not quite comfortable with the Mary stuff...

My fellow ex-Budapester Sam alerted me to an interesting online quiz by posting his results on his blog. It came as no surprise to anyone that he was pegged as a Roman Catholic. It might come as a surprise to some that I got the same result, though I scored an equal amount of Emergent/Postmodern with my Papist portion. My first time around I whipped through the 63 questions, giving mostly gut reaction answers. The Catholics and Emergents tied for first, followed by a cluster of Reformed Evangelical, Classic Liberal, Neo orthodox, and Wesleyan. I decided it must be an aberration so I took the test again, this time more carefully considering each question. Again, the Catholics and Emergents tied for first (though my score was slightly different than the first time), followed by the Reformed and Liberal groups (no Methodists this time). I will say I felt some of the questions obviously aimed at Calvinists misrepresented the tradition. Even the Heidelberg Catechism doesn't give a straight up yes to “We are corrupt and incapable of doing any good.” It qualifies it with a big "except we are regenerated by the Spirit," if I remember right. The whole quiz obviously simplifies complex schools of thought. And, lastly, Fundamentalism came up dead last both times I took it.

life update, list style

-City of residence: Cleveland, Ohio (specifically, Parma Heights)

-Number of negative myths the city has lived up to: Zero (the river is NOT on fire)

-Most enjoyable Cleveland events: Indians games at the Jake, West Side Market on Saturday mornings, The Lion King at the State Theater, Martin Sexton in a basement hole-in-the-wall bar in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Metroparks system, etc.

-Day job: ESL teacher at International Services Center

-Average age of students at ISC: 31 (estimate)

-Location of ISC: the heart of downtown Cleveland

-Number of nationalities of students: 20, and counting

-Length of my daily bus ride: 38 minutes each way, traffic dependent

-Reading I get done on the bus: lots

-Distance from my house to the library: one block

-Night Job: serving at Antonio’s, the local family-owned pizzeria

-Number of years Antonio’s has been open: 36

-Television star who loves Antonio’s and used our pizza boxes on his show: Drew Carey

-Number of church homes found in Cleveland: Zero (please pray for us!)

-Plan for the future we’re mulling over: me going to seminary in the fall

-Age of Kaitlin Annette, my darling neice: 3 months today!

-Date of her baptism: October 13, 2007 (she cried the whole way through it)

-Things about Budapest I miss: countless

-Things about Budapest I don’t miss: also countless

-Average number of days a week I see Marianne now: 7

-(As a reminder) Average number of days a week I saw Marianne a year ago: 0.34