Wow!

Valor played at our church today. I really liked their music.

Church was wonderful today overall - the energy, the sermon, the Sunday school class, and it seems like we get more new people every week.

It's exciting.

Another angel monument...

...because I am too tired (but it's a good tired) to write a lot of words, and because I love looking at angel statues.



I can't wait until the weather is warm...I take more photos then.

A milestone

Last night I finished reading all of the New Testament through for the first time ever, and I'm much more pleased with myself than I have any right to be. It took me from early December until now, reading 3-5 chapters a night, and, well, yay.

Tonight's Bible study went well too and really energized me.

Excelsior. On to the Old Testament.

Low Church vs. High Church

I've been thinking a lot about this subject lately, having had similar conversations with three different groups of people over the last couple of weeks.

An interesting example of synchronicity...possibly partially explained by the fact that this is the beginning of Lent for those of you of the High Church persuasion.

When I first started attending Baptist services, I was really surprised at the differences compared to the ones offered by the Presbyterian church I'd attended while growing up...and those were more Middle Church than High.

Middle Church is like High Church, but with hobbits.

(...sorry.)

Where were the raised wooden pulpit, the choir robes, the colored altar cloths? Why was there no mention of the church calendar? No hymnals, no pews?

COOL.

This was fresh, new, and different, and I liked it. A lot.

There are a lot of things I love about High Church traditions. The familiarity of the services, the organized movement through the ecclesiastical year, the beauty of gothic stone construction and stained glass windows...aesthetically, it's lovely and graceful.

But it's Low Church that really moves me. I love that we start out singing praises, and that the songs are modern gospel songs you might hear on the radio. I love learning new music. I love that there are no pre-set ecumenical guidelines for which sermons to preach on which Sundays - the pastor prepares sermons and speaks as the spirit moves him. I love that we all greet each other. I love having so many opportunities to learn and study the Bible. I really love the emphasis on the teachings of Jesus.

It's a living faith. It's something I use in my daily life. (I know that not everyone reacts the same way to the same type of service, which is why choice is good.)

Interestingly, the novel I'm currently reading (The Perpetual Curate, by Margaret Oliphant - I am addicted to Victorian fiction) touches on this subject as well. The curate of the title is Anglican, torn between a rector who wants to stop him doing mission work in poor neighborhoods because it hasn't been offically approved yet, and his three brash and evangelical aunts who attend services with disapproving looks, ask loudly about Dissenting chapels, and are shocked that money is spent on altar flowers and surplices when there are people starving.

You can't please everyone. (And why is it that so many evangelical characters in mainstream literature are either comic or dastardly or both? I suppose that's another subject for another time. Mrs. Oliphant quite fairly plays both extremes off each other - I'll be interested to see how the story ends.)

My faith in God doesn't falter but my faith in people does.

I haven't posted much lately because I've been going through some things, mainly health- and weather-related.

Sometimes it's hard being the new kid, especially when things go wrong and people don't know you well. They tend to leap to conclusions that usually have more to do with their past experiences than anything you've done.

I guess it's hard for them too. People new to faith come in at all levels - for me, I'm pretty advanced in some areas, and I need way beyond basic remedial help in others. It's uneven, and I end up hearing the same things I already know over and over, while not getting to the parts I need to learn.

Right now I'm feeling worn, discouraged, and disappointed.

It's weird, though. I never blame God; God's the guy who gets me through. I don't really blame people either; they're doing the best they can.

I'm a category-buster in nearly every part of my life; I don't fit neatly into boxes tidily labeled with common preconceptions. I need my own box.

This means that I'm unusually useful in some ways...but it also means that I'm often overlooked or discarded.

I can't change the circumstances of my life and I can't change the way people react to me, but maybe I can change my mindset so that I don't expect people to see me clearly when they can't.

I don't know how to fix this in myself, but God probably knows.

Another photo

...because I'm lazy. I had a text entry written out in longhand, but I'm too tired to want to type it up, so here instead is another photo. This one was taken a few years back in the back garden of an abandoned house in early spring. A friend and I were out driving around, looking for picture material, and we drove past this. I'm not sure if it was part of a trellis or something else, but it looked interesting, especially with the vines on it.

Michael (I think)

I said when I created this blog that one of the things I wanted to do with it was post photos. Since we're in the midst of a blizzard, I'm editing some older shots. This one was taken in summer of 2005 at a local cemetery. I don't see archangels in cemetery art very often, and this was a lovely, eloquent statue.