Interesting Weekend

Yesterday morning when we woke up Gail wasn't feeling well and decided she wasn't up to going to Church.  So I seized on this as a opportunity to go and visit a new congregation.  I've been wanting to go and visit the 'Miracle Hills Baptist Church' for a while now and so I took this as my chance to go see them.  I have never been to Miracle Hills and so I had no idea what to expect.  This is a church that had a few problems with their previous Pastor and which has just in the last six months or so found a new Minister.

Well I wasn't even in the door yet when I was approached by the first person welcoming me to the church.  To say this is a friendly and warm greeting congregation would be a tremendous understatement.  I shook many hands just getting to a place in the pew.  During their greeting time they actually call on all guests to stand and introduce themselves.  They spend a good amount of time greeting one another and one lady even came up and gave me a big hug.  I met the Pastor and his wife who both sought me out to welcome me.  It's a mixed racial congregation but the new Pastor and I'd say easily over half of the congregation are African American.  When I introduced myself I mentioned that I was preparing for the Ministry and was just going around town visiting different congregations worship services.  I've been told that African American congregations are always very excited to have members of the clergy visit and so I have to wonder if that wasn't part of the reason that so many sought me out to welcome me.  At any rate if you want to visit a Church and feel right at home and valued from the moment you walk in the door go see Miracle Hills Baptist, you won't be disappointed.

Their new Pastor Dylon Young is a very animated and energetic preacher.  He has a good speaking voice and delivers a good sermon, he was however far too long in his presentation taking just over 45 minutes from start to finish.  He tackled a tough bit of scripture and gave it a good go but honestly I think he avoided the hardest part of the text and just brushed it off.  I don't want to get into the practice of 'correcting' other Ministers so I'll just leave it at that.  I will add that it seems to me the bottom line of his personal theology is 'The Devil is at the door.  My own personal theology is 'The Devil is in the mirror', I think these differences are stark and we'd be far better off if we'd stop blaming some monolithic 'Evil' and start focusing on our own individual 'Evil' and the corporate (masses not businesses) 'Evil' that comes about in society.  I am completely convinced that if you want to see 'Satan' just look in the mirror.  That's the evil you need to concern yourself with not some mythic beast that you feel is trying to lead you astray.  We all lead ourselves astray with our egos and sinful desires.  We'd be far, far ahead if we taught people to take responsibility for their actions and not blame something else for their evil acts.  I can tell you that every single act of evil I've ever committed came from my own ego, anger, lust, and pride.  The only 'Satan' involved was the one staring back at me in the mirror.

After church I ran home had a bite to eat and went out to pick up the hardware I need for a unusual install that I had to do the next day.  I had to run to several stores to find everything I needed and once I was done with that I swung by 'Half Price Books'.  Even though I need more books like I need another hole in my head I found three books that I felt were calling my name. Honestly, I should be proud of myself for limiting myself to just three.  LOL  The books I picked up were;
        "Writing In The Sand, Jesus, Spirituality and The Soul of the Gospels" - by Thomas Moore
        "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, a Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture" - by John Shelby Spong
        "Paul Was Not a Christian, the Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle" - by Dr. Pamela Eisenbaum

The book by Spong is about 20 years old but is still well worth reading.  Spong is one of the bigger names in Liberal Theology and I have yet to read one of his books.  This one sounds very interesting to me and may well be the first of the three books that I dive into.

The book on Paul is written by an author who is a practicing Jew who teaches in a Christian seminary.  This one is also very interesting to me as it addresses one of my favorite things to point out to people; that neither Jesus nor Paul had any intention of starting a new religion.

All in all, Sunday was a busy day for me, besides everything I've already relayed, I did three loads of laundry, cooked up a pot of chili, and went to the gym and did a heavy leg workout.  I was very happy with my workout as I hit a personal best on the Leg Press, managed to push 1,080 lbs (plate weight only, I have no idea what the carriage weighs).  I was happy but pretty shot after hitting the Leg Press so I just did a few sets of isolation work on legs, visited with some of my 'gym rat friends' and headed home.

I do want to also talk a little bit about my day on Saturday.  Saturday they had the fourth annual 'UNO UFO Symposium' up at the UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha) Campus.  I went to this event the year before last but only took in a portion of the day, this year I worked it out to spend the entire day.  I'll confess that I've had a life long interest in this subject and I have seen three different UFOs in my life.  Now I will point out that I do not believe these crafts are from other worlds, I believe they are military in nature.  Sadly, most (if not all) the speakers and attendees at the symposium are of the mind that these objects are visitors from other worlds, times, or dimensions.

The first presentation was actually about Ghosts and not about UFO's.  I found this to be very interesting and the members of the 'UNO Paranormal Society' are trying to use science to capture evidence of the paranormal.  Personally, I'm not at all convinced that the phenomena known as 'ghosts' has anything to do with dead spirits.  I'm suspicious that if there is anything to this at all it has to do with Quantum Physics and either 'time' or 'dimensions'.  Either it's a disturbance in time or it's a point where alternate dimensions overlap, or more likely there's nothing to it at all.

The second speaker went over some personal insights into the phenomena of UFO's.  Honestly I got nothing out of it at all, he was attempting to tie together Quantum Physics, the Standard Model of Physics and UFO's.  Yet he is just a layman and honestly has little better understanding of these fields than I do. It was all in all just a filler.

The third speaker covered the history of UFO sightings in Nebraska and Iowa.  I heard this very same presentation at the previous symposium that I attended and so I was disappointed that there was nothing new offered up.

After lunch the fourth speaker took the floor.  This segment was about 'Alien Abductions'.  I honestly feel a great deal of sadness and pity for those that claim abductions.  I'm totally convinced that these events are all psychological in nature and have to do with suppressed memories and sleep paralysis.  Likely some of these suppressed memories have to do with terrible events and again I just can't help but feel incredible sadness when listening to their stories, even though I do not believe for a second that there are any Aliens involved.

This fifth speaker was Dave Pares, a professor at UNO.  He along with a physics grad student have been working on 'Micro Space Warps'.  At the symposium they announced results from an experiment they have successfully run five times which demonstrates a space warp on a micro level.  This alone was worth the time to attend for the entire day.  Finally a speaker who was actually presenting something that was rooted in science and who had documented his results.  Dave and his grad student are working on scaling their experiments up and if they're able to recreate this on a larger scale, well then we're talking about a world changing event.

The Keynote Speaker is well known in the world of UFO's, Dr. Jack Kasher, UNO Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy.  Unfortunately, I think Dr. Kasher is just too easy to pull the wool over on.  His talk consisted mainly of his meeting with a shadowy figure who told him all these wild claims of unbelievable technology that he was working with.  Oh and the guy also spent a year studying in the Vatican Library.  In my opinion the guy he was talking to was a master con man and Dr. Kasher has a personality that is just easily swayed.  After listening to his presentation I'm more convinced than ever that the UFO phenomena is completely terrestrial and is military in nature.  Perhaps the military already has technology along the lines of the findings reported by Dave Pares in his presentation.

All in all the day was much like my last visit to the UNO Symposium, it was a day of people watching and a time to contemplate just what is it about humans that we will concoct and even convince ourselves of the craziest things.  I suspect that we all have a need to be recognized in some field and these individuals have found their 'home' here and the wilder their stories the more they are looked up to like 'rock stars'.  In many ways it makes one sad to think about the frailty of the human psyche.

So, it was an unusual but throughly enjoyable weekend.  LOL 

May you all have a wonderful and blessed week and in a couple days have a great spring.

In His Abiding Love & Grace,
Roy

March ELM Class, preach, preach, preach....

Well first of all let me apologize for not blogging much lately.  I will try to get back on track and keep up to date on the blog.

This weekend we started another session in ELM.  We are now in the 'Preaching' section of our education.  We spent the weekend with the Rev. Dr. Sue Gallagher.  Sue is a retired Pastor of the UCC tradition and currently lives in California.  She has been teaching the Preaching section of ELM since the beginning of the ELM program.  At that time she was a minister in Iowa, but she is so dedicated to the program that she has continued to come back to Nebraska every three years to share her knowledge on Preaching with a new class of Lay Ministers.  Sue is a very gifted teacher and has a razor sharp wit which helps her to bond with people quickly.

During the majority of our next month's class we will be holding a "Preach-A-Thon" at the UCC Church in Hastings.  We selected times to do our sermons and I chose to go at 8pm on Friday night.  I'm hoping we can work it out so that Gail and Maddie can go along and spend the night with me in Hastings and then drive back home on Saturday morning.

All of the sermons will cover sections in the book of Acts and we drew lots to see which verses we would be asked to preach from.  I drew what may be one of the more difficult sections to preach to Acts 1:1-14.  I'm thinking at this time that the title of my sermon will be "Why are we still looking up?".

Acts 1:1-14

New Century Version (NCV)

1 To Theophilus.

The first book I wrote was about everything Jesus began to do and teach ² until the day he was taken up into heaven. Before this, with the help of the Holy Spirit, Jesus told the apostles he had chosen what they should do. ³ After his death, he showed himself to them and proved in many ways that he was alive. The apostles saw Jesus during the forty days after he was raised from the dead, and he spoke to them about the kingdom of God. ⁴ Once when he was eating with them, he told them not to leave Jerusalem. He said, “Wait here to receive the promise from the Father which I told you about.⁵ John baptized people with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

⁶ When the apostles were all together, they asked Jesus, “Lord, are you now going to give the kingdom back to Israel?”

⁷ Jesus said to them, “The Father is the only One who has the authority to decide dates and times. These things are not for you to know. ⁸ But when the Holy Spirit comes to you, you will receive power. You will be my witnesses—in Jerusalem, in all of Judea, in Samaria, and in every part of the world.”

⁹ After he said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud hid him from their sight.¹⁰ As he was going, they were looking into the sky. Suddenly, two men wearing white clothes stood beside them. ¹¹ They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking into the sky? Jesus, whom you saw taken up from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you saw him go.”

¹² Then they went back to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. (This mountain is about half a mile from Jerusalem.) ¹³ When they entered the city, they went to the upstairs room where they were staying. Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon (known as the Zealot), and Judas son of James were there. ¹⁴ They all continued praying together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and Jesus’ brothers.

Why, oh why have so many disregarded the angels "why are you standing here looking into the sky?" and Jesus himself "The Father is the only One who has the authority to decide dates and times.  These things are not for you to know."  Well, I'll save the rest for the sermon.  LOL

We're getting down to near the end of our ELM process and everyone in the class is starting to feel the sadness of knowing we'll soon be ending this bonding experience that we've enjoyed for nearly three years now.  Some of the previous ELM classes continue to have 'reunions' and I certainly expect our group will try to meet again from time to time through the years.  It's a great mixture of people that we have and it's been a genuine treasure growing through this process with them all.

Today we woke up to freezing rain which turned to snow (and it's continued to snow all day long!).  We had planned to go to Church at 8:30 but Gail forgot to set the alarm when she went to bed and I woke up first, but we didn't have time for everyone to get ready for early Church.  Madeline was scheduled to work at 11:00 but I didn't want her driving in this weather so we skipped Church and I drove her to work and then picked her up later to bring her home.

After she got done with work Maddie and I went to the gym to workout.  I was a good workout for me even though I have had to baby my shoulders along lately.  Currently both of my shoulders are barking at me (I'm alternating ice on them right now) and I have had to scale back my workouts a bit the last few weeks.  Today was chest & back night and even with my bum shoulders I worked up to a good heavy 4 sets of 5 reps on Inclines and came within 10 lbs of my previous best on Hammer Strength High Rows.  I'm just about to the point where I will scale back for a few weeks before revving up and taking another run at the heavy weights.  It's a good thing too, as my body needs the break.

Today I pulled out some reference materials and started reading in preparation of my sermon on Acts.  In one way I'm looking forward to ending ELM as I've got a large stack of books which I very much want to read.  In spite of having all the books from Jesse I've of course continued to occasionally visit "1/2 Price Books" and purchase more.  LOL, I confess that I have a serious problem in that I can't resist purchasing interesting books.  The good news is they're all books that will aid me in my ministry in the future.

I hope you all have a very blessed and for those involved in the weather here in the Midwest I pray you all have a safe week as well.

In His absolute and abundant Grace,
Roy