No, Brady, I won’t be writing about Costco.

Our time with Greg, Janice & the Long Beach Crew was a delight (as always). I enjoyed immensly playing with the band.

Today, we’re headed to Disneyland. We’ve planned this for a while and just told the kids on Friday before Reese and I headed down. Needless to say the bambinos are quite excited. So are the kids.

The last time we went to Disneyland was 7 something years ago. I look forward to the contrast. I think the kids are at the right age to enjoy the park and not be spooked by the rides. The bambinos, however, might be a different story all together.

Right outside our front door underneath our porch is the perfect place for a nest says mama bird.

The baby birds seem to agree.

Greg wrote yesterday about an experience at a well known eatery. He wrote about occupations that expect and demand a tip. My favorite is the tip jar at Starbucks or the sandwich shop. So, not only do I pay $4 for the coffee drink I’m expected to pay you for making my coffee drink? I thought that’s what the owner of the shop was suppossed to do?

Time to start another campaign. Ministers are being left out of this lucrative tip enterprise.

I can see many tip worthy scenarios.

“Here’s a little something for a seat on the back pew.”

“How about a crisp Franklin to keep the sermon under 20 minutes?”

That whole tradition of standing in the back and shaking everyone’s hand as they try to think of something nice to say about the sermon would be more interesting if we ministers were in on that gratuity thing.

Pool with the guys was enjoyable.  They play once a week and thus (as Ececil pointed out) they have skills.  When it comes to my pool playing at least I can’t be accused of spending all my time in a pool hall.  My hosts were very gracious and no money changed hands.

On a different note, I’m serious there is no connection, is it appropriate to use an alternate word in the place where others might use a curse word? 

My grandfather used to say piffle in certain situations.  Frankly, up until I just typed the word, and the spell check didn’t flag it, I had no idea it was a real word.  It seems piffle means "to talk or act feebly or futilely.  Foolish or futile talk or ideas; nonsense."

In a time of stress, anxiety or other emotional moment is it appropriate to say "farfegnugen", "wienerschnitzel", or any other food name in German?

Some of those infamous (which of course means more than famous) italian painters have fun names that could be used in certain situations – "pisanello",  "ghirlandaio", or "verrocchio".

I like the way "Ricardo Montalban in rich columbian leather" rolls off the tongue.  But I’ll save that for another post. 

How about "rats", or "pickles" or some other random word?

Just curious.  The kids were asking on the way to school and I thought I’d abdicate my parental responsibility and defer to the collective wisdom in the community of blog?

Well, either you’re closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community.
Ya got trouble, my friend, right here,
I say, trouble right here in River City. 

This past Saturday Beth and I attended (as guests) the annual church luncheon for those married 50 + years.  During the course of the meal one of the attendees invited me to join him and a couple of his buddies to play pool at their recreation center.  How could I resist the invitation?  The best kind of ministry is the away from the office ministry.  So, I’m headed over today to play pool for a couple of hours with some of our long-time members.

Of course I’m having all kinds of fun thoughts imagining what the scene will be like in the rec center.  Will there be medamusil on tap?  Ensure on ice?   Should I wear a biker jacket?  Bring my own pool cue?

I don’t have my own pool cue and don’t play well enough to own my own cue.  It would be funny, however,  for the preacher to show up with a ivory inlaid skull and cross bones pool cue!

Here are a some photos from our new house.

Notice how happy the kids are. 

Just wait until they find out their allowance will go towards the mortgage!

And that they have to mow the back yard!

One of our church members told me a story about buying a house based on a handshake.  It didn’t happen in the frontier days like you might expect.  It was way back in the l980′s.  Seems the guy was tired of living next to the church and notified that he was intending to sell.  The church members was helping out around the church office.  He walked over there on a lunch break talked to the guy shook hands as an agreement to purchase.  Word got out the guy wanted to sell and someone came in an offered him more money.  The man said no.  He was quoted as saying "a handshake is a handshake."

We arrived to sign yesterday and sealed the deal on a handshake.

Of course the handshake was with the escrow agent.

Of course the handshake occured after we signed a couple of tree’s worth of paper.

To celebrate the handshake (and the event) we went to In-N-Out and purchased a milkshake.

I heard a comment this past week regarding original sin and it got me to thinking about the whole concept and doctrine of original sin.  Original sin, like any other highly charged, sensitive topic must begin with a simple question:  "are ya fur it or agin’ it?"

I consulted the trusty internet and found these comments relating to original sin:

“In Christian theology, the condition of sin that marks all humans as a result of Adam’s first act of disobedience.”

“In Christian doctrine, the condition or state of sin into which each human being is born, or its origin in Adam’s disobedience to God when he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  His guilt was transmitted to his descendants. Though Genesis describes Adam’s sufferings as the consequence of his disobedience, it does not make Adam’s sin hereditary.”

“According to Christian tradition, original sin is the general condition of sinfulness (lack of holiness) into which human beings are born.”

“Original sin, from the Augustinian perspective, is not a free and individual choice by a baby; but rather the effect of the sum total of "world sin", taught analogously through the story of the sin of Adam and Eve. The Augustinian doctrine of original sin teaches that every individual is born into a broken world where sin is already active; that they are inevitably influenced personally by the actions of others and the consequences of choices made by others. The Augustinian effectively believes that human nature—and hence every individual person—is flawed.”

“Judaism rejects the concept of the original sin altogether and stresses free will and men’s responsibility of their actions rather than religious obedience or faith. Why, they ask, would God, who is, by dogma, universal unconditional Love, create sentient and sapient beings, then intentionally let them become corrupt—and then punish them from generation to generation with eternal torture for simply just being born in the world and for nothing else—and judge people not on their actions but by their faith or its lack—and then by whim save the beings from nothing else but from his very own wrath.”

Key passages in this discussion being Romans 5 & 7, and of course Psalm 51.  Here is the text of verses 1 through 5 – pay special attention to the last couple of sentences.

God, be merciful to me because you are loving. Because you are always ready to be merciful, wipe out all my wrongs.  Wash away all my guilt and make me clean again. I know about my wrongs, and I can’t forget my sin.  You are the only one I have sinned against; I have done what you say is wrong. You are right when you speak and fair when you judge. I was brought into this world in sin. In sin my mother gave birth to me.

What challenges my thinking about Psalm 51, a psalm of David, is that the poetry of a shepherd king has been canonized into "Scripture."  So then, are we to accept every line David writes as factual?

House is scheduled to close tomorrow.

In the meantime it is a flurry of paper. 

The digital age has allowed the sending and receiving of faxes and emails with pdfs.

You still have to keep a hard copy.

So much for the digital age. 

We join those who are stunned by the unfolding events at Virginia Tech.

Friends of ours are on faculty at Virginia Tech.  He teaches in the building where the gunman was playing God.  We are relieved they (and their child who was in VT faculty day care at the time) are safe.

We are sad for all the families whose worst fears came to pass yesterday.

We can’t expect to understand the "why?" of such events. 

We do expect sadness, relief, and even anger.