Presby-Musings

I saw an article the other day when I was reading through the tech section of an online magazine. It was for a device you could wear in your ear, almost like a hearing aid.  This device would provide real time translation  of whatever language it was "hearing."   In other words, we are very close to the day when people from different countries and origins will be able to speak their own languages to one another without confusion.   I love the symbolism of the earpiece translator.  It's a huge technological advance, to be sure, but it also requires a certain amount of humility and a willingness to be vulnerable in order to use it.  But when it is used, it has the potential to connect, unify and heal--depending on the grace and peace of the words spoken and heard.    There's this passage of Scripture in the book of Genesis chapter 11 that tells the story of the Tower of Babel.  "Come, let us build ourselves a city," the people in the...

Charles Blondin was the greatest tightrope artist alive in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Some might argue he was the greatest ever.  Blondin made a living out of walking a tight rope across Niagra Falls .  I've been there a couple of times,  so that impresses the heck out of me.   He got so good at it that he would go out on to the high wire in outlandish ways---on stilts, with a lit stove which he used to cook himself breakfast while on the wire... pretty crazy stuff. There is a story of how Blondin once walked out on to a tightrope during an exhibition and then wheeled a wheelbarrow out on to it and back.  The crowd cheered.  Blondin then asked the crowd if anyone believed he could wheel the wheelbarrow out on the wire with a person in it.  They all affirmed that he could do it.  He then asked for a volunteer. That's when things got quiet. Finally, a man volunteered from the crowd and went and got into the wheelbarrow an...

This Sunday is Pentecost. I'm excited because I get to wear my red stole at the traditional worship service at my church. There's some rule somewhere that states I should only wear a red stole on Pentecost or when an elder or another pastor is getting ordained. Who makes these rules, anyway? Some of you might be asking, "Yeah, and what the heck is a stole?" This... is my red stole. And my smoking hot wife. She's pregnant now so she looks a little different, but she's still smoking hot.  Yes, I am married to one smoking hot pregnant woman. That I knocked up. And my stole looks pretty flippin' sweet, too. I just made a decision.  I don't care what dried up old prune of a person made up the rule that I can only wear my red stole on certain Sundays of the month.  They had to be a Presbyterian, because Presbyterians don't really talk about the HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD on any other days of the year. Unless they are praying one of their lo...