True Nothing

As the day progressed I developed a nasty sore throat and cold and the hypocondriac in me thought I detected the beginnings of a fever. I should hasten to add that this is fairly typical of a week when I'm due to preach. I get excited about the sermon and then I get sick. Go figure.

It is common enough that both Sue at work and Karen at home seemed to take it in stride. "It's that time again isn't it?" was essential what both of them said... separately.

Here is what is even more ironic this week. The sermon for Sunday is on HEALING. The text is from Mark 1 (verses 29-34) where Jesus heal's Peter's mother-in-law from... get this... a fever.

As for Jerry up in the corner, I confess to finding the sitcom Seinfeld both a delight and curiously insightful. I still haven't worked double dippers, close talkers, or the Soup Nazi into a sermon, but I plan to try. Seinfeld came to mind in relationship to the beginning of these online musings particularly because they confessed that the whole show was designed to be "a show about nothing." In reality their "nothing" became playful caricatures of life tidbits that turn out to be clearly trivial but oddly relevant. I bet good BLOGS cover some of the same ground.

Anything happen to you today that was clearly trivial but oddly relevant? Like getting sick yet again before a sermon? What IS with that?

Intro To A Moveable Feast

I suspect simply announcing that I’m a pastor, unpublished novelist, and published restaurant critic doesn’t mean much in an online world where identities can be shaped without any fixed reference points. For this reason I’d like this experiment and late entry into the BLOG phenomenon to hitch any personal travails or epiphanies to several ideas I’m chewing on.

IDEA ONE – one of the better metaphors for life is that of JOURNEY

Light years from original, but still helpful.

IDEA TWO – we need FOOD for any journey worth taking

Already my love of food surfaces… I believe we can’t pack enough to make it to any place worth going. We are going to need to find food along the way. Scavenge a bit. Get off the beaten track and forage.

Fear always says we’ll run out… probably tomorrow. We’ll starve in the stretch of desert we all know is coming. Not that I think all desert is necessarily bad—all the best roads are full of desert stretches. But this said… and it is easy to say… real desert will never feel like anything but death and I for one am afraid of death. Pastor-smaster.

I sign up for every tour package that guarantees a route to the Promise Land without any desert time. And every time I do, the bus gets high centered on what looks to me like a sand dune. The guy up front with the microphone (who took my money) flatly denies that the wasteland outside is anything more disturbing than extensive parking for the Wonderful World of Disney up ahead, but I’ve started to wonder.

Now I’m toying with setting off without one more tour package and just a few friends. I’m afraid because no matter what the man up front says, it really looks like desert outside the door. But I’ve heard a few whispers of people who left buses before me and survived… whispers of a God who doesn’t charge tour prices and still provides a TRAVELING FEAST. I figure that either the whispers are true or I’m dead.

That second option would scare me more if I hadn’t noticed the skeletons in the seats at the back of the bus. The guy up front tells us to ignore them… that they died on tours that cost less than what we paid and that we really will get moving again and everything will be just dandy.

But I’ve decided to get off the bus and bet on the God of the whispers.

I would count it as confirmation that I’m not crazy and part of the TRAVELING FEAST if our paths cross in coming days, weeks, or years.