The big news is that I'm back from Florida and I'm hairless. On a whim I decided to shave my head (in part because I know other things may prevent me from doing this in the future, like having a job or a wife, for example). Perhaps my favorite part of this has been watching people's responses. It usually starts with their eyes getting very big, then their mouth opens for a few seconds as they try to figure out what to say, and then they always ask why. The fact that it's always the first question makes me think this may not have been the best move, but I'm not too worried. The truth is that I don't have a good reason, so I've been making them up. I've tried, "I wanted to loose weight," or "I wanted to be more aerodynamic to increase lift." I like the classic, "I lost a fight with a lawnmower," but the most laughs come when I say "I just wanted to look tougher." I don't know why.
On a serious note, I was deeply shocked and saddened to hear news of the untimely passing of Stan Grenz last week. I was blessed by the one short opportunity I had to meet Stan and his wife Edna in January. He was generous and open with us, a group of college students trying to figure out our calling. I particularly appreciated how willing he was to share his personal struggles and fears about ministry. His love and affection for his wife was obvious. His combination of wisdom and compassion was an example of truly living a theology.
As we enter Holy Week we are reminded of the now-but-not-yet-ness of the kingdom. As Ann Weems says, we only understand the alleluias of Easter because of the darkness of Good Friday. The forgotten definition of the word passion is "the state of being acted upon." It comes fromt he same root as passive. Perhaps as we approach Easter we should let go of constantly wanting to do, to go, to act in the name of Christ. The Reformed tradition is all about doing - but maybe we should focus on being this passion-tide. Dean has written about letting go of our kingdom-building aspirations, and it's easy to get pulled in the direction of "making a difference" and "changing the world." As I think about Christ letting go of "equality with God" this Holy Week, maybe I could let go of my pride and remember passion is about being acted upon and not acting.
3/21/2005
3/12/2005
I'm off
I know I haven't been posting much lately, and for that I apologize. I'm off today for a spring break camping trip in the Florida panhandle. I've never done this before so I'm very excited! But it means I've been quite busy trying to get everything together before I go and haven't had time to post about Thorobus, Calvin basketball, Jurgen Moltmann, my new haircut, the new Anne LaMott, or any of the other thigns on my mind. I think things will be calmer when I get back, so until then...
3/05/2005
the bad and the good
It's only noon on Saturday and it's already been a busy weekend! A lot of things have been on my mind lately, which means they're likely to show up in my blog.
Kent and I planned a Friday hymnsing chapel for yesterday, and he's blogged about it here and here. Yesterday morning I got to Calvin and found out that a Calvin student had passed away suddenly in what may have been suicide. I know of no more tragic death than suicide, and we didn't hesitate before changing our plans for the service. The original theme had been Christ's fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system through his role as the sacrificial lamb of God slain for our sins - lots of substitutionary atonement. A lot of the songs we had picked fit with a service of lament, but one of the things we had to change was the intercessory prayer. The dominant emotions as I sat down to re-write were confusion and anger. I didn't feel like leading worship, I didn't feel like worshipping, I didn't feel like doing anything. About then I remembered, it's not about me. I had the opportunity to lead my community in worship at a time when many of them didn't have anywhere else to turn but worship. I got to voice their cries to God when some of them didn't have the words to speak. What an awesome privilege and responsibility! Of course it brought me back to the chapel Kent and I had to lead on the morning we found out about Daryl's accident. Please pray for Rachelle Goedhart's family and friends as we are here at Calvin.
Then yesterday afternoon I was fortunate to meet with one of my favorite groups of people: the Lilly Vocation Grant Committee. This is the third year in a row I've had the chance to share with them about my experiences with Lilly grant programs. I know several of them from other contexts, so it's been a joy to have them follow my vocational journey, encouraging and supporting me along the way. It also provided me with a chance to reflect on how far I've come in these three years. When I think back to who I was when I started the Worship Apprentice program, he doesn't look too much like the person I am now as an alum of WA and Jubilee Fellows (For more insight into that young impressionable version of me you can read my first attempt at a blog of sorts - the 02-03 WA Journal I wrote). The best part was getting to have lunch with Sandy Vander Ploeg, a committee member who's my Mom's best friend from high school and college days. Mom will be so jealous.
For some unrelated reasons I was a bit grumpy when I got home last night, and it turned out my roommate Nathan was too. We decided the best course of action was to go out and stuff ourselves with excellent Mexican food, which we did. We've been spending more time together lately - it's good to live with a solid brother in Christ like Nate. We had project neighborhood class on urban socialization this morning. We were just getting into a good discussion of how to find a balance between a personally-focused evangelism-based Christianity and a societally-focused inclusive but doctrinally watered down Christianity when we ran out of time. Next time we get to talk about white flight and gentrification! In other news, the Calvin men's basketball team beat Wheaton in the first round of the NCAA D-III tournament. Take that you Evangelicals! And the Dodgers lost a spring training game to the Braves on a botched double-play attempt in the bottom of the ninth that would have won the game. Again, those dumb Dodgers...
Kent and I planned a Friday hymnsing chapel for yesterday, and he's blogged about it here and here. Yesterday morning I got to Calvin and found out that a Calvin student had passed away suddenly in what may have been suicide. I know of no more tragic death than suicide, and we didn't hesitate before changing our plans for the service. The original theme had been Christ's fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system through his role as the sacrificial lamb of God slain for our sins - lots of substitutionary atonement. A lot of the songs we had picked fit with a service of lament, but one of the things we had to change was the intercessory prayer. The dominant emotions as I sat down to re-write were confusion and anger. I didn't feel like leading worship, I didn't feel like worshipping, I didn't feel like doing anything. About then I remembered, it's not about me. I had the opportunity to lead my community in worship at a time when many of them didn't have anywhere else to turn but worship. I got to voice their cries to God when some of them didn't have the words to speak. What an awesome privilege and responsibility! Of course it brought me back to the chapel Kent and I had to lead on the morning we found out about Daryl's accident. Please pray for Rachelle Goedhart's family and friends as we are here at Calvin.
Then yesterday afternoon I was fortunate to meet with one of my favorite groups of people: the Lilly Vocation Grant Committee. This is the third year in a row I've had the chance to share with them about my experiences with Lilly grant programs. I know several of them from other contexts, so it's been a joy to have them follow my vocational journey, encouraging and supporting me along the way. It also provided me with a chance to reflect on how far I've come in these three years. When I think back to who I was when I started the Worship Apprentice program, he doesn't look too much like the person I am now as an alum of WA and Jubilee Fellows (For more insight into that young impressionable version of me you can read my first attempt at a blog of sorts - the 02-03 WA Journal I wrote). The best part was getting to have lunch with Sandy Vander Ploeg, a committee member who's my Mom's best friend from high school and college days. Mom will be so jealous.
For some unrelated reasons I was a bit grumpy when I got home last night, and it turned out my roommate Nathan was too. We decided the best course of action was to go out and stuff ourselves with excellent Mexican food, which we did. We've been spending more time together lately - it's good to live with a solid brother in Christ like Nate. We had project neighborhood class on urban socialization this morning. We were just getting into a good discussion of how to find a balance between a personally-focused evangelism-based Christianity and a societally-focused inclusive but doctrinally watered down Christianity when we ran out of time. Next time we get to talk about white flight and gentrification! In other news, the Calvin men's basketball team beat Wheaton in the first round of the NCAA D-III tournament. Take that you Evangelicals! And the Dodgers lost a spring training game to the Braves on a botched double-play attempt in the bottom of the ninth that would have won the game. Again, those dumb Dodgers...
3/04/2005
neo-calvinism
The big news around here is that our little blog-ommunity has been labeled Neo-Calvinist. I'm not sure what that means since I haven't had time to investigate Mr. Strauss' blog yet. Kent made a typically witty comment about the label, but the whole situation brings up some interesting questions for me.
The first is inevitable: how is a neo-Calvinist different from your regular, stock Calvinist? Is it simply the fact that I'm under the age of 25? Second, am I really a Calvinist? I grew up in a very Calvinist home (for which I'm grateful - thanks Mom and Dad), but as a 21 year old student I'm supposed to be searching a bit, right? Right now I'm particularly struggling with issues of determinism, predestination, foreknowledge, and free will (thank you Prof. Crump), and the Calvinist view is not necessarily cutting the mustard at the moment. I know my anfechtung is pretty insignificant in the big picture, but I felt like it would be a good idea to set the record straight. Third, does this mean people are actually reading this? The internet is such a tricky place because of the pseudo-anonymity. I was pretty confident the readers of this blog were limited to Kent, Bethany, Dean, my sister (maybe), and my mom (probably). Not that I mind - what I put up here is for public consumption. But the aforementioned are the audience I have in mind when I write. Now I'll have these muddled ideas about who I'm writing to (and delusions of grandeur, for that matter). Oh well, this is the way things go. I had been planning to make this blog a bit more public next fall anyway, so that when I'm in Hungary people can keep up with what's going on. (Have I mentioned I'm moving to Hungary next fall?) So, Mr. Strauss, I hope you enjoy your look into what is really more like a cabal than a coterie.
On a side note, the first Dodgers update of the year is that they're 1-1 after 2 Spring Training games. Of course, like the Dodgers, they won their first game on the pitching of a whole bunch of people nobody's ever heard of, and today Jeff Weaver, the guy who two years ago was going to be their next big ace, got shelled for the loss. His salary is probably 5 times what they pay the 4 guys who pitched well for them yesterday. Those dumb Dodgers...
The first is inevitable: how is a neo-Calvinist different from your regular, stock Calvinist? Is it simply the fact that I'm under the age of 25? Second, am I really a Calvinist? I grew up in a very Calvinist home (for which I'm grateful - thanks Mom and Dad), but as a 21 year old student I'm supposed to be searching a bit, right? Right now I'm particularly struggling with issues of determinism, predestination, foreknowledge, and free will (thank you Prof. Crump), and the Calvinist view is not necessarily cutting the mustard at the moment. I know my anfechtung is pretty insignificant in the big picture, but I felt like it would be a good idea to set the record straight. Third, does this mean people are actually reading this? The internet is such a tricky place because of the pseudo-anonymity. I was pretty confident the readers of this blog were limited to Kent, Bethany, Dean, my sister (maybe), and my mom (probably). Not that I mind - what I put up here is for public consumption. But the aforementioned are the audience I have in mind when I write. Now I'll have these muddled ideas about who I'm writing to (and delusions of grandeur, for that matter). Oh well, this is the way things go. I had been planning to make this blog a bit more public next fall anyway, so that when I'm in Hungary people can keep up with what's going on. (Have I mentioned I'm moving to Hungary next fall?) So, Mr. Strauss, I hope you enjoy your look into what is really more like a cabal than a coterie.
On a side note, the first Dodgers update of the year is that they're 1-1 after 2 Spring Training games. Of course, like the Dodgers, they won their first game on the pitching of a whole bunch of people nobody's ever heard of, and today Jeff Weaver, the guy who two years ago was going to be their next big ace, got shelled for the loss. His salary is probably 5 times what they pay the 4 guys who pitched well for them yesterday. Those dumb Dodgers...
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