There is a Balm from Memphis

Anyone who knows me that I came away from our Memphis honeymoon obsessed with Elvis Presley.* How can you help it? Elvis is everywhere in Memphis. Our soundtrack for driving around town was the album 'Elvis in Memphis'. Anytime I hear the words "I had to leave town for a little while/You said you'd be good while I's gone" it takes me back to one of the best weeks of my life. The only reason that album is not still in my car is that it got mistakenly carried out with some other CDs. Truly, it is a masterpiece.

Now I always considered myself primarily a fan of heavy metal music. Whenever I was angry or upset, I would grab some Cradle or Dimmu Borgir and turn it up loud. I swear, it used to calm me down! But now, when I am about ready to lose it I toss in some Elvis. Whether it is C.C. Rider, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Suspicious Minds, or In the Ghetto there is something about that voice that soothes my troubles like honey soothes a sore throat.

I have read up on Elvis and yes, I know he was kind of weird. I don't endorse his bizarre personal life or his habits. Yet everything I have read about the man suggests that Elvis spent a lot of time wondering 'Why me?' Why did God make Elvis...Elvis? He struggled with this his whole life. Some even claim that for a period Elvis thought of becoming a preacher, but a preacher friend of his told him that God meant for him to use his gift of singing. Well, I don't know that I can verify that story, but I can testify that there is a lot of good in that voice. Hearing Elvis sing gospel songs makes me a staunch believer in 'common grace', that God bestows his gifts on the regenerate and degenerate alike. Only God knows what has in Elvis Presley's heart...but as for his voice, I am convinced it was one of God's greatest gifts.

*This is really funny considering that while Jenn and I spent 2 hours looking for a friend chicken joint we saw on the Travel Channel, we decided not to go to Graceland. Granted, we were both not feeling the greatest that week and didn't get off to an early enough start to go to all the places we wanted. We did drive by the Graceland parking lot in the shuttle bus that goes the Heartbreak Hotel. At least we got to see the Lisa Marie!

The Act of Penitence

Lent must be here. All the new McDonald's billboards are advertising fish sandwiches. I don't know who at McDonald's gets a hold of the liturgical calendar every year, but right around this time of year you can expect marvelous deals on fish. And for those who are reluctantly giving up meat on Friday, why not try a DOUBLE fish fillet sandwich. If you are going to be properly penitent, you might as well enjoy it for all its worth.

Penitence is a rather foreign concept in our culture, even though guilt is quite prevalent. We feel guilty about a lot of things: drinking, smoking, overeating, watching dirty movies, etc. But rarely do we do actual penance for the little evils we have done. We are conditioned to feel like our needs and desires are good, or at least normal. Though we feel guilty, we are told there is nothing to feel guilty about. A few 'my bads' will usually cover it. If we persist in guilt, it is called a complex. And if that complex continues, then we need some help to get over our issues. The last resort is to actually stop doing those things we feel guilty about. Unfortunately the guilt cycle only seems to numb us as to what guilt is and what we should feel guilty about, even as we persist in the behavior that made us feel that way in the first place! Then we wonder why we are so down all the time.

Perhaps Ash Wednesday is the one time a year that we Protestants come face to face with the solemnity of our guilt. As we confess we are reminded of our mortality, which is presented in all of its stark beauty with a cross of ash. While giving up chocolate or soda pop might seem like a trivial nod to the penitential spirit, I believe it is at least a good start. For once we stop glorifying our desires and set aside those things that tempt us, however small. In theory, we also devote our time to prayer and meditation. Even if we aren't successful, we can admit that we have failed and place the blame on our own shoulders for we are the ones who made the choice to give up something in the first place.

Yes, Lent is, if anything, a good start. It is a good habit. Above all we know that with our failures comes not condemnation but grace. And it is grace, not self-pity or hollow guilt, that should get us by.

Angry polar bears? Or my imagination?

All right. I know that God does not sit up in heaven pulling levers on some giant weather machine. I tend to believe that God set Creation in order and, for the most part, sets it to run like clockwork. But lately I have secretly wondered if there is some malevolent force in the universe that gets joy out of this horrible winter. Someone must be doing something to deserve this. I know its not me, so I'm pointing fingers!

Seriously, is there anything as aggravating as shoveling WHILE it is snowing? The other option is to let the snow pack down and open up a luge track in my driveway. Trying in vain to keep the concrete clear so that it might melt off at some point has merely resulted in creating an invisible sheen of ice underneath the snow. The results might be comical to some divine spectator, but my knees are killing my and I think I pulled something as many times as I slipped on the snow.

I have heard "So much for global warming" so often this winter, it has lost all sense of irony. Personally I know that Climate Change is much bigger than a winter in Iowa. We are still in the midst of a global warming, polar bear genocide. But this winter is terrible! I am tired of it. So please tell me who is responsible for this! Is it one of Skeletor's spells? Or maybe a scheme hatched by C.O.B.R.A.? Or maybe it is those vindictive polar bears....hmm...do they have access to weather machines or a few pages from the Necronomicon?

All I have to say is please, please make this weather go away! We will give in immediately to all of your brutal demands! Just make it stop snowing!

Narratives, narratives, narratives...

Narrative. It is essential to good story-telling. Set up a good background, give the characters manageable goals and enough conflict to make it interesting, put in a happy ending and voila! You've got a great story on your hands. Of course narrative is not the sole possession of some romance author sitting in a picturesque wooded villa where fairies dance and eat lollipops.

Last night I was watching the evening news. I know, a terrible habit to get into. The lead story was the celebration in New Orleans as the Saints returned home to the welcoming throngs. The gist of the story is that this football team represents all the hopes and dreams of the people of New Orleans. Now that they won their trophy, the recovery is over and New Orleans will soon be better than ever! (I didn't say that, some woman in a bar did). Thankfully the producer of this story did include a few pans of the 9th Ward.

It would be a little bit too perfect, wouldn't it, to have such a fairy tale ending? The papers declared in bold 'AMEN!', yet New Orleans is still a city in shambles. Admittedly I haven't followed local news in Louisiana, but I assume the levies and bridges and infrastructure would fail again if there were to be a major weather event. There are still thousands of people who have not returned to their homes, hundreds of businesses that are still shuttered, and areas that have become ghost towns. But NBC likes its happy ending. And so the narrative concludes...the Saints lived happily ever after.

Personally, I hope all the best for the people of New Orleans. I truly hope that city can return to the city it once was. But the whole "We Are Marshall" angle on this story really bothers me. It seems more of a product of 'public interest story' than hard news. I mean, the fact that the Superdome was completely refurbished and the 9th Ward was not should rankle any true journalist, shouldn't it? I don't follow local news, but things aren't exactly back to normal in 'Nawlins, are they? But the fairy tale ending is certainly a better bookend to the story than the one that probably should be written. "Saints Win Super Bowl, Thousands of Fans Who Fled City Missing Celebration".

Reboot!

Okay, I will admit I miss blogging. It seems that I go through spurts, just as I do with everything else...collecting plastic toys, buying Elvis movies, getting breakfast pizza everyday at Casey's. It has been over a year since I updated my old blog and wow...I sound like a crazy person on that thing! So it is time to start over.

I know a lot of pastors who blog about church-y stuff, the last book they read, theology...nuh-uh. I am done with seminary and I don't need to read any books that don't feature a) Wookies b) killer robots or c) relatives of Elvis telling what he was really like. All kidding aside, I hope this blog isn't a cheesy retelling of the subject of the week. Instead, I want it to be an open conversation with friends and whoever. I don't have an agenda or even much to say. But whatever I am going to say, I am going to try to say it here if only to make sure I still have the rudiments of grammar that are necessary for basic communication.

As with everything else, modern technology has made our lives easier. It would fabulous if there was a machine that could suck my thoughts out of my mind so that I didn't have to type them out via my lightning speed 'hunt-and-peck' method I learned from my dad. But alas, to the lament of so many Springfielders who were tired of taking out their own garbage, "Can't someone else do it?" The answer to that is a resounding 'no'. So I am stuck writing my own blog while hyper-intelligent computers spend their energy manipulating stock prices and plotting to take over military systems to create a future dystopia run by robots. *Sigh*

So...it begins.