Adam posted this on Facebook…. couldn’t resist:

Life is most decidedly good right now.  Wild on the edges, but good as God made it.

I posted the following to presbymergent’s website and it should, pending review, show up sometime over the course of the next week.  I spent a little time working on it, so I didn’t quite have the time to write something for here this week, so I thought I would post it here as well.  Enjoy!

For all of my twittering, facebooking, g-mailing, blogging and blackberrying, and so forth, the truth is that I most often find myself in sacred space, in the presence of God Himself, when I dare to put that all away, step away from my techno-centered routines, and simply be.  At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I most often see God when I stop texting and start looking around at the world God made with the eyes God blessed me with, tasting the air on my tongue and taking in the world around me rather than confining my experience of the world to that which appears on a small, digital screen.

* * * * *

Most recently, it has been the reality of the summer—a warm breeze picking through the branches and leaves of the live oaks, the whirring of bugs and beetles high above me, the taste of honeysuckle and thyme in the air—that has brought me back to myself.  There isn’t much cell phone service worth using on the streets near my parent’s northern California home, so I have been forced to set down my phone and amuse myself with my surroundings instead, packing away the email, facebook, or catch-up calls that are so often a feature of my more urban hiking adventures in Philadelphia.  As I walk down the dusty trail that lines highway 130, my ears prick to the gentle rustle of oleander and wild turkey, and I find myself reeling with the recognition that I am a part of something bigger than myself, that the signs of life around me are small reminders of something deeper and grander than anything I could imagine, something that could so easily go unnoticed and then suddenly bowl me over in a instant of blazing clarity. 

            When John Calvin wrote of the glory of and specialness of creation, I heard what he was saying.  And I recognized myself in his remark that we too often fail to see the beauty that is before us.  Every once in a while, however, a thin space, as the Celts called it, opens before our eyes, and the truth of the world and God’s presence in it is clear to us.  As Calvin would put it, we find that in God we are given spectacles to see the sacred quality of all things, which hide in plain sight before me.

            So what are the things that stun me back to the recognition of the Sacred?  There is no pattern that I can discern, no perfect formula for figuring it out.  While I am often bowled over by that which is natural, I also find that God can strip me of my ignorance of the sacred around me in the most mundane or even complicated of circumstances.  I see it in the pattern of a quilt made by my own hands and a well-written poem, or even in the midst of the fray as much as the beauty of a mountain range.  And I could argue that it takes practice to see the sacred with more clarity, and yet even that isn’t always the case.  I have learned that the world will surprise my fuzzy eyes into focus as shockingly when I am looking for the sacred as it will when I am doing everything but.

            Ultimately, these moments of recognition are both a mystery and a gift, for like God they are beyond my ability to grasp them, and filled with grace and wisdom.  They surpass knowledge and understanding and are filled with Truth.  They bring me closer to God, to myself, and to my fellow inhabitants on this great, sacred sphere that we call home.  For that, I am thankful.

This afternoon I came across Peter Singer’s NYT Magazine article on rationing and health care.  Now, as a philosophy major in undergrad, I was required to read Singer’s book entitled “One World” for Dallas Willard’s class on the history of Ethics.  If you haven’t read him, I recommend it, because he certainly pushes the boundaries of what many would consider comfortable in the realm of ethics.  As I understand him, he considers and explores the realm of corporate or universal ethical challenges.  In One World, he explored the costs associated with dealing with world poverty and, if my memory serves me, concluded that those of us in the developed world have the capability to solve the problem if only we are willing to part with a small fraction of the comfortable lifestyle we are accustomed to.  He also was made infamous by his arguments on abortion, euthanasia and infanticide, in which his ethical positions centered around the question of whether it is in fact wrong to take the life of those who are old, insane, or unborn. 

He’s basically an ethicist with a whole lot of balls and a thick skin, because most of his thinking has been, shall we say, difficult to swallow for many people.

But I have to admit, I like him.  The old Princeton prof is one smart guy, and while his arguments are challenging to me on certain personal levels, I have to admit that much of what he has to say is compelling, and certainly has the power to refocus conversation around significant issues like poverty, life, and death.

Back to the article.  So I stumbled across Singer’s piece on health care reform, and I must recommend it as worth reading.  In the article, he deals with the problematic ethical concern of valuing life and rationing health care, both of which are visible concerns in the current health care reform debate.  Singer argues that, while most people decry the attempt to put a value on a human life, it is still the case that it happens.  He cites various instances in which human life has long had a price tag roughly equivalent to $5 million dollars, and that despite our uncomfortableness with the concept, it is one that drives insurance concerns. 

What is interesting about his article for me, however, is how he uses this information to argue that we need to ration health care.  Most people don’t like the concept of rationing, and Singer certainly acknowledges that when folks are deathly sick, they resent the notion that their insurance might not cover expensive live-extending treatments.  That said, these treatments often do not save lives, but merely draw them out, often at the cost of failing to save the lives of the non-insured, which he illustrates with a provocative study of health care received by insured and non-insured auto-collision victims. 

Ultimately, Singer argues for a rationing sytem for health care that operates along the lines of live-years saved and QALY, or quality-adjusted life years.  These measures of value are both interesting and worth consideration, and I certainly found his article worth a good ponder.

There are some questions that I came away with, as I read this article.  First of all, I was surprised to discover that I agreed strongly with Singer’s evaluation of prohibitively expensive life-extending drug treatments.  Basically, he noted that when insurance covers treatments that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while extending lives by small increments, they aren’t worth it because they drive up costs for everyone else.  I have to say that I agreed with him.  Perhaps I don’t find death as frightening as I should, but I tend to believe that if your body is shutting down and you are going to die for certain, it is most important to spend your remaining time coming to terms with that and loving those moments you have left rather than frantically scrambling for a few more months.  But that’s just me.

Another issue of Singer’s that always seems to get him in trouble is his logically sound argument that saving a teenager’s life is worth more than an 85-year old because you are saving more life-years.  I have a hard time with this concept, but at the same time I have a difficult time disputing his claims. 

Ultimately, all my rambling amounts to the suggestion that you go and read him yourself.  I don’t expect everybody to agree with what I say, or even see the same things I do, but I do think that it is a valuable exercise to participate in the conversation, and I appreciate Singer’s bravery in entering the dialogue.

The beginnings of a delicious BBQ creation

I couldn’t help it; mom my and I are making BBQ for dinner tonight, and the recipe for the sauce called for a delicious bundle of thyme to be bound in bacon and cooked into the sauce.  We went ahead and borrowed from my mother’s monster thyme plan, and here we are…. my kind of barbeque, if you ask me!

To come, some awesome photos of my foray into fruit preserves, basically a second installment, given last year’s experimentation with loquat.  Also, some of my own observations and reflections regarding God, etc.; long overdue.

I am starting to digitize things that I do (because, you know, it is a good idea and all, what with the world being digitized)… so without further ado, I bring you….. SERMONS!  They are both from archive.org, a great little site my friend Randy out in Cambridge turned me on to.

Numbers 21 and John 3  :“One Powerful Snake”

This is a sermon that I preached at Billings and later at Clarendon Hill; the sound quality isn’t perfect, so I sound like I have a lisp, but otherwise it is fine.

I Samuel and 2 Corinthians: “Listening Skills”

 I am super-bummed that I neglected to actually RECORD this sermon when I initially preached it.  This represents my best attempt to recreate what was a really great sermon at Yeadon Presbyterian which I preached off an outline, thereby making it difficult to recreate and also do justice to whilst sitting alone in front of my computer in California.  Somehow, preaching to the screen is a bit different than preaching to a room full of people you can see an interact with, but hopefully you get the idea.

So often I hear the experience of waiting described as hell, as agony, as the most distressing aspect of getting to something.  In the book I am reading right now, for example, the protagonist describes the moments before a cross country race as the worst part of his running experience, worse even than the pain of sprinting through six miles, of choking and gasping for breath at the end of it all.  Many others describe how waiting seems to drag on forever–children watching the clock for the bell to ring, college grads waiting for the results of a test or interview.  In my case, there is a lot of waiting to be had these days, but I find that, rather than dreading the wait, I have been basking in this in-between time of sorts, for it has allowed me to, of all things, take a moment of pause and to return to some of the simple things that give me joy.  

As I wait for, variously, graduation, a job, and my marriage, I find that I am more than content to indulge three of my favored (and often neglected) habits–reading, cooking, and running.  It is truly interesting to me, in fact, to discover how quickly the joy of some of these pursuits returns, for it was seldom to never the case that I would pick up a book for fun during my studies.  And yet, less than twenty four hours after my FINAL final I found myself devouring fiction like I had been starving these last few years.  I am beginning even to resent the reality that i will soon be far removed from my beloved Harvard library system, wherein my heart’s desire could be mine within hours, as long as it wasn’t already in use.

The gym has been a similar experience.  Sure, I have been diligent in going to the gym throughout my time at school, but my free schedule has allowed me to explore new things, to push myself in ways that my former time limitations couldn’t and wouldn’t allow.  I have tried two-a-days, for example, and find that I rather enjoy the burn.  It also doesn’t hurt to have access to a nicely subsidized Harvard Wellness Center that offers lovely massage services!

Finally, I have had time to indulge some of my sillier habits with regards to cooking, which I must say has been wonderful.  I am back to making granola again, which is hands down the best breakfast I can imagine.  Furthermore, I have the luxury of listening to my gut rather than planning around classes and travel–in other words, I eat when I am hungry, which is infinitely more satisfying.

As an aside, all this time to read and think has been good for my Spirit– I have found myself more open to exploring some ideas that I didn’t previously have time for, not only reading pursuits but also theological and pedagogical interests.  I have been thinking about sermons more, for instance, and it feels good to be creative.

I just had to share Stanley Fish’s latest entry over at NYTimes entitled “God Talk.”  In it, he gives an overview of Terry Eagleton’s latest book, “Reason, Faith, and Revolution,” which seems to be a faithful Christian’s response to what Fish calls “the shallow arguments of school-yard atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins,” whom he refers to as “Ditchkins.”  I will leave you all to check it out for yourselves, but I am interested to see Eagleton’s book.  It appears that it might be an interesting and thought-provoking reflection on the meaning of faith for those of us who choose to put our trust in God first.

So MAYYYY-be I haven’t been the most bloggerific or blogtastic of bloggers lately; I must admit that blogging hasn’t even really been on my radar screen lately. There has just been so much else to worry about–getting (or more realistically NOT) a job, finishing classes, trying to battle a pernicious tendency of mine to procrastinate where finals are concerned, planning (or rather, NOT) a wedding, and more. It has been a whirlwind these past few weeks, and I am just now getting to a place where I can stop, breathe, and remember that, once upon a time, I wrote stuff on an online blog thingy.

But all is not lost, for there is certainly much to think about. As I have been contemplating a move back across the country following graduation and up until the wedding, I have begun to consider what life after seminary might look like. This has been fun, sometimes exciting, at moments frightening, but definitely interesting. For example, I have found myself thinking fondly of all the time I will have and all the BOOKS will be able to pick up that AREN’T homework. So far, I have a decent idea of what i might read, which includes:

-anything by Christopher Moore
-The Last Temptation of Christ
-Lovely Bones
-anything by Toni Morrison
-anything by Barbara Kingsolver
-anything by Chuck Palahnuik
-Dow Mossman’s Stones of Summer

Of course, this list could be much improved… and so I turn to you, my blog-tastic friends with the question: what to read when the weather turns warm and school is no more?

Actually, any ideas about cool things to fall into when school is out would be much appreciated; this is my first summer in memory where there is nothing academic in the fall, so I feel pretty wide open. I could do anything, really, so lets hear some ideas.

It has been a remarkably productive/positive week for me out here on the Right Coast.  This is surprising in some respects, particularly given that it is spring break in Harvardland, and I would have assumed the week would therefore have been more or less forgettable in the wonderfully relaxed sense that a break often is.  And indeed it has been.  At the same time, I have managed to make headway on some big stuff, have gotten some good news and have achieved some pretty neat things.

To begin:  Harvard loves to do things like, lets say, make your final draft of a senior thesis be due the day after break is over.  So naturally, the expectation of many of us last-years is that our break will in fact be a mad dash to fill some paper with meaningful thoughts.  Now, I like to think of myself as someone who plans ahead, and I did for a great deal of the paper. However, after my first draft I generally let the thing sit around and collect dust while I pursued more “pressing” issues.  I had received lots of feedback but hadn’t followed through on any of it.  I was worried therefore that I might find myself living by the light of my Mac out here at midnight in PA, frantically typing and thinking and freaking out about the meaningful/meaninglessness of what I have to say.  Instead, the revisions were relatively straight-forward, and in many cases I have found myself to be generally pleased with the way I am writing.  I finished most of my first round thoughts on the revision on the train ride down to Philadelphia, in fact.  I will go back again before I turn it in on Monday, but it is safe to say that the thesis is under control.

Other good news: right before I left for Philadelphia, in fact while I was at work hours before stepping on the train, I received word that I have passed all of my ordination exams. Yippee!  I was excited to know that those are a few less hoops to worry about, and I feel confirmed in my confidence coming out of polity in January.  One step closer to a real job!

A and I had planned to run a 5K out here in PHiladelphia, today in fact.  I had been worried because I pulled a muscle in my hip and have been a bit on the limpy side when it comes to running.  Thankfully, I was feeling sufficiently restored to actually run the 5K…. only it turns out that both of us did so well that we won our age groups, and got medals.  A made it zippy with a 21:56 time on the 5K, and I rocked it out at 22:05.  He was beaten by a lot of 20-year olds, and I found myself losing the women’s overall title by three minutes to a fourteen-year-old.  Man she was fast.

Job-wise, I interviewed for a CPE position out in Philadelphia this week and it went quite well.  I didn’t really take CPE very seriously when people first told me to consider it, but I am thinking that it could be a really important and meaningful opportunity, especially given the denominational job search.  Which isn’t to say that the job search isn’t going bad–there are a few things out there, I just recognize that it is going to take time, and CPE is definitely far from the worst thing I could be doing with my time and energy.

Friend-wise– caught up with two friends I haven’t seen in a while, Ne and Shawn.  Both were fun to see, and of all things Ne asked me to be in her wedding party, so now I will get to see how it is from the other side.  I have never been in a wedding, so my own and hers will be a new frontier for me.  With Shawn, it was fun to catch up, talk, enjoy some tasty fries and beer and talk about living in Philadelphia next year.  He is an awesome dude, along with his really cool wife, and I look forward to being in the same city with them next year.

On the wedding front, A and I stopped over at a few shops on Jewelers Row to check out wedding bands.  It was kind of fun, mostly just checking styles and pricing, but I liked watching A look at rings.  I want something relatively basic, and he does as well, but the guys wedding rings are so diverse in terms of options and it was really neat to check them out and see what A is into.  He actually found some really cool styles, and we will probably be buying our rings come May.

There’s lots going on, really, and I am just happy to look back with fondness on the last week.  It is nice to be able to spend time with a wonderful person like A, and to visit with my friends out here in PA.  I miss them all when I am in Boston ( and I miss my boston friends while in PA), so it was great to catch up.  I go back tomorrow, 35 days and counting until classes end, so there isn’t much time left to make my mark in Boston.  I am starting to feel the horizon, and I can’t wait to see what is beyond it, but I also want to enjoy the time I have left where I am.