Month: December 2017

Posted on

Two Traditions Converge


We are a family of traditions. Seriously we have a lot of traditions that we do throughout the year. Today was a double whammy of tradition.

Years ago Noah, the youngest boy child, wanted a muffin from Kwik Trip. His way of getting a muffin was to declare that the 24th was International Muffin Run Day, where you are supposed to go and get a muffin. Being the good parents that I am I gave in and took the boys to get a Kwik Trip muffin. So from that point onward the 24th became the day that I continued to take the boys to get a muffin somewhere. This started when Adam was in High School and Noah was in Middle school but we have continued to celebrate the 24th as Muffin Run Day If either of the boys are at home. Obviously, you already knew that the 24th is International Muffin Run Day.

Christmas Eve supper is also a tradition for us. This tradition started because we were tired of trying to prepare a big homemade meal after me getting back late from doing Christmas Eve church services. So decided to try a more convenient meal and it turned out to be something we loved. Each person eating with us picks their favorite appetizer (this includes my mom this year – Hi mom!) and those appetizers are shared by everyone for supper while we watch the modern Christmas classic Elf. We love this movie. Sadly if the sound ever went out but the video continued we could probably fill in all the dialogue.  The only thing that is different fro normal in the above picture is that usually there would be cocktail weenies, which I have a weakness for, but we were so stuffed already I decided to forego my appetizer suggestion today.

I hope you have traditions that remind you of Who Christmas is all about. I hope you have a wonderful day of remembering the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Posted on

In Praise of Boring Lives

Today I watched “The Last Jedi” with my boys. I love watching hero movies. It is fun and exciting to watch people, even fictional people, overcome great obstacles and achieve amazing things. I cheer for them to be heroic.

But we don’t praise the boring, mundane, and ordinary.

We don’t typically write New York Times best sellers or Blockbuster movies about the mundane. I get why. We want excitement in our entertainment. We don’t usually make heroes of the ordinary. Who wants to hear a story about a person getting up grabbing some breakfast, doing his/her work, coming home and spending some time with family and friends, then going to bed to rest up to do the same thing the next day Not many people want to hear that story over and over. We praise and glorify the extraordinary.

But such moments are called extraordinary because they aren’t ordinary.

The ordinary is what most of us do 99.99% of the time and therefore it is who we are 99.99% of the time. We fix a meal that we have had many times before. We say “hi” to our friends and families as we have done many times before. We cut our grass, shovel the snow off our driveways, walk down the stairs of our apartment buildings, buy our groceries, walk our dogs, feed our cats, pay our electric bills, and do all sorts of ordinary things during the majority of our lives. Acting like such mundane tasks aren’t very important, even though they make up the majority of our lives. So we praise and glorify the extraordinary.

We don’t lionize the ordinary because it doesn’t make for an exciting story, and I believe more importantly, because if we praised the ordinary, then we would suddenly have to hold ourselves accountable for whether or not our ordinary lives are praiseworthy. Not many of us have a chance to live a heroic moment, but all of us have the chance to choose whether to live our regularly daily lives in a heroic manner or not. Sometimes it seems that the person who actually faces a heroic moment and responds well to that moment has a difficult time living out a good and decent life in their ordinary choices. Kind of a heroic milkshake duck, a hero for a moment but a jerk for most of their lives. All of us can choose to live our mundane and boring in a manner that extends loves to those around us by living in a sacrificial manner that puts others first. So we must ask ourselves “What if I live the ordinary in a pretty crappy manner?” Does that mean that we are living 99.99% of our lives in a crappy manner?

So we praise and glorify the extraordinary … in hopes that praising and glorifying the extraordinary will turn the attention away from our mundane and boring. But the mundane and boring are really who we are.

I believe that is part of the significance of the Incarnation of which Advent reminds us. That in the Incarnation God claims the mundane and boring. Yes, Jesus did the most significant things ever, and He was, and is, extraordinary, but He was also mundane and boring. Think about it, we have years of His life that were never recorded. God incarnate walking on earth in such a manner that next to nothing is recorded concerning the age of 2 and 30. We don’t have stories of Jesus doing His chores, or walking His dog (I am sure that Jesus is a dog person), or dealing with His crazy cousins The Incarnation brings the mundane and boring into the nature of God, and I am convinced that Jesus lived out His boring and mundane in a praiseworthy manner. Jesus didn’t just live sacrificially during the passion week of Easter, or during the three years of His ministry, but during his entire boring and mundane life before the time described by most of the gospels. His boring and mundane were praiseworthy because He was living out the will of His Father 100% of the time.

I think many people would describe my life thus far as an accomplished life. I have accomplished a few things in my 50 years of life that I am pretty proud of and there are still others things that I want to do. Yet I believe the most significant things that I have done are the boring and mundane things. The boring and the mundane show who I really am.

Our extraordinary moments are just that, moments. But the boring and the mundane, that is who we really are. May we (may I) live the boring and mundane in a praiseworthy manner

Posted on

Project Tuna Casserole

Each week I go to the  Place of Peace (PoP) meal done by Evergreen Community Initiatives (ECI) and about every three months Tapestry provides the meal for the week. If you aren’t familiar with the Place of Peace, it is a meal that it is open to everyone that was started by the Catholic Workers Movement house (CWM) in Stevens Point. When the Point area CWM group disbanded ECI jumped in to lead PoP meals. Since it is an open meal it involves all sorts of people from all sorts of groups. The PoP meals are wonderful and I, my family, and a tons of “threads” love being a part of them.

Around 5 months ago Tiffani (the leader of ECI) asked if I would start coming by weekly because she wanted a pastor to be there to pray with people. Back when ECI was connected with Evergreen Church, the pastor of Evergreen, Al Kinnunen (an all around great guy) was there each week for this purpose. Since Al and his family left the country to do God’s work elsewhere and Evergreen Church sadly stopped existing long after he was gone there hasn’t been a pastor necessarily around each week. So Tiffani, knowing that I love PoP, asked if I would come around to pray with anyone who wants prayer. Therefore, most Thursday nights I am there talking with and praying with whoever wants to talk or pray.

That’s how I learned about the desire of a few guys for tuna casserole.

There are a group of guys with some communication and developmental issues who believe that tuna casserole is the greatest thing ever. Each week while the food is getting ready and I am about to pray over the meal, one of them sends a aides up to me to ask if it is tuna casserole. Seriously this has gone on for weeks. Personally I can think of very few things in this world as disgusting as tuna casserole. Blah! But these guys desperately want tuna casserole.

Sarah L has already sent me this photo of cookies her students made for the PoP meal next week.

It is Tapestry‘s turn to bring the meal next week. Now as a church we are known as the jambalaya church. I usually make a huge pot of jambalaya and the rest of the threads bring other wonderful things. Homemade bread, lots of fruit, salads, vegan friendly options, lots of things. Since I am there pretty much every week to pray I know that we are bringing something different and something that is looked forward too, because I get asked regularly when the next time is that we are bringing the jambalaya. Most of the people at the PoP meal aren’t wanting tuna casserole and therefore we aren’t going to bring a lot of tuna casserole. But there are about three guys there who are desperate for tuna casserole and I plan on making sure they receive it.

We already have a thread who has volunteered to make the casserole for these guys. She’s never made tuna casserole before and personally I’m pretty sure there is no way you can ruin this dish because, in my opinion, it is already pretty nasty.  😜 All I know is that I am looking forward to the brief moment when then guys send one of their aides up to ask me if it is tuna casserole and I get to look at them as say “Yes! It is tuna casserole!”

Then I will quickly walk away from the smell of that plate.

Posted on

Bonhoeffer Quote – Advent Is Like A Mine Rescue

From the Advent devotional I am presently reading.

You know what a mine disaster is. In recent weeks we have had to read about one in the newspapers.

The moment even the most courageous miner has dreaded his whole life long is here. It is no use running into the walls; the silence all around him remains…. The way out for him is blocked. He knows the people up there are working feverishly to reach the miners who are buried alive. Perhaps someone will be rescued, but here in the last shaft? An agonizing period of waiting and dying is all that remains.

But suddenly a noise that sounds like tapping and breaking in the rock can be heard. Unexpectedly, voices cry out, “Where are you, help is on the way!” Then the disheartened miner picks himself up, his heart leaps, he shouts, “Here I am, come on through and help me! I’ll hold out until you come! Just come soon!” A final, desperate hammer blow to his ear, now the rescue is near, just one more step and he is free.

We have spoken of Advent itself. That is how it is with the coming of Christ: “Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God in the Manger, p. 41, from Bonhoeffer’s Advent message in a London church December 3, 1933.

Posted on

The Cheesing of the Relatives

Whenever Pam and I shred cheese we tend to shake the grater where the extra cheese falls on the kitchen floor so Clive can eat it. We also used to do this with Montana and Roux, or two deceased bassets. Pam has always referred to this act as “the cheesing of the bassets”. Needless to say, when Pam or I get the cheese grater out Clive gets very excited.

Hey Ken your cheese has been packed with love, though not necessarily skill.

Years ago when Pam and I were first introduced to the beauty of Wisconsin cheese (seriously, I’m not sure that I would call what I ate before moving up here cheese – this stuff is so much better) we decided to send it to our relatives as Christmas gifts. It was so well received that most of them told us that they never wanted anything else other than cheese for Christmas. So each year Pam or I hike over to Rudolph to our favorite cheese factory, Dairy State Cheese. As busy as the factory store is each year it is obvious that many other out of state families have also asked for nothing but cheese for Christmas.

Anyhow today I made the trip over to Rudolph, then Pam and I packed the cheese and mailed it to our relatives. It should be there in time for y’all to have some Christmas cheese (other than Jim’s jokes -😜).

I believe I will now take a phrase from Pam and refer to this as “the cheesing of the relatives“.

Posted on

If You Want to be an A-Lister Never go to Vegas

I have posted before about signaling theory and there is a pretty good chance if we have talked about anything then I have brought signalling theory into the discussion no matter what the subject of the conversation. Adam told me today that I needed to listen to the most recent episode of a podcast that we both  like called “Hidden Brain“. Adam and I have had several conversations recently on some non conspicuous forms of spending that we both believe are basically methods of signaling that one belongs to a certain socio-economic strata. “Hidden Brain”‘s episode “Never Go to Vegas” discusses some good examples of the type of signaling we were discussing. I highly recommend listening to not just the episode but regularly listening to the podcast. So much of hat we do has very little to do with our conscious choice and so much has to do with communicating with others which groups we are a part of and which groups we are not a part of.

The episode compares the behavior of Hollywood A-lister celebrities who have unconsciously created an exclusive grouping that have certain spoken and unspoken signifiers (one of which is not to spend much time in Vegas) with people in what they call the Aspirational Class. The episode describes many Aspirational Class behaviors which can be viewed as signifiers that serve to “reproduce privilege” within the group.

Do yourself a favor and listen to the episode.

SIDE NOTE – If you listen to the podcast you’ll understand the title. Basically A-List celebrities generally don’t go to parties in Las Vegas.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – I recognize the irony of me mentioning a NPR show episode concerning signaling that specifically describes listening to NPR as possible signaling behavior.

Posted on

Way To Go Chic-fil-a Atlanta

I saw this tweet from Anthony Bradley (a professor of religion at King’s College who I first heard when he delivered this excellent Q conference lecture on Abraham Kuyper and engaging culture).

He was tweeting in response to this tweet from the city of Atlanta concerning the present power outage at the airport.

Makes me like Chic-fil-a all the more. Way to know when to keep you store closed (i.e. Sundays) and when to open that closed store up (i.e. a Sunday where there is a major need) Chic-fil-a.  Y’all are great.

You would be even better if you opened up some restaurants closer than an hour and a half away from me. Please don’t make me keep going to Madison to get a sandwich.

Posted on

Bonhoeffer Quote – Celebrate Christmas Correctly

Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God in the Manger, p. 26

Posted on

Bonhoeffer Quote – God Loves the Lowly

I’ve mentioned before that I am reading  “God Is In the Manger“ by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and “Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent“ by Walter Brueggemann as part of the my Christmas preparation during Advent. I decided to start sharing some quotes from my daily readings because I am enjoying and being challenged by each book so much.

And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God in the Manger, p. 22.