Weekend Recap

Quick run-down of the holiday weekend:

Thursday night went to White Fence Farm for dinner. Fried Chicken mecca of Denver. We had a great waitress and she let us guess the ingredients of two of our favorite side dishes - Bean Salad and Coleslaw. Now, I just have to figure out the measurements. I am sure they make the stuff by the swimming pool-sized bowlful. 

Friday morning went to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Lots of great art. Stuart and Sheralee surprised me with this nifty dragon fly yard art from one of our favorite artists there.

Friday night a dozen people came over for movie night in my backyard . 

Saturday evening I hosted 35 people for an Independence Day celebration. 

After tons of hours of yardwork by the fabulous Richard Turley and myself, the rain commenced fifteen minutes before my guests were slated to arrive. My mother would be proud that my house was clean so we were able to seamlessly transition things inside, soon after I finished my fit of anger. You know the one... you are tired and exhausted, the yard looks great, you are finally proud of it, but, alas, you and your guests must enjoy it from afar. I got over it.

The rain did stop and we were able to be outside for part of it after all. Bottom line is that we all had fun anyhow. And the thirteen pound brisket I cooked that people thought was too freakishly large? Not. a. single. piece. left. 

books I've read in 2009

June
Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl, Susan Campbell

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor

Babymouse #3: Beach Babe, Jennifer Holm and Matthew Holm
Babymouse #1: Queen of the World!, Jennifer Holm and Matthew Holm

May
Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design, Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl

April
The Film Club: A Memoir, David Gilmour
The Furious Longing of God, Brennan Manning
I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Sloane Crosley
How (Not) to Speak of God - Marks of the Emerging Church, Pete Rollins

March
Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment and Moments of Grace, Nora Gallagher
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't), Brene' Brown
Sleeping at the Starlight Motel: and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home, Bailey White

February
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lenconi
The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray, Lindsey Crittenden
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher
From Stone to Living Word, Debbie Blue

January
Post-Rapture Radio: Lost Writings from the Failed Revolution at the End of the Last Century, Russell Rathbun
A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes 
To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, John O'Donohue

tidbits from today

drinking: Aveda comforting tea

eating: a Shari Meserve chocolate-chip cookie leftover from last night’s Denver Book of Prayer meeting

reading: Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl, Susan Campbell

listening: Paper Bird’s Anything Nameless and Joymaking

loving: not having to water today, thanks to some late afternoon rain

hating: not being able to work in the yard due to said rain

hoping: that the raccoon stays on the other side of the back fence

dreading: tomorrow’s long leadership meeting

anticipating: a long, hot bath

pentecost, bluegrass style

15 Books in 15 Minutes

This from Facebook:
The meme of the day...Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Feel free to leave your list in the comments.

Here's mine, in no particular order:

1. Take This Bread, Sara Miles
2. Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor
3. Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
5. Finding God, Larry Crabb
6. Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
7. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
8. The Soul Tells a Story, Vinita Hampton Wright
9. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
10. God’s Silence, Franz Wright
11. Practicing Resurrection, Nora Gallagher
12. Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner
13. The Little House on the Prairie (series), Laura Ingalls Wilder
14. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
15. Travelling Mercies, Anne Lamott

books I've read in 2009

May
Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design, Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl

April
The Film Club: A Memoir, David Gilmour
The Furious Longing of God, Brennan Manning
I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Sloane Crosley
How (Not) to Speak of God - Marks of the Emerging Church, Pete Rollins

March
Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment and Moments of Grace, Nora Gallagher
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't), Brene' Brown
Sleeping at the Starlight Motel: and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home, Bailey White

February
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lenconi
The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray, Lindsey Crittenden
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher
From Stone to Living Word, Debbie Blue

January
Post-Rapture Radio: Lost Writings from the Failed Revolution at the End of the Last Century, Russell Rathbun
A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes
To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, John O'Donohue

Blessing of the Bicycles

We had great fun at our Blessing of the Bicycles last Sunday. Check out Nadia's blog for the Ezekiel reading and the prayer she wrote for it.

Cornhole for Kids

Urban Skye's Cornhole for Kids, a fundraiser for our summer Art Day Camp, was a huge success today. Here are a few pictures of the afternoon.

agenda for today:

- Bike ride
- Serious yard work
- Cornhole Tournament
- Chile Rellano Burrito at el Taco de Mexico, perhaps?

agenda for today:

blessing of the bicycles

Bring your bike and join us for the Blessing of the Bicycles a week from tomorrow. Then we'll eat cake!

books I've read in 2009

April
The Film Club: A Memoir, David Gilmour
The Furious Longing of God, Brennan Manning
I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Sloane Crosley
How (Not) to Speak of God - Marks of the Emerging Church, Pete Rollins

March
Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment and Moments of Grace, Nora Gallagher
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't), Brene' Brown
Sleeping at the Starlight Motel: and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home, Bailey White

February
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lenconi
The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray, Lindsey Crittenden
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher
From Stone to Living Word, Debbie Blue

January
Post-Rapture Radio: Lost Writings from the Failed Revolution at the End of the Last Century, Russell Rathbun
A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes
To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, John O'Donohue

potpourri

- Work has been quite demanding this week in a lot of ways, so not much coming out on the creative front.

- I'll get back to posting Holy Week stuff this weekend. Still have photos from Easter Vigil to clean up, as well as some thoughts about my experience with Lent and Holy Week.

- Feeling sad tonight at the loss of a dear childhood/college friend, Gregg Fulkerson. Gregg was among the most talented people to come out of my hometown. He was an amazing, extremely talented singer-songwriter/musician who will be missed by many. My heart goes out to his entire family, especially his son, Carter. He was one of those people that I've known my entire life. While I love living in Colorado, it's times like these I wish I was back in The South.

- Chances are as great as not that I'll begin my day shoveling show tomorrow. Wet, heavy snow.

- Off to bed in hopes of starving a cold that is lurking.

- Weekend, come quickly.

Good Friday

Tonight we had our Good Friday service at House. Upon arrival, each person was given a purple tulip to lay on the cross during the time of adoration.

We chanted the psalm and did a responsive reading of the Gospel text, which was John 18 & 19. Not having much Scripture as part of corporate worship in recent years (last several months excluded), I am enjoying anew hearing the text read aloud. (Although 'enjoying' isn't quite the word to describe hearing this text.)

Following the sermon and prayers was the Proclamation of the Cross and Adoration. After which people had a chance to visit the stations of the cross and scribe a response to each station, before leaving in silence.

The times of silent reflection were quite meaningful to me, yet the whole service felt very haunting and sparse without the Peace, Alleluia, and Eucharist.

Following the service, a few of us took the tulips downtown to the site of the last shooting (that we could recall) and placed them at the site and offered a prayer.

I am liking this liturgical rhythm that I have seemingly fallen into.

Maundy Thursday

It's late, so I'm just gonna let the photos of our Maundy Thursday service at House for All speak for themselves with just a few quick details:
- We did the gospel text as a narrative reading and then incorporated the foot washing and Eucharist into it. It was powerful.
- Yes, those are condoms you see. We put together over 200 bleach kits for Praxus, a street outreach that is part of the Colorado Network to End Human Trafficking (CoNEHT).
- At the end of the service we stripped the altar bare and covered it with a black cloth.
- As people left in silence they dropped 30 silver coins into a bowl by the door, to be given to a group that has been betrayed. We'll be giving the money to the Four Winds Native American community, who we rent our space from.
A holy evening.

on rotation today

Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
Andrew Bird, Noble Beast
Sigur Ros, Hvarf Heim
Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog

Palm Sunday

Spent the day yesterday de-cluttering and cleaning my house from top to bottom in preparation for a little shin-dig last night, which ended with a spontaneous Sunday School sing-a-long. Did party clean-up around 1 A.M. Started some pulled pork in the crock-pot before going to bed. The result? A true Sabbath for me today. Not a bad start to Holy Week.

Sidenote: We discussed this briefly last night during the sing-a-along, but why do almost all of the Sunday School songs we know have to do with being happy? What is it about not teaching children about the whole spectrum of emotions? I could do several posts on my personal experience around this. The other extreme is the songs that instill fear.

By far, the creepiest one was one that Sheralee knows about growing if you read your Bible and pray every day, and, conversely, shrinking if you don't. We would love to see our six-foot pastor do this one in heels.

The greatest take-away of the evening might be that no single denomination has cornered the market on creepy children's church songs. They are everywhere.

books I've read in 2009

March
Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment and Moments of Grace, Nora Gallagher
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't), Brene' Brown
Sleeping at the Starlight Motel: and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home, Bailey White

February
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lenconi
The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray, Lindsey Crittenden
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher
From Stone to Living Word, Debbie Blue

January
Post-Rapture Radio: Lost Writings from the Failed Revolution at the End of the Last Century, Russell Rathbun
A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes
To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, John O'Donohue

weekend fun in bailey, co

Practicing Resurrection

In February I read Nora Gallagher’s Things Seen and Unseen and loved it. Could not wait to read more of her work. On my trip last week I read Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace. It did not disappoint.

Of the two books, I favor Practicing Resurrection, but reading Things Seen and Unseen sets the stage for it, so I’d recommend reading it first.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Practicing Resurrection:

p. 67 - “...that’s what ails Christianity, this literalness, this imprisonment with the facts of history. When it becomes this, with the insistence on historical authenticity and whether the water really became wine and Jesus literally being raised from the dead, then it loses its whole point, which is to show me ...and to show us how to relate to the earth and be comfortable with mystery..."

p. 153 - I realized that one of the jobs of a writer was to see what was unseen or hidden, and then to have the confidence to find the words for it.

The world remains a mystery without a tool to enter it.

p. 156-7 - “Every single one of us has ‘good work’ to do in life,” says Elizabeth O’Connor, a layperson, in her book, Cry Pain, Cry Hope. “This good work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us.
Frederick Buechner said, “Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

p. 187 - Faith is only an approximation, as is memory - one never knows if one has the real thing in one's grasp. It's always only a reaching toward...

p, 207 - We spend so much time in church "believing" in the resurrection or "not believing" (six impossible things before breakfast) that we may lose the point. What if the resurrection is not about the appearances of Jesus alone but also about what those appearances pointed to, what they asked? And it is finally what we do with them that matters - make them into superstitions or use them as stepping stones to new life. We have to practice resurrection.

...."It's like what happens in spiritual direction. You pay attention to things you never noticed. You start by thinking, There's something out there for me and I need to find it. In that search, there is nothing that isn't grist for the mill. And there will always be more of it, you are not going to outlive it. It's not going to run out."

p. 209 - "When it comes right down to it, it seems to me that Jesus invites us to follow where the truth leads.....and the bear the cost of whatever truth we find."