Miscellaneous Ramblings...

Today I am on Holiday. Yes, it is a holiday for all Georgia State Employees. What holiday, you may ask. If you are not from below the Mason-Dixon line then you probably did not know that we still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day. The War between the states, or Civil War, however you refer to it, cost the entire nation many lives. More lives than in all other US wars combined. It seems that people are best at killing brothers than strangers. This war is only one example.

It's good to have a three-day weekend, although I still have my church duties on the weekend. Today I have been listening to Puchini's Madam Butterfly and excerps from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Music puts me into a place where all cares seem to melt away. All of the muscles in my neck and back relax and real peace settles all over me.

While listening to this great music, I have been reading the recent posts of several of my blog friends. Monastic Mumblings is remembering the loss of his dear wife fourteen years ago. My prayers are with him today. Grief is a common commodity that we all share. But we cannot share our own individual grief with another. Usually a brother's grief reminds us of our own.

Gordon at Real Live Preacher is contemplating his own type of grief, depression. He talks about the depression that his father suffered and the bi-polar syndrome his mother suffered. Gordon, I'm glad you are back on your medicine. Coming off medication like that can be very dangerous. My own thorn in the side is bi-polar. I understand the deep lows that block all ability to feel. Sometimes I think I am in a black hole spinning ever downward. I understand the unrealistic highs that take me to the edge of reality. I get almost megamaniacle thinking that there is nothing I cannot do. Gordon, my thought and prayers are with you today.

Tripp at Anglobaptist is going to begin a book study in his church on Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. I read the book about a year ago and didn't get much from it. I look forward to reading it again and reading Tripp's comments. I also have Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy that is being reviewed over at Mustard Seeds.

I'm in the middle of many projects just now. The most ambitious is trying to get through N.T. Wright's Christian Origins and the Question of God. I am in the middle of volume one: The New Testament and the People of God. Wright is a good read and a good biblical historian, even if his church politcs appears to conflict with what I consider right and proper.

Moving on...