Weekend Bits

I trust everyone is alive and well after the busy weakened. We were all having so much fun, inhaling great buckets of candy, and then, surprisingly, everyone began to cry midway through Sunday afternoon. After hearing many variations on the cry “This is the best day ever!” it was sad and alarming go hear the gentle whine of “this has been a really bad day.” Saturday ascending to the heights, Sunday crashing very hard.

So in the end we had a regular princess, a woodland fairy princess, a second Narnia Lucy, an Anakin, a Luke Skywalker, and Jael the wife of Heber. I was disappointed not to be able find hipster glasses, or tiara and so wore someone’s tiny reading glasses for the Angry Liberal look. Don’t get mad at me, I did Michelle Duggar for a lot of years. I’m equal opportunity mean.

Really, though, the whole adults dressing up bit is interesting. It seems to be more every year. Although, I do live under a rock. I don’t know anything about the past. Maybe adults have always dressed up, and I’m just noticing it now.

Sunday we celebrated All Saints and the Reformation together. In rotation, we decided to land on the Swiss Reformation, mostly because we felt it was time for fondu. Fortunately, several children decided they hated cheese and one had to go away to youth group, and so we didn’t have fights over the pot the way one would with grown up people.

Matt preached one of his best sermons ever, which is hard for him to do, since his baseline preaching is so excellent. If and when he gets it online I’ll make true efforts to link it. I am always surprised by how God allows me certain troubles and difficulties in the days leading up to a Sunday, and then resolves them during the sermon. It happens almost every week. This time it was a general frustration and dissatisfaction with the gray sky, the futility of all my work, the sense of great longing to be able to pack it in and fly away on the wings of a dove to be at rest (common and recurring themes, I know). Somehow, the unfolding of the biblical text, Matt’s exhausted cough ridden voice pushing through to articulate the gospel, to tease out Paul’s impassioned defense of the resurrection, caught all my frustrations and sadnesses together and dealt them a hefty blow.

Contrast that with the Michael Curry sermon we listened to late last night, once all the candy wrappers had been swept up and the children had finally collapsed into fitful sleep. Michael Curry, for those who don’t know and probably don’t care, is the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. He has been called “an evangelical” by hopeful people, and certainly, he is able to sling around the word “Jesus” with breezy and confident ease. I always felt like his predecessor was in danger of choking whenever she came to the point of having to say it. Curry is a good preacher the way Joel Osteen is a good preacher. You watch in wonder and are able to see why everyone is so happy to be listening. It is the gentle, elegant, subtle subversion of the gospel that is going to make it harder and harder for real Christians to stand their ground. You have to have your wits about you as you listen, your finger hovering over your Spot Your Heresy Button. Whereas with Schori, if you wanted to play a sermon drinking game, you had to be careful with your perimeters or you would be drunk in the first three minutes, with Curry, the heresy and mishandling of the bible was delicate, masterful, and much much more dangerous.

Today is a day of homework and Matt going off to see someone shout his cough. I have some books to read and some agonizing to do over what kind of book I myself should write. I need to write a book. Any ideas?