Green Jello Hotdish

I’ve arrived at LAX, not without a few unexpected twists and turns along the way. I started the morning at the Milwaukee Amtrak station (thanks, Paul, for dropping me off) only to walk in to an announcement that the train to Chicago I was expecting to take was 30 minutes delayed due to a Metra “grade accident.” I took that to mean a car-train accident, but 30 minutes wasn’t going to be a big deal. As I was finishing up the ticketing process, the next announcement came that all trains for the morning were not running, and the next train out wasn’t going to leave until AFTER my flight was to leave Midway.

Some last minute scrambling, a $15 cab ride later, I’m on the road en route to Kenosha. Chris was my saving grace for the day and offered to drive me to Midway, so I got there with plenty of time.

As the morning went on, more and more flights were being delayed. Luckily, mine was only 30 minutes delayed (seeing a trend?) and we were up in the air quickly once we were set to go. We hit terrible turbulence along the way, which wasn’t helping the situation of my hating flying. I sat next to an interesting character, which made the flight that much better. In the end, we made it in to Los Angeles only 15 minutes behind schedule, and my luggage made the whole trek, so it was good overall.

Now I’m waiting for the long flight. Twelve hours from LAX to Auckland, New Zealand. I keep thinking of the flight here as being not horribly unbearable and 1/3 of the flight to Auckland. I’m not sure if that positive thinking is going to continue to work, however.

I’ve brought a number of books with me to read, including Barbara Erenreich’s new book “Bait and Switch.” So far it’s very typical of Erenreich’s writing style, but rather dry. I’m about halfway through it, and the ah-hah moment is nowhere to be found. I think I’ll finish up the book two hours into the flight or so, and call it a night.

Look for more updates as I continue my vacation!

There’s an interesting post on the blog of the Rev. Susan Russell, convener of Claiming the Blessing. It was originally written by Larry Graham, verger at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta. You’d be good to check it out.

It’s sunny and 44. Just like the weatherman said it would be. Pretty warm for this time of the year, so we better enjoy it. There will be two feet of snow soon, and we’ll wish for sunny and 44.

But the store’s not open today; well yes, that one is, but that’s not where you go. Why didn’t I think of this yesterday? It’s a holiday. There will be food. Of course we need a new serving platter — we dropped the old one on the floor after my sister’s party. It had been in the family for generations; it was handmade by your great-grandmother, you know. The pattern on it was intricate and inspiring. Just go to the store and get a new one, it doesn’t matter which store. It won’t be the same anyway.

We’ll use the good dishes from my great-grandmother today. Everybody has good dishes they don’t use every day, that’s why they’re the good dishes. Some people could call it a waste, yes, but it’s just what is. Holidays should be special, they should have that extra level of niceness. But it’s too bad the platter got dropped. Why are you still here? Go to the store! Whichever one is open, just look for a bunch of cars and pull in.

People are driving with their windows down. It’s strange being outside without wearing a jacket. It’s November. Where is the snow? Why is there still green ground? The SUV in front has bumper stickers for Michelle Bachmann, George Bush, and the ever-present yellow ribbon. They turned into the SA, which is stupid. It is so much cheaper at Food ‘n Fuel.

You have to talk with your mother. If you don’t, someone else will. This is the third time this week we’ve been over here. The fundraiser is next month, are you going to be home for it? It looks better having us all there. The store will be open, stop saying it won’t. That store isn’t open, but this one is. It’s still early in the day.

It’s sunny and 44. The bank on the corner says 10:42, but the city hall clock says 10:50. And the convenience store says 43. Does it ever snow around here anymore?

Be nice to your sister. Let’s go around the table and share what we’re thankful for this year. We’ve never done that before. It would be nice. Stop throwing corn at your sister. I don’t care who started it, I’m finishing it.

Sometimes we want to say what we’re thankful for, but we just can’t. Sometimes there are things we’re thinking, but we can’t share them. What if it didn’t matter? What if everything was just shared. What if it didn’t matter?

Oh stop asking questions. Clean up the table. Then we’ll go cut down the tree.

There’s not a cloud in the sky. I wonder if it’s going to get above 44 even. It probably could, if it kept up like this. The decorations look funny in the yard without snow. No breeze or wind today, either.

I’m leaving for Minnesota tomorrow for the Thanksgiving holiday. Besides catching up with family, I have a couple of other things on my list:

• Checking out the finished Midtown Exchange development in Minneapolis’ Chicago-Lake Neighborhood. (Which has apparently been renamed Midtown, I assume in honor of the redevelopment. For wonderful stories of Christian ministry in this area, visit my home congregation, Mount Olive Lutheran Church, at Chicago and E 31st.)
• A reflective walk through the Walker Sculpture Garden.
• Walking through the new Mill City Museum.
• Buzzing by the new Guthrie Theater facility.
• Avoiding, at all possible costs, late autumn outdoor work with my father.

A blessed Thanksgiving to one and all, regardless of the original story we’ve all come to believe.

The socially conservative American Family Association is calling for people to “take action” on Best Buy’s decision to not use references to any holiday during the winter season, bucking the trend of other retailers, including giant Wal-Mart and department stores Kohl’s and Federated who will be upping the ante of Christmas verbiage.

What is most repulsive, however, is the AFA’s assertion on its Web site that shopping is the whole point of the Christmas season:

While many other retailers have decided to return to the traditional “Merry Christmas”, Best Buy will not be among them. Best Buy considers the use of “Merry Christmas” to be disrespectful.

But while Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics company in the nation, will not be mentioning Christmas, they sure do want the shopping dollars from those who remember the Reason for the season.

Sadly, this is continuation of the excessive commercialization of the holiday season. The conservatives complain when we’re “missing the point” of Christmas by shopping until we drop. But then when corporations downplay that connection… you guessed it, they complain that we’re not spending ENOUGH money.

I’ll be doing all of my shopping abroad this year, as my upcoming travels are at the height of the shopping season. But if I wasn’t, I still would do my shopping at socially responsible, progressive businesses. Check out the Buy Blue listing and see where your favorite store ranks to start. Do your research, and don’t stop there. Google the company and find out where it stands on gay rights, employee relations, sourcing… Become a conscientious consumer!

I wasn’t going to blog about the obvious. But I’m irate, and it was a given.

I have not heard a single argument in favor of the marriage ban that has not been religious in nature. The very term “marriage” is rooted in religion. The matter should not be handled by the state in the first place. “Marriage is sacred,” they say. “This vote protects the sanctity of marriage.” The state is not sacred — it is secular. Let’s call this argument faulty logic number one.

Faulty logic number two comes in when determining the civil benefits for marriage are for means of protecting children and the family. I won’t waste my time repeating the many reasons this is a bad argument; anyone who has watched Grumpy Old Men can figure out why this is false.

Which brings me to my favorite, faulty logic number three: using “civil union” is just rhetoric. See faulty logic number one. If anyone is using poor rhetoric and word games, it’s those who stand in favor of this ban.

So congratulations, Wisconsin. You are unfair. You are marrying church and state. (Pun intended.) We should be changing all terminology to secular language, not passing further legislation blurring the separation.

You might notice there’s a new box to the right-hand side of the posts, inviting you to subscribe. If you enter your e-mail address, you’ll receive all of the day’s posts in your e-mail between 9:00 and midnight each evening. This service, and the new RSS feeds, are being delivered by Feedburner. (Another piece of trivia: one of the veeps over there spoke at the 2006 ELCA Communicators’ Conference. You can see some of the feedback to his presentation on his Web site here, and his blog is linked in the blogroll.)

I also changed the header picture. One of these days I’ll finish up the script for rotating pictures, but today isn’t the day.

Finally, look for podcasting soon.

I knew it! The advent of the paperless office has actually increased paper usage.

New Zealand’s top education authority announced they will allow “text-speak” in national examinations. That should capture attention by itself, but the fallout in the blogosphere is even more deserving.

This is a bad idea on many fronts. I could give you my reasons why, but I’ll just let those who have spoken receive more credit. This comment, by Kenno, in response to the post by Engadget, summarizes the kiwi point-of-view:

Ye Gods, they already speak a lower form of English in NZ, this will drive the place back into the dark ages of literacy. NZ is hell bend on not putting the little darlings under any stress or putting any kind of challenge in front of them where one person might exceed another — it’s becoming Walden II down here and we will suffer for it.

There were two Canadian comments to the same AP report from the Globe and Mail that were particularly interesting. The first from S Lucht:

What a great idea! Just like Ebonics was a great idea.

The second, as direct entry, from GB:

perfect…train the youth for their future years of using those obnoxious Blackberry phones…the english language has gone to hell in a handbasket anyways…no surprise here…and i am sure the ever popular lazy profs are all for this…the less they have to read, the better….having gone to university, i remember my great profs…arriving to class in track suits, incoherently rambling for 2hrs, drinking an alcohol laced coffee and then giving us a project to work on… just a matter of time before this is adopted in Canada..

Looks like GB shouldn’t be criticizing incorrect English publicly. Notwithstanding, if students haven’t discovered there is a difference between formal writing and peer communication, there’s a bigger issue at hand. And I’m going to vouch for the second: there has been a great breakdown in contemporary education distinguishing that difference. Is it teacher laziness, as some have claimed? I don’t think the buck stops there. As a society, we have become so infatuated with the notion of time, that making effort to do something right in the first place is now “inefficient.”

This is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my parents and some friends, reflecting on my day. I started the day teaching some communication workshops at a youth leadership training event at a church in the synod. The topic of the day was utilizing effective online community to build ministries. (I’ve edited the excerpt to protect identities, and removed some of my “artistic flair” just for job security!)

A little background on the Episcopal connection. Today was the investiture (”installation”) of the Most Rev. Katharine Jefforts Schori as the 26th Presiding Bishop. It is the first time in history that a member church of the Anglican Communion has installed a woman as its Presiding Bishop, Chief Pastor, and Primate. I’ll post more about that later.

Today’s teaching was interesting. First with the youth leaders — so much fun. This one lady hit it on the head in the large group when the leader was discussing e-groups and effective Web tools. He had planned this huge presentation, and then told me, “Oh, feel free to jump in with examples of how others are doing this as I’m talking.” He’s a nice guy. He was talking about how the group should imagine what it would look like to share our resource online, to have a Web site devoted to youth ministry where anyone could upload files, share ideas, and come together in a community.

Uh, we already have that. The concept is older than the Internet. We’ve had that for a while now. It was one of the first things I set up.

So I put it up on the screen, people were looking at it, and people thought that the only thing we had was an e-mail group. It’s SO frustrating!

So he went further in their brainstorming, and people came up with a lot of good ideas — not new ideas, mind you, nor things that are really intuitive — but good ideas. Then he was looking to get people together to form a committee (can you feel the blood pressure rising?) so they could “take this slowly to do it right.”

Then this lady, out of nowhere, interrupts him and says something like (seriously, it was profound, I wish I remembered it word-for-word because it hit the nail on the head), “I’m sorry, but I disagree with that. When you look at places like the Willow Creek Association who are getting millions of hits on their Web site a day, who monopolize the media, who have seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal and are attracting people with their cheap, shallow theology… the ELCA has missed the boat. Entirely. We do need to do this now. We need to do this yesterday. We need to do this five, ten years ago.”

What upset me wasn’t what she said, because it’s what I’ve been SAYING since I started. It’s that, in typical Lutheran fashion, nobody said “that’s right.” Nobody clapped. It was just a desire to “move on” to something else.

So after that, I transitioned my lesson plan into Google Groups (I was originally going to talk about MySpace). And sure enough, the question came up, that churches had to be cautious using this because it “validates” all the bad uses of the Internet.

I almost wanted to lose it. I’m so sick — SO sick — of the church not doing anything because either a committee has to be formed and nothing gets done, or because the church refuses to get involved in something until it’s too late. It’s no wonder that we’re losing members — or that the mainline church is losing members while the evangelicals are growing. Their theology, yes, is shallow, individualistic, decision-based, and flawed. But they’re the ones who are MEETING PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE. They’re the ones who are embracing the media, who embrace the Internet and technology to a nauseating degree. They’re the ones who, truthfully, pioneer accessible worship and structures, with their auditorium-style sanctuaries, big-screen lyrics, and video projection of speakers.

And what do we do? We argue that the new hymnal is red, because the old hymnal was red.

At least the Episcopal Church stood out on a limb today and pissed people off. They took a stand. Moderates don’t accomplish anything but a false sense of security. I don’t agree with conservatives, but at least they push the envelope and get people talking. I agree with liberals, and they push the envelope and get people talking.

I’ve never been so excited for my own generation than when I talk with kids from Carthage who have never voted in their lives, and during a midterm election, they’re asking how to register to vote and making sure that they’re able to vote on Tuesday. I’ve never been so excited for my own generation than when I see the reports that this could be the highest voter turnout from 18-24-year-olds since the voting age was lowered in the 1972.

I’ve never been so excited than today, when I hear youth talk about how they’ve joined MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking groups that are conducted by Campus Crucade, InterVarsity, Willow Creek/Elmbrook, and other fundamentalist evangelical organizations, and watch leadership squirm and feel uncomfortable in their chairs as they fear what is going to happen to our church and realize they’ve missed the boat.