likely become infected yourself.  and what could be better than that?

happy birthday, gerard manley hopkins

july 28th is the birthday of the victorian poet, gerard manley hopkins.  now i'll bet you didn't know that!  but you learn something new everyday.  and here is a poem by hopkins about the glory of God in nature and our ineffectiveness sometimes at beholding or appreciating it. 

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge & shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast & with ah! bright wings.

vbs

arrrrrrgh!  ahoy mateys!  i be writing to ye from the high seas and....(clearing throat and speaking now in my regular tones)...um, sorry about that.  we started our vbs program last night, and are excited about all the children who are journeying with us through the book of acts.  last night we talked about how God's Word is true, and guides us along the journey like a compass.  tonight we'll have new adventures in store, as we continue to explore the mighty love of God. 

i find vbs to be at once exhausting and exhilarating.  the sheer volume of kids - the number of screaming, snack-filled, sugar-charged high-pitched voices screaming about scripture or some other doctrine of the faith - can be a bit overwhelming for me.  but at the same time, sharing 5 nights with all those young people, so full of hope and so willing to hear some good news, is incredible.  it is an awesome responsibility to make sure that the Truth of the Gospel isn't lost among the costumes and curriculum, and is offered to the children not as an over-simplified slogan to scream about, but as the life-giving, world-changing love story that it is. 

in the end, i know that those who have given up every night of their week to do this work will do the best they can, and we will leave the rest of it up to the Spirit of God, who will sow seeds of learning and hope in the lives of these young people; seeds that we pray will one day bear fruit.  it isn't about us.  it isn't about the curriculum.  it isn't about the crafts or the costumes.  it's not the songs or the motions or the skits or the snacks.  it's not about us at all.  it's about the way that God can touch the lives of these children, even in the midst of the noise of the week.  it is exhausting, yes, but it is also an amazing journey - an exhilarating expedition!

just a simple reminder of my vocation

as i sit in my office in preparation for my 4th sunday at the Catawissa Avenue United Methodist Church in Sunbury, PA, i am reminded of the amazing blessing and responsibility it is to be serving a church.  it is, to be honest, a wonderful vocation, full of the joys of people's lives - joys like weddings and births and new jobs and anniversaries and answered prayers.  it is full of spiritual sojourning, walking together, eating together, welcoming new travelers along the way.  it is, at times, dripping with hope, like great drops of life-blood that can't be contained by the skins of these church buildings. 

but it is also an awesomely humbling vocation, full of pain and grief, and every kind of brokenness.  it is always marked with the scars of life, and sometimes requires dealing with very open wounds.  when it is at its best and most honest, it is completely full of our brokenness and both our worst and best potentialities. 

and in all that, to be called to be one who serves a community like that, who tries to speak the truth in love, who tries to guide us towards growing in our faith, and who tries to leave room for the Spirit in all of that - to be called to that work - is a humbling and awesome responsibility.  seeing my name on the sign is a very visual and even tangible symbol of this calling.  just a simple reminder of my vocation.

as i enter this fourth week of ministry in this place, i look forward to many, many more.  what will i be able to say at the end of july 2011?  2012?  will we have been faithful to God's call on us?  will we have grown in our faith?  will we have learned better how to love God and our neighbors?  these are questions that remain unanswered for now, but will be answered by the countless moments and decisions ahead: moments and decisions that i am excited to be a part of alongside this group of disciples. 

if you are in the susquehanna valley area and are looking for a church home, or are just curious about church, come and visit us on sunday mornings at 10am at 319 catawissa avenue in sunbury, pa.  come and journey with us!

surprise!

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  i'm so excited! it's a surprise, because it wasn't supposed to happen for another month, but i'm an uncle again this morning, as my brand new neice was born at 6:01 this morning and Amelia Catherine is doing great.  can't wait to meet her!  i barely slept last night in anticipation, but it was so worth it.  isn't she beautiful? 

what bella taught me

being sans-children this week has afforded us the opportunity not only to get lots of things done, but also to relax differently than normal.  for example, we went to a movie yesterday, a very rare experience for us.  we went and saw the twilight saga: eclipse, and, even though i know that i may be losing significant credibility among many of you, i have to admit that i loved it.

there, i said it.  i'm a twilight fan.  when it comes right down to it, i'm a fan of stories, particularly when they involve love and tension and conflict and hope, and especially redemption.  and the twilight stories, whether they are a modern form of pulp fiction or not, have all that, and i love them.  i have read them all, and haven't really enjoyed the film versions all that much until yesterday. 

eclipse was great.  it was so much better than the previous two: better directing, better effects, better costuming, better hair and make-up, better adaptation, better acting, better everything.  so i really enjoyed it.  and not just on an eye-candy level, either.  i thought the film did an excellent job portraying one of the main conflicts/tensions in the book, the love triangle between bella, edward, and jacob.  i remember it being painfully awkward at times in the book, and the film really captured that well, i thought.  and as i watched it unfold on the screen before me, i found it to be an interesting metaphor for our spiritual love lives. 

you see, bella is torn between her two loves, edward and jacob.  neither is exactly a "safe" option (and is love really ever safe?  love implies risk, in my opinion), and she explains late in the film that the two loves represent the difference between who she is and who she should be.  this really reminded me of the apostle paul's struggle with the two natures he often talked about.  at one point in romans 7 he talks bluntly about how he does what he doesn't want to do, and doesn't do what he wants to do!  he is torn. 

through the story, bella tries to maintain a delicate balance between both of these significant relationships, and it really reminds me of us (of me) - we try to walk a balance beam between a relationship with God and with our sinful nature.  in other words, we try to do the right thing while maintaining a connection to what paul calls "our sinful nature."  we want to keep on overeating or being angry or neglecting a relationship or taking a drug or watching porn or feeding our greedy consumerism, and still maintain a good relationship with God.  we want both.  we try to "serve two masters," which is really ironic because that is exactly the phrase Jesus uses when he tried to tell his followers that this kind of love triangle just won't work out (matthew 6:24).  ultimately, we choose one or the other.  not choosing is, by definition, a choice in itself. 

and so we are all like bella, torn between right and wrong, (or more often) between good and best, between what is right and what feels good, between the easier way and the way we should take.  and most of us work pretty hard to try and find a variety of creative ways to serve two masters, but in the end, we have to make a choice, or more likely a series of choices, which by the outline of their trajectory will mark the journey of our lives, towards self or towards life.  it cannot be both. 

more important than par

the night before we moved out of new jersey, we were all done packing and there was really nothing we could do in the house, so we took the boys and my mom (who was there helping us with the move) out to play mini golf.  we thought this would be a nice relaxing recreational way to spend our last night in new jersey. 

nope. 

jackson, our oldest, needed constant help with how to hold the putter, and got extremely frustrated when he wasn't as successful as any of the adults.  i was proud of him, though, because he was fairly patient and actually kept trying to get it right and hit the ball properly. 

but caedmon, the younger one, was a whole 'nother story; an exercise in futility.  he was interested in mini golf for as long as it took to select the colored ball at the beginning.  from then on, it was more about the flags:

and the water:

oh, wow, did he love that water.  he was constantly stepping in it, splashing it, trying to swim in it, throwing his ball into it, etc.  while this was mildly entertaining to me for the first 7 to 8 minutes, it began to test my patience after that.  i tend to get a bit competitive on the mini golf course (because, after all, what is more naturally intense than hitting colored balls across astroturf?), and he was cramping my style.  he routinely picked up my perfectly placed approach shot and dumped it in the drink.  he would kick someone's ball into mine.  arrrgghh.

but as soon as i would get irritated, he would do one of those unbelievably cute things that would remind me that staying under par at funtown wasn't the most critical thing i could do on the night before we moved.  just being a dad and loving my family, even in the midst of the frustrations, was the most important thing on that - and any - night.  just ask this guy:

mary and martha

"mary and martha"

Henry Moore

lithograph

1983

image borrowed from here

tommorow i'll be preaching on the well-known story of mary and martha, with the title, "don't get distracted."  we'll be looking at the classic tension between 'doing' and 'being,' and where Christ invites us to be on that spectrum.  if you're in the susquehanna valley, i invite you to come to the catawissa avenue united methodist church in sunbury, pa at 10am to join us for worship, as we explore God's word together, and seek to not only hear God's good news, but put it into action in our lives.  hope to see you there!
grace|peace,
greg.

greg vs. the bunk beds

when we moved into our new parsonage, we decided that it was time for our two sons to share a room, which meant that we needed to look into getting some bunk beds.  after doing some comparison shopping, we finally landed on a web company, so we ordered the beds online and waited for them to arrive.  finally, on wednesday, the beds arrived around 3pm.  by 4pm i had begun to approach the two giant boxes with a box cutter, and some expectations about proving my dominance over any and all building materials that could be lurking within those elephantine boxes.  with agility and all the confidence that opposing thumbs can generate, i opened the boxes and reverentially pulled out the contents, setting up what would, unbeknownst to me, become an epic battle.  it sort of went like this...

imagine if you will, the voice in my head, a deep and dramatic baritone, in pompous tones: laaaaaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen, welcome to the big fight tonight.  in this corner we have greg, champion wordsmith but generally inept at anything that involves a screwdriver and instructions.  he has had many fights with pre-fab furniture and has lost them all to TKO.  looking for his first victory, he approaches this battle with high expectations, thinking that he'll actually finish in a couple of hours (the crowd roars with laughter).  aaaaaaaaaand in this corner, we have the bunk beds, champions of the heavyweight circuit, daunting and taunting, a mess of pre-drilled boards, various types of unrecognizable hardware, and indecipherable instructions.  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare you ready to ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmble? 

ding ding.  the battle began.  i started with energy, exuding an alpha dominance over the stained boards and shrink-wrapped hardware.  round one finished with a flourish, and the next couple of rounds followed suit, with me taking the clear lead.  it looked like i might just finally have a dominant victory.  one bed was made, one obstacle (poorly threaded hardware) had been creatively overcome, and i had begun the second bed.  i began to feel cocky.

that's when it all fell apart.  as i began to place one of the sideboards on the second bed, i realized that the instructions showed a tiny dot on the side of it.  i could find no such dot on the board i had left.  in a moment of panic, i looked over at the bed i had finished, which, by necessity, had to be the bottom bed, and i found the missing sideboard.  yep.  all my confidence had been misplaced and all my momentum was gone.  i had to undo what i had done and start over.  i took it like a mike tyson uppercut to the jaw.  i reeled.  i whined.  i even yelled out in turmoil.  i would have shaken my fist to the heavens, but i lacked the energy.  and i wasn't the only one.  by this time, my drill had also lost its mojo, and i was reduced to use a screwdriver while my drill recharged.  with each turn of each screw, the bed mocked me, like captain ivan drago.  i stammered, and even hit the mat a few times, ready to throw in the towel.  if not for my two little boys who needed somewhere to sleep, i would have.  but i thought of my two little guys; i imagined them lying uncomfortably on the hard floor, with kinks in their tiny necks, and i summoned the energy to pick myself up for one last shot.  i basically flung around like a wild man, but in the end i landed the final shot, and, against all odds, prevailed.  i put the ladder together, hung it on the top bunk, and fell to the floor in exhaustion, if not victory.  it was 9:30. 

so the 5 and half hour epic contest ended well, with two boys tucked in snugly in the defeated bunks.  i slowly dragged myself to my bedroom, and fell asleep on the floor, in a pile of sore muscles and a nearly-broken spirit.  i awoke on thursday without the ability to grip my coffee mug or walk like a normal human being, but with the sweet taste of victory in my mouth.  i fought the bunk beds, and i won.  and here is the proof:

my second most embarassing story

someone over at facebook asked to hear this story, and while i'm sure that many of you have heard it before, it's still worth sharing, as i could always use a good dose of humility.  enjoy....

about 5 years ago, b.k. (before kids), shannon and i would often head to borders or barnes and noble for a friday evening after dinner.  we had a little routine.  as soon as we walked in we would immediately split up and start looking individually.  in the classic tradition of hunter/gatherers, we would sort through aisles and tables of books, collecting the ones that seemed most interesting or relevant.  this would go on for about 45-60 minutes until we would head back towards the cafe carrying our stack of books.  we would sit down, get some coffee, and look through our books together.  if you bought a book at the barnes and noble in brick, nj, and it had coffee stains on it, that's probably my bad. 

on one particular night, as shannon and i were in the hunting/gathering stage of this process, i was scouring the religion and philosophy section, probably feeling especially full of myself.  i mean after all, only the really cool guys wear glasses and spend their friday nights perusing plato and spinoza.  as i looked up from some diatribe on existential angst, i noticed that shannon was just beyond the philosophy section, sitting with her back to me, in one of the couches that are scattered throughout the store.  surprised by this violation of ritual, i began to approach her with a certain indignation. 

but as i got close enough to see her closely and to look over her shoulder at what she was reading, my mood changed a bit.  i immediately recognized the glossy pages and perfumed aroma of one of those thick woman's magazines, like cosmo.   this seemed curious, as it wasn't shannon's usual material, but my curiosity was replaced by some level of surprise when i saw the name of the article she was reading:  21 NO-FAIL WAYS TO PLEASE YOUR MAN IN BED. 

whoa.  that changed everything.  just a second before i was going to chastise her for breaking with tradition and starting the reading process without me, but now i was going to congratulate her for such an interesting reading choice.  so, with my eyebrows raised a bit in surprise, i placed my warm husbandly hands on her shoulders with a firm familiar grip, and i put my face down by her ear and said to her, with a certain friskiness in my voice, "hey...what are you looking at?"  caught off guard by this, shannon immediately put the magazine down and turned to look at me, revealing that most horrible of possible outcomes to this story and setting into motion the very sudden ending to it: it wasn't shannon. 

nope.  it was a stranger.  and she looked about as terrified as i've ever seen a woman appear.  i immediately backed up with my hands in the air, like she was the fbi or something, and i said, in a stunned voice, "oh, i am so sorry, i thought you were someone else."  she never spoke a word.  just got up quickly and quietly, like a cornered animal, and practically ran out of the store. 

i was left standing there, my heart racing, all the blood in my body called in for a special event in my head, an attempt to set a record for the reddest face of all time. 

and that, that is my second most embarrassing story.  if you want the most embarrassing story, you'll have to pay me substantially large amounts of money. 

hope your day is, well, less embarrassing.

who's line is it anyway?

yesterday i preached my second sermon at Catawissa Avenue UMC (cat ave umc), and i used the image of a plumbline from amos 7 as a metaphor for our own spiritual health.  a plumbline, of course, is a tool that is used to make sure things like walls are standing straight up and down, and it is a way to measure if something is "in line." 

we do this all the time.  we measure ourselves to see if we are in line.  we measure ourselves against others regularly, and whether we say it out loud or somewhere subliminally, we are often guilty of a kind of "better than them" mentality.  "at least i'm not like so-and-so," we think to ourselves.  "i would never treat my kids like that," or, "i would never act that way," becomes a common refrain in our heads.  we use this kind of thinking to justify ourselves or blind ourselves to our own behavior.  we are measuring ourselves with a plumbline of our own choosing, and it looks to us like we are "in line." 

but who's line is it anyway? 

the other text i used yesterday was Jesus' story about the good samaritan.  sadly, it's a story that has become sickeningly familiar.  this is truly a shame because the truth is that this story is kind of a "grab-you-by-your-shirt-collar-and-shake-you-up" kind of story.  Jesus knew that the people he was talking to had been measuring themselves against the samaritans ("we would never act like those people!") and coming up roses.  so he told this story about a Jew who get's beaten and robbed and left to die on the road.  and priest walks by.  and a levite walks by.  these are the respected people.  these people are "in line" if anyone is.  but all they do in the story is toe the line and walk right by the need in front of their faces.  then comes the punchline.  a samaritan ("ewww...yuck!") walks by and sees the hurting man, and proceeds to help him up and give him a ride and put him up for the night. 

clearly the righteous ones were in line, like you and i are, but who's line is it anyway? 

Jesus told this story as an answer to a question.  a lawyer had just been asking Jesus about the main thing in the law.  it goes like this:

lawyer:  "hey Jesus, you seem like a pretty cool rabbi.  you've got some interesting things to say, i'm not going to lie.  in your opinion, though, what do i have to do to get eternal life?"
Jesus:  "umm...you're a lawyer, right?  why are you asking me?  don't you read the law?  what does it say?"
lawyer:  "well, you know, the standard stuff about loving God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself."
Jesus:  "well, that's it then.  just do it.  if you actually do it, then you will actually live." 
lawyer: "okay that's great, but what i'm getting at here is, who is really my neighbor?  who do i have to love in order to get this eternal life?"

and here's where Jesus tells the story.  here's where Jesus figuratively reaches into the ol' toolbox and pulls out a plumbline.  "want to know if you are in line with God's plan?  here, use this.  it's called love." 

in kids own worship yesterday they were talking about this story and one of the teachers asked Jackson about who his neighbors are, and he matter-of-factly told them:  everyone is our neighbor. 

yep.  everyone is our neighbor.  even the samaritans. even those people.  stop measuring yourself by how you compare to them and start loving them.  stop using the line about doing better than so-and-so, because, who's line is that, anyway?  start using the line of God's love as your standard, even when it shows you to be badly out of balance.  it's time to get back in line with love. 

living room before/after

as you ask, you shall receive. 

you asked for before/after pics of the living room, so here you go:

the above picture is the living room before we moved in.  of particular notice here is the flooring and the curtains, which have both changed. 

here is the room the day we moved in: empty.  you can see that the lime green carpet has been pulled up to reveal nice hardwood floors.  unfortunately, there was some damage to one section of the floor, so it needed to be cut out and replaced, before the rest of the floor could be sanded and finished.  so, needless to say, it's been a process while all of our living room stuff has been in the dining room and garage.  this week we were finally able to move stuff into the finished room, and while we have not gotten to the point of decorating or hanging anything on the walls, we've at least got our furniture in the room, the tv working, new curtains up, a new area rug in place, and a start to our new living room. 

last night we put the second coat of paint on our kitchen, so you'll soon be able to see some update pictures of that, as well, for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing.  of the most interest, however, will be the mancave, which i will eventually get to, but for some reason keeps getting put at the bottom of the priority list.  hmmm....

steadfast

i've never really responded much
to all the talk about you
being unchanging,
but in the midst of
new banks and bathrooms,
new accents and aromas,
in a land of new roads,
and new people,
and just so much new,
i'm glad for the constant that is
You.
You, though,
are steadfast, not static,
steady, not statuesque,
a sojourner. 
in a new land,
you have not changed;
your love remains.

-gregory a. milinovich

life in the desert

well, i had thought that we moved to the middle of pennsylvania, but it turns out we made a slight miscalculation, or perhaps the gps was on the fritz, because we apparently ended up in the middle of the sahara desert.  yesterday it was approximately 137 degrees fahrenheit.  at least at night it cooled to a comfortable 96 degrees. 

it's hot.

we continue to settle in to our new home, but we have to watch out for tumbleweed and cactuses.  (cactuses?  cacti?  what the heck?).  last night we got our living room furniture all in (we were delayed because of some repairs to the floor) and we will soon have a dining room, too!  we still have some painting to do, and boxes to unpack, and i may need to set some scorpion traps, but day by day, we are settling in.  thanks to all of you have checked in and asked how we are doing.  we've been plenty busy, so i've failed a bit on the whole blog/facebook/twitter thing.  the good news is that my new laptop is up and running, so i should be back in the swing of things here, if only i could find an electrical outlet somewhere out here in the sahara....

moving on

well, here is a picture of me and the boys from nearly a week ago now.  this was on monday, when two huge trucks rolled up to our house.  the men inside were ready to carry all of our possessions and (somehow) stuff them all into those two trucks.  it was an amazing feat, and a somewhat emotional one, as well. 

after the last box was loaded and the trucks drove off with our stuff for the night, we finished cleaning the house that has been our home for the last four years and said goodbye to the empty, echoing rooms.  it was truly with a sense of sadness that we turned out the lights, locked the doors, and drove west. 

but the emotion didn't end there!  we arrived in our new home in sunbury on monday evening, and greeted similarly empty rooms, like the one below.  these rooms elicited another emotion in us, though: excitement.  tuesday morning all our belongings arrived, and we spent an equal number of hours unloading all the boxes we had just loaded the day before (a somewhat surreal experience, really).  i don't know how we would have done it without the help of my mom and dad and sister and sister-in-law.  the last few days have consisted mostly of box cutters and paint brushes.  we haven't really "settled in" yet, whatever that means, but we are excited about where we are, and about the future God has for us here in sunbury, pa. 

these new empty rooms are a reminder to us that God wants to fill us with a new future, one of hope and not of despair.  there are great things in store!  tomorrow is my first sunday in the new church, and i am ready to begin a new chapter of the journey, filling our lives with new people, new relationships, and new stories to tell along the way.  it's been an amazing journey so far; i have no reason to believe it won't continue to be.  we're moving on.

hang in there

for those of you awaiting word about our move and subsequent settling into sunbury, hang in there. we still don't have a computer connected to the worldwide web. for now i am confined to using my phone, which is tedious at best. so be patient, and you'll get more agentorangerecords posts soon. peace.