The OOC

Doh, I thought I was going to get to be the one to break the 6 week silence here. Darn that Joel Keen for posting about Star Wars before I had a chance! Now I’ll have to comment on that post too. Oh well, I’ll still throw out a couple of thoughts I had while avoiding work…

First of all, Go Cards!

Secondly, (believe it or not I have more on my little mind than baseball) I thought I’d bring up how great the retreat was a couple of weeks ago. The Nelson family had a wonderful time getting to know several people better and spending time at a really terrific place – even got to smoke a pipe around the campfire with some fellow pipe smokers! Truly community building and fun. Which brings me to this:

T.S. Eliot wrote in Choruses from the Rock:

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

This is a quote that has been banging around in the back of my head for about the past 10 years. The community that is Old Orchard Church is truly a blessing. Sure, we are broken and twisted and in many ways I’m sure we fail one another, but we are also a little spot of light doing our best to love one another as Christ has loved us.

Now before I get too mushy and cheesy; anybody out here have thoughts on what it looks like to be a community when many of us don’t live close enough to actually get together on a regular basis? I know this is something that gets hashed around quite a bit in Christendom, but I’m curious if anyone as any particular thoughts as it’s something that is often on my mind.

Hurray! Coffee is good for you! Now where’s that research on donuts?

This is truly amazing and wonderful. Hat tip to the World Mag Blog for posting this story.

I found this article to be interesting in its own right, but especially following Ron’s sermon on Sunday (which by the way, I found to be very compelling). I know that Ron wasn’t focusing on the same issues as this article, but the theme of order vs. authenticity is very present in both. What Mr. DeGroat labels as authenticity in his article, seems to some degree to be what Ron was calling order – a longing for a return to a more structured, liturgical church with historical roots and away from the pop-culture reflections of church that has proliferated over the past 25 years or so. This is something that I have been seeing for at least the last 10 years as several of my college friends (including me) looked very closely at Anglicanism, Catholocism, and Orthodoxy as a way to counteract what we perceived as a watered down Christianity that seemed to focus on exerience.

If anyone else has read this, I’d love to hear thoughts on it.

Just a quick post on how much the we (the Nelson family) enjoyed the time last Friday at the Milligan house.The music was fantastic and I wanted to say a big thanks to Rene who put it together as well as the musicians for providing us all a terrific evening.

Max especially was enthralled and expected us to do the same thing on Sunday morning. When we got to church, he informed us that he wanted to stay upstairs and sing – then when church was over, he was ready to go over to the “Migilan” house to sing some more.

Thanks to all who contributed!