Dec
14
Catching up
We leave for Nebraska today. We will stop in Kewanee tonight to drop off the dog and shave a bit off the travel time. I’m still a little skittish when I drive; the accident (black ice on an interstate overpass, 50-55 mph head on crash with a concrete guard rail) has made me more timid than I thought it would. When the truck was spinning out of control on the bridge, all I could think was “I do NOT want to die like this.” I heard a lecture by Stanley Hauerwas about a year ago and he was talking about how people today want quick and painless deaths as opposed to people who lived during the Middle Ages and the Reformation. Those people wanted to have long deaths, so they could get their lives “in order,” so to speak. I think I would rather endure a long and painful illness than to be pulled from my family and friends so quickly. [Interjection: I'm at Starbucks and I hear two soccer moms using the Bible to justify why they should be distant to some relatives they don't like, because "the Bible says: a friend is closer than a brother." Yes, it's right next to the part about "the consumer inheriting the earth." End Interjection.] I really did think it was all over; icy bridge, 55 mph, heading for the rail. But somehow I am still here. When I get a free mental moment, I still get absorbed in my own mortality and the mortality of those around me and the idea that this is not the way it was in the beginning (or will be in the end, for that matter). And again I am stuck in the present-ness of our fallen reality rubbing up against the restored reality that God will completely usher in someday.
In other news: I begin my Doctorate in Worship Studies at Robert Weber’s Institute for Worship Studies in a few weeks. This is the best I’ve felt about starting any kind of educational endeavor; it just seems like a good fit.
I’ve gone through 3 ½ bags of Senseo coffee over the last 2 weeks. I love the machine. It probably rates about a 7 out of 10 for coffee taste, but it makes up for its small deficiencies by brewing my cup in 19.5 seconds, super fresh every time. Is it as good as a properly pulled shot of espresso? No, but it handles the middle ground well (pun intended and apologized for).
All the talk this week in private and public conversations has been about whether or not to have worship services on Christmas Day. Maybe I wasn’t listening close enough, but I don’t remember having this kind of conversation in the past, although I can’t remember the last time Christmas was on a Sunday. More later.
