Again, I appreciate the music and the musicians at UFC. Well done without being showy.
This morning we sang a song that had the classic, "Holy, Holy, Holy" woven into it. The lyrics for that hymn are drawn from Isaiah 6:3 where he hears the Seraphim singing those words, and his response is, "Woe is me...for I am a man of unclean lips" (v. 6).
It occurred to me as a room of about 800 of us sang those words that we were all probably WAY too casual as we sang, too unaware of our unworthiness to join the angels in praising the most holy God of the universe. I wondered if we'd be so quick to sing those words if we had half a notion of what we were doing.
Pam's dog is back to a normal diet and everything seems to be OK. That's good, because we were really tired of the stench that pretty much filled MoHo. Wow.
The fashion designer who created dresses for Michelle Obama says she won't do work for Melania Trump.
Shouldn't that generate the same kind of legal action that befell the bakers and florists who refused to do work for gay weddings?
Both seem to flow from a conscientious objection, so why is one illegal and the other a laudatory, or at least acceptable stand for personal principles?
It looks like I'm going to have to pull and rebuild the truck's carburetor. This thrills me more than you know. But gas leaking over the top of the exhaust manifold is not an ideal situation, posing the potential for a minor conflagration.
Or major.
Since we got married in 1971 we've lived in four states: MI, CA, AZ, and now OR, spending at least a decade in each except for OR where we've only lived a year. On the way home from church today we talked about how different each is, and we weren't discussing the weather. Each has a distinct culture that's hard to describe, but very evident for anyone who goes from living in one to living in another.
Note: we lived in CA for 13 years, half of it in the L.A. basin and half in Prunedale, a rural area outside of Salinas in what's considered northern CA (though it's just about exactly mid-way up the state). As anyone who lives in "northern" CA will tell you, they have very little in common with SoCal, and that's more true than not.
West MI (very different from the eastern side of the state) is very conservative socially and politically, so moving from SoCal to Grand Rapids involved some culture shock. We loved some of the changes and really struggled with others. Moving from there to the Phoenix metro area was another shock, again with positive and negative aspects.
Oregon is the same, with differences from AZ that we appreciate and some that make us wonder what these people are thinking.
And I'm not even talking about the pot sales that are legal to everyone in every form imaginable, including candies and soft drinks.
Oregon is navy blue, as liberal as any state in New England, but in a laid back, counter-culture way. Maybe it's the pot.
I think it's part of that liberal perspective that includes a very generous approach to the homeless. We've never lived anywhere that offers the services Eugene makes available to street people. We've also never lived anywhere with as many street people as Eugene, and we suspect there may be a connection there.
That attitude toward the homeless may find its roots in political liberalism but it seems to extend to conservatives. I say that because each of the three churches we attended in our search for a church home had several programs to help the underclass...or whatever term is appropriate in this context. I do NOT mean to disparage those programs, we were just noticing this morning how big a part they are of congregational life here.
My only problem comes when those programs are called "missions," a word that has a much narrower and, IMO, a much more critical meaning. And when we use that word to describe things that don't fit within its definition we run the risk that people will think they're doing that most important thing when they're not.
"The good is the enemy of the best." - Gen. H. Rickover
No comments:
Post a Comment