I'm 37! I'm not old!

(There's a Monty Python video embedded below, FYI, for those reading from the feedreederz.)



(I must admit, I kinda feel old.)

Another World Is Possible

Another World is Possible
Living Into God's Jubilee Economy

Servant Leadership School
July 19
10am-4pm
Suggested Donation $10 (includes lunch)

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Global warming. Widespread hunger. People pushed out of their homes. Full-time jobs that don't even pay the basics. The world is not working; we've got ourselves a system that devastates the planet and exploits the majority for the benefit of a few.

What does our faith have to say about all this? How did the people of Israel and Jesus respond to the systems of economic domination they experienced in Egypt and Rome? How can Jesus’ followers and justice seekers live differently today?

Together, we'll collaborate on ways to embody a just and sustainable world now and transform our present structures. Another world is possible—and our faith calls us to it.

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Cry Jubilee! The Biblical Paradigm of Alternative Economics
Jan Sullivan, Co-director of Ministry of Money

Why Jubilee? Created Crises, Current and Coming
David Hilfiker, Author of Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen

Do Jubilee! Workshops Include:
Redistribution Circles with Relational Tithe
Local Alternative Economies with Anacostia Hours
International Debt Activism with Jubilee USA
Challenging Gentrification with Empower DC
Community Investing with David Hilfiker
Talking Money in Church with Ministry of Money

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Servant Leadership School
1640 Columbia Rd. NW
Washington, DC 20009
www.slschool.org

Register by calling 202.328.0072

Not for the faint of heart

This little piece of dramatic art from Canadian filmmaker Mathieu Ratthe is heart-wrenching. It's also wise. I won't tell you what teaching(s) (of Jesus, and many others) I think it illustrates, because, well, that would be telling. But please be warned: don't hit "play" if you find disturbing images and situations hard to take. Seriously.

Cohorts!

Reminder: NoVA Cohort tonight!

Monday, July 7, 8 pm (Look for Cohort signs at the tables)
Glory Days Grill
3059 Nutley Street
Fairfax, VA 22031
Phone (703) 204-0900
http://www.glorydaysgrill.com/locations/fairfax/index.htm

AND: DC Cohort tomorrow night!

We will meet Tuesday July 8 at the Front Page at 7pm. We will debreif on Shane Claiborne's Jesus for President tour, get updates on the Church Basement Road show that will swing through DC on July 31at 7pm at American University and otherwise carry-on.

Hope you can come out!

The Front Page is located at Dupont Circle http://www.frontpageresturant.com/

Y'all come!

Politics

Seeing as how it keeps coming up lately (and seeing as how I just attended a subversively wonderful rally on such topics), I thought I'd say a few words about my ever-evolving perspective on secular government. My thoughts on this have been shaped by such practical theologians as Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, a monkey named Mojo (whom I understand is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Walter Wink), Matt Pritchard, and Marguerite Welton St. Lawrence.

Here's where I stand these days, more or less. Biblically speaking, secular government is Caesar, or Babylon. God really didn't want God's people to have kings, but we insist on having them. Our governments are never going to save us. They are not going to be kingdom-oriented. If we are faithfully following our Lord, we will probably get in trouble with government at one point or another - God knows Jesus and his original followers did.

We should concentrate on following in the way of Jesus, serving and blessing everyone we meet, and stop waiting for laws and policies to make life the way God dreams it could be. And we Christians should be, at the very least, deeply suspicious of any power that uses force (violent force or merely legal, authoritarian force) to compel behavior, no matter how desireable that behavior. That's the way of Caesar. It's not the way of Christ.

Does this mean I completely equate the US government with the Roman or Babylonion empires? Absolutely not. The US is a republic. Whether our democratic process works well or not, there is a very real sense in which our government acts on our behalf, in our name, if we are US citizens. There's a very real sense in which the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of Western soldiers has happened in our name. There's a very real sense in which the torture of countless "enemy combatants" has happened in our name.

That's why I believe that US citizens, even Christians, really do have a responsibility to some minimal involvement in the political process: damage control. Caesar is always going to be Caesar. He's never going to be Christ, and quite honestly, he's never going to be someone who follows closely in the way of Christ. (He'd get fired.) But a Caesar who does not condone torture is hugely preferable to one who authorizes, commands, and defends the torture of unnumbered children of God in my name. It is worth spending an hour in line at my local polling place to try to pick the lesser of two evils, because we have seen how evil the greater evil can be.

Caesar always sucks. My hope is not in Caesar. But in a republic, we do not have the luxury of claiming that this is not our problem.

And that's what I think about that.

Certainty and control

I concluded a recent post with the following question: If I feel that God is calling me and/or my community (present or future) to emerge into a radically different way of being and doing Church, what am I willing to lose?

You may ask, "So, Mr. Rude Armchair, exactly what do you suppose this rhetorical 'I' might have to give up?" (No-one did ask, truth be told, but in my benevolence I'll tell you anyway.)

I think a lot of the answer boils down to two things (which may actually be one thing): certainty and control. But that works itself out very differently for folks with different stories. For a lot of folks from a more evangelical background, the biggest difference in the "postmodern" or "emerging" space is the letting go of certainty regarding our "perfect" understanding of matters of doctrine. This shift can be extremely stressful, as is obvious from the history of the emerging church conversation.

And for folks from all over the established church (but especially, I think, folks like me from a more "mainline" background), the biggest difference might be a letting go of certainty and control regarding matters of church structure, polity (church leadership), and career-related issues. Postmodern folk are frequently no too keen on stuff like hierarchy, positional authority, lay/clergy divides, and regularly scheduled stewardship beg-a-thons that are necessary to fund a model where professional clergy make 100% of their living from their job as a pastor, priest, bishop, apostle, or whatnot.

This means that if you are one of those professional clergy, and you feel called to move in an an "emergent" direction, then I honestly feel that one of the questions you must ask yourself is, "how will I feed my family and pay the mortgage?" Because the traditional answer, "From my church paycheck, of course", is going to be less and less tenable in an emerging context. I know many people who have unhappily discovered this.

There are many ways to creatively answer this question, even for folks who feel like they have no other marketable skills than those of a pastor. (I guess that's one good aspect to traditional churches expecting pastors to be omnigifted - pastors need to be able to do all kinds of things, many of which can be sources of secular income.) And there are ways for couples and communities to plan creative ways to make sure that everyone gets by - smplicity, sharing (Acts 2), entrepreurial ventures, etc.

I would also go so far as to give this advice to folks feeling the call to ministry in an emergent context, but doing something completely different now: don't plan to go to seminary, get ordained (if that's something they do in your tradition), and then expect to support your family going forward on a pastor's salary at an emerging church. I'm not saying that's impossible - it's entirely possible - but I am saying that it's hard, and will (I believe) get harder as more people step out into the wild, uncertain freedom that is emerging.

As much as I suspect that failure might be a necessary step in emergence, don't set yourself up for that kind of failure, that "OMG, my whole plan for supporting my family is totally not working - now what do I do?" kind of failure. Yes, if you step out into the land of uncertainty and having to find creative solutions to such problems, you run the risk of that very thing happening anyway - but I think it's important to expect it, as opposed to expecting that a traditional church structure, a traditional pastor's role, a full-time paycheck, etc. are a certainty, and that you can control the emergence of your community in such a way as to gaurantee the viability of those things.

So what do you get when you give up certainty and control? You get things like freedom, risk, constant change, and hope. It's not a simple either/or, of course, but it's important, I think, to pray hard about what sort of context God is calling us to.

photo by sgs_1019 (rights)

Next NoVA Cohort gathering: Monday, 7 July in Vienna

Hey y'all! You're invited!

Our next gathering is going to move out to Fairfax (since that is where everyone was from anyway). We'll meet near the Vienna Metro station at (walking distance):

Monday, July 7, 8 pm (Look for Cohort signs at the tables)
Glory Days Grill
3059 Nutley Street
Fairfax, VA 22031
Phone (703) 204-0900
http://www.glorydaysgrill.com/locations/fairfax/index.htm

Subscribe to the cohort's blog feed for all the latest news.

Success is not an option

This is something I've been thinking a lot about for the past week or two. My thoughts are still quite preliminary, so maybe there will be more of them later.

The question on my mind is this:

Is failure - i.e., critical crisis; death with optional resurrection - a necessary and unavoidable step in authentic emergence - at least in the realm of human social institutions like the Church?

I'm not talking about setbacks - I'm talking about major, life-torpedoing failure that makes it blatantly obvious that if life can go on at all, it will go on in a radically different fashion than before. I wonder about this in the journey of the individual, but even more right now I wonder about it in the shared journey of a community.

My wondering has been shaped by a number of high-quality nodes, including some recent good stuff from Grace, but much more from conversations with genius friends like Dee, P3T3, and Amy, and reflection on the journey-stories of various people and communities I know (including my own). For some theoretical/practical reasons why I fear this might be the case when it comes to communities, see here: The Practices Must Support Each Other.

If this is true (and I have no way of knowing whether it is or not - but I have to tell ya, I have a strong intuition that it's at least mostly true) - if this is true, then several other questions follow, it seems to me:

1. Are "emergent" books, conferences, etc. leading folks to believe that they can shortcut this process - this death and resurrection? That it's possible to read some books and say "Yeah, baby! That's where it's at!" and then just go thou and to likewise?
2. If so, is that necessarily a bad thing? Or is that setting folks up for the failure which is, perhaps, a necessary stage in the journey?
3. This, to me, is the biggie. Unlike the others, it's not the least bit rhetorical. To the contrary, it's extremely concrete and personal, and it's one that I sort of feel like every person who feels called to "emergence" needs to seriously wrestle with (like, don't walk away without a dislocated hip and a blessing):

If I feel that God is calling me and/or my community (present or future) to emerge into a radically different way of being and doing Church, what am I willing to lose?

DC Cohort meeting this Tuesday

This just in from the DC Emergent Cohort:

The DC Emerging cohort is meeting next June 10 - 7pm at the Front Page in Dupont Circle.

We will be discussing emergent; who were are, where we are going and how we worship. We would love to hear your prespective, so come on out.

Indeed, come on out, if you're in the DC area!

Two stories

My brother Sean is getting married this year, which I couldn't be more thrilled about. I'm not sure I could recommend either of these two remarkably similar, yet markedly different, methodologies for creating the guest list for the reception....

The modern story.

The ancient story.

Kinda makes you think a bit...about gifts and hospitality and reciprocity and relationships. Also about fashion - both in terms of "dressing appropriately" (toward the end of the second story) and "trends".

Further adventures in suburban gleaning

So around 10:30 this evening, I got a voice mail from our church's Dive Team Captain saying she was headed for the [ESTABLISHMENT NAME REDACTED] near us to see what's the what, dumpster-wise, and did we want to join the expedition?

So we said yea verily, and headed over to the [REDACTED] parking lot, consolidated into one vehicle, and dove. (Dived? Huh - apparently it depends on where you are.) There were two bags with what appeared to be worthwhile stuff in them: one with a variety, the other with just some oranges. We ended up with the oranges, some strawberries, figs, little pita breads, and a whole lot of hamburger rolls that we really didn't want, and thus returned to whence they came. ([REDACTED] throws out a lot of those this time of year.) All in all, pretty slim pickins. But we could tell the store employees were still restocking and de-stocking shelves in there, and there were a whole bunch of shopping carts full of who knows what sitting in the store near the entrance, so we figgered we'd stake it out for a while, hoping for the big dump.

We chatted for a while, and then the Captain stated that further waiting would require fuel, so we went to the nearby [FAST FOOD ESTABLISHMENT] and got a couple of shakes (and fries for Tina - OK, LARGE fries to share.) We were now in danger of having spent more on gas and junk food than we had saved through our paltry take.

We also noticed that there seemed to be someone sleeping on the front porch of the abandoned restaurant next door to [FAST FOOD JOINT].

We went back to [REDACTED] and waited a while. While we were waiting, someone got into the car we'd parked next to in the mostly-empty parking lot, drove down to the dumpster, put on the flashers, and futzed around a while there. We were pretty darn curious, I must say. Was this competition?? When he'd gone, we spun back down there and checked it out. Nope, turns out he was making a deposit, not a withdrawal: there was a new bag of garbage in there, and it wasn't [REDACTED] products. Used diapers and such. "Dude," we thought self-righteously, "that's illegal." ;-)

We gave it a little more time, but now it was midnight and we were turning into pumpkins. So we headed back toward the Captain's van, which took us by the abandoned restaurant where we'd seen someone sleeping out front. That person seemed to be awake now, so at the Captain's suggestion, we decided to go say "Hi" and see if he or she would like some food. She turned out to be a very nice lady who was camping out there where there was a bit of shelter. We introduced ourselves and explained where we'd gotten the food, and she seemed happy to accept all of it. We chatted a bit more about the weather and [REDACTED]'s food disposal habits, and then said farewell and headed home. She was cool. We'll definitely keep an eye our for her when we return.

This is fun. Y'all should do it. As I've offered before, if you email me, I'll be more upfront about details and esoteric dive-fu (though due to my relative lack of experience, your mileage may vary).

Northern VA Emergent Cohort - TONIGHT!

Well, this is pretty late notice, but better late than never. A Northern Virginia Emergent Cohort is forming! If you live in NoVA and are free, why not join us? Here are the deets (plagiarized from the NoVA Cohort blog):

Everyone is invited to our first cohort gathering on:

Monday, June 2, 2008
@ 8 pm

Ri Ra Arlington
2915 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
(3 Blocks from the Clarendon Metro)
________________________________

We'll be gathering for our first time to meet some folks and talk about what this cohort could look like. Hope you can make it and feel free to invite anyone you think may be interested in such a gathering where conversation about church, theology, friendship, philosophy, and culture are the order of the day.

Hope to see you there. Email me with any questions @
novacohort@gmail.com

Tom

TOE jam

(Parenthetical word to the wise: I definitely do not recommend doing an online image search using the term "toe". Most of the results are really gross, in a fascinating variety of yuckness.)

So P3T3 is in search of TOE's (Theories of Everything). He says (unless I misread him): physicists know they lack one, and are seeking one fervently; fundamentalists act as if they've got one, but don't; evangelicals sort of have one, yet leave key terms undefined (kinda wise, if you ask me); and emergentingishlicalian Christians ought to be seeking one to avoid divide-by-zero errors such as classic pitfalls surrounding hell, the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus, and the (excellent) question, "Does God hate brown people?"

Now, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of TOE's (apart from the 10 fleshy ones that most of us have - this despite having just now seen about 100 disgusting online photos of said digits). They sort of strike me as the epitome of hubris. I'd much rather just admit I don't have that level of clue, and probably never will.

HOWEVER, I do recognize that it's impossible to do really authentic, quality, high-level, big-picture thinking without edging into the territory of TOE's - and that TOE's are, by definition, theories. (You know - "just" a theory - like evolution, or gravity.) This means that any TOE, no matter how comprehensive, is by definition provisional. I'm pretty sure that the physicists burning the midnight oil trying to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics realize that their success (should they succeed) will one day seem rather limited and perhaps even naive, however useful it might be in its time, place, and conditions.

I think Physics learned that one long about the time time the last ivory-tower holdout said, "FINE. You win. There's no such thing as aether. Are you happy now?? Gorram kraut Einstein." - and then picked up his toys and went home.

(Religion, I fear, hasn't learned that lesson yet, by and large.)

So with that in mind (that this is provisional, limited, speculative, and in all likelihood simply full of crap), I'll take a stab at a vaguely TOE-like line of reasoning that has helped shape my thinking around some of Pete's emerging-church divide-by-zero errors. Here's what I think, based upon my personal "three-legged stool" of Scripture, community, and experience:

God is Love, and God is the Father of all creatures. God loves each and every creature - certainly including each and every human being ever born - to a degree that we can't grasp. Every human being: Pharoah, Judas, Nero Caesar, Hitler, Pol Pot - everybody.

I very strongly suspect that God never gives up on that love for any one of us. Admittedly, this suspicion is based largely on the third leg of my stool, "experience" - but also on my reading of the character of Jesus in the New Testament. My personal understanding of God and God's character makes it pretty much inconceivable to me that a God who is Love would ever give up that love for any child of God. Therefore, I disagree with those who interpret Scripture to say that one's eternal fate is sealed upon the moment of death: that doctrine, IMHO, places limits on God's love.

Does this make me a universalist? Maybe. Quite honestly, I don't really care one way or the other about that label. But though I don't admit the possibility of God giving up on any of us, I do admit the possibility of us giving up on God, and never repenting of that desertion for all eternity. Frankly, this seems unlikely to me, but I admit that it's possible. Just as I hesitate to place limits on God's love, it seems unwise to place limits on the extent to which we talking monkeys are capable of thrusting our heads up our asses.

So that's part of my personal TOE: I think that God is Love, and that God loves all God's creatures, and that God never, ever gives up on that love.

Which leads me another thought. I sort of feel like there's been a tendency, through the ages, of people within the Church equating "the Church" with "the set of people who are loved by God". This equation has sometimes been explicit, but often seems to be an unstated assumption. It seems implicit in the culture of consumer Christianity: churches must not expect much from churchgoers, because they must be places for everyone who has decided to say "yes" to God's love.

It's widely known that deciding to follow Jesus with one's whole life and be obedient to God's risky call is a different thing from simply deciding to give mental assent to God's loving reconciliation in Jesus Christ. But (the thinking seems to go), the Church consists of all those who love and are loved by God, whether they choose to try following in the dangerous footsteps of Jesus or not - and our churches, therefore, must be comfortable places for those who don't make that choice.

But what if the set of people who are loved by God is not the set of people called "the Church", but instead the one called "everybody"? Then what is the Church? My thought - and it's a rude one, I admit - is that "the Church" is actually the set of people who are earnestly trying to respond to Jesus' invitation, "Take up your cross and follow me." This set of people may have (and does have) a WIDE variety of interpretations of what that looks like - from the most fundamentalist to the most liberal, to mention just one possible "axis" of opinion.

But the reason I say this is a "rude thought" is that this implies (IMHO) that there are an awful lot of folks who are members of churches but who are not members of the Church, and probably never will be - because there's no expectation that "the Church" is anything other than "those who are loved by God and know it".

My suggestion is that God's love is for everyone - it's an enormous, immense, incredible gift of grace for every human being. But God has other gifts too. God's Son has a yoke that is good, and risky, and dangerous, and joyful, and surprising, and demanding, and maybe a little bit nuts. Not everybody wants that yoke - and that's OK! God doesn't love those who try to follow Jesus one iota more than those who don't. But following Jesus is an enormous gift, and when we confuse that gift with the gift of God's love, given freely to all, we do no one a service.

So I think that's how I, personally, do-si-do around P3T3's divide-by-zero.

Hell? Maybe - if we can be stubborn enough in our hatred to outlast God's love - which means holding onto it until the end of time.

Exclusivity? No way, if you're talking about the love of God - but yes, obviously, if you're talking about following Jesus. It's a matter of obvious fact that not everybody tries to follow Jesus - not every human, and not every churchgoer - and that may be because they're not aware of the option. (Though many people who have never heard of Jesus - or who have heard of him, but have been put off by Christians or their doctrines - choose to live much more like him than I do!)

God hating brown people? Well, I sure as hell hope not. I admit I'm still a little weirded out that the enormous gift of following in the way of Jesus is something that needed to spread by word of mouth from a single point in time and geography.

But that's the undeniable pattern of history, and of every historical gift from God - including so many that have come to us at times and in places where brown people live. It's weird, when you think about it - but peculiar distribution of gifts is a lesser matter, I guess, than excluding some of God's children from the very love of God.

And that's as far as my TOE's have carried me today.

Photo: "Big Toe goes to Dharamsala" by Qaanaaq (rights)

Wooo-hooo! Toward a more balanced life

So I get to start my Memorial Day weekend on a high note. A long-standing dream of mine (OK, "long" means maybe two or three years, but still) has finally come to fruition: this will be my last Friday at the day job until further notice. (The actual arrangement will be a little more flexible than that, truth be told.) I have the official letter in hand: starting next week, my hours are dropping from "full time" (which to USA TODAY means 37.5 hours per week, or five 7.5-hour days - but which in practice for a salaried position means "whatever it takes") to 30 hours per week (or, typically, four days in the office). My bosses are being much more insistent than I am about ensuring that when I make this change, the company keeps its side of the bargain, and that they don't want me monitoring work email, working extra hours, etc., beyond my 30.

Speaking as someone who is trying to make my life work as a "tentmaker" (i.e., giving quite a bit of volunteer time to the little "emerging" church I'm a part of - in addition to other ministry and missional activities - while drawing income from a secular job), I have to say I'm over the moon.

I've worked full-time constantly since college, and I'm (hopefully) not whining about that - of course most people in this world have to work way more hours for way more years than me to make ends meet. But I found myself in the uber-blessed position of feeling strongly that I need that time more than I need that income, and of having an employer, a spouse, and other key relationships that are willing and able to enable that tradeoff.

And in the interest of transparency, I ought to admit that it wasn't a trivial thing for Tina and me to figure out how to take the primary breadwinner's salary and cut it by 20%, or to decide that this was a good thing to do. But we did it!

I don't intend to use the one day in seven that I'm getting back in my life to do more "church" work - I sorta feel like I tend to do plenty of that already. Instead, I have two initial goals and a meta-goal. The two initial goals are:

1) To be a more equal partner in my marriage. Since I work what typically ends up being the equivalent of a full-time day job plus a part-time volunteer church job, Tina ends up doing way more than her fair share of the housework, etc., even though she works full-time (plus) too.

2) To get some more "sabbath" time in my life. Certainly Sundays are a sacred day for me, and worshipful, but I'm often so busy (with good, hopefully God-given work) that I don't get much time in my life for reading, writing, contemplative prayer, podcast-listening - all that good stuff that's helpful for formation and a healthy relationship with God and with the inside of my own head. I'm hoping to get some of that back.

The meta-goal is to teach myself how to uni-task. I have multi-tasker's disease, really bad. I need to learn how to vacuum, and just vacuum. Or read a book (for more than 20 minutes before I fall asleep at night) and just read. Maybe with some awareness of God, and of what a gift it is to be able to do these things. Brother Lawrence, help me out here.

Beyond that, I think I may pick up the guitar again. And we'll see what happens down the road.

But for now, I'm rejoicing in this gift. Yeee-haw!

P.S., Deep gratitude to my dear friends Dee and Pete, who helped me to realize that this was even a possibility, and to my kickass employer and particularly to my bosses (Erik and Steve) and my team there (Raul, Jeff, and Alon) for making this possible. And especially to Tina, who is amazing beyond words. And I'll shut up now, 'cause I sound like I just won a freakin' Oscar. :-D

photo "part time" by ubiquity_zh (rights)

Clay Shirky on the brokenness of one-way content flow

This brief (16-minute) presentation (by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008) is must-viewing. If you're bored (and you shouldn't be), at least fast-forward to the 11-minute mark and watch the last 5 minutes.

Choice quote (at 11:35): "'I could do that too!' - this is something people in the media world don't understand." Just strike out "media" and substitute "church", and it's equally true. Another quote at 14:45: "Here's what 4-year-olds know: a screen that ships without a mouse ships broken." Watch it, and think about the implications.

HT: Len Hjalmarson.

Good stuff on the day job: a new USATODAY.com

I don't tend to blog much about my day job, but I have to say that I think the redesign we launched this morning for USATODAY.com looks right spiffy. And it's faster, and more convenient, and puts more of the info that folks seem to want in front of their eyeballs. I can claim very, very little credit for this, but I am proud to be part of a crack team of designers, editors, programmers, and business folks who do fine work and have a good time doing it.

Check it, y'all.

P.S., it's also an awesome place to work, from a values/culture/flexibility point of view. Join us! ;-)

Jesus for President in DC!

Friday June 27 at 7PM

Calvary Baptist

755 8th St NW, Washington, DC

FREE Tickets at
www.JesusforPresidentinDC.org

Len on tentmaking and paid ministry

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Len Hjalmarson rocks. And another thing: I'm so glad he's Canadian. Why? Because my friend Tim keeps reminding me that he thinks my strong preference for non-hierarchical forms of leadership and organization is more an expression of American individualism than it is of identification with the postmodern cultural shift. But when Tim says this, I can point toward Len and say, "But Tim, what of Len? Len's not American. He's Canadian."

;-)

(Actually, a lot of the most interesting folks that I'm aware of who are thinking about and practicing new forms of ecclesial leadership and organization seem to be from Canada. So there.)

Anyway, today Len posted an excellent blog post on paid church work and "tentmaking" (the practice, named after the livelihood of St. Paul, of doing the work of God while earning one's income from some secular source). If you do God's work - whether you get paid for it or not - I encourage you to read it, think about it, and maybe even pray about it. It's good.

UPDATE: Len just posted a follow-up. It's also excellent. Give it a read!

Caption contest

The winner will receive, well, I dunno, prolly several dozen LOLz from amused readers of this blog. Here's the photo:


I would certainly accept Biblical chapter and verse references as captions, but Matthew 4:18-20 and John 21:4-6 are already taken. However, feel free to (mis)quote from those passages, or any others, at will.

Ready...steady...go! :-D

HT: My day job pal Ed, who supplied the Buddy Christ, the little plastic fish, the gorgeous beach photo from his native Cape Cod, the camera that took this shot - heck, everything but the blog. I am merely a conduit for Ed's genius.

Day job cubicle upgrades

I neglected to take a "before" pic, but the sofa is new.

Stole it from Marketing.