glacierscout

Weekend update

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:38:41 GMT

Saturday was spent helping to teach ten people how to be good Scoutmasters at our council's training facility. The classes were fun, and there was a lot of good interaction with the students. A few were fairly new to Scouting, but several were veteran leaders who were transitioning into a new role.

At home, we had the maple tree in our back yard cut down. Our kids grew up climbing in the tree, and finding favorite perches to read, curl up with cats and while away the summer. It got hit by lightning two years ago, and has gradually been dying, so it was time for the tree to go. We have several sections of the trunk saved for each of the kids (and us) to make endtables. We also dropped our middle daughter off at a county MRDD facility for respite care. She's been there before, and has a grand time on this type of "adventure".

On Sunday, we all went to a combined service with another Episcopal church and parish picnic. My wife, mari4212 and I stayed through the service, then drove down to the University of Evansville to drop mari4212 at school. Her classes start on Wednesday, but this gives her a few days to get settled in, and it helps with our schedule as well. We made good time going down, and got her settled in her dorm in reasonably good order, save for a temporarily missing computer cable. (See her post for moving in tales and room rants.) We also met with the rabbi and his wife at dinner. mari4212 thoroughly enjoyed her class with him last spring, and positively squeed about taking an independent study course this semester. After meeting him, we can understand why she got along so well with him in class. We then returned to home, leaving from Evansville at 8:15 our time (EST). naturally, Cincinnati traffic was snarled up, with three lanes merging into a single lane through a construction zone where NOBODY WAS WORKING. We made it home at 1:30 in the morning. I think I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I was rudely reminded that things were shifting back to our almost kidless state at 5:00 AM, when Blackie, mari4212 's cat woke me up to have his head cuddled, and water added to his (almost) full water bowl. He's been sleeping curled up against her, and sleeping in late all summer, but now that she's gone, he needs to be reassured that somebody loves hime early in the morning.

Wednesday we start a road trip to take our son to Hampshire College. One LONG day of driving, moving him into the dorm on Thursday, a family orientation late on Thursday and all day Friday, then my wife and I have three days to ourselves before I'm due back at work. There'll be a stop in Boston, and another in Fall River, where my wife grew up. It'll be the longest alone time we've had with each other since we became parents. Too bad there'll still be fourteen hours of driving home in it.

Leadership Skills

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:04:15 GMT

A quick, but obvious leadership skill - you get more volunteer help when you show appreciation for what your volunteers have done.

I'm part of the training committee for the local Boy Scout Council. I'm the chairman for training in one of the districts (a smaller region within the council) and therefore have a seat on the Council Training Committee. The Boy Scouts of America has a LOT of training courses available, and it is hard for many leaders to keep track of what is necessary to be considered "fully trained". There was a very rough-looking table that showed which courses were required and which ones were strongly recommended for every leader, but it was shown in a black-and-white text table with large boxes and small "R" and "S" letters in each box. The easiest way to read the table was to assume that everyone neded to take everything.

I developed a clearer, one-page form that showed the training that was absolutely required for both the Boy Scouts and the Cub Scouts. Our previous Training Committee Chair decreed that we should not post the sheets until they had been reviewed (which I agree with), and then assigned the review to another member of the committee who wanted everyone to take everything. For six months, she came back each month with one or two changes she wanted, then new changes the next month and so on, bfore our Training Webmaster finally posted them online in draft form, so that the people who wanted to use them (even unapproved) could.

The Training Committee Chair and the reviewer stepped down at the beginning of the summer, to be replaced by new people. We also suspend work on training over the summer, since everyone is busy camping. Last night, we got started again, and during new business, the new Training Committee Chairs told me "I put your training summaries upstairs in the Scout Shop for general distribution. They're great - can you do similar sheets for Venturing and for District/Council positions?"

And now the rhetorical question - who will I do more and better work for?

Weekend update

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:46:51 GMT

My son and I went out to the Order of the Arrow Ordeal on Friday and Saturday. (OA is the Boy Scout honor society) 42 new people were inducted into the lodge. My son was in charge of ceremonies for the last time before leaving for college, and also managed the near impossible on a Boy Scout trip - he got to spend time with his girlfriend. The ordeal weekend was held at our scout camp, and he met her while they were both working at the camp. An ordeal weekend is deliberately stressful on the new candidates - not enough to fail them, but stressful enough to be memorable - and much more pleasant for the members. That is, unless you do it the way I do. On each ordeal, the new candidates are gathered together in clans, and are led through the weekend by a member of the OA, who acts as a guide-by-example, and endures the ordeal all over again. That's the job that I usually do, for the adults who are experiencing the ordeal. I got home tired.

On Sunday, we took the family up to visit my wife's sister and her husband and son. It's the last chance the family has to get together before we take mari4212 and our son to college. Good company and good food - BUT - I discovered that I'm allergic to my sister-in-law's house. I started sneezing shortly after we arrived, and didn't really stop till on the way home. She's noticed that she sneezes more at home too, and is looking to have the ducts cleaned out.

Between being gone for most of the weekend, I missed out on two of the "Quaffle" competitions at hogwarts_elite Quidditch matches. Sorry, Bronze Banditos.

There was one interesting moment in church, and afterward. We take the time during our services to celebrate any special events in people's lives - birthdays, wedding anniversaries, anniversaries of sobriety, etc. in the middle of the services. This Sunday, a girl that's been a member of the youth group with my son and her boyfriend got up. She just graduated from high school and is starting college in a month or so. He's been to college for the past two years, and they've been dating for two years. They got up to announce their engagement, which became official last Friday, on their second anniversary of dating. Both mari4212 's and my son's immediate reactions were "She's too young to get married".

My wife and I both noticed that she was wearing a mich tighter blouse than she had on previous occasions, and that her tummy was now bulging outward farther than her breasts. Yep - about five months pregnant. Both mari4212 's and my son still had the same reaction when we pointed out the evidence too them later - "Oh NAME DELETED how could you? You're too young to get pregnant".

Well, yes and no. They're certainly old enough biologically, since it happened, and in any century before ours, eighteen to twenty-year olds would already be married and raising families. On the other hand, American society still generally discourages getting pregnant before you are married, and getting married before you finish your education.

My father-in-law once defined a conservative Republican as a New Deal Democrat with a teenage daughter. Since I still like my Democratic label, I'm not reacting in quite the same way. Life for this couple would be easier had they not gotten pregnant, but 1) he's still in the picture and accepting responsibility, 2) she has supportive parents and a supportive church community, and 3) she had already chosen to go the local university and live at home, so she can still get an education. The successful marriages on my wife's side of the family for the last two generations have all involved moving in together after getting engaged and before getting married, and (in some cases) a pregnancy hat started after engagement but before marriage. My wife and I have no problems with our oldest daughter living with her fiance while they plan their wedding, because its cheaper for them than maintaining two different residences.

Part of mari4212 's and my son's immediate reactions might just be that our oldest daughter is almost ten years older than the girl who just got engaged, and they might see oldest daughter's actions as responsible ADULT decisions, while someone that is their contemporary (or younger) is making an irresponsible childish decision. They may be right, but I'm mildly amused that they're responding in a more conservative manner than I am.

Rant on the news

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:16:16 GMT

I usually don't post on the news, even though I follow the news on TV, newspapers and a variety of blogs. But sometimes, I just have to comment on the idiocy of newscasters. case in point, the coal mine disaster in Utah. They've just announced that a "seismic bounce" killed three of the rescuers and injured six more. The media is acting clueless, and the mine owners are somehow implying that a "seismic bounce" is a natural phenomenon, an "act of God". Nonsense!!

I'll put on my geology hat here. Coal is formed in swamps or deltas, like in Louisiana, and is found in layers of different types of rock. Generally, there's a layer of shale, formed from the mud dumped into the shallow sea or ocean. Once enough mud gets dumped into the ocean to raise it just above sea level, trees start to grow in the swamp. They die, fall onto the mud flat, and when buried, turn into coal. Coal formation generally stops when the river shifts, and a flood layer of sand covers the dead trees. The basin subsides, the sea floods in, and the cycle starts over again.

The result is layers that look like this:
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS - THE SANDSTONE LAYER
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC - THE COAL LAYER
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM - THE SHALE (MUDSTONE LAYER)
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

In Utah, conditions changed just after the coal layer was deposited, and the sandstone layer on top of the coal was over 1,500 feet thick. Now, rock is heavy, and 1,500 feet of sandstone is damned heavy. A cubic foot of rock is between 125 and 150 pounds, so a column of 1,500 feet of sandstone on top of the coal puts a stress of about 225,000 pounds per square foot. If you put that much load on an isolated block of coal, it would shatter as it gets squeezed out sideways. Nothing much will happen to the coal layer underground, because each of the blocks of coal (think the individual letters in the diagram above) is supported by being next to other blocks.

Now mine the coal. You can't mine all of the coal, or the roof will collapse. Over half of the coal has to be left behind to support the roof, and at the end of mining, the mine looks like this:

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS - THE SANDSTONE LAYER
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
CCC    CCCC CCCC       CCCC         CCCC
CCC         CCCC        CCCC        CCCC    CCCC    - THE COAL LAYER
CCC         CCCC        CCCC        CCCC         CCCC
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM - THE SHALE (MUDSTONE LAYER)
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

The loads on the pillars of coal left are carefully calculated, so that the roof won't collapse and the pillars won't explode. We've mined out a little less than half the coal, so the load on the remaining coal layer has almost doubled. In addition, the coal has lost its lateral support. If you know the strength of the coal, and the load it has to bear, it's possible to figure out how much of the coal to leave behind, so that the mine will not collapse, and the load on the coal will not cause it to burst.

Sometimes, if there's a weakness present, a pillar will fail, killing any miner nearby. Sometimes there's weaknesses in the roof rock, and a slab will fall down, crushing the miner. Coal also contains methane and sulfur dioxide, which can escape from the coal and smother the miners. A spark can ignite the methane, causing a fire or an explosion. There's a lot of reasons that a miner can get killed suddenly, and coal mining is probably the most dangerous job in the world. Therefore, you have to have high safety standards. Unfortunately, coal is a cheap commodity, and one way to keep making a profit is to mine more coal, and short the safety measures.

The coal mine in Utah was "played out". They had mined out an area extending for three miles from the mine entrance, and it was no longer profitable to mine farther back into the mountain. The owners could have simply closed up the entrance to the mine, and walked away. Instead, the mine owners started what's called "retreat mining". They remove some of the remaining pillars, starting at the back of the mine and working their way towards the mine entrance. As they do it, the mine roof collapses, and the remaining pillars start to shatter. It's tricky, dangerous work. The original six miners were trapped when many of the coal pillars throughout the mine shattered. They do so explosively, and pieces of coal fly sideways at high velocity. The "earthquake" you heard the coal mine owner talking about was the mine collapsing.

If the pillars shattered completely, it would be impossible to re-enter the mine - 1,500 feet of sandstone roof would have dropped by about 10 feet (the height of the mine). Only the outer sheet of coal on the column broke away. The rescuers had to clear away this rubble to try to reach the back of the mine. Last night, another slab of a pillar gave way, killing three rescuers and injuring six more.

You hear the newscasters saying that this was a "seismic bump" or "bounce". That's a coal miner's term for this type of pillar explosion. Miners have bravado, and they minimize the danger with a tame-sounding name.

You hear the newscasters saying that a "seismic bump" or event caused the collapse. NO - exploding rock is noisy, and the seismic signal is the evidence for the pillar failure, not the cause of the failure. Saying that the seismic event causes the collapse id like saying that the thunder causes the lightning.

You hear the mine owner and the newscasters saying that "the mountain is alive", as if there's a lot of natural earthquake activity. NO - the mine is gradually collapsing, sometimes in little falls, and sometimes in major collapses.

The newscasters seem to be either ignorant, or else determined to make this sound like a natural disaster. When the dust and rock settles, we'll probably find that the mine owners pushed the mining to the ragged edge of the safety margins (or beyond) when doing the mining, then went well beyond any safety limits during the retreat mining. They'll get fined, and maybe jailed. And nine men will be dead. Sadly, it's likely that the original six were killed when the mine first collapsed.

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:31:35 GMT

Update for the past two weeks -

fandom at last update, we planned on hitting our bookstore for Deathly Hallows at midnight on the release date. We actually picked up two copies, one for the family, and one for my oldest daughter, Elizabeth. mari4212 started reading when we got home, and finished the book by dawn. I started reading Elizabeth's copy, and when my son, Thomas got home from camp at noon, he started reading the family copy. He read it until he finished the book at 4:00 AM on Sunday morning, coming out of the room only to eat, and to complain to my wife "THEY KILLED NAME DELETED</b>! NO!!!" about one of the more tragic deaths in the middle of the book. I kept reading all of Saturday until Elizabeth came by after work and took her copy, then I got our copy and started reading early on Sunday morning, and finished before I had to leave for camp.
No detailed review here - but it's a satisfying read.

Boy Scouts We took 20 boys to Summer camp from July 22nd to 28th. The kids had a great time - we were one of nine troops in camp that week, staying at seven campsites (three small troops were joined as one for the week). There were three camp-wide competitions held, and our boys won all three, with little to no guidance or help from us adults. Many merit badges were earned, and there were few behavior problems (with the exception of one kid). The adults were NOT as happy. There were problems with how some of the camp staff ran program areas, we found out that the camp staff was under a lot of stress and pressure, and we're not happy with the way that the senior camp leadership responded (or didn't) to our complaints.

When I got home, I had to help finalize an interfaith church service to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the World brotherhood of Scouting. The committee that helped plan and run the service all did a great job, and my troop stepped up to host a simple reception in our meeting hall afterwards. The council did a lousy job of publicizing the event - we sent e-mails and articles to them, and the Council newsletter got delayed, and nothing showed up on the council web page. We managed to get enough publicity out to attract over a hundred Scouts and Scouters, but we could have had a lot more people there.

workI mentioned in the last update that I don't talk about work here, but I'll make an exception. Our company downsized my immediate boss around New Years day this year, since they haven't done such a good job marketing the investigation and remediation side of the business. We still don't have a lot of work in that area, but I'm essential to what we do (having the broadest skill set of any of the people in my company). Late Friday, I got a call from my former boss, in part to let me know he landed on his feet, and in part acting as a headhunter. He has a lot more work than staff, and needs several entry-level people in the environmental business, but he also needs at least one senior-level person. He'd offer a lot more money, BUT:

1) The office is two hours away - too far to commute easily.
2) Will any possible salary increase make up for at least temporary losses in my wife's salary as a day care provider? And will it cover any increase in the cost of living elsewhere?
3) No problem with mari4212 or our son, Thomas, since both will be in college. We DO have to worry about social services for our middle daughter, Sara, who's profoundly retarded.
4) The housing market in Dayton is VERY soft, with one or two years needed to sell houses in our area, and the sales price we could get right now would just cover what's left on our mortgage and HELOC. We could rent to our oldest daughter and her fiance, for enough to cover our mortgage and an escrow account to take care of repairs, but we'd still need a downpayment.
5) What's the housing market like in Indianapolis?
6) Moving churches, Boy Scout affiliations and our whole social network.

It will make for interesting times in the next few months.

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:19:57 GMT

It's been a long time since I made a serious update, and I'll be disappearing for all of next week, so here goes. In part the lack of activity is due to a busy final session at sorting_elite. Then there was Hogsmeade. In part the lack of posting has been competing with mari4212 for computer time in the evening. And finally, it's due to living a boring life.

So, what's new?

Work I never post details about my work, because I work as a consultant for other firms. Some of my work is covered by attorney-client privilege. Other work eventually makes it into the public domain when it finally gets submitted to a regulatory agency. Most of the time, my company and I are providing confidential advice to companies considering the purchase and acquisition of land. None of them would be really happy with having me share about what I do, no matter how circumspectly. Occasionally, there's some fascinating things that come up when we in the environmental world try to mix government regulations with health science and with the physical world, but even sharing that might compromise a strategy we will be using with one of our clients. So work stays off limits.

church We suspend adult Sunday School for the summer, so there;s really just the regular experience of attending services on Sunday - when I can (see family below). I am working on some posts about where my denomination is going on the issue of recognizing the ministries of gay Christians, or else splitting over the issue, but they're not in any final form yet.

family My kids are busy with their own lives, which takes a lot of time out of our schedules. Our oldest daughter is busy planning her wedding next year, but most of the fun trips are made with my wife and with mari4212, who gets to be a bridesmaid. She's been doing most of the squeeing about the wedding plans on her journal, while I watch our youngest daughter. There's been less posting of daily life now that mari4212 is at home for the summer. Middle daughter (the disabled one) just spent a week at camp, so Mari, my wife and I actually got to sit down for dinner for the week. She usually gets so distracted by other people that she doesn't eat until we leave, and she is far more interested in what is on other people's plates than what is on her own. This makes family dinners around a table difficult. Youngest son is working at a Scout camp this summer, and gets off at about 11 AM on each Saturday, and has to be back to camp by about 11 AM on Sunday. He doesn't have a car, so I get to make at least one trip out to camp and back each weekend. We've been able to make at least a few car pool arrangements, but it's been on a weekend to weekend basis. Any time I have to take him out on a Sunday, I miss church as well.

Boy Scouts Two new Eagle Scouts in the troop, or they will be as soon as they pass their Board of Reviews in the next few weeks. We're also getting ready to go to summer camp next week. I'm also helping plan an interdenominational service to celebrate the centennial of the Boy Scout Movement on August 1st.

fandom I did go to Order of the Phoenix, with mari4212, my son, one of Mari's friends and her dad. A good time was had by all. We're leaving in about half an hour for the book release party at our local bookstore. There's been some careful scheduling of the book rights. mari4212 will start reading as soon as we're home, and will probably have it read by noon tomorrow, when my son arrives home from camp and starts to read it. He will probably have to take it back to camp with him, but since this is the week I'll be there with the troop, I'll recover the book and get it read by the time I come back. We'll be living in tents, with no computer access and no Internet access either.

I firmly expect that the community will be almost silent for the next week or so, unless all of the Hogsmeade entries get dropped for voting. So except for a few comments back and forth this weekend, I'll see you all in a week.

Real life update

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:19:02 GMT

I love having my kids home from school. It'll become less common in the future, as our youngest will be going of to school this fall, at least 12 hours driving (one way) away from home. He's functionally away already, on a church-related mission trip to help reconstruct New Orleans. he'll be back next Sunday, long enough to throw his dirty clothes into the hamper, pack more clean clothes and have me take him out to Scout Camp. From then until about August 13, he'll be in the house on Saturday night only. There'll be about two weeks left before he goes off to school, and we won't see him back until Christmas.

Oldest daughter moved out of the house several years ago. That leaves our disabled daughter and mari4212 at home with my wife and I for the summer. The good news is, it means "chick food" - dinner meals with interesting ingredients and new flavors that my son won't eat. The bad news is - I have to share the computer. mari4212 has hers set up downstairs, but the cost of upgrading the Internet connection to allow for multiple users is just too much for her summer use. Between sorting at hogwarts_elite and mari4212's sorting (and checking her f-list for raves on her Supernatural fan-fiction, it's been hard to finish some of the pieces I want to post. I guess they'll wait.

mari4212 mentioned being stressed out serving as an acolyte at our Sunday service, because so many of our young people were out. She actually did a fine job. I was being three other people during the service. I was acting as the sound man, a job my son normally does. I also filled in reading the Prayers of the People for an older parishioner who played hooky. And I filled in for my oldest daughter, who was supposed to serve as a chalice bearer, but didn't show up at the service. So yes, I too suffered through the heat of wearing the robes.

We stopped by after church to see what happened to oldest daughter, and arrived just when her landlady was delivering a shovel to my daughter, who was in tears.

Her cat died.

Our entire family have been cat people, and as soon as my daughter moved from a near-campus apartment to a rental house, almost two years ago, she adopted an older, stray cat who had been visiting her landlady. She took care of some eye infection issues, had him fixed, and found herself owned by Stray Gray. He was very skittish of strangers at first, then started to warm up to family and friends. He got fatter on a regular diet. He had approval rights over my daughter's fiance, and when said fiance moved in, Stray Gray got along with the fiance's cat. He got sick very late last week, deteriorated rapidly and died late Saturday night. My daughter buried him in their garden.

And that brings us back to the family cats. We have three, all adopted strays or the offspring of strays. Ginger and Blackie are siblings, almost seventeen years old. Ginger is firmly patterned on my wife, but Blackie is mari4212's cat, and is glued to her whenever she is home. Schroedinger is a four year old adopted stray who worships the ground that my son walks on, but will snuggle up to anyone else who she can steal a cuddle from. We're just now realizing that as much as Blackie and Scroedie are patterned on our kids, that both of them will live out their lives as our cats, in our house.

So next fall, when mari4212 and my son go off to school, we won't just be almost empty-nesters (middle, disabled daughter will still be with us) - we'll become full-time cat parents.

Sun, 27 May 2007 20:32:22 GMT

Many of you on my friends list have absolutely no interest in religion. You can just skip this entry. But for those of you who are:

* Orthodox Christians
* Attracted by religion, but feel burned by past experiences with Christians or other religions, or
* actively exploring your own faith

you might be interested in this post.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the date when Christians celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, and traditionally celebrated as the "birthday of the Church. The following is the text of the Prayers of the people, the communal prayers of our parish church for this Sunday.

Prayers of the People

We are thankful for Jesus Christ, through whom we discover the realm of God.
We Praise you, O God.

We thank you, God, for the way you help us to recognize the faithfulness of others who have different paths to God's realm. We thank you for those other faiths and spiritual disciplines which are not Christian, and through which the wind of your Holy Spirit also blows.
We Praise you, O God.

We thank you for the opportunity to share bread and wine in Jesus' name, which is God's feast for all people.
We Praise you, O God.

We are thankful for the invitation to all sorts and conditions of people to join in our worship and common life. We thank you specifically for our full partnership among believers and agnostics; conventional Christians and questioning skeptics; females and males; the despairing and the hopeful; those of all races and cultures, and those of all classes and abilities. We thank you, God, for not imposing on any of us the necessity of becoming like someone else.
We Praise you, O God.

We are thankful that the way we treat one another and other people is more important than the way we express our beliefs.
We Praise you, O God.

We thank you, God, for the way we can find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty, in living the questions than in the answers.
We Praise you, O God.

We thank you for spiritual community in which we discover the strength to strive for justice and peace among all people and to bring hope to those whom Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers.
We Praise you, O God.

We are thankful for the consciousness that our faith entails costly discipleship, renunciation of privilege, and conscientious resistance to evil.
We Praise you, O God.

Gracious, Holy, and Living Spirit of God: enliven and transform our faith and our lives so that we may be witnesses in every culture and among every people to your goodness and love. Change the hearts of all who intend and perpetuate evil. Open the minds of all who are closed to your fresh breath. Free us from domesticating or trivializing your good news. These things we pray in the name of the God who
is always greater than we either perceive or imagine.
Amen.

Our rector wrote up these prayers, cribbed liberally (pun intended) from the Center for Progressive Christianity (http://www.tcpc.org/), and their guiding principles. My parish is a member of this organization. These prayers and principles are EXACTLY why I find my home in the Episcopal Church, and why I don't feel the need to change the views of any of you with different beliefs than I have. My church tells me that God is at work in all of your lives, that your path to God does not need to be my path to God, because all paths to God are just that - ways that each of us can reach the divine.

Fri, 18 May 2007 18:43:45 GMT

swiped from traumerin

Your Score: Lawful-Good

80% Good, 30% Chaotic

Plane of Existence: Mount Celestia, "The Seven Heavens". Description: Countless paladins and saints have ascended here. Notable Inhabitants: Angels and Devas.

Examples of Lawful-Goods (Ethically Lawful, Morally Good)

Aeris "Aerith" Gainsborough (FFVII)
Superman
The Tick ("Lawful Stupid")
Abraham Lincoln
Sherlock Holmes
Phileas Fogg
Captain Picard

A person with a lawful good attitude believes in the use of authority and rule of law to bring good to the greatest number of people. Her/His actions support the status quo and s/he uses systems and organizations to achieve good goals.

S/He will keep his/her word and value truth.
S/He will avoid the use of poison and use violence only when authorized to do so or in self defense.
S/He may or may not be disciplined, organized, emotionally restrained, caring, compassionate, and peaceful, but s/he believes that these are admirable qualities.
Respects law and order and is willing to suffer limitations on individual freedom for the benefit of the group.
Puts moral principles before material considerations.
The lawful good person will be a very faithful member of a group, but if the laws of the group clash with the ethics dictated by his or her moral alignment, the lawful good person will probably leave that group and look for a group more closely aligned with his or her ethics.
The lawful good person is an active advocate of his or her beliefs.

Lawful Good "Saintly"
"Crusader"

A lawful good [person] upholds society and its laws, believing that these laws are created to work for the good and prosperity of all. He is both honest and benevolent. He will work within the established system to change it for the better, and strives to bring order to goodness that other good-aligned [people] might pool their resources to better the world. A lawful good [person] combines a commitment to oppose evil with discipline. Most lawful good [people] live by a strict code of honor, or by the rules of conduct set down by their deity. They will generally selflessly act by these codes even at the cost of their own life.

Lawful good combines honor and compassion for the innocent.

A knight/paladin who always follows the orders of his superiors is an example of a lawful good [person].

Other Alignments and Tendencies (Tendenices are what you would more often sway towards; esp. for Neutrals):
0-39% Good, 0-39% Chaotic: Lawful-Evil
0-39% Good, 40-60% Chaotic: Neutral-Evil
0-39% Good, 61-100% Chaotic: Chaotic-Evil
40-60% Good, 0-39% Chaotic: Lawful-Neutral
40-60% Good, 40-60% Chaotic: True Neutral
40-60% Good, 61-100% Chaotic: Chaotic-Neutral
61-100% Good, 40-60% Chaotic: Neutral-Good
61-100% Good, 61-100% Chaotic: Chaotic-Good</i>

Link: The Alignment Test written by xan81 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Weekend update and a good story

Tue, 15 May 2007 19:10:54 GMT

I spent most of the last week (and considerable time before) getting ready for a Boy Scout camporee for our District. We planned it as a service project at Fort Ancient Historical Park, a Hopewell Indian site that features over 18,000 feet of walls surrounding several hundred acres of hilltop. The camporee went from last friday to Sunday and was a rousing success:

* About 230 Scouts and leaders from thirteen different troops attended the camporee
* Another 30 Cub Scouts attended for the day
* The Scouts contributed over 525 hours of community service in a single day, clearing brush from some of the earth walls to make them more visible
* 55 boys earned the Indian Lore merit badge
* Another 50 learned how to kayak on a river, at a neighboring canoe livery
* The competition games held between classes and the service project were very popular.
* Five Scout troops and one adult leader group participated in a cooking competition, and we staff judges ate very well
* The weather was fantastic!

At the closing campfire, the director of the park gave a motivational speech, urging all of the boys in attendance to keep up with Scouting, and try to reach the rank of Eagle, the highest rank in Scouting in the United States (Queen's Scout for the English among us). The story works just as well for all of the people on my f-list, especially those who may have someone in their lives (including themselves) who tell them what they can't do, or that they can't succeed. It goes like this:

One spring, a hen turkey got up off of her nest to stretch her legs and scratch in the dirt. As she walked into a thicket, she found a strange egg. It was still warm, and she thought to herself that the egg would die if she didn't take care of it. So she tucked the strange egg beneath her wing, returned to her nest, and kept it warm along with her own eggs.

One day, her eggs hatched, and so did the strange egg. The other turkeys gathered around to see what would hatch from this egg. As the chick's head emerged from the shell, with its powerful beak gleaming, the other turkey mothers let out a gasp of horror. But the old, wise turkey leader said "Don't worry - just always remind it that it is a turkey.

As the strange chick grew, the other turkey chicks mocked it and insulted it, because it looked so different from them, with its dark feathers, large wings and powerful talons and beak. The strange chick asked the old, wise turkey leader why the other chicks mocked him. And the old, wise turkey leader told him "Don't worry, you're a turkey, just like them.

Another day, the strange chick saw his reflection in a pool of water, and noticed that the feathers on his head were turning white. He saw how long and powerful his wings were, and how small the wings of the other turkey chicks were. He returned to the old, wise turkey leader and asked why he was so different, and what he really was. And the old, wise turkey leader told him "Don't worry, you're a turkey, just like them.

Then one day, the shadow came. The strange chick looked up, and saw a powerful bird, with wide black wings and a white head and tail soaring overhead. The old, wise turkey leader shouted "It's an EAGLE. Run for your lives, into the thicket." The other turkeys ran into the thicket, but the strange chick looked up into the sky at the eagle, then at his own wings, and shouted "I'm an eagle too!" But the old, wise turkey leader told him. "You're not an eagle, you're a turkey. Go hide your brothers and sisters with your wings. The eagle chick shouted even louder "BUT I'M AN EAGLE". And the old, wise turkey leader told him. "You're not an eagle, you're a turkey."

And the eagle chick finally believed him, and hid his brothers and sisters with his large, powerful eagle wings. That eagle lived and died as a turkey.

The lesson of this story is that you were born to be an eagle. You're only a turkey if you believe what other people might say to bring you down. Believe in yourself, and be the eagle you were born to be.

meme

Fri, 04 May 2007 19:31:30 GMT

stolen from 427

Mingle2.com - Free Online Dating

I disagree - the question they say I got wrong is incorrect in their answer key.

69% Geek Mingle2.com - Free Online Dating

Not bad for an old guy!

I am 58% Addicted to Coffee

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Thu, 03 May 2007 13:29:31 GMT

from strangealchemy who always gets the exact opposite of what I get on these memes - but we get along online anyway.

April update

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:22:53 GMT

I'm way behind with substantive updates on what's going on with life, but that's mostly because I have been busy with Boy Scouts on most evenings and weekends. We're in the middle of running an adult training course that involves two Wednesday evenings and two weekends, where participants actually form a Scout troop and learn what the program is like by being Scouts. Oldest daughter and my Eagle Scout son are on the staff as well. This year, another staff member and I are starting to work on a full-length manual for how to run the course, so I'll be co-authoring or compiling a book after all. Due date is two years from now, as we modify and improve on it during the next two courses.

Another fun part of Scouting was last weekend, when I attended a picnic for Vigil members of the Order of the Arrow. The OA is Scouting's honorary society, and it is unique in that it's the only honor society where members are voted in by non-members. Scouts are elected into the basic level of membership in the society by the rest of the boys in the troop, most of whom are not even eligible to be members. There's a second level of membership, which can be reached by learning more about the Order of the Arrow and committing to its purposes, and most active members advance on to this second level. Vigil is the honorary membership level WITHIN the society. Only one Vigil member can be selected each year for every fifty active lodge members, and at least half of the people selected have to be youth, under the age of twenty-one. Our lodge CAN elect either six or seven Vigil members a year, but typically, we elect fewer than that. Last year, I was one of four elected.

About forty of us gathered at one of our Scout camps, socialized together, and cooked up some burgers and hot dogs. After we ate, we sat down to review the names of the Scouts and adult leaders who had been nominated, and all of us got to say what we knew about them. Once the youth members were satisfied that they knew who each of the nominees were, we adults got kicked out, while the youth voted on who was elected. To me, that's one of the things that makes the Vigil honor special - it's awarded by the youth in Scouting, not the adults.

Once the election was complete, we all got called back in, and were told who was elected. Then came the fun part - figuring out an honor name for those who were elected, and translating that name into Lenni Lenape, the language of the Delaware tribe. The only restriction is that the name can have no more than thirty-two letters, including blanks between words. One of our adults (a Shawnee) manned the official dictionary, and translated as we came up with ideas. Mine isn't too bad - Achsin Elachtoniket, or Rock Seeker, in honor of my career as a geologist. One of the names we came up with was perfect, but came in at thirty-six letters. Good fun was had by all.

The identities of the honorees are still secret, until the day they are formally called out and recognized at summer camp or another occasion. Their honor names won't be revealed until after they keep their vigil. I plan on being there for that occasion.

We've finished up the class on "The Passions of the Christ" at church. We're currently starting a series on who we are as Episcopalians, how did we get into such controversy over consecrating an openly gay bishop in 2003, and what else is threatening to tear the church apart over this issue, women's ordination and (as the Canadians have done) blessing same-sex unions. I've been keeping the notes, although they're not as long or complex as those for Larry Welborn's classes. other than for mari4212, is there any interest in these classes?

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:57:40 GMT

I'm way behind on this one, but mari4212 will want the notes anyway. This is the last of our lenten sunday school classes. Since then, we've gon through palm Sunday and Easter, and i've been swamped with Boy Scout training and issues.

In the final session of our study, we are looking at the last Supper, and viewing it as the final symbolic action that Jesus took to break free from loss and melancholy, in order to become an agent of salvation.

The scriptural reference used is Mark 14:21 and following verses. The actions are familiar; at the Passover feast, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples, with the words 'This is my body'. At the end of the meal, he took a cup of wine, gave thanks and passed it to the disciples, saying 'This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for many".

Many of the most memorable and meaningful actions that Jesus took were at table. This seemed to be deliberate on Jesus’ part. John Dominic Crossan writes that "for Jesus, the table was a miniature model of the kingdom". Many of the parables also likened the kingdom of God to a feast.

A particularly important parable is the one in which a king invites many people to a wedding feast. The invited guests don’t show up, and the king orders his servants to travel the highways and byways, inviting anyone they could find, until the hall was filled for the feast. This parable is found in Matthew and Luke, as well as in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, and (since it is found in identical form in Matthew and Luke) in the sayings gospel "Q". The kind of random search would have brought in all classes, all sexes, all ranks of people, saints and sinners – all mixed together and equal at the feast.

Jesus himself lived out this parable by constantly eating with "sinners and tax collectors". Not mentioned by Larry was the ancient Semitic practice of hospitality, which meant that at a desert oasis, you had to provide food and water to anyone, even an enemy. On the other hand, if you ate with that enemy, you were required to reconcile with that enemy. Therefore, Jesus’ habit of eating with the "sinners and tax collectors" meant that he was obligated to be reconciled with them, in an open, egalitarian table fellowship. In contrast, the Pharisees were a renewal movement, seeking to strengthen Judaism and their common Jewish identity by having ritually pure people eat ritually pure meals. The Pharisees practiced table fellowship too, but it was an exclusive one. No wonder they quarreled with Jesus.

There are other examples of this emphasis on the banquet as an image of the kingdom of God. The feeding miracles were eschatological dramatizations of what the kingdom of God would be – feasts where all would be welcome and hosted by God. In the Sermon on the Plain, Luke cites the beatitude "Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be filled".

And now, we return to psychology. We have been viewing Jesus as a utopian melancholic, an idealist entranced by a utopian vision, but traumatized by the death of that vision. The response to this melancholy is either a turn to mania, or to despair. It turns out that many utopian melancholics become preoccupied by food and obsessed with diet. They respond in one of two ways. Martin Luther exemplifies one extreme, becoming a voracious eater and drinker, ultimately suffering from his overindulgence. Mahatma Gandhi shows the other extreme, displaying an ascetic, abstemious eater, almost starving himself to death several times. Interestingly, Gandhi first encountered Christians and Christianity in London, when he was seeking out vegetarians.

Why the preoccupation with food? For one thing, it’s something the melancholic can control. Food is also closely tied with maternal care and feeding, and with hope. Eric Ericksen says "Our first firmament is our mother’s face, shining above, giving out nourishment. Having tasted and sensed it, we remain part of it and eventually become strong enough to leave it." Utopian melancholics become fixated on another hope, and when that hope dies, and melancholy begins, they respond by internalizing the failed hope, and by internalizing that initial hope of maternal care. In the struggle with that failed internalized hope, mania results when the self overcomes the hope; and gluttony an overconsumption can be a consequence. Luther’s gluttony was an expression of his will to live, sometimes described as "melancholy with teeth in it". When the internalized hope overcomes the self, depletion and despair is the result, shown by abstention from food, as in the case of Gandhi.

Jesus appears to be much closer to Luther than to Gandhi. His enemies accused him of being a glutton and a wine drinker. While Jesus DID fast, he never encouraged fasting as a spiritual discipline for his disciples. In his teaching, he ruled out the more extreme food rules, saying "Nothing that goes into a man can defile him, only what comes out of him."

The Last Supper is particularly illustrative of Jesus attitude towards food, and actually points to a third way of response to melancholy, not gluttony (mania) or asceticism (depletion).

From the text, Jesus sent two disciples into Jerusalem, and told them to follow a man carrying a water jar, then to ask about a guest room in the home that he entered, and there to prepare the feast. The first significant thing about the story is how difficult it would ordinarily be for out-of-town Galileans to find a room in town where they could actually celebrate the Passover feast, due to the large number of pilgrims compared to the size of the city. The preparations were very elaborate and involved, and include obtaining an unblemished 1 year old lamb, taking it to the temple to be ritually slaughtered, and then properly cooked.

Once the feast began, the first significant action Jesus took was giving one last prophecy that he would be betrayed, literally "handed over", by one of those who was eating with him. The prophecy echoes those in Mark 8, 9 and 10. This would have been the bitterest possible blow, the ultimate breaking of the inclusive table fellowship and an ultimate violation of the hospitality code. The natural reaction of a melancholic (or even a normal person not suffering from melancholy) would be a loss of appetite, or the temptation to start binge drinking. Instead, Jesus takes a different approach – taking a symbolic action, breaking free from the captivity to loss, and becoming an agent of change.

He then institutes the Eucharist, by taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and announcing "Take, eat, this is my body." At the end of the meal, he gives thanks for the wine, gives it to them, and tells them "This is my blood, poured out for the new covenant. Whenever you do this, you do it I remembrance of me."

The sharing of the wine directly implies a sacrifice, recalling the blood of the Passover lamb, and the blood poured out in sacrifice any time a covenant is made. The principle behind this blood sacrifice was "May the same thing happen to me (my blood completely poured out) if I break this covenant."

In Jesus view, the death of his original vision (the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God) had been irretrievably broken, by the killing of John the Baptist, and by the opposition of the Jewish authorities. The old covenant was broken. In the three symbolic actions we have been discussing, Jesus seeks to establish a new covenant:

· The entry into Jerusalem – I will answer the call.
· Cleansing of the temple – I will repair the break in the covenant
· Last Supper – I will lay down my life to achieve this.

To return to the thesis that Jesus was a utopian melancholic, who has been driven to the melancholy by the death of the idealized hope – the battle within the melancholic is between the self and the idealized, internalized hope. When the self triumphs over the internal hope, the response is manic activity, over consumption, and self-destructive excess. When the hope overcomes the self, the result is despair, depression, depletion and possibly suicide.

Jesus chooses a third path – he decides to share himself and his internalized hope with others, through these symbolic acts, and most especially the Eucharist. This abolishes the boundary between himself and others, so that we believers become the Body of Christ, his new self in the world.

We do this when we practice the same open fellowship in our lives and in our world, today. Jesus didn’t get to experience the Kingdom of God in his own life (only in his death), but by giving his life to us, we get to experience at least part of that life, a life lived in relationship and service to others, as a new reality. In this way, we share in the passions of Christ, so long as we share in his fellowship and in his ministry.

My personal reaction to this and the previous lessons is that I am not yet completely ready to accept a depressed or melancholic Savior.

Part of it lies in the narrative. Larry would have us believe that everything was sweetness and light until about halfway through Jesus' ministry, when opposition by the Jewish authorities and the murder of John the Baptist triggered the melancholy. The evidence used to show the melancholy (predictions of His own betrayal and death, weeping at the death of Lazarus, agony in the garden, feelng of forsakenness on the cross) is supposed to extend all the way through Jesus life, to the moment of His death. On the other hand, the evidence for Jesus' active management of His melancholy, the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple and the last Supper all occur during the middle of the narrative.

There's also the matter of the actual trigger. There's an old saying that just because you are paranoid DOESN'T mean that everyone isn't out to get you. In the same context, being melancholic doesn't mean that the "bad guys" aren't out to oppose you either. The initial lack of opposition to Jesus and His message may just mean that the Jewish authorities weren't aware of Him yet. The Temple authorities were dispatching what they saw as false messiahs on a regular basis, and Jesus wouldn't have been that much different to them. Jesus' response that he would be betrayed and suffer death wasn't despair - it was the stark truth, amply verified by what happened to every other messianic figure. Jesus was unique in predicting that he would be raised again from the dead, and I believe it was that faith in His Father's actions that gave Him the courge to go on. The REAL temptation that Jesus faced was more likely the apparent hopelessness of the situation and unbelief that God would actually carry him through.

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:46:08 GMT

swiped from strangealchemy Probably right, I'd wear a kilt.

You scored as William Wallace. The great Scottish warrior William Wallace led his people against their English oppressors in a campaign that won independence for Scotland and immortalized him in the hearts of his countrymen. With his warrior's heart, tactician's mind, and poet's soul, Wallace was a brilliant leader. He just wanted to live a simple life on his farm, but he gave it up to help his country in its time of need.

</td>

William Wallace

83%

Indiana Jones

75%

Maximus

75%

Neo, the "One"

54%

Captain Jack Sparrow

50%

The Terminator

50%

Lara Croft

50%

El Zorro

50%

Batman, the Dark Knight

50%

The Amazing Spider-Man

50%

James Bond, Agent 007

42%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:08:43 GMT

Continuing with the Sunday School classes taught by Larry Welborn, here's the March 18th class. We've been discussing the passions of the Christ, the concept of jesus suffering through an emotional passion for much of his ministry, culminating in the passion week. In previous weeks, we've discussed the evidence for melancholy in Jesus' life, then modern perspectives on melancholy and deprression. In last week's class, we discussed the first of three symbolic actions taken by Jesus that show him working through the melancholy - the triumphal entry into Jerusalem

The focus of today's lesson was Mark 11:1-15 - 19, the Cleansing of the Temple. 15] And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; [16] and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple. [17] And he taught, and said to them, "Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." [18] And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching. [19] And when evening came they went out of the city.

According to Larry, this is the second of three symbolic actions that Jesus takes, and deserves to be seen as a decisive response as Jesus works through and beyond melancholy. The question to ask is whether the action was a premeditated, symbolic gesture, or an impulsive reaction out of strong emotion. Larry then concludes that it has to be seen as a deliberate action because the alternative is false.

Psychologists note that impulsive action is meaningful. For example, dreams can often reveal meanings that our conscious mind suppresses. Melvin Lansky suggsts that impulsive actions are part of a larger life picture, and can be seen as an attempt to re-create and master past traumatic situations, in an attempt to come up with a different, better outcome. He differentiates between dysfunctional and functional impulsive behavior. Dysfunctional impulsive behavior means acting without any kind of forethought. It is risk-taking, in that the person doesn't pay attention to the risk. While occasionally, good might result from these type of impulsive actions, often, the results of the actions can make the situation worse. In contrast, a functional impulsive action takes into account the risks, and balances them in a search for a favorable outcome. This type of behavior is more ventresomeness instead of simply risk-taking. Larry notes from the exigesis that Jesus' actions avoid the obvious risks, and do not lead to harm for others, which lead him to believe that the actions are either a functional impulsive behavior or premeditated and deliberate.

EXIGESIS There are two different versions of the cleansing story, one in Mark 11, which is picked up in the other Synoptic gospels, and another version of the story in John 2:13-22, which adds additional details, a prophetic reference to the Old Testament and a Resurrection prophecy. Scholars universally believe that the temple cleansing incident happened, and that it was the proximate cause of Jesus' subsequent arrest, conviction and execution. On the practical side of the story, Jerusalem was a one-industry town, based on the temple, and upon producing righteousness and forgiveness. Animals sacrificed at the temple had to be unblemished, and had to pass inspection by the priests before they were offered. Monetary offerings had to be made with the sacred shekel, and not with the coins used in everyday life. The family of the High priests Annas and Caiaphas had a monopoly on raising of sacrificial animals in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and got rich off of selling these animals. There was an incentive to find fault with any animal brought into the Temple from outside of jerusalem, so that a new animal would have to be purchased on the spot, at exhorbitant rates. Money changing could also be a source of extra income, as the moneychangers in the Court of the Gentiles had a monopoly on the exchange rates. Both of these potentially (or actually) corrupt activities took place in the Court of the Gentiles, the only place within the Temple that a God-fearing gentile could enter.

There is less of an agreement among scholars about the reasons behind Jesus actions. The traditional school of though is that it is a cleansing, throwing out the corrupt activities from within the temple precincts so that the proper temple activities could resume. A newer theory is that by interrupting the commerce within the Temple that the whole sacrificial system was overthrown - people couldn't offer sacrifices without an unblemished animal or the proper coins. In this view, Jesus is trying to destroy the temple cult, the actual charges leveled against him by the Sanhedrin. Larry believes that both resons are valid.

Larry further suggests that Jesus undertook a symbolic action, overthrowing the moneychanger's tables and driving out the animals in only a portion of the Temple Court. The physical size of the Court of the Gentiles is too large for one man to drive out all of the commerce, there's too much security, there would have to be too much violence, and the Roman garrison in the Fortress Antonia looks down on the Court of the Gentiles. Some commentators, suggesting that jesus was part of the Zealot movement suggest that he led an uprising at this time, but if that were true, Jesus would have been arrested immediately, along with others. The action was most likely symbolic; Jesus, acting alone, cleared out a portion of the Temple court as a symbolic act, just as many of the Old testament prophets took on symbolic actions.
There were multiple meanings of this symbolic action:

1) Jesus was pronouncing a Divine judgment against the corruption associated with the Temple cult, and by doing so was trying to restore the Temple to it's proper role.

2) The action was a reiteration of different OT prophetic utterances, as well as a Messianic sign of a New Age. In this meaning, Jesus was self-identifying as the agent of God's change.

3) Jesus is acting in the role of God's messiah to restore purity to the "center of the world", as Jews believed the temple to be.

CONCLUSIONSThis was not Jesus' first visit to the Temple. He first visited it at the age of twelve, while he was still innocent of the evil in the world. At that time, he had a dawning sense of his self as the Son of God, and identified the temple as his Father's house. The worship in the temple was already corrupted by then, but it seemed to be beyond Jesus' world view at the time. He didn't appear to have visited the temple again until the end of his life. Galileans traditionally were estranged from the Temple worship that took place in Jerusalem. When he sees the temple again, it is after already experiencing the death of his vision of the imminent Kingdom of God, feeling the opposition of the religious authorities, and experiencing the melancholy of that loss. This time, He sees the Temple cult for what it has become, as symbolic of that loss. He is cognizant of the Roman/Jewish opposition to his actions, and doesn't involve His disciples, but he takes symbolic action against the corruption. In doing so, he is working through the melancholy of the death of the initial dream by identifying with God's messiah, ACTING, recreating and resolving the past trauma. He symbolically restores the Temple to that of his past memories, and makes the temple (and with it the world) a home for innocents once more.

Next week - the Last Supper

Sunday sermon blogging

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:15:52 GMT

Continuing with the Sunday School classes taught by Larry Welborn, here's the March 11th class. Larry was absent, as he was attending a diversity conference on behalf of the Dayton Theological Seminary, so he recorded his lecture. My wife and I took mari4212 back to school right after church was over, and the rest of the week was busy both at work and at home, so please pardon the delay.

The focus of today's lesson was Mark 11:1-11, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

We read it in two different versions. What follows is the RSV.
1] And when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Beth'phage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, [2] and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it. [3] If any one says to you, `Why are you doing this?' say, `The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'" [4] And they went away, and found a colt tied at the door out in the open street; and they untied it. [5] And those who stood there said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?" [6] And they told them what Jesus had said; and they let them go. [7] And they brought the colt to Jesus, and threw their garments on it; and he sat upon it. [8] And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. [9] And those who went before and those who followed cried out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! [10] Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!" [11] And he entered Jerusalem, and went into the temple; and when he had looked round at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
We also read it in a vernacular "Aussie Bible", which uses Australian slang, such as "team" in place of apostles, "blokes" in place of the bystanders, and "On ya, God" in place of "Hosanna". As a side note, the next day, I saw a car with various Australian flags and stickers, and a vanity license plate reading "GD ON YA". Since vanity plates are limited to eight characters (counting blanks) and "God" will get rejected, I'm not sure if they were saying "God on ya" or "Good on ya".

REVIEW We have been discussing Jesus as the "man of sorrows", experiencing an emotional passion that started near the midpoint of His ministry, from Ceasarea Phillipi onward. The evidence for melancholy appears in all of the gospels, and is especially abundant in accounts of the Passion Week in Jerusalem. This evidence was discussed in the first week of the class. During the second week of class, we looked at modern perspectives on melancholy. First, one cause of melancholy was the failure of a utopian ideal, the death of a dream, leading to disappointment, and a romanticism of past glories and ideals instread of engaging in contemporary activism. We also looked at freud's perspectives, differentiating mourning and melancholy. While those in mourning eventually relinquish their lost love, the melancholic refuses to relinquish his loss, internalizes the loss, then engages in a battle between the self and the internalized lost love. When the self wins, this can lead to mania, unrestrained hilarity and constant activity. When the loss overcomes the self, it can lead to depression, inertia and even suicide.
NEW MATERIALIn this week's class, and the next two, Larry will show how Jesus chose a third way, where He finds a pathway through or beyond the loss or melancholy, as shown in three deliberate, symbolic actions, the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Temple and the last Supper. We'll cover the entry into jerusalem in this class, and the remaining two in the following weeks.
Scholarly opinion is that the entry into Jerusalem is ahistorical, a Christian elaboration of Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.. In contrast, Larry considers the sequence to be historical, for two reasons:
1) First, before Jesus, there was no evidence that Zechariah was considered a Messianic prophecy. The most widely cited works, the apocryphal Psalms of Solomon portrayed the Messiah as a conquering figure, a return of King david, who would overthrow their oppressors and elevate the Jews to rulers of the world. In contrast, Zechariah describes a humble, peaceable Messiah, with no politics involved.
2) Secondly, as a basic principle, what is odd is likely to be true. No self-respecting Passover pilgrim would ride into Jerusalem. The pilgrims walked on foot into Jerusalem. The Mishna allowed the infirm to ride or be carried into Jerusalem as an act of mercy. This tradition has lasted into modern times. In the 1890's, Kaiser Wilhelm rode a horse into Jerusalem for a visit, and was roundly criticized for it. In contrast, during World War I, General Allenby dismounted outside of the city and walked into Jerusalem, for which he was universaly praised.
EXIGESIS The text comes in two parts, the preparation for the entry, and the entry itself.
There is an extraordinary amount of detail in the preparation section, showing that the entry was deliberately stage-managed. The significance is in the details. The colt was said to be tied up at the front door of the house, which recalls Genesis 49 10] The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. [11] Binding his foal to the vine and his ass's colt to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine
and his vesture in the blood of grapes; [12] his eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk., where the Lord's beloved (Judah's heir, the Messiah) is decribed as tying his colt to a vine. The colt has never been ridden before, showing purity. There is the conscious effort to echo the Zechariah passage already cited. The colt will be immediately sent back, which echoes the passages from Exodus, where the Righteous One restores anything that is borrowed, so that justice and fairness can be seen.
Finally, this is the only time in the Gospel of mark where Jesus uses the title "Kyrios", or Lord for himself. it is a term of both earthly and heavenly kingship. Elsewhere, Jesus is referred to as Rabbi, or teacher by others, and he uses the title "Son of Man" for himself. The appropriation of the title Kyrios in the context of a Messianic appearance is evidence that Jesus deliberately took on that role willingly.
The actual entry into Jerusalem was a symbolic action which was recognized and accepted by the rest of the disciples and by the Passover pilgrims. Placing garments on the ground is a sign of respect for the King. Waving branches, or straw cut from the fields is found in the jewish calendar on the feast of the purification of the Temple, from the Maccabean times. The cry of "Hosanna" is sung, rather than just shouted. The word itself is a plea of "Save us now", and the rest of the cry of "Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord" is the benediction from Psalm 118 is a prayer for the coming of the Messiah. In short, the crowd recognized Jesus' claim as the Messiah, and proclaimed it themselves.
TWO CONCLUSIONS
First, in working his way through, and triumphing over melancholy, Jesus makes a complete identification with the internalized loss. We have speculated that His original message was the imminent Kingdom of God. When there was evidence that the Kingdom was NOT coming, as evidenced by the martyrdom of John the Baptist and the opposition of the Jewish authorities, this loss was the trigger for the mourning and melancholy. Jesus resolved the melancholic depression not by overcoming it (mania) or being overcome by it (depression), but by radically identifying with the internalized loss, and becoming the agent who will bring about the Kingdom of God and restore the loss. he recognizes Himself as the Messiah. This is a path which faces great personal risk, requires great faith in God, and also requires great courage to say "Here I am, send me!"
Second, in identifying himself as the Messiah, the agent of change which will bring about the Kingdom of God, Jesus also changes the role of the Messiah, from that of a regal, military conqueror, to that of a humble, peaceful Messiah. This is illustrated in His immediate departure from the city, instead of leading the revolution then and there.

Next session - cleansing the Temple

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:32:26 GMT

Mostly for mari4212's benefit, but anyone else can join in the celebration. My oldest daughter is now officially engaged. They had been planning for this for a while, and are saving for matched Claddagh rings to use for both engagement and for wedding rings, but after seeking our permission last weekend, prospective son-in-law picked out a gorgeous garnet and opal "placeholder" ring from Grandma's jewelry. While my wife and I were taking mari4212 back to school, prospective son-in-law took oldest daughter on a hike through one of the prettiest areas in a nearby state park. After eight miles of hiking, they reached "their" spot, and he officially proposed.

Of course, we knew it was likely to happen, because as we were leaving, prospective son-in-law showed us he had the ring in preparation for the hike, but it wasn't official until we heard it from our daughter.

The placeholder might stay on the left ring finger for a while. Claddaghs used as engagement rings are worn on the right hand, so she needs something for the left hand as well.

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:06:15 GMT

Stolen from strangealchemy, with a little bit different results. No. I'm not completely sinless - see lust and gluttony.

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:33:43 GMT

mari4212 was here for the Sunday School lesson, but for other occasional readers of this series, here's session 2.

This is the second class on "The Passions of the Christ", which explores the emotional passion of Christ, which took place over the last half of His ministry, not just for the last few days of His life. As we reviewed in last week's session, Jesus was "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief" starting from when He asked His disciples "Who do you say that I am?" at Cesarea Phillipi, then told the disciples for the first time that He would be betrayed to the authorities, killed, and would rise from the dead in three days time. We also discussed the idea of Jesus experienceing melancholy, which is generally triggered by some profound loss. Some of the possible triggers include:

1) the death of John the Baptist, who was associated with the start of Jesus' own ministry

2) the contrast between Jesus' preaching of the imminent Kingdom of God, and the proclamation of God's favor to the sick, the blind, and the outcast, followed by the shock of John's death, or

3) Jesus realization that the Kingdom of God was NOT imminent, thereby triggering a major loss on the part of Jesus.

The three texts we are looking at today were:

Mark 8:31 ...he began to teach them that the Son of Man had to undergo great sufferings, and to be rejected by the elders, chief priests and doctors of the law; to be put to death, and to rise again three days afterward.

Mark 9:30-32 They now left that district and made a journey through Galilee. Jesus wished it to be kept secret; for he was teaching his disciples, and telling them, "The Son of Man is now going to be given up into the power of men, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." But they did not understand what he said, and were afraid to ask.

Mark 10:32-34 They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way; and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid. He took the Twelve aside and began to tell them what was going to happen to him. "We are now going to Jerusalem," he said; "and the Son of Man will be given up to the chief priests and the doctors of the law; they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the foreign power. He will be mocked and spat upon, flogged and killed; and three days afterwards, he will rise again.

These three passages, which span the last half of Jesus' ministry in the Gospel of Mark show how persistent this message is. There is an ineviability to Jesus' response, and no real sense of optomism, on either the part of Jesus or his disciples.

We then focused on some of the studies of melancholy and its causes and consequences. The first full description of melancholy was by Robert Burton, in 1621. Citing Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Burton notes that the described utopian vision failed to arrive. He suggested that melancholy was prevalent in England due to the disappointment that society hoped for great things, but failed to realize them. His answer was that the sick politics of the time needed reform.

A second study was done by Walter Benyamin, a German Jew of the first half of the Twentieth Century. He postulated that western society was experiencing a kind of "liberal melancholy" due to the same disappointment of hopes for change and progress in the world. The response by people was to refuse to come to terms with this disappointment, and instead to form a romantic attachment to past idealism. This attachment to the past supercedes any desire to remedy the present situation. Larry noted that in his own life, he becomes nostalgic for the time he helped run a soup kitchen at Yale, or helped out in the political reforms of Mayor Harold Washington in Chicago, but hasn't participated in any social or political campaigns for decades.

The third study that Larry cited was the developmental psychology of Sigmund Freud, who published a comparison of mourning and melancholy in 1917. He noted that both are similar, in that they are reactions to the loss of someone or something. They differ in that mourning passes, the mourner adjusts as time passes, and is capable of partially or completely relinquishing what was lost. In contrast, the melancholic can't let go of the loss, and the melancholy persists or deepens, The melancholic can lose interest in the outside world, and is incapable of an attachment to a new love. There's also a sense of self reproach, blaming oneself for the loss, and the melanchholic also has a sense of further suffering or punishment.

Why the self reproach? The melancholic often experiences the loss of a loved one with ambivalence, even if the "fault" for the loss is with the lost love, when the lost love abandons the melancholic. But the melancholic can't acknowledge this by blaming the lost love, and instead starts blaming himself or others.

How does melancholy work out? Usually in one of two ways. The first is mania, or too much activity. it can include high spirits, or unrestrained activity in an attempt to triumph over the internalized loss. The second is depletion, an inability to act, where the person is too weak to overcome the internalized loss. This often leads to suicide.

Larry suggested, as a teaser for next week, that Jesus chose a third path. He remained calm in the face of the melancholy, and chose to be the stage manager of his fate. He then initiated three highly symbolic acts - the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Temple, and the last Supper. We'll explore each of these in the following weeks.

Larry then left, and one of our parishioners then led us through a guided meditation on the three passages cited earlier, using a method known as the lectio divina, in which the passages are read aloud four times, and we are asked to focus on specific responses we have to the texts without initial discussion, leading ultimately to a prayerful response.

My own reaction to the passages, was that Larry might be overstating the case for melancholia on the part of Jesus. First of all, there's a good reason for the loss that Jesus was experiencing, whether it was the loss of John the baptist, the loss of the "simple" message of the imminent kingdom of God, or both. That reason was the active opposition of the Jewish authorities. These authorities opposed John the Baptist, and once Jesus ministry got noticed, they opposed and challenged Him too. While herod was to blame for killing John, the jewish authorities were remarkably effective in opposing other religious dissidents as well, and if they had not opposed Jesus too, he would have been a singular exception. In the same way that being paranoid isn't necessarily paranoia if everyone IS out to get you, reacting to a severe loss isn't necessarily melancholia if you ARE experiencing a severe, ongoing loss.

There's a second way in which Larry might be overstating the case for melancholia. If, in the three readings cited, Jesus had prophesied that he would be betrayed, tortured and killed, stopped at that point, and then persisted in travelling to Jerusalem, it would be possible to call Jesus suicidal. However, in each of the three passages cited, Jesus also announces that after He is killed, he will be raised to life in three days time. Jesus real response to the opposition of the authorities seems to be a growing realization that they will kill him if he persists in his ministry, that the Father promises a successful outcome, and that he voluntarily chooses to obey.