Return of the Taleings

It has been a long while since I last wrote in this blog... three years have passed, and a lot has changed. Before I reboot the blog with some new content, I thought it would be a good idea to share where life has taken me!

In 2012-2013, I worked for KNOM in Alaska. My morning show co-host and I ended up winning five communicator awards between us for our spots and promotions. She alone out of the five of us volunteers stayed at KNOM for a second year. The rest of us went off into the lower 48, in various positions and to various new lives, enriched by our living together, and by our work at the station.

Communicator awards!

My position was to be a Teaching Elder (that's Pastor, for non-Presbys) for two small, rural churches in central New Mexico. Soon after submitting my PIF to the Church Leadership Connection, I received a call from the Pastoral Nominating Committee (PNC) of this yoked call. They had me fly out to preach to them in April, and I accepted the position that evening, though I wouldn't start working at the churches until October 2013.

My first blessing over the table at Corona - at the installation service!

Meanwhile, my best friend from Seminary and I started to realize that we were called to be more than friends. We dated long-distance, as she was still in Kentucky, and ended up getting engaged in September 2013, and married in March 2014 - in a city that neither of us lived in, Greensboro, NC (though it was her hometown before Seminary). We like to joke that we have the shortest time of anyone we know between first kiss and engagement - only a month!

From the wedding - we asked everyone to wear hats!

So, since May 2014, Elana and I have been living in New Mexico, putting our lives together, and adjusting to married life. It sounds simple, putting it that way, but there have been some significant challenges - including an 8-month bout with low blood pressure that kept her confined to the couch that was resolved only after realizing she was one of the "lucky" 1-in-10,000 that have a low-blood-pressure reaction to a particular asthma medication.

Recently, I've been asked by several of the church members to make the written text of my sermons available online - and I recalled that I had set up this blog three years ago! To that end, then, I will be posting my weekly sermons here - and perhaps some other thoughts as appropriate, too. I know it marks a shift in tone for the blog, but since it's been three years, perhaps that's appropriate!

Sometimes, we even worship outside!

PIF Writing Blues

Like many a seminarian
Whose views some say are contrarian
I've got to write myself in a box

The box's lines are well defined
though the question's been refined
to summarize the pastor's talks

Oh, I've got the PIF writing blues
Haven't you heard the news?
When you write a PIF on all the issues -
You're sure to get a call,
Just as long as you're Paul -
It's the PIF writing blues you can't refuse...

What's a PIF? you ask -
In short, it's a task
A resume and online-dating ad in one...

It's for churches and for pastors both -
To see what the other "hath quoth"
A service for Presbyterians

Chorus

With the multitude of churches
To find no smears or smirches
Is frankly, inconceivable

But remember, we're all people
And we fit beneath one steeple -
God connects the right and liberal!

Chorus


Oh, I've got the PIF writing blues
Haven't you heard the news?
Where you have to write on all the issues -
I may not be Saint Paul
But I hope to get a call -
It's the PIF writing blues I can't refuse

Traveling Mysteries

There's nothing that's so exciting and simultaneously demoralizing as sitting at the airport waiting for a plane. The anticipation of a long journey is palpable, but so is the exhaustion inherent in any traveling. Sometimes, when travelling alone, I like to look around me and imagine the stories of the people walking by, or sitting in the black pleather chairs. Some of them seem to be looking back at me, wondering what I'm thinking - and it's that moment of anti-solipsism before I duck my head in slight embarrassment that really helps connect me to others around me.

My flight yesterday took me to Nome, AK, by way of St. Louis, Seattle, and Anchorage. When checking in with the attendant, she asked what had happened "on the outbound leg" - confused, I said, "this IS the outbound leg" - and with a look of pity in her eyes, she said, "Oh... one way? To Nome?" as though there were no hope for my immortal soul in the frozen north. What is it about the cold that drives most people crazy, their eyes and nostrils flaring in tandem as though to suck one last breath and sight before the mere mention of cold weather can bring about its reality?

Being from Michigan, I am used to the cold. Well... perhaps, thrive on it is a better word-choice. While I was younger, I lived in Jakarta, Indonesia - a hot place, in the tropics, where it rarely got below 72 degrees. While that may be someone's idea of paradise, I missed the cold terribly. I missed snow, the way that the trees shed their leaves and iced over, even the crisp, cool air that hits the lungs like a cup of coffee hits the brain.

Now, though - I'm heading to a land that freezes over in September, where the very sea - that salty monster of old - freezes in defiant submission to the North Winds. That crisp, cool air that I love so much - will I still love it when it is around not just for my birth month, but for six months of the year?

These thoughts were running through my head in the airport before flying, and while I was snoozing in Anchorage. Imagine my surprise when, in the Anchorage airport, I was asked politely to move by some airport workers who were going to irradiate the area.

I had been sleeping on a bench, as it was three-AM locally, and my plane didn't leave until six. I'd heard the workers moving the benches around, but was trying to dismiss it and get back to sleep as best I could - bright lights and plane landings don't make for the best sleep environment. Apparently, there was a great need to x-ray the floor near where I was sleeping, and so I followed the suggestion that I leave the immediate vicinity, believing that an interrupted nap was worth not increasing my lifetime radiation exposure. I still don't know exactly what they were x-raying for - nor, even, if there were people on the floor below (though I doubt it) - but perhaps you'll have an idea, and share it in the comments? (In the modified words of Cookie Monster: "YOU HAVE COMMENT, SO SHARE IT, MAYBE?")

More updates, including pictures of Nome and thoughts on moving into a shared living space, coming up in the next few weeks!