Ruthie and I are participating, in a kind of half-assed way, in a weekend gathering of people who are somewhat like-minded regarding how to do faith/church. By half-assed I mean that we're attending what we want to and skipping lots of stuff. Mostly we're there to hear Brian McLaren. Two thoughts from tonight, maybe three:

1) Life is relative. Most of the time, in a given conversation, our church is the least churchy. Compared to most of the people I know around here, we're doing pretty well. Tonight though, I felt like a fundamentalist. We still have a long way to go.

2) When given a choice between doing something (tonight it was staying at the thing a bit longer) and going home with (or to) my wife, nine times out of ten I'll go home. The tenth only occurs if there's something special going on, (i.e. Brian McLaren). This trend is intensifying daily. Whether it's healthy or not I don't know.

3) McLaren said that the Christian media machine (my terminology, not his) is like the dome in "The Truman Show." Nice.

Listening to "Into the West" from the "Return of the King" soundtrack. Also nice.

peace.