The Lutheran Zephyr

I'm Blogging Less

This blogging dip may be a temporary situation - I hope so, for I do enjoy blogging.  But life has been pretty darn busy recently. 

As I detailed in a post last evening, our au pair suddenly left a month ago, leaving us in a childcare pinch.  We've been trying to balance life and work and care for three children shorthanded.  Time I used to spend blogging I'm now spending holding children or catching up on household chores.

On top of that, I'm approaching my Approval for Ordination interview.  In the past few months I have written my approval essay, attended part of a Candidacy retreat, and sat for a 90-minute interview with two members of the seminary faculty (I received a positive recommendation from them).  May 16 is fast approaching . . .

Two weeks ago my wife put the final push on to complete her PhD dissertation.  She'll have more edits yet to do, but getting the whole thing out on paper was a huge accomplishment. 

In addition to family and Candidacy, my internship is keeping me busy.  From teaching and preaching to fellowship events and pastoral care, I've had my hands full.  Our congregation is a vibrant place with lots going on . . .

So, that's it.  Family, candidacy, internship . . . that is, Life has been catching up to me.

Friday Five: On The Move

Substantive blog posts are few and far between these days.  But this week's Friday Five makes blogging easy - just answer a few simple questions.  Here goes:

1.How many times have you moved? When was the last time?
I recall living mostly in two houses as a child - a colonial-era farm house said to be haunted, and a cute 1920's home with a front porch in a neighborhood of front porches, parks, sidewalks and two Italian delis.  Oh how I miss that neighborhood!

In the past 11 years, however, I've had about 8 addresses.  Recently, I lived in Philadelphia for almost two years, in Princeton, NJ for two years, in Doylestown, PA for two years, and now I'll be at our current address in Fairfax, VA for two years.  We hope our next move - somewhere in the DC area to be determined by my first call - is our last move for a long time.

2. What do you love and hate about moving?
I like finding a new house/apartment and working to make it home.  Same can be said for the neighborhood.  I don't like feeling like an outsider.  Wherever I live, I want it to be home (even if I'll always have a special place in my heart for Havertown, PA and the Philadelphia area).

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?
Hire movers.  Last time we hired movers to pack up our house and move our stuff.  It was great.  With the help of church folk we got unpacked fairly quickly and settled into the new house within a day or two.  We're still shifting furniture from time to time, however, to find that perfect arrangement.

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?
Hire movers.  One man packed up our entire life in about a day and a half.  For our previous move, we packed ourselves - over a period of three or four weeks.  Living out of boxes stinks.  And get unpacked quickly.

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?
I'm moving into a new career - ordained ministry - within the year (by Christmas, I hope).  This will likely involve a move into a new house.  My wife is moving ever closer to finishing her dissertation and being awarded her doctorate. We're also awaiting the arrival of our new au pair on May 9.  Yes, there's lots of moving going on in our household.

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what moving means to you.
My folks were divorced when I was young, so I spent a lot of time moving between Mom's house (during the week) and Dad's house (most weekends).  During most of my elementary and middle school years my dad lived about an hour away, and every Friday we had a lovely drive along I-95 or Roosevelt Blvd (US 1) from Delaware County (south and west of Philadelphia) to Bucks County (north of Philadelphia), crossing directly through Philadelphia during Friday's evening rush hour. 

For a while during those years my Dad was on a Willie Nelson kick, and he'd often play - and sing! - "On the Road Again" in the car ride to his house.  In a situation in which getting "on the road again" was often a hassle and a strain marked by traffic and long days for my dad, and a reminder of the unfortunate brokenness in my family, singing "I can't wait to get on the road again" somehow made the whole situation alright.  The road became something to look forward to - the smell of Oreos as we passed the Nabisco factory in Northeast Philadelphia, or the inevitable fart jokes as we passed the oil refineries in Southwest Philadelphia, or the guy who sold us five (usually wet - I'm not sure why) pretzels in a brown bag on a street corner in Southwest Philly just before we got onto 95, or . . . oh, there are so many memories I have from those weekly journeys to my dad's house.  Perhaps that is why I like driving so much, and took to the traveling sales representative role so well.  For moving and driving can be worthwhile experiences in and of themselves, interim places where meaning is made . . . quite unexpectedly.

I just can't wait to get on the road again.

Out of touch

Just a quick note to explain the recent blog silence . . . our au pair - who had been living with us and helping us care for our children since September - suddenly returned to her home country last week, creating a bit of a childcare pinch.  Thanks to the generosity of several ladies from church we have filled most of the gaps in care and we'll manage alright until our new au pair arrives on May 9.  But with two fewer hands at home to tend to the children and their stuff, I have much less time for the blog.  Oh, there's so much to write and share, and I hope to find the time to do it soon.

Thanks!

Theology Quiz - did I fail?

If I'm preparing for ordained ministry in the Lutheran Church, is it bad that an online quiz says that I'm squarely in the Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan tradition?  I always knew I had a holiness streak in me, but something tells me this ain't a perfect quiz . . .

Hat tip to John over at Progressive Involvement - with whom I agree on many things except for baseball team and Democratic candidate of choice - for the link to the quiz.

           

What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.           Neo orthodox           79% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan           79% Roman Catholic           75% Emergent/Postmodern           64% Reformed Evangelical           50% Charismatic/Pentecostal           43% Classical Liberal           39% Modern Liberal           25% Fundamentalist           11%

Beyond Capernaum

My old seminary classmate Matt Staniz has a new blog.  I figure it's worth reading for three reasons:

• he serves a church in my fare hometown of Havertown, PA
• his new blog has an awesome name: Beyond Capernaum.  Capernaum - Jesus' home base for his ministry - was my favorite place on a Holy Land tour I took ten years ago (yeah, it beat out Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and all the other mega-popular touristy holy places in my estimation).
• he's a smart, witty, and faithful guy. 

So, go check out his blog, add it to your blogroll, bookmarks, and/or feedreader, and enjoy.

Liturgy and Copyrights

I have requested permission from our friends at Augsburg Fortress Publishers to post some liturgical material from Evangelical Lutheran Worship on my Daily Prayer Delivered blog.  Specifically, I have requested to publish an amended version of Responsive Prayer (pg. 328-331 ELW pew edition) along with Propers from the Church Year (including Lesser Festivals and Commemorations - pg. 14-61) and citations from the Daily Lectionary (pg. 1121-1153).  That is, I'm requesting permission to post what I've already been posting for several months.  Shame on me for not doing this sooner.  It's a lot of material that many people worked hard to create, edit, and publish.

This morning I received an email saying that my request was being reviewed.  I am a bit nervous about this, and I anxiously await their response.

Copyright law is serious business, and too many of our churches violate copyright every week.  From photocopying sheet music rather than purchase enough copies for each choir member, or reprinting hymns in bulletins without proper licenses, we violate the Seventh Commandment all the time.

The Seventh Commandment
You are not to steal.

What is this? Answer:

We are to fear and love God, so that we neither take our neighbors’ money or property nor acquire them by using shoddy merchandise or crooked deals, but instead help them to improve and protect their property and income.
[From Martin Luther's Small Catechism, in The Book of Concord: The confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Kolb & Wengert translation, (c) 2000, pg. 353.]

When we copy or distribute copyrighted material without proper licenses - licenses that provide payment to the creators of the material - we are stealing.  Click here for Augsburg Fortress' Copyrights and Permissions page.

That being said, I agree with Father Chris who writes that liturgical material should be protected under a less restrictive system than our current copyright laws allow.  Liturgical material is for the whole church - congregations, church institutions, and the people themselves who constitute the Body of Christ - and as such I would hope that liturgical material could be shared and distributed in generously permissive manner.  If liturgical material is being created to facilitate the prayer and devotion of the People of God, we should seek out ways to distribute this material in as many and useful ways as possible.  This blog is one such way.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't fault Augsburg Fortress for requiring me to purchase a license to publish the material on my Daily Prayer Delivered blog.  It's their material and they need to charge a fee for their work - I know!  I used to work in sales for Augsburg Fortress!  But I also wouldn't be upset if they granted me permission to publish without any fee, with certain conditions or citations.

We'll see.  I'll let you know when I hear from the folks in Minneapolis.

Life, Blog Updates

This weekend Northern Virginia is expecting an ice storm.  Oh, to live in a climate where rain is rain and snow is snow, and ice appears only in the freezer.  Oh well.  That's not where I live.  The storm is supposed to be pretty bad - they're calling for freezing rain to fall all day, on top of 1-2 inches of snow that will fall tonight.  Ice skating, anyone?

My lovely wife is sequestered in a hotel through Sunday, making a concerted and focused effort to get her (insert expletive here) dissertation done.  She is so close, but with a new full-time job and three children at home it is tough for her to find the time to write.

Two out of three kids in my family are sick enough to make sleeping difficult, but not sick enough for the doctor to be able to do anything for them.  Did I mention that my wife is in a hotel this weekend?

I've applied for copyright permission from Augsburg Fortress Publishers to use an amended form of Responsive Prayer on my new Daily Prayer Delivered blog.  A friend reminded me that I was probably violating copyrights by posting this material online, so I made my petition to my former co-workers at Augsburg Fortress.  I'll let you know what they say to me.  (For a good, short plea for a new approach to copyrights and permissions for liturgical material, check out this post - The Church and Copyleft - from Father Chris, an Independent Catholic priest who was raised in the Lutheran Church.)

I've been dabbling with a custom theme on this blog, but Typepad doesn't make it easy for amateurs like me.  If this blog looks funny to you, it's entirely my fault.  But I'm tired and I'm not fixing it for a few days.  Here's the banner I was toying with:

Have a good weekend.  For all who are battling ice and snow, please be safe!

I'm on Facebook

I just got a Facebook account, and I'm loving it.  I confess that Facebook - along with three crazy kids - is one of the reasons I haven't been blogging much in recent days.  But in just a few days I've made over 60 friends - some of whom are close friends or family I've kept in touch with for years, but others of whom are folks I haven't seen or heard from in a long, long time.  It might not be a high school reunion or family Thanksgiving Dinner, but it nonetheless connects people far and wide in an engaging, entertaining format.  My favorite feature is something called "SuperPoke" which allows me to, among other things, "use the force" on my friends.  How cool is that?

I was trying to come up with a really insightful post about the distinct emotional, social and identity issues involved in blogging vs. social networking - they're very different phenomena - but that was late last night and I was getting pretty weary. 

So, if you're on Facebook come and make me a friend.  If you're not on Facebook, sign up.  It's fun. 

G'night.

Ten Random Things

Eric over at The Heart of a Pastor tagged me for a 10 random things meme . . . I did something like this in the past (and also here), but that was a while ago.  Anyway, this is just the perfect distraction while I wait for baby #3 to arrive!

1. I've been broadcast over the airwaves in Australia (radio), Chile (radio), and the United States (television and radio).
2. I'm fairly color blind (I do poorly at these kinds of tests).
3. One of my goals in life is to catch a ball on the fly at a major league baseball game - not to pick it up off the ground, not to steal it from a little kid, not to get it tossed to me by the batboy or a ballgirl.  Nope.  I want to catch a ball from the bat straight to my hands.
4. I once sang the National Anthem in a large choir on the astroturf at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.
5. I've been to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
6. I once dyed my hair red on a dare with my youth group.  The hair quickly turned orange, and remained that way for weeks.
7. I saw Michael Jackon's Thriller Tour when I was a kid.
8. My college newspaper's Letters to the Editor page once printed five letters ripping me apart for a letter I had written critical of the College Republicans a week earlier.
9. I often had letters published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on a variety of issues - from Elian Gonzalez to sports to politics.  Never did that fine publication dedicate a page to my ridicule.
10. I aspire to have my Christmas tree - complete with my handmade bows, antique ornaments, and white lights (of course!) - featured on the cover of Home and Garden Magazine.

I hesitate to tag anyone for this simple meme, as I'll likely not get around to reading your response.  But if you're looking for time to kill, have fun with this and let me know that you did it.

Thanks!

Interview Questions for RevHRod

I was recently interviewed by Eric who blogs over at The Heart of a Pastor.  It was alot of fun.  In return, I offered to interview another fellow blogger.  RevHRod, whom I know both in the real and virtual worlds, asked to be interviewed.  Here are her questions:

1. You are ordained and currently serving in a "specialized" call.  What do you miss most about the parish? What do you like most about your current call?
2. What is the most important thing you learned in seminary?
3. What did you not learn in seminary that has been most helpful for your ministry?
4. If you were not a pastor, what can you imagine yourself doing?
5. You've moved a few times in your life.  Which place that you have called "home" is your favorite, and why?

• Bonus Question: Please ask and answer a question you would like someone to ask you.

RevHRod, here are the rules.  Post these at the end of your interview response. 

1. If you are interested in being interviewed, leave me a comment saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by posting 5 questions for you. I get to post the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.

Have fun! I can't wait to read it!