Pastor Dan’s Musings

July 29, 2011

Pastor Dan’s Musings

July 22, 2011

Pastor Dan’s Musings

July 15, 2011

 

Pastor Dan’s Musings

July 8, 2011

 

Pastor Dan’s Musings

July 1, 2011

 

                                                            “On Reading”

 

            When people ask me what I do with my free time, I usually say:  I love to exercise- especially running, lifting weights and biking right now.  I like to putter around the garden just a little bit.  And I love to read.  Widely, deeply and across various disciplines and genres. 

Short answer:  Yes.

Pastor Dan’s Musings

June 10, 2011

                                               

              You are invited to wear RED on Sunday for our Pentecost worship celebration!”    

                                                            In It Together

Two weeks ago I sat in a conference room with our amazing Youth Ministry staff, and six of the youth who are in the Confirmation class.  I loved that time, talking about our faith in Jesus and hearing them wonder about next steps on that journey.  At one point I asked them to consider the different metaphors that are used for the Church.  “Body” emphasizes the vital need for a variety of differentiated parts. “Hospital” helps focus us on the idea that everyone in a faith community is broken or hurt in some way, and our mutual need for Christ’s healing. “Community” is helpful in remembering that the church isn’t a building, but a group of people.  “Family” grounds us in our relationship to God and to one another.  It also reminds us, sometimes to our chagrin, that we don’t get to choose our family members!  Then we talked about “Team.”   This one brings together a number of elements from the others:  the need to work together, the appreciation of different gifts, the necessity to move the same direction. 

 

High on my current endangered species list are what may strike you as unlikely suspects: words.  It’s not that words are actually disappearing.  But we are ruining them one at a time, through overuse or misuse or increasingly flabby listening skills.  Words which once carried great weight are now throwaways.  But there are exceptions, and I kept running into one of them this week.  Grace. 

Once upon a time back in the 1980’s I was a businessman, and an elder at our church.

I dutifully attended session meetings and sat at a long conference table similar to one in the executive meeting room at my company. The meetings tended to wander aimlessly and endlessly, and we spent most of our energy on things of little importance, and almost all of our time on “business.”  I usually went home numb and frustrated.

More graffiti.  Early this morning I drove down Hollywood Boulevard on the way to the office. Sun coming up, palm trees swaying, beautiful morning.  The Boulevard wakes up slowly.  Folks who slept in doorways overnight were stirring, and there were a few earlybirds waiting at bus stops.  A couple blocks short of my Starbucks stop, I glanced up to my right.  Near the top of a two-story building were the three-foot words scrawled in black spray paint:  “I’m on it, Jesus!!”