Three years ago, I posted this bit of doggerel in honor of the 20th anniversary of the airing of the first MacGyver episode.

The poem hasn't gotten any better with age, but here it is again, anyway, in case you missed it the first time:

( An Ode on St. MacGyver's Day )

It turns out I didn't have to worry about the graveside service, after all. (I'd known I might not have to do it, so hadn't wasted any time on lengthy preparations for saying some prayers before the military salute at the graveside.) So, I didn't need to keep in mind my old preaching and worship professor's 'first rule for graveside services': " ( Read more... )

It's pouring again in Tennessee, and has been off and on for several days. This morning, there are flood warnings (not watches -- actual flooding has occurred as the result of yesterday's rain), and I have a funeral to preach at noon and a committal service in a cemetary right along the flooding Harpeth River at 2 PM ( Read more... )

I just returned from spending a week with my family in Wisconsin, during which I told my parents that I'd like to move back there when my current lease expires at the end of August (no sense paying exhorbitant rents here, when I don't have a teaching assignment in the Fall and I KNOW that the social and personal isolation here is not helping either ( Read more... )

That's what a girl whispered (I presume to me, since she and her male companion were walking away from the large group of young-looking nun-type persons that I was headed towards, and I had seen no nuns behind me) when I was on the homeward stretch of my walk around Radnor Lake this afternoon ( Read more... )

I just got back from seeing the film “Why We Fight” at my local multiplex (if you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you do so at your earliest opportunity), with my zeal for my dissertation project suddenly renewed ( Read more... )

Just a quick note on a couple of movies I finally saw this week: "The Second Chance" and "Mrs. Henderson Presents".

I say 'finally' not in the sense that they've been out forever (as far as I know, neither of them has been playing in my city very long), but because it's been quite a while since my last trip to the movie theater.

"The Second ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to update my LJ for the past week, having been completely blown away (in the good sense) by attending a concert performance of the Soweto Gospel Choir last Friday night.

( Some Seriously Fun 'Churching' Going On )

One of the college chaplains on my campus ministry mailing list sent out an "S.O.S." this week, saying he'd been tagged to teach a course (for the first time in at least ten years) on "Religion and Literature" and needed some recent novel suggestions for the reading list, since he hadn't kept up with contemporary fiction over the past decade. He ( Read more... )

Just a quick note about the movie "Saved!", which I saw and mostly found very funny yesterday afternoon. I'll try to avoid spoilers and just speak in general terms about certain aspects of the film which I thought maybe didn't work so well.
( Read more... )