Church Picnic

Church of the Resurrection had a picnic on "Holy Hill" yesterday. That is, we are hoping to buy land to build our own building (finally!) and so all the people who have made pledges to the building project got to come onto the land to have a picnic. The hill is called "Holy Hill" by the current land owner whose father was a man of faith.

Unfortunately, Karisa came down with a fever. She was feeling warm Saturday night, but woke up Sunday with a temperature of over 100. So she stayed home all day! I did everything I could to help but there's not much I can do to make her feel better. At the picnic, I got some friends to help me tell her how much she was missed:





















In order, they are: Alyana, our dear friends' daughter. Joe, one of our old Sunday School kids. Matt, deacon at our church who did our premarital counseling. Abbi, one of the youth from our church. Janet, our Family Pastor. Keith, our good friend and Alyana's dad. Tegan, another one of our former Sunday School kids.

It was a fun picnic but I missed Karisa! I spent a lot of the picnic trying to recruit for a logistical nightmare that fell into my lap Saturday afternoon. But I managed to have some fun. Here's me and Ella (though she refused to smile!):

Sacramentalism and Community

(While I was traveling last week, I did some writing on my new iPhone. Here's one of the things I was thinking about)

While traveling the west coast to do college fairs I brought a couple of books with me for reading material. A smart traveler will bring light reading to help pass the time. Sadly, I am not the smart traveler. I brought to serious books:

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne



and

For The Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann



Revolution reads easy enough, but confronts the reader with such challenging ideas that it is not possible to breeze thru. Life of the World, on the other hand is an inspiring book but so dense that it requires sustained concentration to benefit from and even begin to understand.

Neither book has made for the easy plane reading that would be my usually fare for such trips. Somewhere in the air between San Fransisco and LA, though, I realized that it was highly significant that had these two seemingly very different books together in my bag.

Throughout my trip my peers have been asking me about plans for the future. I have said seminary is my plan. But the truth is that I am still very unsure about what I want to do.

I love the church and the sacramental world that is the topic of Schmemann's book. I also am captivated by the depiction of community and a life of "ordinary radicals" that Claiborne writes about.

I realized is that these two books represent what I want to do with my life. Or at least the vision for my future that I find most captivating. I want to do is bring together the ideas and visions of these two very different books just like the two books are physically stashed right next to each other in my carry on.

What would a sacramental, charismatic, evangelical community among the under-served and poor look like? Could I learn what it means to bring the joy and beauty of what we have at Resurrection to the intentionally loving community that strives for justice?

That is a life calling that I would love to walk. Seminary, internships, overseas and even loving and living in our apartment now can be training and preperation for that sort of calling.

We're landing now and even though I didn't have an easy-to-read, page-turning novel to read, I think this flight was well worth it.

West Coast Travels

From August 1 until August 7 I got the chance to travel to some amazing places. In order, I went Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Denver. This was an especially neat trip because I had never been to Seattle, Portland or LA before (and my only visit to San Diego was an ill-fated trip in high school to see my girlfriend which shoudln't really count for many many reasons, but that's another blog entry all together).

Sadly, the way that the trip was structured was that I saw all these cities in only five days. That made for a crazy lot of travel, rushing between hotels and aiports. I did get to go to La Jolla while we were in San Diego and saw some seals. Here's one of them:



The other great thing is getting to know the people you travel with since we're all doing the same crazy schedule together. Sometimes I'd end up on the same plane or taxi with someone, but the main way we'd get to know each other is through our meals together after doing a college fair.

One guy I got to know especially well was the counselor from St. Johns (Santa Fe), Garret. Garret and I had been on a fair tour in the Mid-west last year. I didn't expect to see him out west but was pleasantly surprised to find him searching for our fair location the first morning (something that I had just done 5 minutes earlier!)



Garret and I connected pretty well. It sounds too junior high to call him my "favorite counselor" on the tour, but I did enjoy hanging out with him. He's a great guy, fun to chill with, and is anal like me about getting to the airport with time to spare!

Our last night of the tour we went out to a northern Italian restaurant. I have to admit, I felt pretty embarrassed the whole night because I didn't drink wine (not allowed to on college dime) and didn't recognize hardly anything on the menu. I ended up ordering bruschetta (got corrected on my pronunciation though) and a Caesar's Salad because I knew what they were. I would have preferred to just order pizza (as my wife can attest to), but that didn't feel cultured enough. Here we are all:

Golf Victory, of a Sort

Last Friday night, Karisa and I went mini golfing with a good friend of ours: the ever lovable and consistently enjoyable Meghan Cahill.



Notice how excellent of a golfer she looks like. Needless to say, we were up for a challenge. And it proved to be true as Meg was the first one to get a hole-in-one!



I did pretty well for myself in the first half. On all of the first nine holes I managed to putt for exactly 2 strokes every time. I was in the zone! Unstoppable! I was especially excited because they had a "best score of the day" board and it was only 38 by some guy named Nathan or something like that. 38? Piece of cake. I was on track for 36.



Then the wonderful women I married jinxed me. On hole 10 she said it was all over. I proceeded to putt for 3 and 4 strokes on the next 5 holes or so. But then something AMAZING happened! I went first and made a nice putt that put me about 4 inches from the hole. On track for a hole in 2 again. (Finally!) Then Karisa went. Her ball hit my ball and knocked me into the hole! Not only that but her ball's spin allowed it to curve with the green and she ALSO got a hole in one!!! That means she got two hole-in-ones with one stroke!!!!



That made our night. It was awesome. As a result of her stellar play and my second half collapse, Karisa and I ended up tying for the win:



To celebrate the fact that we all got hole-in-ones (though mine was really Karisa's but if you looked at the scorecard you wouldn't know it) we went to the local DQ. We thoroughly enjoyed the background on the wall there:



And thus:



Good times were had by all! Thanks for hanging out with us Meg. And Thanks to DQ for their awesome wall decorations.