Thanksgiving to Advent

It has been awhile since I last posted; my schedule has been much busier than I was anticipating even though I ended up getting much less done than I was hoping. So when this week came around - which we essentially had completely off because of the Thanksgiving holiday - it was certainly gave me reason to be thankful.

Thanksgiving was very interesting this year. It was the first time I was not at home for the holiday, making me one of the few this year who stayed on campus the entire week. Quite the experience walking around campus when it was almost empty, though I have to say it was very relaxing. For Thanksgiving, I went over to a friend's pastor's house, and it was a good substitute this year. We had a big traditional dinner, and we played the dictionary game. It's basically Balderdash, except we just go through the dictionary and pick out our own words rather than using words provided for us on little cards. It's a lot cheaper too. I think the words are more interesting too when you find them yourself. You can come up with words like Dugong, Tenebrific, and Phragmocone. The best part is my spell-checker thinks they're spelled incorrectly right now. =) I felt at home when I couldn't be at home, and that was a good feeling.

So now we head into the season of Advent, and I get to preach the first sermon of the Advent season at my internship church. I'm preaching on Matthew 1:18-25, which is the birth story that focuses on Joseph. It will be a new challenge, but I have always wanted to preach during Advent, so it will be a fun experience too.

The coming of Advent also means I'll be home soon. This year my break will be unusually long, but I'm not complaining. I'll be coming home on Decemeber 8 and in CA for the rest of December, which will be good. It will be good to be home for awhile and see friends who I haven't seen for 3 months. It has occurred to me that this is the longest I've been away from home for any one period of time. Went by a lot quicker than I was expecting.

The Christmas season brings back good memories, and one is particularly on my mind. My sophomore year of high school, our band director gave us caroling music to play in concert band, since marching band season had ended and we didn't have any concert music that needed to be immediately practiced. A group of my friends decided that it would be fun to get together and play the Christmas music as a small brass quartet. We played at a retirement home, for a private party, and we even got to play in Old Town Pasadena near the Johnny Rockets. It was a lot of fun to play, but it was also fun to bond with friends and really celebrate the season with music. Something about standing playing trombone with a santa hat on in the middle of Old Town really brought the season to life.

I will probably post once more before I head back to CA, and I'll post my flight info again for anyone who missed it the first time. So check back at the end of the week. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Post-Election Woes

Now that the election circus is over, I can go back to worrying about things that will have a more immediate impact on my life.

It has been a crazy couple weeks. Along with the political climate, I have had quite a full plate with my internship responsibilities and classes. Last week was a flurry of sermons, bible lessons, papers and costumes (granted, not school related) that were all due in a five day span. I was studying the difficult story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, trying to find good news in there (which I think I may have accomplished) but also requiring me to preach the sermon in a format that I'm not completely comfortable or familiar with (narrative). Then it was on to trying to fit the stories of Joshua, Ruth, and Samuel all into a cohesive story with a singular point - and giving that Bible lesson in 10-15 minutes. From there it was on to a paper about my personal struggle with Panic Disorder as a child, and relating that to pastoral ministry (a paper on which I received an A+). And, as you saw in my last post, I spent about an hour getting ready for our hall's annual Halloween party dubbed "Brownoween," since we live in Brown Hall. Finally, I continued developing the curriculum for the children's sermons for my church's Sunday services. This week was talking about the kingdom of God as a culture of freedom. Quite a busy week.

I'm surprised that everything went as well as it did, but that has always seemed to work out for me. Usually everything ends up working out and much better than I am expecting. Now I have to keep that hope alive for the next two week because my next big milestone project is due: my thesis. It is only a first draft, so it is not hugely critical that I have it pristine or perfect; quite the opposite actually. But I am still deep in research, thought, and writing. With only a week and a half left to work on it, I have a very steep climb ahead of me. But I have been working diligently on it, and hopefully I will have a complete draft to turn in when the time comes around.

So I will be running around quite frantically the next couple weeks and sprinting all the way to Christmas break. Our children's ministry program is starting a new Sunday School unit, and I am leading an entire section of it. On top of that, I still have two or three more children's sermons to write and life in general to deal with. No rest for the weary, but in some ways, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Trick or Treat!

Just in case anyone wanted to know how I dressed up for Halloween. I won third in a costume contest.



Anyone want to see a magic trick?

The Big Decision

I think many of you who read here are pretty much aware of the decision I have have been talking about making for the past couple months and officially made two weeks ago. But I wanted to let those of you know who haven't heard yet and to give a fuller explanation of the decision that I have made.

When I decided to restart the ordination process over the summer, I had hesitations about restarting the process at Arcadia Presbyterian Church. I had made that known to a few people, but I'm not sure how widely known it was. For various reasons that I won't go into, I felt that it was not best equipped to guide me through the process. But APC has been my home church for as long as I've been alive, and despite reservations I had, I decided to restart the process under their care.

Over the last (almost) four years, there have been a series of complications that have made my experience going through the process difficult. I believe that sometimes we face difficulty because it is an indication that we are going the right direction and it is a sign that we should continue going in that direction. Sometimes that difficulty is there to cause us to reconsider and either stop or determine a new direction. I am still not sure what this difficulty is indicating to me overall, but it did cause me to stop and reconsider.

My internship at La Crescenta Presbyterian Church was a life-changing experience for me. The experience restored my faith in the church's ability to be a redemptive for in the world and that people of various backgrounds and ideological beliefs can come together to worship God as one community. I had become very cynical about the church and LCPC gave me a glimmer of hope that I had needed. I was welcomed into the community from day one, and it has started to feel like home. I found leaders with experience who could easily relate with my vocational struggles as well as sharing some of my theological areas of interest. It became a community where I could share my gifts and be stretched out of my comfort zone in healthy ways to grow.

Toward the end of the summer, complications began to emerge again with the ordination process, and needing to return to Princeton, I left being in basically the same place I've been for the last four years. During the summer, it seemed like God was pointing me to a community that could guide me through the ordination process, and this complication seemed to be asking me to seriously consider that option.

This wasn't a decision to be made lightly or implusively. I prayed about it over these past months. I spoke to my friends, mentors, colleagues, advisors and a couple pastors to discuss the options. After getting their advice, I sat on it for another month. Every answer I received, every indication I had pointed in the same direction.

So two weeks ago, I sent a letter to APC to request my membership be transferred to La Crescenta Presbyterian Church. I believe God, at least at this time, wants me to continue to pursue the ordination process under LCPC's care. It was a hard decision, but I think it was the right one. I still consider APC an integral part of my life: it was the church I grew up in, the place where my faith became real, the place where I was given my first opportunities to serve in the church. But for everything there is a season, and I believe one season is ending and a new one is beginning. I know the reasons may seem simple; they are anything but. Those reasons don't need to be stated or known to anyone but those who are closely involved. Just know they are much more complex than they may seem.

I am not sure what the future holds for me in terms of completing ordination. I am beginning to wonder if this difficulty is in place to point me in another direction entirely. At this point, I still feel this is a direction that God wants me to go, despite my own reservations, and I will continue to go in that direction.

Winter Comes Early

Well, right now, I'm looking out my window and the snow is coming down hard. That's right: snow. At the end of October. So while all my So Cal friends and family are trying to cool down from the 90* weather, I'm trying to bundle up to keep warm. Oh, the joys of NJ weather.

Big decision post finally coming this afternoon. Stay tuned.

Now For Something Completely Different: A Review of W.

I would imagine that when people heard the Oliver Stone was releasing a movie about George W. Bush, many thought it would be a "left-wing" smear job with little to no objectivity. But "W." is much more evenhanded than I would have expected, especially coming from Oliver Stone.

For those who are big fans of the Bush administration, this is not a movie you will enjoy as Stone depicts Bush's young adulthood as a period of alcohol abuse and directionless for the future politician. Depictions of his cabinet and closest mentors, as well as the relationships within his family will probably also make you upset.

For those who have not been impressed with the Bush administration, I think many will see Bush in a different light and that Stone is not bashing him but trying to understand why Bush made the decisions he did.

The movie focuses on the time period from Bush at Yale to Bush just after the break out of violence between Islamic sects in Iraq. It is not chronological; it jumps between the "present" and the past throughout the movie but almost always with the clear identification of what time of Bush's life we are in. As I said before, Bush's young adulthood is depicted as a time of recklessness, especially concerning alcohol, as well as being directionless. He is in trouble with law and under the constant pressure of trying to live up to his father's expectations.

Stone shows Christianity as playing a vital role in Bush's life and in a positive light. When we first see Bush praying after a strategy meeting in the first 10 minutes of the movie, we laugh a little bit because it seem facetious or at least out of place among a room full of less devoted Christians. But when we witness Bush's conversion and his following meetings that end in prayer, we see Bush's devotion as genuine and meaningful to him. Stone treats it with respect and not as a weapon with which to attack Bush's character.

This movie is not kind to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, or Karl Rove. All of them are acted very well, especially Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney. An excellent depiction and an incredible visual likeness. Josh Brolin is also excellent as Bush, mimicking his mannerism and speech, so that it is somewhat difficult to tell the difference in a few shots.

Overall, I left the movie feeling sympathy and compassion for Bush, seeing him as the victim of poor circumstances rather than a conniving dictator or malicious politician. Stone paints him as a devoutly religious man who wanted deeply to have a positive impact in the Middle East and across the world. Bush's weaknesses were allowing himself to be driven by associates with ulterior motives and being unable to stand under the weight of his father's expectations.

I don't know how much of the movie is factual, but honestly, I don't care. This movie isn't intended to be a strict retelling of Bush's life or a definitive biographical movie. It is a character study about a complicated man who became president, and it focuses on specific parts of Bush's life that can shed some light on his psyche. He is a round, dynamic character as are most of the other characters; only Cheney and Rumsfeld stay fairly static, and they receive the harshest treatment from Stone's retelling. It was a fascinating journey, and an enjoyable movie to watch that left feeling a little more sympathy for Bush than I would have expected.

Closer to a Decision

I'm getting to the point in the semester where the work starts to pile up a little bit, which this year I am actually excited about. I think it will encourage me to structure my time more, a goal I'm already trying to achieve. Plus it will get me more involved in topics I'm interested in, so hopefully my classes will start to pick up a little more.

With that increased work, it also encouraging me to come to decisions which I have been mulling over for the last couple months. I expect to make and follow through on those decisions by the end of the week.

For some reason, I feel like it's going to be a rough week. Nothing tangible really provides evidence for that; just feels like one of those weeks. We'll see.