Why is Christianity important? Why should anyone bother with faith? with worship? with prayer? It’s all well and good to engage in the practices of piety because one has been raised in a religious environment or because it makes us feel good, but what consequence does one’s personal faith journey have on the world that Jesus Christ came to save?

Especially as I prepare sermons, I often find myself wrestling with Nicodemus’ other question: “Why should anyone else be Christian?” Of course, Jesus commands us to “go and make disciples of all nations…” but why? Jesus was not one for blindly following (or giving) rules, so one can guess that he had a good reason for giving the command. However, our modern-day Christianity is too often about fire insurance and bus tickets. We believe and/or attend church so that we don’t condemn ourselves to hell (“fire insurance”) or so that we are assured of our seat on the bus bound for glory (“bus tickets”).

Is Chrisitan faith simply a 'bus ticket' to guarantee our trip to heaven?

As I preach, I consistently find myself faced with the question, “So what?” What difference do God’s love and grace and forgiveness and all that make in our lives, in the lives of those around us, in the life of the world? Aside from a few extra smiles and politeness, how is this world a better place because of the gospel? These are questions worth struggling with. If our faith as Christians is focused entirely on the apocalyptic and what happens after we die, then that faith is useless. How does that faith have concrete, meaningful presence in our lives today?

I continue to wrestle with this, along with Nicodemus. I invite you to wrestle with it, too. Doubt is not a bad thing; it clears out the cobwebs of neglect and complacency and makes room for living, vibrant faith. Whether you are a person of faith, somebody searching meaning, or even one who is happily areligious, please check out Nicodemus’ blog, leave comments and enter the conversation.

Myself, I am still waiting for a call. It’s hard to be in this situation again after over a year and a half waiting already, but the synod office has been very helpful and proactive in communicating with me and helping me find somewhere to serve. I’ve currently got a possibility for a call at a two-point parish a little over a half-hour away, but it’s too early to tell if this will work out or not. There’s still a lot of discernment to be done.

In spite of my unemployment, we’re both very happy to be here. Willmar is a great place, and we are happily settling in. Whatever happens next from here, we’re excited to see what it will be. Challenges aside, it is very, very nice to be able to start getting to know people we will not be saying goodbye to within a year.

The long and the short of it: “Bob” [name changed to protect privacy] got sick the evening of Thanksgiving, and was hospitalized that night. When I came on shift at 5pm on the following Monday, I was informed by the day chaplain that Bob had coded—his heart had stopped, and the doctors were working to resuscitate him. They were successful, but over the course of the night, it became obvious to the doctors and then to the family that Bob was not going to make it. By 4am, the family was asking for a priest to administer last rites before they turned off the ventilator.

I stayed with the family for the rest of the night (or morning, by this point). I was there with them when Bob’s wife and two sons made the decision to cease life support, when they talked to the doctor about their decision, and when the nurse disconnected the machine. Bob’s extended family, who had been there the whole night as well, milling around, trying to comfort one another and take in everything that had happened, all gathered around the bed at this point. From the moment the machine was off, everyone waited with him, somberly watching the monitor and saying goodbye to Bob.

In our cultural mythology, we have many different stories of what happens when a person dies. Many people believe that angels come to bring people to the hereafter, or that one sees a bright light, often with a voice or a presence that beckons them. Then there’s the image of the grim reaper, that morose personification of death as a tall being shrouded in black and carrying a scythe as it comes to collect souls. Even in our popular culture, there have been explorations of the event of death. One of my favorite TV shows was Dead Like Me (2003), which begins with the death of a young woman. After dying she finds herself in the role of a reaper, part of a bureaucratic organization that collects the souls of the recently deceased and shepherds them to the afterlife.

As I stood with Bob’s family by his bedside, I began to reflect on the connection between these cultural legends of ours and my current scenario. We hate to think of people dying alone. We prefer to believe that when we die, there is somebody or something—an angel, a voice, even a creepy skeleton in a robe with a giant sickle—that comes to be with us, to accompany us to whatever comes next. Even though Bob was unconscious, even though it was unlikely that he was even aware of anybody’s presence in that room (due to brain damage from lack of oxygen when he coded), once the decision was made to remove the life support, everyone waited there with him, saying their goodbyes, unwilling to let him die alone. I know that for myself, I hate to think about it, too. Once, working as a chaplain at the hospital in Baltimore, I held the hand of a woman as she died. She, too, was unconscious, and even if she knew I was there, she didn’t know me from Adam; but she had no family around, no friends, and I couldn’t let her die alone. So, I held her hand for about 45 minutes as her life ebbed away, just so she wasn’t alone.

So, what does this have to do with Christmas?

As Christians, we believe that the God who created the universe took on human form in the person of Jesus Christ. God did this in order to be fully present with us as people. In other words, so that we wouldn’t be alone. It’s something that both Christians and non-Christians alike fail to fully appreciate, I think. When we think about God, we often focus on what we get from it, what God does for us, how faith in God makes our lives better. Mere presence just doesn’t seem enough. It doesn’t decrease our suffering, it doesn’t make us happy, it doesn’t enable us to do anything we can’t do by ourselves. And yet, when it comes down to it, when we are faced with a dire situation like the end of our lives, the one thing we truly want more than anything is not to be alone.

The prophet Isaiah writes of a child named Immanuel (Isa 7.14), a name which literally means “God-(is)-with-us.” For Christians, we celebrate the holiday of Christmas as the day when the Creator of the universe put off heaven to put on flesh, to be Immanuel. In our evangelism, we too often forget this significant fact, or when we don’t, it’s received with ambivalence: so God became human to ‘be’ with us, so what?

Somewhere deep inside each of us is the need for companionship. It may not be essential to our survival, but it is essential to our happiness. We can’t bear to think of a loved one dying alone because inside ourselves that is also what we fear. With all the pain, the suffering, and the challenges we face in life, we need to be loved. It doesn’t make any of that go away, but somehow it makes it more bearable.

God understands this about us, even if we don’t always get it ourselves. It’s a jungle out there. There’s a lot of pain and heartache to be had. But even in the midst of joy and elation, it’s so much better if there’s someone to share it with. Even those of us who have the blessing of friends, family, community and spouse find ourselves occasionally feeling alone. Circumstances change, people come into and leave from our lives. We face separation from loved ones by death. Though we almost always have the comfort of having people around us, there are times in everyone’s life where we feel undeniably and inescapably alone. It is for those times, when we are hardest pressed and backed into the tightest corners, that God has become Immanuel.

This is the good news: no one has to die alone, and no one has to live alone.

The bishop and synod staff to whom we have talked seem friendly and enthusiastic, which makes us feel enthusiastic as well. So far we’re still waiting on paperwork, but even so we’ve had some conversations about possible congregation placements already. We don’t know exactly where we’ll end up yet, but we should have a better idea soon. If everything were to progress full-speed-ahead, we could be expecting to have calls by early January.

At this point, I am getting really excited just to be in one place for a while again. I have lived a nomadic existence for 10 years now. It’s crazy to think about. Even though I was in Moscow for 5 years and Gettysburg for 4, I was mostly moving every summer, and always only ever a student, never a “townie.” After so long, I’m looking forward to being a townie. I’m looking forward to never having to answer these question again: “So what are you doing next?” “When are you leaving?” “When will you be done?”

One topic I have addressed before is this longing I have for “home.” The trouble I have had is that there is no such place that exists for me right now. The house I grew up in is my parents’ house, not mine, and will always be a home of sorts, but never a place where I will live again. My hometown and my congregation are certainly close to home, but not in the sense that I will ever be able to live there and not have the weight of a bygone life on my shoulders. Moscow was home for a while, but again, only sporadically. When I left, I knew it was time to leave, because afterwards it would no longer be home. I feel like after a decade of wandering, I am finally on the verge of moving to a place I can call and which feels like “home.”

I have been steadily working towards it. I think one aspect of “home” is personal identity. I could never go back to my hometown because it is too full of who I used to be, and I have changed since then. I can remember coming to Moscow and feeling a profound sense of relief and opportunity as I was able to start completely new and fresh. So, in the last ten years, I have been discovering and defining myself, becoming the person who is ready to settle and put down roots. I have had my adventures, I’ve earned my stripes, I’ve learned my lessons. There are more lessons and stripes and adventures before me, of course, but I’ve had the ones I needed to be able to settle down and not have regrets or be unprepared. Perhaps most important of all, I’ve found my spouse, and the two of us are growing and shaping each other now, our identities transforming around and in response to one another. Frankly, maybe I’ve never been able to find “home” before now because it hasn’t existed at all.

I sincerely hope I’m not setting myself up for disappointment, but at the same time, I’m also quite certain that the ability to build more permanent relationships with people and connections with a place without the strain of knowing it is all temporary will help me live into a place and make it home. First call is, of course, temporary. There are pastors who stay in a place for 20 or 30 years, even their whole career. I am not one of those; I can tell already that I will not be able to stay too long because I don’t think it is healthy for either the congregation or the pastor. However, even in spite of this, I think moving to a place to live as a citizen instead of a student, a seminarian, a counselor, an intern or an intern’s spouse will naturally allow me to finally find “home.” And I am damned excited.

Many have checked this box. Some have meant it. Steph and I have both heard stories of people who have checked the box, but when they get assigned somewhere and their stomachs turn, they pull their paperwork and ask to be reassigned. This fact, we’ve been told, makes the bishops wary of people who check the box.

Most do not check the box. A lot of people have kids in school, a spouse with a career who either needs to remain in the company or find a specialized replacement job, parents in ill health, etc. which means that they either need to restrict their assignment to a certain area or that they list preferences. Some simply want to end up in a certain part of the country and do the same. This is why it is a wonderful thing to have the preferences available.

Steph and I are young and childless, we have no previous careers tying us down, and our parents (thanks be to God) are all in good health. In addition, we both like the idea of ending up somewhere new. After years of long-distance relationship, years of either being on “her” turf or “mine,” either being with “my” friends or “hers,” we are looking forward to finding a place and a people that are equally new to both of us, to which neither of us can lay previous claim. It’s a refreshing thought. As such, we have checked “the box” and we have made it clear to our respective seminary folks and candidacy committees that we really mean it and won’t back out.

I have another reason. I don’t know if this holds for my wife or not, but as I look at the possibilities of congregations open for calls now (as they are listed on the ELCA website), I realize that I flat-out don’t trust myself to pick one. With the assignment process, that is not my place, but I don’t even trust myself to pick an area. There are areas where I would like to end up, rather, there are areas where I think I would like to end up. However, I don’t trust that I have the knowledge or the experience to make a good, informed decision about where I want to start my path.

When I applied to colleges, I started out as an engineering major. This narrowed my choices to U of Wyoming and U of Idaho because of their proximity and their engineering programs. I chose Idaho, and even though I switched to a chemistry major, I believe that the Spirit led me there to that place and those people where I was tested, stretched, and matured. Those friends and programs and communities formed me into the person I am, and I believe it was where I truly needed to be. Similarly, I believe that the Spirit guided me to Gettysburg for seminary; even though I knew next to nothing about it, I ended up at a place where I fit, a place that had the environment and the emphases and the faculty that were right for me. It is true that I adapted to both these places, but I think it is also true that (especially in seminary) they were the best fit for me to begin with.

As we approach assignment, I am excited to let God work again, to once again let the Spirit lead me to where I am needed. If I were to choose a parish, a synod or even a region, and if the fit were not good (perhaps even if it was), I would not be able to help but think that perhaps I was responsible, that I got in God’s way. However, by allowing God and the Church to work unencumbered by what I think I want, I trust that wherever I end up, good fit or ill, will be for the benefit of the congregation, the Church and myself.

God is good, and God knows a lot more about me and the congregations than I do. The Church has been doing this for a while, and though mistakes are sometimes made, they’re much better at the process than me. It gives me a lot of comfort to trust God and the ELCA to put me where I will be most useful and productive. That is why I am “Open to All.”

First: The church council of congregation I serve is considering how to react now that Wisconsin has enacted a concealed-carry law. I myself have no strong opinions either way on concealed carry in general, though I do not like the thought of people (well-meaning or not) carrying weapons in church. When I mentioned to the council that we ought to consider the ethical implications of our decision, I was told that they do not want to make a statement for fear of creating division. I can definitely respect and understand this; right now, we’re having budget troubles and the last thing we need is something else to cause problems. However, I cannot help but think of how ELCA congregations addressed the issue of homosexuality prior to the ’09 Churchwide Assembly and the adoption of the “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” social statement.

Second: I read a thread on a facebook clergy group concerning how to react to a family member at a funeral who wanted to preach “decision theology” (that everyone must make a decision for Jesus and those who do not are condemned to hell— patently opposed to all forms of Lutheran theology which all center on grace, God’s acceptance of us) over the pastor. This family member had expressed an intention to give a sort of homily of his own when he got up to read a scripture lesson, likely to be followed by an altar call. Most commenters on the original post were in agreement that the pastor ought to counter the man’s message or even find a way to prevent his extemporaneous homily. As much as I agree with their theology, I still have a deep reluctance to deem one theology “correct” to the exclusion of another (unless that other is patently unbiblical) since no human can claim to know the mind of God.

As I consider these two events, I have been asking myself when and where the Church should take a firm stand on issues. Apparently, my own instinct is that making ethical judgements on (divisive) real-world issues is okay, while claiming authority to preach and present gospel as we understand it is more uncertain.  Religious certitude bothers me. The unwavering belief that “I am right and you are wrong,” is the root cause of most of the problems associated with religion (bigotry, violence, Crusades). Evidently, my reluctance does not extend moral certitude (at least on certain issues).

When Martin Luther presented his beliefs at the Diet of Worms, he famously declared “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Yet since, the Church has been notoriously slow to take a stand on much of anything. Honestly, I think that is part of the reason that religious practice is declining among the mainline denominations and rising in the fundamentalist, charismatic, uber-conservative (FCUC—my own acronym) traditions; those pastors and dogmas are unafraid to take a firm stand and provide their people with “answers.”  That is not always a good thing, but in an uncertain world, I think many people find comfort in having black-and-white answers handed to them.

The Church does not and should not have the final word on all ethical questions: one of Luther’s key arguments during the Reformation was that all God’s people (not just priests and bishops) are theologians, called to engage and interpret scripture in conversation with the Church and the Holy Spirit. However, if the Church seeks to remain relevant to society, we have to at least engage contemporary issues, rather than burying our heads in the sand. That’s what happened to the ELCA: nobody wanted to ruffle feathers talking about sexuality or sexual orientation, so when we were finally forced to deal with the issue, our people were caught largely with their pants down, unprepared and unequipped for the decision. There are some conversations, namely those dealing with human dignity (slavery, abuse, murder, etc.) to which the Church must add its voice and authority to the, but the tricky bit is discerning when that intervention is appropriate.

There is also the matter of preaching an authentic gospel. Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!” (Gal 1.8-9)  No one person or group has exclusive access to the knowledge of God’s will, but it is also clear that God’s Word is not open to libertarianism; that is, one has no license to go off willy-nilly preaching whatever one feels like in the name of God. However, the question is again when the authoritative intervention of the Church is appropriate.

When it comes right down to it, grace is the final word.  The letter to the Ephesians tells us “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” (Eph 4.29) We are called to do all things for the benefit of our neighbor and the Church. Additionally, God understands that as we strive for that, our intentions and our actions will occasionally lead to failure, and that failure is forgiven through grace. We need to take a stand once in a while without being paralyzed by fear of failure. Because of that, some people will be offended or turned off, but that is the nature of the world.  I guess that as we discern when and where the Church will exert its authority, that decision, too, must be made in conversation with one another. All of us need to be encouraged and reminded to remain in community, no matter what, because the only way to truly fail is to walk out of that conversation.

First, a brief primer: The feeding of the five thousand, for VH1, like the story of Jesus’ first temptation in the wilderness (Matt 4.1-11) is not so much about bread as it is about God’s abundance and compassion and relationship with humankind. Dostoyevsky’s tale draws specifically from the wilderness temptations to make observations/explanations for the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church and especially the Inquisition. VH1 uses this story to make sense of the gospel story about the feeding and how it is different from a typical miracle story.

When Jesus resist’s the tempter’s offer to turn the stones into bread in the wilderness, he is not merely resisting the temptation to feed himself (and take responsibility for his own well-being rather than trust in the Father), but is in fact resisting the temptation to feed all humanity and buy their allegiance for his ability to miraculously give bread. Jesus himself says in John’s gospel “You will always have the poor with you…” and it has proven to be true.  As long as humans have organized themselves in societies and cultivated and distributed resources, someone has always been without. We have no reason to think it should ever change. The feeding story (which appears in all four gospels) is motivated primarily for Jesus’ compassion for these folks, the have-nots of his time. Mark even says, “He had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” God loves these people and desires them to eat their fill. Yet, it is not Jesus himself who feeds them: instead he commands the disciples to do that part. He blesses and breaks the bread, but it is the disciples who distribute it, feed the crowd, and collect the left-overs (12 baskets full!). Jesus loves, and that love manifests itself in Jesus’ workers caring for their neighbors.

In John’s gospel, the evangelist specifically mentions that because of this miracle, the people seek to take him and make him king by force, a “Bread King” as VH1 calls him (John 6.14). This is also what the tempter is offering in the wilderness. As Dostoyevsky puts it, “But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread.” If Jesus were to accept the tempter’s offer, he would have the undying obedience of a hungry world. For even today, when we are entirely capable of feeding every man, woman and child in the world with the food we produce, tens of millions of people are not guaranteed enough food to survive. Anyone who could guarantee that would be able to rule the world.

By suggesting that Jesus turn the stones to bread, the tempter is offering him the world. Jesus refuses because he does not want allegiance that has been bought and paid for, but allegiance that is freely given—in other words: love. After all, Jesus himself says that he has come to set people free (John 8.31-32). And, this is precisely what happens in John 6: he has fed the people, and they seek to make him king because of it.

Instead of allowing them to do this, Jesus turns the conversation to “food that endures for eternal life.” He does not want to be a Bread King now any more than he did in the wilderness; that was never God’s aim. God instead intends to nourish our souls, in spite of whatever difficulties we face in the world, to be not a Bread King, but a true King.

Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor has other ideas. In short, the Inquisitor argues that by giving humanity their freedom, God has sentenced them to suffering and unhappiness because in spite of our rebellious nature, we are constantly seeking someone to worship. He posits that a few should take the burden of absolute leadership, telling people what is right and wrong, how to act and think and behave, and that this would make them truly happy. Then, he says, they would not be burdened with figuring all these things out for themselves. He makes a quite convincing point based on history, and I’ll not try to recap it here. In the end, he says that these few will sacrifice their own happiness out of love for humanity in order to make the rest of them happy. “And so, convinced [that this is the way to make people happy], [the Inquisitor] sees that he must follow the counsel of the wise spirit [the tempter in the wilderness], the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction, and yet deceive them all the way so that they may not notice where they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think themselves happy.” This happiness does not offer the rewards that the Kingdom of Heaven offers, but it does offer contentment and happiness now. He offers them the bread that fills the belly, knowing that he cannot give them the Bread of Life. He believes that the full belly is more important.

God’s love, however, extends beyond bread, beyond the full belly. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” The Inquisitor may be right, that people will follow anyone who can feed them, but God knows that bread is not all we need. Bread, like the manna, will only sustain us for so long. What sort of God would only give us what we want and not what God knows we need?

So, how am I to regard this? As a conscientious Christian, I believe I am called, with the disciples, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to speak for the voiceless, and to stand up for the oppressed. Yet, ultimately, these things are bread; vital to life, but not of lasting importance. It is the extreme of this reasoning which prompted Karl Marx’s famous observation that “religion is the opiate of the masses,” the pie-in-the-sky hopes of a better future which allows the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat now. I would agree: if all religion can offer is hope that “it gets better” without actually working for change now, then it is no better than a drug that lets people escape reality and ignore their problems for a short while.

However, VH1, Dostoyevsky, the gospel writers and Jesus all agree: bread is not the answer, a full belly is not the goal. In spite of Jesus’ assertion about the poor, it is well within our power to feed the world. We have the capability, and it is not beyond imagination that we might one day be able to do it. If we should accomplish this, what need have we for God? If social justice is the only aim and goal of the Church, we might as well be a social organization, an Easter Seals or a Habitat for Humanity. These organizations are vital and good, but they are not the Church. The Church’s aim and goal should bring the love of God to life. This love, if it is true, means caring for the body as Jesus did when he fed the crowds, cast out demons and healed the sick, but it also so much more. Contrary to the beliefs of the Grand inquisitor, Jesus knows that bread will never fill us. The sticky bit is suggesting that perhaps some or even all of the suffering and wanting in this world is worth the Bread of Life. Is it? Or is it a giant cop-out on the question of theodicy and social justice?

At the end of Matthew’s account of the feeding miracle, the people do nothing. It’s almost as if no one noticed! If there was a response, the author did not think it important enough to mention. What the evangelist does mention, however, are 1) Jesus’ compassion as the driving force behind the feeding, 2) his command that “YOU give them something to eat,” 3) and that there are 12 baskets of leftovers. God’s compassion is abundant, God’s love is abundant, but feeding people bread is not God’s job, it’s ours. And yet, it’s not even our only job. Remember why the crowds were there: Mark and Luke record that Jesus was teaching and preaching. He was bringing the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew and John record that he was doing signs and curing the sick, and all record that it was Jesus’ compassion which drove him to do all these things. The crowds, whether they were there for the signs or for the bible studies, were drawn by Jesus’ love.

This is our goal and aim: to love as we have been loved. John record’s Jesus’ command “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Just as Jesus loved: both spiritually and physically. We must give bread, but we also must remember the Bread we cannot give. To Christians who focus too much on the bread, as I sometimes do, I suggest that perhaps we are paying too much attention to stones. And to Christians who focus too much on the Bread, I suggest that Jesus words, “YOU give them something to eat,” perhaps still ought to ring in our ears.

Basically, when this man, Jon Sarkin, had his stroke, it primarily affected the left hemisphere of his brain. According to the author and researcher, Amy Ellis Nut, the left hemisphere is the “interpreter,” it takes all the information gathered by the right hemisphere and gives it meaning, translates it into linear story and thought, and helps us make sense of it. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is then responsible for collecting sensations and experiences. I suggest it might be called the “filter” or the “lens,” because without it, the left hemisphere has nothing to translate. Sarkin, with his diminished left hemisphere, describes his worldview as constantly fresh, but because everything is always new, it also has no context; everything is also alien. Think of going to a new place. At first, everything is new and maybe kind of strange, but as you stay for a while, you get accustomed to it and it becomes familiar. For Sarkin, that sense of familiarity never sets in, the world remains new and strange. It is both exhilarating, but also tiring.

This got me thinking. Human beings have for centuries been seeking enlightenment in some form. (Note: I apologize ahead of time if I oversimplify or misrepresent the viewpoints I bring up here—I’m not an expert, I’m just thinking.) Buddhists, for example, seek a state of Nirvana, which is total transcendence of the self and a state of utter awareness, that is, to be “one with everything.” This sounds to me like what it might be like to experience only right-hemisphere existence. It seems like the goal of this sort of enlightenment is to transcend the meaning-making and logic of our minds and experience everything as it is.

On the other side of the spectrum is logic. The Greeks are perhaps most well-known for seeking this path, but we continue to see it pop up in current culture. The progress of computers (and the society that uses them, I would argue) is oriented to this goal, always aiming to be better, smarter, faster. Rationalist thought is experiencing a resurgence, seeking to use science and experience to understand the universe and looking down on religion as “superstition” or the answers we create for ourselves when we cannot the truth. Since the Enlightenment period, Western Civilization has sought to be more and more objective. Characters in science fiction, such as Cmdr. Data and Mr. Spock symbolize this reach for sheer objectivity. Objectivity and meaning-making are activities of the left hemisphere of the brain. This sort of enlightenment appears to be reaching for the opposite of spiritual enlightenment by seeking to transcend the right hemisphere and live in a state of utter logic and order.

So, I began to wonder: what if true enlightenment is to embrace the duality of our experience, to transcend neither left- nor right-brain, but to perfectly balance the two? It is at once both unremarkable and extraordinary: unremarkable because both halves working in tandem is the norm of human existence, extraordinary because we have a natural tendency to each favor one mode of experience over the other. That is, some people are naturally “left-brained” and others “right-brained.” (We use these terms to denote people who are either more logical or more creative, respectively, but of course everyone uses both halves.) What would this enlightenment look like? Would we all be striving to be what we aren’t, always seeking what is beyond our grasp? Or would it be an exercise in embracing our humanity, in striving to be more holistic individuals and understand ourselves better by understanding one another?

Just some random thoughts to start the morning…

Where this trait becomes harder to deal with is in my professional life, particularly in the call process. As my wife and I prepare for ordination and call, we have to fill out all sorts of paperwork which asks about our strengths, weaknesses, talents, what we love, what we think about this, that and the other. The purpose of all this is to make sure that we end up placed at congregations which are a good match: the more they know about you from paper, the better idea they get of you as a pastor (in theory). This works the other way around, too, as we will start to look at the congregations’ paperwork.

Thanks to seminary, I have begun to learn how to market myself. I can now tell you what I’m best at and what I need to work on as a pastor. I can tell you all about my opinions and beliefs about certain congregational and church practices, contexts, etc. That gets me through the paperwork. I think it also helps that I don’t have to say it  to anyone face-t0-face (yet).

I mentioned in a recent post that I have begun a new sermon blog. I did this mostly to help potential congregations get a sense of my preaching, but also because I’ve had lots of people ask for copies in the past. So, since it’s something people have asked about, it shouldn’t be hard to let everyone know it’s there, right? Wrong. I am having the hardest time figuring out how to tell the congregation it’s there, because I can’t toot my own horn. The last thing I would do is announce it during worship (because I think it would be inappropriate), I don’t feel comfortable putting it in the bulletin, because I don’t feel like it merits that much attention…

Truth be told, I have the same issues about blogging in general. Why should I write all this stuff? Who wants to read all the thoughts that pour out of my head? Perhaps that’s part of the reason why I’ve been so lax in posting lately. And yet, there are some who continue to visit both this site and my new blog. Someday I’ll get the hint.

The congregation felt so bad for me that they took up a surprise collection and replaced the bike for me. I got the same model with all the same accessories, totally thanks to them. It was a wonderful gift from some wonderful people.

Me and my Yukon at the Atlantic Coast in Maine

I had this one for about 6 years. It too was stolen (I figure it must be a popular model). This time it was locked up to the bike rack at the seminary in Gettysburg. It had been outside for quite a while (I was getting ready to take it in for the winter), and apparently somebody decided it wouldn’t be missed. They must have picked the lock as it wasn’t lying there cut or tossed in the dumpster. Boo.

After Steph and I settled in Watertown, I went to Budget Bicycles in Madison (thanks for the tip, Wil!) and got a 2010 Gary Fisher Mendota. Much lighter than my old mountain bike, it’s made for commuting. Of course, I had to include a cargo rack and fenders.

The new bicycle, ready to ride.

I also got a huge Kryptonite U-bolt lock that comes with a warranty: if the bike is stolen while locked up, they will pay you the cost of the bike. I’m not taking any chances.

Last fall I worked at a soil lab in town, 3 miles from the house: perfect for cycling. It was a nice 20 minute ride every morning and evening, and kept me feeling good. When winter hit I stopped riding, mostly because I didn’t have great winter riding gloves. (I used to ride year-round in Moscow, but the winters were milder.)

Now that I’m working at Trek, I try to ride whenever the weather is nice. That is a 12 mile commute, and takes me about an hour, but the route is beautiful and there are enough hills to be interesting but not enough to be daunting. If there is no rain and the wind isn’t too bad, I try to ride every day that I can. As an added bonus, I get credit towards buying Trek accessories every day that I ride. I estimate that for every week that I bike to work (3 days), we save about $15-$20 in gas.

Someday in the future when I work at a church, I would love to be able to ride to church and ride to hospital calls and visits. It helps me get out more and I just feel better in general. That is one thing that I will potentially miss about Watertown when we leave: it’s a very bike-friendly place, a lot like Moscow.