All for Alicia

1) Almost everyday I wake up with a song in my head. I don't know where it comes from.
2) The song in my head this morning: "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tommy James and The Shondells

3) I watched a movie on Hulu called "All for Melisa." It was weird and I think it would have been much better if Jon Herder had played Jared. They could have taken out all of the "F" words and it would have made a great sequel to Jon Herder's other movie. Anyway... Jared ends up with a girl named Alicia.
4) One of this morning's readings was about Elijah and Elisha. The man who read it kept saying Alicia instead of Elisha.

Mission Objective

I am a certain kind of person. Among other things, I am the kind of person who works best when there is a definite goal, mission, or objective. That is why I like math. The mission is to get the right answer. I like jobs where I know what the objective is, like building a cabinet or making a roof. I like to know what the end goal is because then I can decide what the next step is and I can see how it relates to the end goal.

Sometimes in the church I don't know what the end goal is. As an intern I know that I am suppose to preach and teach and relate to people and teach confirmation but then I don' know how to do these things because I don't know why I am doing them or what is the ultimate goal. I start asking the question, "What is the point?"

So I have spent a lot of time thinking about the goal/mission/purpose/objective of the church. This is what I came up with:
The mission of the Church is to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to all people.


Let me know what you think.

PS I realize that I may need to define terms.

It's (Relatively) Winter

One of the interesting things about the earth that we live on is that is has many different climates. Orange county has a dry Mediterranean climate with 328 sunny days every year and an average daytime temperature of 73 degrees.

If you were to ask me, I would say that it is always summer here. In fact I have actually told people, "This is the longest summer of my life." However, it is supposedly winter now. We know this because the temperatures have "plummeted" (some forecasters actually use this word) into the 50's and 60's, and it has been raining.

The rain is a big deal, as I suppose it should be since this is the desert. The weather people on TV broadcast their "Storm Watch." In Nebraska storm watch meant there were severe thunderstorms with hail and maybe a tornado, but here it means rain.
People also get into a lot of accidents. Everyone is driving to the very limits of tire traction so any little slickness is trouble. If it were to snow 1" here I would conservatively predict 100 freeway deaths.

Reminded by Rachmaninoff

I had the good fortunate of having a ticket to this evening's performance by the Pacific Symphony. They perform in the beautiful and acoustically stupendous Segerstrom Concert Hall down in Costa Mesa. They performed two works: Brahms' third symphony and Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto. They played both very well.
A young man from Russian named Nikolai Lugansky played the piano. He was awesome. The audience seemed to enjoy his work. They clapped and cheered and he came back out to bow four times. Then he played a little encore.
Experiencing a performance like this reminds me about parts of life that I don't experience everyday. It reminds me of what it means to be human, to be able to create and express, to think and to feel. It inspires and rejuvenates and puts existence into perspective, at least a little bit.

Transdimensional Travel

This past week I was able to travel back to Nebraska. I hadn't left California since my internship began so I really looked forward to this trip and I really enjoyed it. I was in a friend's wedding, saw a lot of my family, and even scooped a little snow. Like I said, it was a great trip, but returning to California was weird.

There was such a stark contrast between my life in Nebraska and my life in California. It was 10degrees when I woke up in Nebraska and 75 when I got off the plane in California. When my grandparents drove me to the airport in Omaha we drove 30 miles without seeing a car; when Pastor Laherty picked me up at John Wayne International we got right onto the freeway with hundreds of cars. My brother was loading cattle when I left; people were coming home from their offices when I arrived. These are the observable contrasts, but more than the weather, the traffic, and commerce it just felt different.

When I arrived things seemed more tense, the people more distant, and everything more superficial. Despite being surrounded by 17 million people I felt more isolated. When I moved out in August I traveled four days and was able to transition slowly but traveling that distance in a matter of hours amplifies the impact. It feels like I got on a plane that traveled to a different dimension.