A lot of bloggers have already dug into this. I haven’t been able to set it down. So here’s what we are doing with it at ThPM. I sent it out to the gang today.

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Compassion Fatigue. We’ve had a couple of conversations in ThPM about this. You know, that thing that happens where you just cannot face another humanitarian disaster on the evening news. Sudan. Iran. Hurricanes in Florida. AIDS in Africa. The homeless men sleeping in the park where your daughter had drama camp this summer. The kid you know who’s family lost their worn-out government-subsidized apartment to fire.

Compassion Fatigue. Em and I have chatted in the kitchen about how sometimes we just do not feel like being … {read more…}

Last week at ThPM we did Once in Awhile Church. This was inspired, once again, by Jim and Barb Henderson. Jim told me that he and Barb were talking about the kind of church they would like to go to and this is what they came up with. (Jim speaking…and this is almost a verbatim quote…but not exactly.)

“How often do you really want to go to church? About once a month right? That’s really enough. And it should only be music, stories, and communion. That’s it. And you shouldn’t have to go at all in the summer. So why don’t we do a church that only meets once a month, and then takes, like, six weeks off in … {read more…}

I like fall. My birthday is in the fall, and it’s one of few distinct seasonal changes that we experience here is Seattle. If you stand on our balcony and lean out you can see a bit of the canal and the east slope of Queen Anne hill turning red and gold. It’s nice.

For some reason I can’t really get into the traditional fall holidays though. Halloween is okay. I like carving pumpkins at least. But Thanksgiving kind of trips me out. I can’t get over that it was the beginning of the end for 500 nations. In fact, ever since I watched Colonial House last year I’ve been obsessing about attending the National Day of Mourning … {read more…}

My friend Donna is getting married this weekend, and she has asked me to be an officiant. She is not a friend I know well, though she is the kind of person that if you and she “click” right, you can go deep and fast into your friendship. I have quite literally found my conversations with her life changing, though they have been very few in number. In knowing her I lost a layer of something that did not belong to me. Somehow she gave a certain flavor of confidence and assuredness that I did not previously know. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she did not doubt me as her pastor, and she did not demand much of me as her friend. Donna gave me a very great gift. She did not begrudge me of my unavailability. My children were very young when Donna and I first met, and she made space for that. She frequently and generously told me “I know you don’t have much time….and a talk once and a while is perfectly fine with me. We’ll still be connected.” Not many people offered that to me, especially in the intense church world in which I was living, where every conversation had to be wrought with emotional and spiritual depth and had to happen on a weekly basis if it was to be deemed “real.” Also, I just thought of another thing. Donna is one of the first truly postmodern friends I’ve had. What do I mean by this? I mean that if we disagreed on something, even something deeply fundamental, we could still be friends. That doesn’t happen much in the church. Believe me, I know. Plenty of people have walked away from me because I’ve espoused some sort of theological or behavior point that they did not agree with. (And I’m sure I’ve done the same to them.)

At any rate, I like Donna. And I like her fiancé, Alex, too. I think they are well suited for each other. There is a lot of mutual respect there, and that goes a long long way. Plus, Alex just has a easy way about him, which I think will compliment Donna’s intensity. I don’t know. They just have a good vibe about them as a
couple.

So, this is what I finally wrote for their wedding homily. The last paragraph is based on Tracy Chapman’s Wedding Song. Donna said to me, “There are only two things I need to have in this wedding–you as an officiant, and Tracy Chapman.” I think we worked those things in just fine. Click below to read the homily.
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Alicia and Mike hosted our first ever debate party Thursday night at ThPM. Josh hauled the TV up from downstairs and we stuck it in the living room. Paul mixed up yummy drinks. Jennifer brought a pot of her grandmother’s potato soup.

It was Alicia’s idea to get together and watch the debate. She had a couple goals. 1) Watch the debate and listen to the candidates. 2) Think critically about her voting decision. 3) Discuss things with her community. We weren’t sure exactly how to do that, until Elizabeth DiCandilo helped us come up with this debate game. The general idea was that people would get debate dollars which would allow them to … {read more…}