Seven whole days

The secret progressive klatsch and the secret conservative cabal within the Anglican Communion met recently with the Archbishop of Canterbury. As you know, we conspirators are all bloggers. As a blogging member of the liberal conspiracy, I was planning to join with others in releasing a statement in a major press event in Pasadena. However, the MCJ has decided to scoop us all. They must have had a secret recorder at the meeting, and they’ve released a transcript.

ROWAN WILLIAMS: First of all, the Archbishop of York and I would like to thank you all for coming. As many of you know, some are calling this meeting the world’s first digital Lambeth Conference because…

SCOTT GUNN: Dear God, I hope not.

Read more »

The Ship of Fools has had a joke contest. They’ve got a list of the ten funniest and ten most offensive. I would not recommend looking at the offensive list if you are easily offended. You have been warned. But by all means, do go look at the funny jokes. Here’s a sample.

The Trinity were planning a holiday. The Spirit, manifesting the creative part of the divine nature, was coming up with the ideas. “Let’s go to New York,” he suggested.

“No, no, no,” said the Father, “They’re all so liberated, they’ll spend the whole time calling me ‘Mother’ and it will just do my head in.”

So the Spirit sat back and thought. “I know, what about Jerusalem?” he said. “It’s beautiful and then there’s the history and everything.”

“No way!” the Son declared. “After what happened the last time, I’m never going there again!”

At this point, the Spirit got annoyed and went off in a huff. Sometime later he returned and found that the Father and Son had had a idea they both thought was excellent:

“Why don’t we go to Rome?” said the Son.

“Perfect!” cried the Holy Spirit. “I’ve never been there before!”

Last Sunday at Christ Church we enjoyed the Blessing of Animals at our 10:30 service. About 20 minutes before the service started, I was bustling through the narthex on my way outside to greet folks as they arrived. One of our greeters was headed the other way, and she responded to my “Good morning!” with “Good morning! I’m just on my way to help a new family get settled.” She was clutching service leaflets and one of our crayon/coloring bags. I turned and followed.

In a few steps, I was standing at the rear of the nave, at the aisle. I was introduced to a mom and her daughter, our guests for the first time. They had been attending a Roman Catholic church, and they were looking for something else. As I walked up, I noticed that one of our adult acolytes was bent low near the table where the gifts wait to be brought forward. She was showing the daughter that we use “real” bread for Holy Communion, as she explained that the daughter would be welcome to receive Communion — something she wasn’t used to doing in her own church. This simple gesture took hospitality beyond words (“We’re glad you are here”) to deeds. And it gets better.

Read more »

Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to work out. OK, that happens a lot. On this topic, I was interested to read Gizmodo’s “The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time.” It’s a fascinating list of unintended discoveries. Some of them were new to me, while I had heard about a few of these. An example:

Before being found ground into the rugs of child-rearing homes everywhere, Play-Doh was ironically created to be a cleaning product. The paste was first marketed as a treatment for filthy wallpaper—before the company that produced it began to go down the tubes. The discovery that saved Kutol Products—headed for bankruptcy—wasn’t that their wall cleaner worked particularly well, but that schoolchildren were beginning to use it to create Christmas ornaments as arts and crafts projects. By removing the compound’s cleanser and adding colors and a fresh scent, Kutol spun their wallpaper saver into one of the most iconic toys of all time—and brought mega-success to a company headed for destruction.

Got that? Someone set out to create one thing and ended up with something entirely different. This required the willingess to see one’s work in a new way. I think maybe there are lessons for church leaders here.

Read more »