Asides

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Grumpy Old Man Rant

This might be a grumpy old man rant (I find I have a few now that drive me nuts) but people walking on the right side of the (i.e. the wrong side of the road for walking) get my goat. You are supposed to walk facing traffic people. It is safer for you and for the drivers. Especially at night. Tonight Pam and I were driving to see the Celebrate Plover fireworks tonight (we quit because of the rain) and there were people in our neighborhood walking on the right/wrong side of the road wearing dark clothes. It was almost impossible to see them. Come on people. Feet on the left, wheels on the right.

I am now finished with my old man rant … At least for now.

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Christians & Divorce

Ed Stetzer posted an interesting article concerning the erroneous stats of Christians divorcing at the same rate as non-Christians. His post centers around information from the Gospel Coalition. Every now and then you’ll hear someone say that people of faith divorce at the same rate as people without a faith tradition. The problem is that saying you are a part of a faith and actually practicing that faith are two entirely different things. The data show that people who actively participate in their faith divorce at significantly less rates than those who don’t have or practice a faith. The Gospel Coalition summarizes the data this way:

Those who say they are more religious are less likely, not more, to have already experienced divorce. Likewise, those who report more frequent attendance at religious services were significantly less likely to have been divorced.

What does this mean? First, don’t believe every stat you ever hear. Second, while we may be doing somewhat better than those who don’t actively practice a faith the church still needs to work on strong marriage. We need to do everything we can to help people grow and stay together.

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Interviewing

I interviewed for a part-time chaplain position today in Central Wisconsin and, at the very least, I know I made it through their first “weed out” round because they have already emailed me saying they want to go to the next step out of a total of three interviews and two personality/spiritual inventories. I know a lot of people don’t feel this way but I love job interviews. I find the whole process enjoyable. I think part of it is because during an interview people seem to care about why you do something rather than just caring that what you do works. What I do should work and be effective but I think the why do something is very important also.

Anyhow, it was fun. We’ll see where it goes from here.

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Too Fundy for My Progressive Friends

I've said for a few years a line that I am sure I stole from someone which goes like this:

My conservative friends think I am a bleeding heart socialist and my liberal friends I am a raging fundamentalist.

In the past I have probably been around more of my conservative friends and used to being on the more liberal edge of the friendships ideological spectrum. Recently, however, I have been spending a good bit more time with some of my more liberal friends and it has reminded me just how conservative I am. I was told by one of those friends last week that I was a fundamentalist. This person didn't say this trying to be mean and I didn't take it as an insult. It was just a statement in the conversation concerning each of our beliefs. I don't know if I have ever been referred to as a fundamentalist. It just took me off guard. I guess Pam will have to start dressing different since she is apparently married to a fundamentalist pastor.

 

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Crazy

I have developed a theory on how to quickly diagnose whether a person is crazy or not. All you have to do is call them crazy and see how they respond. If they respond by a quick laugh or some other response that is low drama then they probably aren’t crazy. If they have an emotional meltdown after you call them crazy and get very offended that you said they were crazy then they are probably crazy. I have unintentionally tested this theory a few times (not today thankfully) and it seems to hold true. Only crazy people blow up when you call them crazy.

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Pam's Poem

I am presently at Emy J’s for a Sunday morning meeting and in between working on some things I decided to look at my Google Reader and see who has posted new blog entries that I might want to look at. Turns out Pam posted one last night (while cooking me one of the best steaks I have ever eaten, making a turtle cheese cake for the family, and watching my favorite movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales” with me – she is quite a woman). I didn’t see this last night but apparently in the midst of doing all that i just described she also found time to write a poem that I really like. Dang I am married to an impressive woman.

Here’s a small part of the poem

Throughout the day I sometimes toss out Twitter-prayers
140 characters or less
“Hey God! Thanks for the snow on the trees. You’re quite an artist.”
“Help me be…patient, strong, organized, brave, compassionate.”
“Why?”
“Be near.”
It’s constant contact throughout the day and that’s something, right?
But You never re-tweet or favorite.

You can read all of it here. I truly married an impressive woman.

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RaspBMC

My weekend project is basically finished now. Pam gave me a raspberry pi for my birthday and after a few weeks of back order it finally arrived. So for its initial setup I decided to set it up as a media center. Wow it was easy. Much easier than I as expecting it to be. Now I need to transfer movies and music to it. Other than than the raspberrry pi’s first job seems to be ready to go.

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Leadership, Intern, & Nook Color

Been a fun day of ministry and geekiness.

Ministry – Spent the day dealing with the team that interviews the prospective new members of the Tapestry Leadership Team. Lots of fun going through the biblical qualifications of an overseer and dealing with important questions concerning who Tapestry is and how to stay properly focused on who we are. I love meetings like that. Then I got to start the process of being a chaplain intern at St. Michael’s hospital as a part of the Clinical Pastoral Education that I am doing this semester. I’ll talk more about this sometime later. I am pretty excited about the whole process. Anyhow the whole thing took a little longer than I expected but it was really cool. Tomorrow I go back for the health screening. Yea! TB test.

Geekiness – I just finished rooting my Nook Color into a full scale Android Tablet. Fun! Turns out the Nook Color has bluetooth built into its hardware even though bluetooth isn’t used in the Barnes & Noble software. So I hooked the now rooted Nook Color to a bluetooth keyboard to type this little post.

Not a bad day. Yea I live a fun life.

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Image Bearer

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I have many smart and talented friends. Josh C is one of these. While watching responses (tweets and Facebook statuses) from last night’s Golden Globes ceremony he tweeted the following:

He is, of course, right. Personally I needed the reminder to see the image of God in all around me and to respond appropriately to that image.

SIDE NOTE – Why yes I did specifically pick the above image because of the line that looks like Jesus has some type of laser bad breath weapon. Thanks for noticing. 🙂