proverbs blizzog

So, instead of blogging on our own sites, we blogged on our fellowship's!
I'm not even sure K can reach this by proxy anymore so I won't bother CGifying the things we wrote for posting here just yet. But, K, if you need me to, I will.

Anyway, our fellowship has decided to do a sort of outreach event for 4 weeks. We busted out the big guns the first Sunday with animal balloons and hot dogs and celtic dancers and an art show and root beer kegs. I've also noticed the singing of fairly common hymns with our own brand of flair of course. The choir's also back in gear and Lisa did a cool set-up of banners. Also making a wooden sign post that goes with the talk's series that we're on which is "Stop and Get Direction". As funny as I might think it is to be trying seeker-sensitive models now (like a few years past when it was "cool"), we are supporting our fellowship in the ways we know how. Oh, if I didn't mention, everyone was thinking about who they would invite to this event, etc and were supposed to bring someone out of fellowship with the Father.

So, there were these booklets handed out that are basically a devotional guide for the next 4 weeks. It is based on proverbs and are loosely based on a theme. The staff asked different people to share their thoughts on the blog so a different person is taking each day. Greg wrote on Integrity and I just did Pride and Humility. So click on those to find our thoughts and click around our congregation's blog to find other peoples thoughts as well.

ew.

Ridiculousness...so cold and snowy today. From my office here on the 4th floor of the BGC, it looks awful. Snow keeps pounding my window and the impending doom makes itself known in the whizzing of wind. Anyhow, that's the weather today. Bleh and again I say, bleh.

But, he is risen. And that is awesome. Today in staff devo (hate that word but figured it was quite appropriately cg), my boss read from Nouwen on the sacred life and that was really good and then about how the son calls us friends. Indeed, friends of the most high. Also, very cool to realize that Word and deed are not separate for him which is great for all of us who live eating of his body every week, it seems to follow suit. I can't go more into that now plus it's very hard in a cg way to do so.

Bear with me as I make this website look more my own, I want something inviting like a living room but learning about how to make things look cool in blogger is harder than I thought. So, I'm trying and it's sort of a mutation right now but hopefully soon I'll get it to look good. It doesn't help that I'd really like Photoshop on my computer but I don't have it, even though it's on every other computer in the office and I could just steal one of those.

I did put up my link to Picasa, I'm also slowly getting pictures on there. I'm waiting on pics from greg's party, vigil 2007 and st patrick's day partying.

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?

~Emily Dickinson

Well, that's all for now. Have a good couple days before I talk to you again.

noah

So, I remember that I said that thing about noah the other day and the only thing I have to say is that my general conclusion was that often Father does things for Father and for us, too but often incomprehensible to the human mind....so he makes this rainbow as covenant between the earth and he, but mostly to remind himself. How odd is that? Could it be that he is slightly more evasive than we usually think? And by evasive I mean he's less monophonic than we would like, I think. Mind you these are just the musings of a bear of very little brain so disregard what you discern to be faulty thinking. I think it's really cool that this is the case and it does not challenge my power to believe at all but it does seem odd nor am I discounting the views of the saints who I know had to say something about him for the belief to continue...

Anywho, I just thought that was interesting and we also had a discussion about whether or not the curse on the land was lifted, as it appears to have been since father seems to be almost most upset that he largely destroyed his creation. These are neither here nor there really, but just fun thinks to think :)

So, anywho, trying to think of other things to say. While this seems like it is Mink's news to tell and she should, I'm not sure how much you guys talk or not and posting a blog is so much faster than a snail mail letter...she's dating the estimable Ben Petty now! As of a couple days ago and after several years of his trying and after quite a bit of debacle, they finally concluded that it would go that way. Phew, this is such a relief to friends of hers such as myself who have thought and thought about this and wished something would go well in her life. So, thankfulness all around.

Greg's birthday party was a smash hit and it was very fun even though we arrived at Dave and Buster's almost 2 hours late (freakin' Chicago traffic!!!!!). But it was quite the time and some of his friends from other states came and that was a huge surprise and a well-received one at that. I still have about 24 jumbo muffins in my house, a pain when I can't have any cuz I gave them up for Lent. Gotta get rid of those things, can I send you cupcakes? :) We had a decorate your own cupcake bar at Jenn's house after we all left Dave and Buster's. His real b-day was the 28th as you could see but we just went to Olive Garden and then went and watched LOST with Carrie cuz I spent so much time on the surprise party, I didn't have much to do on the real day! Oops. I'm also working on this little journal thing where everybody wrote a little something and he can keep it and see it for years to come....that didn't get done by his b-day either, though :( Oh well, vigil is my life now. Going in about 20 minutes to go load up the trailer with vigil stuff (when will we get a building of our own!?)....

Hope Beijing is fun, Life of a Pilgrim. Write comments if you like cuz I don't think anyone else really even looks at this though they could post too if they wanted (I like that about Blogspot, anyone can post even if they don't have one).

It's palm sunday this week (i hope that's cg; they're too normal words, right?), should be a good partylicious change, yeah for feast days! Thinkin' of ya, have fun travellin'....
Peace out!

scatter-brained

First day of spring...it's raining-which I love. It just so happens that it was so rainy and so cloudy that I turned on my lights. It also just so happens that I am so out of it today that I forgot to turn them off. Crap.

Anywho, happy first day of spring. I'm not sure that anyone reads this but perhaps you are reading it. Katherine, for whom the website exists, is no longer allowed (which in my langorousness spelled "aloud") to view blogspots in China. Alas, but here I remain. Did I mention my languor breeds melodrama?

I debated calling in for a couple hours this morning just to get a couple more hours in bed. Every morning's a fight but after only a few hours because you were on the phone for too many...oops, I mean because I was doing very important things that consumed my thought and fed my soul. Well, it was important because sometimes you need to really work it out with someone before you can hang up and in the end, it's a whole lot better. Plus, you may also be scanning and editing a project for said person with whom it is paramount that you work out issues before the sun goes down.
And then I went to work...

Wednesday's are "devotions" day. It's still quite odd to me to work in an environment where you go and read the book, enrich each other's lives and lift one another up and it's just considered part of a hard day's work. Weird. Anyhow, this morning was the Flood story or at least the more optimistic half. This was sort of anticlimactic for me due to the fact that I am actually playing the part of rainstick in a production at fellowship for Vigil this year. Let me explain. Vigil is the all night watchful service before that Sunday that has been celebrated over the centuries by the saints. It's awesome, nine old testament readings dressed in the promises of our father and declaring our Salvation History to give us hope again for the year to come. It also has a lot to do with the emersions that follow. Well, at our place, we step up the readings a notch or two and perform them, dramatically I guess you would say. But please do not think about those "practical" skits that you watch on Sunday mornings that seem to do nothing but confuse the congregation. These have lots of color and banners and art and movement and yet the Word is preserved (when done well) as the joy of the service. So, anywho, the Flood reading is one of these and so this morning I just inwardly groaned at the thought of hearing more. But I should not have done so because as so often happens with the Word, you learn something new every time.

I must stop for today but wanted to post something, so there ya go. My first blogspot post. How quaint.