Not dead, just Holy Week
Ok, actually many of the things keeping me busy this week haven't had anything to do with Holy Week. In fact, it means that Bell Choir was cancelled tonight, so I can be here now making this post. Yay.
Random recommendations:
Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church, by Jack Rogers - I'm about 20 pages from the end, but since he's made all his theological arguments and we've moved on to 'What should we be doing now?', I feel comfortable saying: if you are at all interested in the subject, go get this book. It's clear, concise, and readable. It is mostly focussed on the Presbyterian church, utilizing our confessions and history, but it can really be applied to any mainline Protestant denomination more or less. Jack is an interesting person and he started out extremely conservative and some of what he talks about here is his progression of understanding from against full inclusion towards being for full inclusion as he actually looked at the Bible and what it had to say and the passages most often used to condemn homosexuality in their full context. I don't know if it will manage to change anyone's mind. But I can hope. I can at least hope that it may influence people who are torn. Or give people who spend time arguing about it better tools with which to argue. If you don't want to get it through Amazon, I can get copies at church, and even get them signed for people. I... will probably have more to say about this book at some point. But it's too babbly and complicated and some of it is far too personal for this post.
On a /completely/ different topic: My inner Mimi would like you all to know that this is the coolest site ever. She would particularly like Roger to know that.
If anyone wants to come to the concert at my church tomorrow and doesn't have the info on it or needs directions, let me know. The concert tomorrow night is free.
Also, I have now added a bunch of icons. In part using the new 'upload any picture and we'll let you crop it and make it icon-sized. Yay!' feature. Mostly I was doing that with artwork that's too busy to take words anyway.
I have all sorts of things to say, but they're all too scattered and incomplete. Hopefully some of them will settle out over the next few days and I'll get a post up.
Random recommendations:
Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church, by Jack Rogers - I'm about 20 pages from the end, but since he's made all his theological arguments and we've moved on to 'What should we be doing now?', I feel comfortable saying: if you are at all interested in the subject, go get this book. It's clear, concise, and readable. It is mostly focussed on the Presbyterian church, utilizing our confessions and history, but it can really be applied to any mainline Protestant denomination more or less. Jack is an interesting person and he started out extremely conservative and some of what he talks about here is his progression of understanding from against full inclusion towards being for full inclusion as he actually looked at the Bible and what it had to say and the passages most often used to condemn homosexuality in their full context. I don't know if it will manage to change anyone's mind. But I can hope. I can at least hope that it may influence people who are torn. Or give people who spend time arguing about it better tools with which to argue. If you don't want to get it through Amazon, I can get copies at church, and even get them signed for people. I... will probably have more to say about this book at some point. But it's too babbly and complicated and some of it is far too personal for this post.
On a /completely/ different topic: My inner Mimi would like you all to know that this is the coolest site ever. She would particularly like Roger to know that.
If anyone wants to come to the concert at my church tomorrow and doesn't have the info on it or needs directions, let me know. The concert tomorrow night is free.
Also, I have now added a bunch of icons. In part using the new 'upload any picture and we'll let you crop it and make it icon-sized. Yay!' feature. Mostly I was doing that with artwork that's too busy to take words anyway.
I have all sorts of things to say, but they're all too scattered and incomplete. Hopefully some of them will settle out over the next few days and I'll get a post up.