No Post Until Monday
Taking a bye until Monday . . . baby shower weekend for daughter (and our first grandchild due in March).
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Welcome to the New Year, from the Valley
My family and I made an excursion to Death Valley National Park this week. Home to the lowest elevation spot in the Western Hemisphere—Badwater Basin—Death Valley in the summer is unbearably hot and dry (routinely 120° during the day, “cooling down” to 100° at night). We chose the wiser course and journeyed down during the last week of December. Theoretically, the average temperature in December is 65°, but during our stay the temperatures hovered in the mid-50s during the day, going down to the mid-30s at night. The wind howled, blowing sand and dust everywhere. We came home two days
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
As I dig down in earnest to write a book about my lung cancer experience of the past year, the dreaded “book proposal” has me delving into stuff I have studiously avoided so far: statistics. As part of my research, I attended last night’s Shine a Light on Lung Cancer presentation in my area. The sponsoring organization, Lung Cancer Alliance, is an advocacy group raising awareness about its prevalence, promoting screening, and lobbying for more funds to go into research of its causes. Almost 200 Shine a Light events took place yesterday, as part of Lung Cancer Awareness Month. The
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Out of the Silence
As I indicated in my last post on October 27, the Naegeli family is grieving the sudden untimely death of Matthew, nephew to my husband and me and beloved friend to so many. Some life experiences are simply off-limits to a blogger, particularly when one’s writing might only add to the pain a family suffers. And sometimes, there are no words. This is my one blog out of this sad journey, about what I experienced and how the Word was brought to life during Matthew’s memorial service in Albuquerque. This was a public event, attended by several hundred mourners who
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Can a Christian Be a Fair and Impartial Juror?
My husband and I have been hugely entertained and encouraged by the messages received in response to yesterday’s non-rhetorical question: What if a trial attorney were to ask you, “Pastor, would you be willing to put aside your Christian faith in order to be a fair and impartial juror?” My blog today could quote them all and fill this page, and I may still before the day is over. But the question itself deserves and requires some consideration simply for what it says about our culture. Part 1: Would I be willing to put aside my Christian faith? I first
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Jury Service and Enduring Trials
After two postponements of my service for medical reasons, finally on October 1 I appeared at the county courthouse for jury duty. The long wait to be called into the courtroom was ameliorated by a pleasant, spacious jury assembly room and the discovery that a friend was also in my group. At 9:45 we were finally brought into the courtroom, “Department 8” to be exact, where we were given the standard civics lesson on the importance of jury service. And then I found out that the trial for which a jury was being selected was a three-week criminal trial. Oh,
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Discipline for Our Own Good
Quite often I find myself asking the question, “How did things get this way?” particularly in reference to my tribe, the PC(USA), but also to the culture developing around us all. It is safe to say that we are shaped over time, individually and corporately. The way things are now is the result of decades of shaping mechanisms at work in and among us. You could say the same for any culture anywhere in the world, but my experience limits my thinking to American culture. This weekend I had a chance to air my brains out as I breathed in
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Self-Maintenance and the Life I’d Rather Lead
Frustration has risen lately, as I struggle to manage a different life than I had been leading in BC days. There are so many things I must do everyday in the category of “self-maintenance,” it feels like a full-time job. Whereas I used to track progress in maybe seven concurrent work projects, my new routine includes management of: Medications, which are taken at 7 a.m., 7 p.m., and at bedtime. Some of these meds are my old standbys for “before cancer” (BC) conditions, but the new batch addresses the aftermath of lung cancer and surgery. Two different inhalers (with different
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Is Creativity Allowed in Presbyterian Worship?
Every fiber of my Reformed body cringed during my presbytery’s worship time two weeks ago, described in yesterday’s post. Among people who should have known better, what we did together was not worship. It certainly was an experience—I’ll grant you that—but because it dwelled on ourselves and our experience of our bodies and never even acknowledged God’s presence, it was nothing like what you would call Reformed Worship. In the note I finally received yesterday from our executive presbyter, Jeff Hutcheson acknowledged that the service was “outside the box,” but shared his own spiritual experience through it as significant and
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The Misdirection of Worship: A Case in Point
Lest one thinks that idolatrous worship was a problem only eons ago, as illustrated in yesterday’s post, even today within the PC(USA) it is possible to find events promoted as worship experiences that are anything but. A case in point: the after-dinner “worship” on the agenda of San Francisco Presbytery’s regular meeting of September 9. The “Order of Worship” handed out to us as we entered the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church of Oakland consisted of the following elements: a call to worship, opening song, Scripture exploration, Communion & Community Prayer, Announcements, Closing Song, and Benediction. The experience unfolded in
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