Go visit the Advent Conspiracy, which is chock full of great ways to reclaim Christmas and to restore Advent.

Warning: if you listen to this, you may suffer “earworm” and be unable to remove the trite melody from your mind. On the upside, you’ll be familiar with what may be the worst Christmas song ever.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t post a Christmas song on 7WD during Advent. This is for illustration purposes only. Do not attempt to sing at home. Void where prohibited, which should be everywhere.

Specifically, I think it might do us well to let the Sunday School class at Mark Harris’s parish govern our church. He recently had the chance to spend some time with the kids in his church, and he writes about the experience:

They had been talking the previous week about the disciples and so the take off point was to ask them first how did the disciples get to be that, and then what do suppose they did when they started getting arrested, or god old or died? So we talked about prayer and asking the Holy Spirit to fill new followers with the gifts to lead the Jesus people into life together.

That got us to bishops. So they all made miters and place cards. “Bishop Lizzie,” “Bishop Josep,” etc. We sat around the table and I called the meeting to order and we proceeded to talk about the following questions, and took votes.

The questions were:

• Should Children receive Communion? 5 for 2 against. We then talked about what happens if you are in the minority. Answer, go to church, don’t receive.
• Should women be priests? 6 for 1 against. The person who voted against did so, it appears, just so there would some opposition.
• If someone does something really really really bad - like killing their whole family, the dog and a next door neighbor - should they be punished by killing them?  (by now two more children had joined us) 5 against 4 for.
• Question: what do we do if it is close?  You could see the light go on in one kid’s head: “I know, the majority rules.” We talked about that. In the end we said, this is what the church says, but if you disagree you are still part of the church. Read more »
  

It’s getting pretty sad when The Onion can’t satirize Christianity. They have a pretty funny piece entitled “I’m not one of those ‘Love thy neighbor’ Christians.” Here’s a sample:

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That’s all. Just the core beliefs. You won’t see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden.

Read more »

I’m not up at 4 a.m., even though this post is coming online then. Why did I pick that time? Because some stores open at 4 a.m. for early shoppers. At the hour of 4 a.m., crazy crowds of shoppers will jostle and queue to buy stuff that no one really needs, much of it in the name a holiday that stands in direct contrast to shopping malls and expensive gifts.

There is another way. Go visit the website of Buy Nothing Christmas. They encourage us to celebrate without racking up more credit card debt, filling our landfills, and experiencing joyless shopping. You can even exchange gifts — but they might not come from the mall.

Read more »

I just took a survey from the Blog Reader Project, as suggested by The Lead. I’d be ever so grateful if you, dear reader, would take this survey. It takes ten minutes or so. This wil help me know who you are, and it will give a better collective picture of people who read blogs. Click the link to take the survey.

Please take my Blog Reader Project survey.

If you’re having that postprandial Thanksgiving lull — complicated by your desire to avoid family at all costs — why not escape into the wonderful world of your iPhone, if you’re lucky enough to have one.

Here are several apps you can install on your wonderphone. Enjoy! The turkey hunting app looks especially promising, if that’s your sort of thing. Being one with strong vegetarian and pacifist tendencies, I think I won’t partake. Let us know how it is, if you decide to have at it.

Oh, and after a few minutes, please go back to the real people in your house. They’re actually more important than your iPhone, even if they sometimes annoy you.

Tip of the wing to Gizmodo, from whence the image cometh.

If you are one of the churchfolk who partake in 7WD, you’ve no doubt heard plenty of faith-filled reasons to be thankful today. In fact, if you hang around the parish I serve, you’ve heard me say them. I’m 100% pro-thanks.

But sometimes we need another perspective. For a fresh take on why we should be grateful, I give you this:

Tip of the black hat (with a buckle) to The Questioning Christian.

President Abraham Lincoln set the standard on Thanksgiving proclamations. Sure, his wasn’t the first proclamation, but it might be the best. It captured a sense of national gratitude, even in a very difficult time. This was to be balanced with a sense of humility and repentance.

Perhaps you, dear reader, will express your gratitude to Almighty God today. While you’re saying thank you, also ask for God’s forgiveness for our individual and national shortcomings, and for God’s grace to amend our ways. Oh, and make special mention of God’s provision of turkey or Tofurky or whatever you eat.

Anyway, here’s a snippet of Lincoln’s proclamation.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

I encourage you to read the rest. Perhaps you’ll even read it aloud at your family meal.

Image from Wikipedia.

In case you are looking for inspiration for your mealtime prayers, here are two examples. According to the internal dialogue, one of these is great and the other is “the worst prayer yet.” You can decide. Use at your own risk. Do NOT mention that you read these on a priest’s blog.

This coming Friday is called “Black Friday” because it is is hoped that on this day retail budgets will go from red to black. (Of course, it’s not the busiest shopping day of the year, but it’s the famous one!)

Many Christians rightfully struggle with this day, with its rampant consumption and angry mobs of shoppers. Over at Theolog, were are reminded that there are choices:

For more than a decade, Adbusters magazine has been promoting Buy Nothing Day, an anti-consumerist alternative to hitting the malls on Black Friday.

The values behind Buy Nothing Day impressed Ecclesia Collective co-founder Jason Evans and his wife, but the event itself clashed with their belief that gift-giving has a proper place in Christian community. So in 2003 they hosted their first Make Something Day gathering, at which friends taught each other art, craft and cooking skills. The idea has caught on a bit, and Evans continues to spread the word online.

I’m not so handy with the crafts, so I lean toward Buy Nothing Day. But you, dear reader, might enjoy making gifts while everyone else it slogging it out at the mall.

This has been sitting in my blogpile for a few days. I’ve been trying to figure out a clever church angle. Maybe it’s a parable about over-engineered evangelism efforts? Or maybe it is in itself the key to church growth: imagine how things would change with one of these babies pointed into your nave.

Why did I want to post this? Because it made me laugh, and because it’s a very well made mockumentary. So, without further delay, I give you The Story of the Great Philadelphia Hot Dog Launcher.

From the good people over at Gizmodo.