Tried to Post this Yesterday

Just got back from lunch with Tara & Karis. Crackin' good time. Sushi makes me inordinately gleeful, and those are good folk.

Outside the window it's gushing snow -- Ruthie's in the other room decorating for Christmas. Karin Bergquist is urging me not to be bothered. I couldn't be happier.

Tired of my Little Book Yet?

Four titles I recommended to Bart:

Walk On, by Steve Stockman

The Divine Consipriacy, by Dallas Willard

Telling the Truth, by Buechner

A New Kind of Christian, by Brian McLaren

I wonder, two years later, if Bart's any more likely to follow up on book recommendations then I am. I wonder if I'd recommend any of those if he asked me the same question today. All four were helpful at the time.

Then for some reason I wrote,

2003 Strat-O-Matic

Ruthie and I don't play as much as we used to, (no idea why,) but it's a great game.

And after that, more of me talking ot myself:

You have to kill somthing to dissect it.

I don't want to be reactionary.

I don't think that I was using the word "reactionary" correctly, but what I was trying to get at is the kind of think I alluded to a few days ago about how there's way more to be For in the world than there is to be Against. This particular line was in reference to all of my ecclesiastical angst, and I suppose that some of that negativity was inevitable, (McLaren actually diagrams it on page xi of the introduction to ANKoC,) but I'm largely past that now. I've got too much to be For.

Then two more book titles (we read alot around here):

More Jesus, Less Religion, by Steve Somebody

12 Christian Beliefs That'll Drive You Crazy

And again, I didn't track those down and read them. In fact, I don't even remember who recommended them. Randy maybe? Or Kathi? Someone else's Rafts. It's like that.

There's three names I wrote down and have no idea why:

Clay Patrick McBride

Francis Niehaus

Don Horton

And then something about Norah Jones (we love her,) and a note to track down "Bring me to Life," by Evanesence. Liked that one. Liked "My Immortal" too.

After that, it gets a bit churchy. Questions that other people were trying to get me to answer about what we were, at the time and for lack of a better idea, calling a church plant. They're questions I won't get into here, (because they're creepy,) but I doubt it's a coincidence that they occur at the exact same time I was telling myself things like the dissection line above. Then I wrote:

This won't look like a church plant.

And it doesn't.

A line from the Greatest Film of All Time:

Get busy living or get busy dying.

And another M. Wilson quote. He was describing a guitar player we saw at the Comet who was in from Nashville and sitting in with the band. Michael said,

He plays guitar like he's falling asleep.

Then a line from a Jewel song,

They're not yours, they are my own,

Which was a reminder to myself to write a bit that I never wrote about how my hands look just like my dad's.

After that there's a sticker from the Wine Shop Ruthie and I frequent

Bridgetown Finer Meats/Wine Shop

Good folk there -- they take care of us, (and they adore Mr. Hoo-Hoo).

And then it's back to the churchiness. Again, me talking to myself and reflecting the desire to let the negativity go. We all felt so suddenly free that it was a temptation to dwell on what we'd been freed from when there were (and remain) so many positives to give our energy to. It's just a fragment:

What we're free to do, not just not.

Then this:

"I've got a pretzel bag @ home...these are better than a pretzel bag."

And then something that a little yellow mouse said to me in a dream, which ended up here, and a humorous inside-joke of a note I took at an elders meeting one night:

Putting people third

It's still funny to me. We were talking about priorities and spending money and where the building ranked on the list and how badly we needed new chairs and when we had the list done we realized that people had fallen to third. Those of you who've been around a while know about my issues with church buildings and the irony of that night still makes me smile.

Bored yet? 'Cause I've still got the better part of 200 pages to get through.

Woot!

my kingdom for a spell-check!