Sunday Cuteness

Gromit's our "someone left the gate open" dog.

Various & Sundry, May 4

It's the 10th anniversary of my ordination and I've been thinking about heresy all day. Not for me personally.  It's because I'm revising the Confirm not Conform curriculum.  To that end, I finally tracked down the source of the Helen Keller quote, "The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next." It's from her essay on Optimism, free on Google Books. She follows that thought up with the great caveat, "The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life." Love it.

Yesterday, while I was pondering the news for the World In Prayer prayers, I found this tidbit about the lost parakeet in Tokyo who told the police his address. "The bird's owner, a 64-year-old woman, said she taught the address to her pet after she bought him two years ago. She had lost another parakeet previously and wanted to ensure that did not happen again, police said." How very practical.

Lots of good obits this week, but how can I resist telling you about professional poker player Amarillo Slim? I've linked here to the obit in the London Telegraph for its very British recounting of a very American man.  It begins, "One of a cabal of rough and ready gamblers, mostly Texans, living on their wits in the days when the game was largely confined to dimly-lit, smoke-filled back rooms, Slim sprang from a Wild West tradition dating from the days of Billy The Kid. Many Americans frowned on poker, some even considering it a sin." Oh, tut tut.

Did you hear the one about the six logicians at a restaurant?

Daniela Papi has a sharp-ish post on Lessons I Learned entitled, So, you’re helping people with “no skills”…?!

I can picture these skill-less people you speak of as you stand there in your suit, I imagine they can grow food we only know how to pick off of a shelf, perhaps build their own home, and fix the limited electronic items they have...Drop me in a developing country, in a community without electricity, with no job, and many kids to feed, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have the skills to survive. I bet the “villagers” (yep, I feel sick!) in that community would indeed describe me as having “no skills” at all… and in their world, they’d be right. 

Yep.

Finally, I  loved Dave Walker's blog post about a bricked up door.  As he says, "There is nothing worse than not knowing when a door was bricked up." The comments are awesome as well.

Enjoy.

Gromit is settling in nicely.

I hasten to point out that they are not always asleep.

World In Prayer, May 3, 2012

It was my week for the World In Prayer prayers and they pretty much wrote themselves this week.  Once I hit that line in the Acts reading for this Sunday, I knew exactly how I wanted to pray. These prayers are from my heart.  Here they are.

Philip asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 

He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?"   -Acts 8:30-31

Dear God,

I do not understand what I am reading.

I read news from throughout the world and I do not understand what I am reading.

I say I read “news,” but the truth is; I read headlines, sometimes a few paragraphs, sometimes a whole article. I get glimpses into conflicts and cultures and circumstances, but I do not understand what I am reading. How can I understand, unless someone guides me?

Help us, God, to listen to those whose experience informs them. Help us to listen to others throughout the world, to those who have lived in the conflict and the culture and the circumstances. Help us to gain perspective. Help us to have insight. Help us to understand.

Help us to understand what is happening in Mali where a recent coup and counter-coup are being discussed by leaders of West African States at a meeting in Senegal.

Help us to understand what is happening in France where voters will decide on Sunday between current President Nicholas Sarkozy and challenger Francois Hollande.

Help us to understand what is happening in Burma where Daw Aung Yan Suu Kyi and other recently elected members of the National League for Democracy took their seats in Parliament.

Help us to understand what is happening in Brazil where more than 8,500 troops have been deployed in the Amazon to tackle drug trafficking, logging, and illegal mining.

Help us to understand what is happening in Nigeria where gunmen armed with explosives set fire to a cattle market, burning it to the ground, killing over 30 people as well as many of the cattle.

Help us to understand what is happening in Serbia where presidential and Parliamentary elections on Sunday may decide whether or not the country joins the European Union.

Help us to understand what is happening in China where the United Statesand China are in conflict over the future of dissident lawyer Chen Guangchen, who is seeking to travel to the United States after escaping house arrest.

Help us to understand what is happening in Syria where security forces have stormed student dormitories in Aleppo in response to anti-government protests.

Help us to understand the world you made, the world you love, the world you redeemed.

Help us to understand. Help us to abide in you. Help us to love. Amen

Review: Operation Mincemeat

I meant to read Operation Mincemeat when it first came out, but was only reminded to do so when I saw the obit for Jean Gerard Leigh.  Who was Jean Gerard Leigh, you ask?  She was a dead man's fiance.  Well, faux fiance.  All part of a plan of MI5 to trick the Germans into believing the Allies would invade Greece instead of Sicily.  How, you ask?  By placing a corpse with suggestive papers in the water off the coast of Spain and doing their darndest to convince them the were the genuine article.

This book is hilarious.  Of all the cockamamie schemes ever cooked up in wartime, this one certainly has to be in the top 5.  Not that I can name any of the other four, because they're probably all still classified.  But what with this crazy plan and this colorful cast of characters, I read this laughing at practically every page.

I mean, listen: You've got your hero, Ewan Montagu, who masterminded the plan and his Russian spy/table tennis enthusiast brother, Ivor.  You've got the coroner, Bentley Purchase, who procures a suitable corpse.  You've got a dashing submarine captain, Bill Jewell.  You've got Miss Leigh, aka "Pam."  You've got the near-sighted racecar driver who has to deliver the body to Scotland.  You've got your Spanish embassy absolutely riddled with double-crossers.  You've got your 1/8 Jewish head of the Abwehr in Spain who had better deliver the goods or be shipped off to a concentration camp.

And even though you know from the first that this completely absurd plan actually does work, it's still mind-boggling--MIND BOGGLING--that they were actually able to pull this thing off.

Ben MacIntyre sounds like he had a great time researching and writing this up.  Perhaps he tells you more about some of these people than you really need to know, but they're so interesting I can't blame him.  And the tale!  Well, it deserved to be told.  Read it and enjoy.

Some practical advice for pastoral search committees

Like so many things in the church, the Pastoral Search process seems often to be spiritualized beyond any recognition for what it is: a hiring process.  Actually, I think what's worse is that search committees are taught to use the language of call while disguising their true desire to hire with a religious patina.  Oh, I don't know.  I just know I've seen a whole lot of bad search processes that seem to lack any straightforward and forthright thinking in favor of a lot of spiritual blather.

I was preaching last Sunday to a church in the middle of a search process.  So I told them my rather blunt ideas about calling a priest as part of the sermon and thought I'd share them with you.

• Be as realistic as you can. Be realistic about the resources you have, about what you want done and the time it will require.  One thing you should know is that for me as supply clergy, it takes about 10 hours a week to prepare a sermon, do the service, and attend coffee hour.  That leaves you 30 hours a week for additional work if you're hiring someone full time.  I have seen so many job descriptions that seem to feel they need to fill up a priest's time.  Forty hours a week is not as much as you think.

• Prioritize. If the person you call were good at only one thing, what thing would you like it to be? What kind of skills will that require?  If you really want to grow as a congregation, make sure the job description allows lots of time for outreach--which means less time for training acolytes, creating bulletins, etc.

• Past titles mean very little. I think this is more true in the church than in many other professions. Don’t be impressed by or dismissive of job titles.  Just because someone was in charge of a parish doesn't mean they were any good at it.  Skip the title and look at their skills, what they have accomplished, and what they say they can do well.

 • Check references! Really, I can’t stress this enough. What do the people who have already worked with the applicants have to say about them? What do they report about their skills, accomplishments, and gifts?  I am amazed at the number of times I've been in a search and gotten fairly far, only to ask my references if they had been called and found out they hadn't.  References are an excellent resource for getting a fuller perspective on the applicant; why people don't use them I do not know.

• Priests lie in interviews. I’m not saying all priests lie all the time. What I’m saying is that if a priest wants a job and you say to that person, “What we really need is someone who’s good at administration. Are you good at administration?”, there’s a temptation to say, “Oh, yes!”, and then try to figure it out later once you’ve got the job. I'm afraid we have been well-trained to give the right answer in order to get ahead.  You need to be (I hate to say it) cunning to allow priests the freedom to tell you the truth about themselves. What questions can you ask that will determine their actual skills, habits, and practices?

 • Priests are also trying to do the best they can. But they are still the same species. Never forget that.

Image courtesy of ASBO Jesus http://asbojesus.wordpress.com

Thoughts?

A new addition

Meet Gromit.

We weren't planning to get another dog.  No, we most certainly were not.  We were trying to help friends get another dog.  But then we met Gromit and we knew we were doooomed.


Gromit is a Guatemalan Otter Hound.  Or something.  He came from an organization called AWARE, a non-profit that operates a spay/neuter clinic and no-kill shelter for street dogs and cats in Guatemala.

From what I understand, his former owner had 8 dogs.  When the owner had a stroke, Gromit and the other 7 (including Gromit's father) went to the shelter.  Gromit was placed in a home where the person was gone all day, so he would howl.  He was returned to the shelter, then was sent to the U.S. where he lived with a foster family for a month.  (You can see lots of pictures of him there at the TubeDog Facebook page.)

We saw his profile on Friday evening, put in an application on Saturday, met him on Sunday, and on Monday evening he came to live with us.  He and Harper played non-stop for almost two hours last night, so I think there's a bit of an over-play hangover this morning.  It's remarkably quiet around here.  But so far, so good.

Here's the pack.  (Gromit is looking at one of the cats.)

Oh, the cats are fascinated.  And Jack ate out of Gromit's bowl this morning.  So clearly they're terrified.

Undoubtedly more images to more.  Here are articles from The Bark and SPCA International about AWARE.