Friday, September 26, 2008

On a Westbound Plane

I found this when I was digging through my hard drive, trying to delete as much as I could in order to free up what is now very valuable space. I wrote this on my way home from my trip to Washington D.C. surrounded by sleeping people, some with mouths hanging wide open. If I had M&M's I would have been too occupied to have written this, alas I was without the treats.

I am extremely tired right now, but wanted to write about this last week before I start work again. I worked today for a bit, and am somewhat not looking forward to the week ahead. There are so many things to figure out, so many issues that have to be resolved, and so many meetings I have to attend and look good for. I wonder what percentage of people never once dread going to work. Because most of the time I look forward to my job. I mean, it beats a lot of things, and some of you may be saying, "What the hell is this guy complaining about?" I've got an office, I get to preach, teach, encourage, be encouraged, talk about Jesus, and on top of it get paid really well for a single guy. I wouldn't say I'm complaining as much as I am dreaming. Dreaming about other possibilities of where I could be and what I could be doing. Because for as awesome and dreamy as my job is, it often feels like I am accomplishing nothing.

There's not much to say about this, but when I worked for Otto's Sausage Kitchen and Meat Market. I made sausage, I sold sausage, and I would cook sausage, and at the end of the day, it was just sausage. Most of the work I do is ambiguous. And even when I complete something I can look at and explain, it's only temporary.

Like sermons. Sermons are incredibly strange. I prepare about 3-6 hours for every 45-minute long sermon. Sometimes it's a lot longer, it really depends what I'm teaching and for how long, but nevertheless, it takes a butt-load of time.*

But then, after completing a manuscript and notes to go with it, as well as some oral preparation (all things I can look at and show people), I deliver it to any number of people.

And then its over.

I mean, some of them are recorded, but most of the time they're gone after that. Hours and hours of preparation and you can only hope that the hearers of the Word react, respond, and are changed in some way. Because I'm not a celebrity preacher. I'm a shepherd. Local and with a small flock. So with no audience outside of those in my spiritual family, these works simply evaporate in 30-45 minutes and only pages of notes on a manuscript are left.

I've heard this analogy: that a teacher is like a pitcher and his students are batters. They chose whether to swing, bunt, watch it go by, or simply never step up to the plate. But this analogy is weak, because I never feel what the pitcher feels: that split second pang of nervousness as he waits to see what the batter will do. I am blind to the batter. I have no idea whether he's taking his best swing at a fastball or if he's picking his butt in the dugout. For as much as I talk to the people who listen to me, I can't get to everyone. Besides, some people don't even want to talk, they just want to sit and listen. And some act engaged and will speak to you and give you the answers you want to hear, but there's some type of dishonesty in their tone. Most of the time, I can't see an inch of the batter.

Bad analogy.

I keep doing it though, and while I'm writing this, I find myself procrastinating the completion of a sermon for our men's retreat.

Back to work.


*A butt-load is just a rough estimate of time consisting of how much load a butt can take.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

When Things Start

She just left and now I'm left with what's left.

School.

Everything's starting and I've got to get my rear in gear. I feel like the protagonist in O the Places You'll Go by the Seuss, sans acid trip. I'm pumped for being an English major again and excited for what God will do with the ministry and the church. I felt fall in the air today as Ali and I walked around downtown and it reminded of great aspects of the season.

I love it when the seasons change. I love this time of year and I adore April and May for the same reasons. But fall has a different tenor, it holds in it a reminder that everything, even the most beautiful, perishes in its unique luster.

For today, Frost can tell us what's to come in a couple of days (I just couldn't wait):
"October" by Robert Frost
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if the were all,
Whose elaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the all.


Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Oh My Frick

Just when you thought Nader couldn't get any weirder...

Friday, September 12, 2008

Things I Have Read

From Proverbs 26:

"It is the glory of God to conceal things,
but the glory of kings is to search things out."

"Americans never think of themselves as sharing fully in the human condition, and therefore beset as all humankind is beset."
-Marilynne Robinson

"Try to understand the Triune God, and you will lose your mind. Deny the effort to discover the Triune God, and you will lose your soul."
-St. Augustine

"I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us...Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence...There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?"

-John Steinbeck

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I Don't Like Christianity

This is how much I love Jesus: that, after seeing this, I can still claim to love the same God they love. That is really how good God is.

Ugh.