Starting a Collection

This past spring my mom and I were in the Goodwill in Brandon, Fl and we saw a commemorative church plate, I *think* it was for a Lutheran church.  We talked about how cool it would be to start a set of dishes by collecting plates from various churches, not to mention that it's fairly inexpensive when you can just pick them up at the local thrift store.  We didn't buy that one, but I guess my mom kept to the idea and I got this plate for Christmas to start the collection.

This plate commemorates the First Baptist Church of Palmetto, Fl.  It's dated 1892-1967 meaning the plate itself is 42 years old.  It depicts the "Old church" built in 1892, and the "new sanctuary" that was completed in 1926 at a cost of $114,000.00.  An education building was completed in 1959 at a cost of $146,000.00 which they were able to pay down by 1965.   I found the church's website, it would appear that since the plate was printed a whole range more renovations were made to building because of their dramatically increasing membership. http://www.fbcpalmetto.com/history

I found this one particularly interesting because the frequent mentions on the back of the plate about the cost of renovations and such were mostly to emphasize the importance they put on paying off their debt and to be good stewards of the funds they had.  They weren't making these renovations for the sake of having a large extravagant building, they were making them because the church seemed to have a genuine need for them, and they were insistent to not build beyond their means.

Anyway, if your church has a plate or if you come across one while thrift shopping pick it up for me would you?

Merry Christmas!!!

Tonight my parents and I went to the Christmas Eve service at First Pres. Brandon, then we went to O'Tooles Irish pub in Brandon... like you do... after the Christmas Eve service.  You all go to Irish pubs after church right?  No, well you should.


While we were there we ran into a a guy who used to wait on my parents at another restaurant in the area that my parents used to go to fairly often.  They got to a point where they knew this guy, and his girlfriend (who also worked there) really well, but they hadn't been there in quite a while. He remembered them and so him, his girlfriend and ourselves sat down and just told stories for about two hours. This seemed particularly funny because this couple is my age and we had a great time sharing stories and laughing.  My parents make friends in interesting ways. I honestly can't think of a more unique, or more cool Christmas Eve than to sit down in a pub and have real genuine conversation, connecting with people that we honestly hardly know and finding common ground.  God works in amazing ways.


What I particularly want to share this Christmas is a quote that I absolutely love and happened to come across a little over three years ago, around the time my maternal grandmother died and about 6 months before I moved to Florida. (perhaps the timing isn't important to the story, but it means something to me).  It's a quote from Bono that really puts into perspective what God was doing the night Jesus was born, I quoted this in pieces on Facebook, but I'm putting it in its entirety here so read it all even if you think you've seen it before :-D Starting with Mitchka Assayas the interviewer :

When was the first time something happened when you thought about a line from the scriptures? When you first said to yourself: yes, I can see beyond that and see how it applies to such and such a situation?

Let me try to explain something to you, which I hope will make sense of the whole conversation.  But that's a little optimistic. [Laughs] This was not the first time, but I remember coming back from a very long tour. I hadn't been home. Got home for Christmas, very excited of being in Dublin. Dublin at Christmas is cold, but it's lit up, it's like a carnival in the cold.  On Christmas Eve I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral.  I had done school there for a year. It's where Jonathan Swift was dean. Anyway, some of my Church of Ireland friends were going. It's kind of a tradition on Christmas eve to go, but I'd never been.  I went to this place, sat. I was given a really bas seat, behind one of the huge pillars. I couldn't see anything. I was sitting there, having come back from Tokyo, or somewhere like that. I went for the singing, because I love choral singing. Community arts, a specialty! But I was falling asleep, being up for a few days traveling, because it was a bit boring, the service, and I just started nodding off, I couldn't see a thing. Then I started to try to keep myself awake studying what was on the page. It dawned on me for the first time, really. It had dawned on me before, but it really sank in: the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.

 And of course this continues, but what Bono let happen here was that he took the time to think beyond what he had been taught of the story all his life, and really processed what it meant for God to come down.  This is even before he starts to talk about Jesus' ministry or the idea of Grace over Karma, and that God's grace upends the Karma that the world seems to run on.  That all comes later, because first you need to understand what it means that God simply came down to join us.  He didn't have to.  Many people have tried to explain that God can understand humanity because he came down to be a human.  No, he can understand humanity because he is who he is, he didn't need to come down to understand us, but he came anyway.  If you look up this book (there's a link up there to it on Amazon) on page 125 Bono concludes his answer to this question by proclaiming that it's purely logical, love must become flesh.  It is, as Bono says, poetry.  Our God came down, not to understand, but to show he understands.  To manifest that love that always existed.  As the song goes "Love came down at Christmas."


Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.


I can't hear or read this verse without hearing Handel's Messiah.  Under a very creepy coincidence my dad has Fox News up right now, and a HUGE black church in Harlem is performing this portion of the Messiah... weird.  I love it!  I was just going to close with that verse.

Ruminating ideas...

I started this blog about two and a half years ago with the intent of keeping friends and family informed of what I was up to while I served as a missions volunteer at Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church in Miami Florida. I still sign in to this account from time to time but as you may notice I haven't written on here in over a year. I, as of late, have found new reason to try to keep this blog more up to date. The reasons to try to spill my thoughts, yet have them out for others to read for a sense of catharsis and to potentially provide me with feedback, have added up.

• I'm nearing graduation
• I'm looking at applying to seminary
• I'm starting the inquirer packet for the PCUSA (like I have been for the past several months...)
• Starting all this seminary stuff brings up a whole series of questions:

1. What *DO* I believe?
2. Ok... I know what I believe, the question perhaps is "How do I articulate what I believe?"
3. What is my call?
4. You know... all those assorted questions...

• I'm not politically apathetic, but I'm not willing to ascribe to a political party because ultimately the parties seem apathetic to reality. Sometimes I feel a need to vent.
• I know that Bono is a rockstar and not a theologian, but he's got some quotes that y'all should not only hear but I would also like to offer my thoughts on.
• I'm planning on taking my senior seminar this semster with our resident Medieval historian on campus though I fashion myself as a modern to contemporary Irish historian myself. Why? Because she's the only European historian who will be offering a senior seminar this semester, and I was hoping to read some Thomas Aquinas in the near future, this way I'll be able to do it and get course credit for it. I'd kind of like to be able to post some of my thoughts as I go about reading his work.
• I started this blog to keep y'all informed about my ministry, and even though I'm not *officially* involved in a specific ministry, I think I should keep doing that. I'm looking into spending more time hanging at Missionaries of Charity here in Miami (Missionaries of Charity would be the order that Mother Teresa started in Calcutta, they have a mission for the homeless in Miami, just a quick Metro-rail ride away in the Overtown-ish area).
• General updates, I haven't been on here in a year. Some people may care to know what I've been up to, some may not. Regardless that'll be on here too I suppose.
• Finally, if some of you actually read this -and comment- perhaps it will keep me accountable.

So my goal from here on out, is an update (or more) a week. This isn't some "New Year's Resolution" because I actually intend to do it and I'm starting before new years. Be looking for the next update within the week. If you don't see it, yell at me! :-P