Lest Blood Be Shed

Here are a few of the pictures I took. I think these are just so awesome! My favorite are the twinks and twinketts!!!

So here I am sitting at McCormick Theological Seminary blogging--only eleven hours after being in New York City. It was so fun and everyone there loves me and thinks I should move to NYC. AHHH! I'm so torn! Every time I go to NYC I am mistaken for a native by some tourist and actually in this last trip by some New Yorkers themselves. The retreat was so much fun. Mostly because it wasn't like a retreat! It was a place of growth not falling back or retreating. We truly had a fire--a spirit--of community and family descended upon our group. Because of confidentiality concerns I'm not going to outline the weekend's events but I will say there are a lot of wonderful, holy, loving, and fun people in ministry and entering ministry that joyfully proclaim the gospel message but that message is rejected by the church at large. It is by the grace of God that we find people of like minds to edify and build up!

Now, I mentioned in a previous entry that the end of the retreat would culminate in having communion at the Pride parade in NYC on Sunday the 26th of June. Well, it was more than that! I have pictures but I forgot to take my digital camera so I still need to develop them. I'd never seen so many naked men and women! I actually marched in the Parade with the "Presbyterian Welcome" group which is composed of openly homosexual ordained clergy from the Presbyterian church and their allies. It seems that despite the some seeming restrictions for such ordinations the book of order for the PC(USA), like any legal document, has varying modes of interpretation and has been interpreted by the courts of the PC(USA) to not restrict the ordination of openly homosexual ministers called by God. There have already been two ordinations in the church using these new court rulings (though their ordinations are always in jeopardy of church question and have been questioned in the courts again and again with the same outcome). The court rulings all hinge on something the uber conservatives put into the book of order which I find quite ironic. At any rate, I'll post some pictures of all the churches involved in Pride and some "other" pictures that I hope scandalize but are not inappropriate. (they will be tasteful don't worry)

Well, it has been one year since I started this blog and a lot has happened. Rather, a lot has changed in my life and I guess all of you have been a part of it through this blog. Sure there are things I haven't mentioned in this blog that have been major life events but if I wrote down everything in my life...I would be considered the most depraved person you have ever met. I'm all for confession in community but sometimes a blog lacks the interconnection required for absolution Anyway... Happy Birthday to me (June 21st) and to this blog (same date).

On Sunday night I drove to my parent's house to visit with my dad. I also had an ulterior motive for driving up north. I needed to turn in some paper work at McCormick to request a copy of my transcripts be sent to my Presbytery for review. So I thought I would cut down on my driving expense and just make one trip to my parents then take off for McCormick the following day. When I get to my parent's house the first thing I'm greeted by is some work to do around the house. My dad wants me to help him move the fish from an aquarium in the house to a huge pond that is now in the back yard. On top of that I guess my sister and father have infected the computer with viruses and spyware again. After running away from everyone attacking me with work, I fix myself some dinner and head into the basement where the computer and fishtank are. I find my dad draining the fishtank and my sister sitting at the computer. The first thing I fix (and I thought it would be the only thing I would need to do) was allow the virus scanning software to access the subscription page. It seems the subscription ran out and my dad forgot his password. I remembered the password (he has like 3 passwords he uses) and was quickly told to buy the upgrade package they had offered for $80.00. To my great surprise (insert sarcasm) the computer breaks after running all the spyware and virus scans. By this time it's 11pm. While I'm working on the computer I ask my sister where my mom is. She looks at me with that look she has when she is disapproving of someone's actions and says, "She went to Georgia. She should be back tonight." This is news to me! My mom has had a pretty rough year; my brother is in prison, my sister is living at home at the age of 23, she caught my dad looking at porn after having a fight, and I'm a "disappointment" (she has a wacko-neo-unthinking-conservative friend that attended McCormick classes and informed my mother that the school was the work of the devil and that it was making every effort the bring about a faggot filled satanic kingdom on the Earth). My mother went to Georgia as a sort of retreat. It's about midnight and I'm still working on the computer when she arrives home and here is where the fun begins.

I've been wanting to blog recently about a whole bunch of different things--that just happen to elude me right now--but I've been super busy putting together a congregational reflection for the process of finding a new pastor for the First Presbyterian Church of Rensselaer. The work is around 37 pages long and I'm finally finished! I had a committee of three other people helping and we worked really well together. Now all the needs to happen is the session of the church approves the document and then the committee on ministry for the Wabash valley presbytery needs to approve it. If any one of those governing bodies sends it back, the committee will have to re-work the document. Fun!

The musical is also consuming much of my time--well, my evenings. The character I play, Harrison Howell, now has a refined southern gentlemen's accent, though Maura says I sound like a failed southern women. Either way, it will be fun to act like a fool on stage yet have the character be in a complete haze in realizing it.

It's retreat season for Presbyterians (I guess) and the closer I get to the end of my seminary career the more I am being forced to attend these things. I'm not one for "retreats" of an organized fashion. I attended a mandatory (yes mandatory) retreat at the Geneva Center in Rockchester, Indiana on June 9 and 10. It was more of a series of committee meetings that what most people consider a retreat but I managed. On the tenth I was scheduled to meet with the CPM and discuss my progress in the past year. They love me! Here are the strength areas they said I had.

• Presentation as a less-anxious presence
• Openness to new experience
• Demonstrates a talent for creative solutions
• Energy and enthusiasm in church work
• Evidence a well-balanced lifestyle
• Eloquent and accessible in his responses to questions

And of course it wouldn't be a review if we didn't find some growth areas

• Needs to self-initiate inquiry as to future steps in discerning call
• Needs to prepare the responses to G-14.0303g requirements

Oooh! Not G-14.0303g! At any rate, what I enjoyed most about the "retreat" was walking the labyrinth they have on site and driving home on IN-16 at noon on a bright and warm Friday. On another retreat note I'll be heading to New York City on June 23rd for a retreat for Presbyterians all over the country. The retreat goes from June 23rd - June 26th and it will actually culminate with a meeting in NYC to have communion with people marching in the gay pride parade taking place that Sunday. How fun and deviant is that! I love it! What's even more is the Presbyterian organization that is putting this on actually paid for part of my airfare! In the eternal words of Fr. Dan, "Too fun! Too Fun!"

I finished with the first Foucault book in the History of Sexuality series and it was fabulous. I'm halfway through the second volume (which is 100 times easier to read) talking all about the ancient Greek philosophies (Aristotle, Plato, Diogenes, Socrates, and many more) concerning aphroditis. (Justin this second volume is right up your alley) I've also just read the first chapter in the book Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. It was a pretty good start and I can tell it is going to be an extremely funny book to read.

Well, my lunch break is over. Back to the (bump and) grind stone.

Saint Joseph's College Campus has a beautiful fountain that is the delight of many human and non-human alike. Every year geese stop by the fountain on their way South and sometimes back North. Well this year a wonderful surprise arrived!
fred (that's what he told me his name was) was born some time this spring and has been enjoying the lush grass and clover surrounding the fountain with his family. I ride my bike past them in the mornings when I come into work and it's such a joy to see them. To my surprise, recently fred (he likes his name in lowercase) has been in the fountain's water. This really isn't a surprise--he is a goose.

I decided to have lunch out by the fountain today and noticed a problem with the "fred in the fountain" scene. fred couldn't get out of the water!
What's worse is there is no real food in the fountain water and the gold fish tend to nip at one's feet when they are dangling in the water. fred and the family comes right up to me when I am around (I don't give them food). So, I decided to lift fred out of the water and onto dry land.
Well, mom and dad didn't like that--fred did!
I left and came back after work. Oh fred! He was back in the water again. Stuck all over again because the fountain really isn't a lake with soft banks for him to walk easily in and out. All fred has is a stark lifeless concrete wall spelling doom for him and starving him to death in a pool of tranquility. I had to figure out how to allow fred to use the fountain water AND get out when he was hungry. I first tried looking around for a long branch that had fallen from a tree after our tornado was around that I could stick in and allow fred to sort of have a bridge from the water to the land. No luck. The grounds had just been cleaned by the lawn crew so there was nothing useful around. I put my thinking cap on again and came up with a "stair" solution.
Now, usually mom and dad are very interested in me when I come around and they get close but never take their eyes off me for fear I may injure their child. Well the strangest thing happened when I came out with my goose stair.Mom and dad ignored me and let me teach fred how to use the stair. fred took about 15 minutes to figure out how to walk on the stairs but he eventually managed. And now the family is reunited and everyone is happy and no longer starving.

My glasses have broken (again). One of the little pads that secure the apparatus to my nose broke off. I had fixed it two weeks ago with some super glue but the glue broke. So now I'm wearing my driving glasses that have glare reduction lenses but are not nearly as trendy as my other glasses. I need to head to Walgreens and get some super glue and just cake it on. I had tried tape yesterday and that was a disaster. Oh well, "human kindness is overflowing and I think it's going to rain today."

On another sour note, I'm doing the musical again this summer. We did a read through of the script Tuesday and the show itself is horrible. What makes the show fun is all the sex and earthy-ness but because the production is being put on in Rensselaer, IN we are cutting out a quarter of the show (literally; songs, pages of dialog, etc.). I love my part though. I play a straight laced, stuck-up, white, old, and uber conservative Washington official. Now imagine that type of person... got it... I have one of the funnier scenes in the show. If this show is going to be any fun at all for people to watch the entire cast is going to need lots and lots of energy. I pray we have it. Oh, by the way, we are doing "Kiss Me Kate".

Power is not a binary force relationship. Power is rather a web of relations that has no central authority that either has or doesn't have power. Rather power is something outside the control of all relations and in fact those who feel they have power over others are really under the control of the power of the web of relations for a society (wow that's a lot of prepositions). The web of society that holds people up in that society actually traps them as well. Even those who oppose the power are actually under it's control because all that those who can oppose oppose are the things that the power defines and thus those who oppose the power really reinforce its force and structures. I wonder if anyone is able to escape from the web. One might ask where did the web come from. That is a good question for I believe it has evolved just as culture and society evolve and thus wields power outside of society while completely supporting it by hiding its existence through abstractions. (just some thoughts I'm thinking about now-a-days)