The Faithful Skeptic

On Monday we went to Louise’s funeral.  She was a really remarkable woman that is truly a saint.  She was also a music lover, and had picked out 13 hymns for the service.  Her family narrowed it down a bit, but we still sang a lot.

 One of the hymns we sang was “Amazing Grace.”  We always used to sing that to our daughter Claire in the car.  I also sang it to her a lot as I rocked her to sleep.  Anyway, the whole congregation was singing the first verse, and then I heard Claire echoing us.  It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever heard.  I couldn’t sing then because one of the things I remember about Louise is how much she loved Claire when Claire was an infant.  Louise had specifically told her family that she wanted children at her service.  Anyway, it was very special and it made me very thankful for my kids.

We skipped church today.  We just started attending a new church and it has been a great experience.  I’d been feeling like I was missing something at church for the last couple of years, and skipping church was a relief.  I didn’t enjoy being there, and it was burden going every Sunday.  But our new church has been filling a hole in my spiritual life and it has been easier to go.

But this morning we stayed home, made a nice breakfast, and just generally had a good time with the kids.  I knew I was missing something good, but it was also good to be with the family.  It was a nice feeling knowing I was giving something up, rather than staying away from something that made me uncomfortable.

One of the things I’ll be writing about here is the future of the United Methodist Church.  I believe in the church and I believe it has a future - otherwise I’d be spending my time someplace else.  But I think if it is going to survive, some things need to change.  I plan on exploring some of those issues here.

An interesting place to start the discussion is with Rekindling the Flame: Strategies for a Vital United Methodism by William Willimon and Robert Wilson.  I just discovered it today and it offers some interesting thoughts that are still very relevant, even though it was apparently published in 1987.

In the last couple of months I’ve discovered some very cool web tools that, believe it or not, have made my life a little bit easier.  Not that my life is really all that complicated, but these have saved me time and are kind of fun.

1. Google Reader - The Google Reader is an RSS aggregator that allows you to read anything that publishes a feed in one place.  If you don’t know what a feed is, read this.  One of the very cool things about the Google Reader is that you don’t have to know what the site’s feed is (it looks like a regular web address).  You type in the url and Google will figure out what the feed is.  So now I can see all of the blogs I read in one place, and automatically see which ones have been updated.  The only downside is that you can’t see if comments have been left - still have to check the site for that.
2. Google Notebook - The Notebook is a cool little web application that lets you save text in one place.  It is kind of like bookmarking site, except that you can save more than just the url.  You can save bits of text and maybe even images.  I used to email myself stuff all the time - from work to home, home to work.  Then I was left trying to track down all of these emails.  Now I just record it in my notebook (and it is linked to my gmail account) and I can look at it from anywhere I can get on the internet.
3. Traineo.com - Traineo is a website that lets you create an account and track your weight loss progress.  Beyond just tracking your weight, you can also track your workouts on a daily basis and your diet.  The site also lets you add ‘motivators’, which are people (you choose) who can login and also track your progress.  Because it is a web application, you can update it from work and home.  I think it is pretty easy to use and it has helped me.

I know that Starbucks is horrible mega-conglomerate super-evil gigantor-corporation, but I like it.  Why? 

• Good, strong coffee.
• Excellent aroma of good, strong coffee.
• Employees that are generally empowered to do the right thing (at least at my local store).
• Atmosphere.  Whether they meant to or not, they’ve created places where people like to be.  In planning (and other disciplines) there is a concept called “third places.”  The urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg says, “Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’”  Starbucks stores are great third places. 

I think a hope many people have is that churches will once again be third places.  But one of the challenges is that many, if not most, of our churches are geographically dispersed through the suburbs.  While a lot of people are moving back to the urban core, I think you’ll still find most families in the suburbs.  But there’s some cool stuff happening on the third place front in spite of those challenges.  My friend Beth has a cool project starting in Portland called CrossBridges.  

Anyway, I like Starbucks. 

Welcome to the reincarnated “The Faithful Skeptic!”  But then I suppose it’s probably not kosher to talk about reincarnation on what’s ostensibly a Christian blog, unless you’re Jesus of course.  Now I may have delusions of grandeur, but I know I’m not Jesus.  I should probably stop now, but I’ll write more soon.