Monday Morning Confessional

Monday Morning Confessional May 19, 2014

I confess that I am headed up to Conception Abbey on retreat for the next few days. I’m not sure how much of a committed blogger I’ll be during that time. There’s no wifi at the abbey (although I hear there might have been some discussion about beginning to offer it… not sure how I feel about that). I will at least post my sermon from this past week at some time on Wednesday.

I confess that a little before six o’clock this morning I snuck out onto our back deck in to hang up a pair of jeans that needed some fresh air. I was not dressed for company–t-shirt & boxers with black sox. It was full-on old-man attire. I figured I was early enough to get away with it without being seen by the neighbors… not so much. The woman who lives next door was on her deck staring right at me… for a moment I thought about doing a little dance. But, physical specimen that I am, I hate when I cause others to stumble so I just skulked back inside.

I confess that we celebrated our graduates yesterday at church, and it was so much fun. I confess that graduation Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. As we are constantly trying to figure out how to engage in significant rites of passage and initiation rites, this feels like such an important one. Yesterday we celebrated four high school graduates, two college graduates, and two formerly homeless graduates from a program called Veterans Court, both of whom are off the streets and sober. It was a good day.

I confess that my transition to the mac is nearly complete. The file transfer is finished and I’m now trying to learn software and a whole new way of relating to my computer. I haven’t even started in on Keynote, which is one of the big reasons I decided to make the switch. Still, at this point, I really love the mac. My current favorite things are: it’s small & light, the battery life is great, the way you navigate the mac is so fast & versatile, it starts up as quickly as my cell phone does, and it does so many of the little things well. For instance, I love “reader” mode when looking at websites. This is genius for the ADHD world–instant focus. I’m still deciding if I want to stick with Microsoft Word, or migrate to Pages. I’ve had several mac lovers of late say that Word is a superior platform and I should just stay with that. Last week I wrote my message in Pages. It went okay–not great. The problem is that I can fly in Word. I just have so many hours in that program–all my writing for my master’s, 5 years worth of sermons, 4 books, and a bunch of articles. Things that I can do w/out even having to think in Word take me forever in Pages. I’m pretty anal about my documents and I’m still struggling to figure out how to do everything I want to do–mostly formatting & aesthetic stuff.

I confess that I am rereading Gilead & Home by Marilynne Robinson right now, because I heard that she was working on a third installment. I finished Gilead last week (Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005 for Gilead). Marilynne Robinson is one of a kind. She was a virtual unknown when Housekeeping was published, and subsequently nominated for the Pulitzer. The Guardian put the book on its list of the top 100 novels of all time. Then she didn’t write another novel for nearly 25 years… until out of nowhere (again) came Gilead. I love this writer & I love these books.

I confess that I’m chronically late to everything. 10 minutes is my standard. I confess that as much as I try to not be this way, it seems as though I cannot help it. So, I’m ending my confession here today, so that I might get to my next meeting only ten minutes late instead of twenty.

Okay peoples… I made my confession. Time for yours. No, really. You can confess in the comments section… really.


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