"christian radio"

I drive quite a bit for work and often listen to the radio while driving along. My car radio doesn't have great reception so the number of stations I can listen to is limited and it can get a little dull. Sometimes I push the scan button--(that's where it goes to each station it can get a signal from and stays there for 10 seconds so you can decide if you want to listen there)--and instead of picking a station, I just leave it on scan for the trip. Kind of like radio attention deficit disorder.

What really gets me going though is listening to "Christian" talk radio shows. The Christian is in quotation marks because that is what they call their radio programs and ideas but I call myself a Christian too--and let me tell you, we're not playing in the same ball park. I agree with Rob Bell, in his book, "Velvet Elvis" that the word Christian makes a bad adjective but a good noun (I don't have the book in front of me so hope I didn't mess that up too bad.).

On one radio program the the host and guest of the day talked about the people in the World Trade Center attacks that lived because of their specific prayers and faith. On another program a pastor told a caller that when people talk about tolerance in public settings they are really secretly promoting homosexuality. I've listened to numerous hosts and guests talk about how persecuted they and other Christians are for their faith--in the United States. And of course, there's only one true way, and lucky for you, you're listening to the people who can tell you all about it....

Why do I listen? Sometimes I hear something I like or agree with or find interesting in a good way. Often what I hear pushes me to keep thinking and working out the questions of faith that run through my mind, helping me to clarify my thoughts about such things. And as I usually argue out loud with what is being said, it keeps me awake while I'm driving.

weather

Sunday night and thinking about the weekend we just finished.

The weather was perfect for my fickle internal thermometer. The weather is always somewhat of a mild surprise to me--mainly because I rarely watch weather reports on TV or pay attention to them on the radio. This is one of those differences that define people--as in you either pay attention to weather reports or you don't much care.

I happened to marry a man who comes from a family of serious weather watchers. I might even say they're a bit obsessive about watching weather reports especially when it inclement weather is on the horizon. This then becomes an ongoing topic of conversation--and if the particular weather issue lasts for days, so does the conversation, in person or over the phone lines. I understand that the weather watching habit hearkens back to their roots in farming but.....

...it makes me crazy sometimes. If the weather's going to be lousy its going to be lousy whether I know about it ahead of time or not. If I'm going to get hurt in two days, I'd just as soon not spend the next 48 hours hearing the predictions about it, having someone track it and talk on and on about it. Let it catch me by surprise. My thoughts are similar about weather watching. A quick sentence or two is all I want to know--"rain all day tomorrow", "nothing but sunny skies tomorrow", "its going to snow for three days-have fun and drive carefully" or something like that.

I don't know why I'm complaining about this--probably because I'm a crabby middle-aged woman but I'd like you to remember that I did start out saying that the weather was perfect this weekend--so I'm not all crabby all the time.

loving my Ipod

My friends, for the most part, are not a very technically savvy group(except for some of the men) of people. Their interests lie in different areas and for the most part they don't care much about HDTV, plasma TV, taking pictures with their cell phones or using their computers-if they have one-for much more than email or looking a few things up on the Internet.

I'm pretty sure that if I wasn't married to Mr. Wonderful I'd still be debating the pros and cons of getting a cell phone--as I hate using the phone. As for computers, he's the one who makes sure we all have them, that they're all running, have all the right programs and all that stuff. He's always trying to teach me new computer stuff but I don't take direction well from him--is that every marriage or just me.

However, Mr. W and the little darlings gave me an IPod for Mother's Day and I gotta say, I'm loving it soooo much. Its full now with about 2000 songs, culled from the 3000plus on my ITunes site. Now I'm dreaming about getting a bigger IPod. Maybe for Christmas. In the meantime, I want everyone I know to get one. I'm beginning to feel a bit like an IPod evangelist even if I'm a little late to the streetcorner.

readin', writin' and revolvers??

Harrold Independent School District in Texas has 110 students and about 55 staff people. This district made the national news for their recent school board decision to allow school staff to carry concealed weapons at school. The rationale is that the school campus is near a busy highway and someone might come in and cause trouble and it would take law enforcement at least thirty minutes to get to the school campus.

The gun carrying staff will have to be certified by the State of Texas to carry a concealed weapon, receive some form of crisis or critical incident training, get specific permission from school officials and promise to use bullets that don't ricochet too much.

This seems like a really bad idea to me--in a lot of ways.

First of all, more guns equal more risk. Right now there are no guns in the school, so just bringing guns in increases the risk that someone will get hurt by one of them either intentionally or unintentionally--by a staff person or a student. For it to be useful in a school shooting situation it has to be fairly accessible which then of course makes it harder to secure.

Second is the whole idea of mixing guns with education. This, I admit, is probably more of a philosophical objection in that I've never used guns much and am not comfortable around them. For me, seeing a gun in the room is like seeing a rattlesnake on the living room floor ready to strike. I realize that a lot of people are a lot more comfortable around guns and have safely used them for legitimate activities.

My third objection is that I think that it asks teachers to do something that is not right to ask them to do. If one teacher decides to get a gun and another doesn't--do parents get to have their child moved from one class to the other depending on their thoughts about armed vs. unarmed teachers. Does marksmanship count in the administrations decision to let the teacher have the gun in school---it seems like it damn well better if they're going to be shooting in or around a room full of children.

Teachers are expected to teach academics, nurture social and emotional development, foster good citizenship, make sure every student has enough to eat, has school supplies and adequate clothing. They need to be able to detect abuse and neglect and report it. Teachers work with changing expectations from government and school boards and administrations and parents. While some argue that teachers are overpaid it isn't usually anyone who has known a teacher well and watched how hard they work (at least the good ones). I think expecting them to carry a gun and shoot the bad guys is going too far.

Vacation Recap

We, Mr. Wonderful, the little darlings and I, just returned from our week road trip from Minnesota, through Iowa, to Kansas City, then to St. Louis, back through Iowa and home again.

In Kansas City we cheered the Minnesota Twins on even though they lost to the KC Royals. We saw some people we know from Red Wing so that was extra fun--(hope you had a good trip home Don and Kac, Luke and Jessie?). We raced go-karts, played mini-golf--which my family likes but is some kind of mini-hell to me so I took pictures. We went to the Starlight Theater, which is a big outdoor theater at the KC Zoo and saw "Fiddler on the Roof"--the family was humoring me by going but ended up really enjoying it. A visit to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library proved more fun than you can imagine (I'm not being facetious either-ask the little darlings). We found a couple of disk golf coursed so the kids could play and I enjoyed the museum about the people who crossed the frontier in wagon trains.

On to St. Louis where the first stop was the Arch. Man o' man, how did those guys who built it dare to be up that high. Pretty amazing. The film before the ride to the top was almost better than the trip up. We then toured the Anhueser Busch beer factory which was a little like being in Pleasantville--but a couple of people in our party enjoyed the free beer. A highlight of the trip was the St. Louis Art Museum--not because I'm so artistically minded--but because it's such a beautiful building in such a beautiful setting. Very impressive. The art was good too.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a travelogue but guess I got carried away. I'm already planning my next trip to both cities to do all the things I missed this time.
Hope my memory lasts that long.

the Mississippi Shuffle

Last night was spent doing the Mississippi Shuffle which is the Red Wing version of the American Cancer Society all-night walk to raise money for cancer research etc. Our team, Pretties in Pink, captained by Jen who was sadly home with some sort of intestinal bug, persevered without her. Red Wing's Baypoint Park, along the Mississippi was home to approximately 20 teams (I'm really bad at estimating so might be way off), at least 1000 luminaries, several campfires, tents, music, Native American drumming, fireworks and hundreds of walkers. Add in boats, a couple of barges and the Delta Queen-which is a massive paddle wheeler-it was a festive night.

But, as always, its the names on the bags of the luminaries, and the names of those in our hearts and minds, that we think about as we do our laps around park. There is no six degrees of separation with cancer.

What's in a name?

Doubt is good. There are so few things in life that I am 100% sure about and I'm always amazed when others present themselves as absolutely certain about their ideas. My dad gave me a book, maybe 15-20 years ago, called "The Myth of Certainty" by Daniel Taylor and I remember that I liked the book but what has really stuck with me is the title. It gave me "permission" in my Christian faith to be comfortable with the questions and doubts that kept pestering me-- without feeling disloyal or less faithful to God. What a relief. Having spent a lifetime in a more liberal arm of the Protestant church and two years at a Bible college, its possible that that information had been presented to me in some form before but with this book it finally sunk in.



So here I am, this many years later, still reminding myself that questioning is okay, uncertainty is normal and doubt is good.

Getting Ready to Go...

I spent a couple of hours tonight make plans and reservations for our family vacation. We leave on Saturday for a 5-7 day road trip. I love road trips--going alone, going with people--it doesn't matter-I love 'em all, as long as I get to sit in the front seat. On this trip, Mr. Wonderful (my husband) and I are taking our four kids along with us, although we had originally thought of taking a trip alone to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Finally we decided that we really wanted to take a trip with the little darlings (even the two that are in college and don't live here any more) so that's what we're going to do.

I hate to wish time away but I can hardly wait until Saturday morning and then as Willie sings so well, "On the road again..."

It was National Night Out here tonight (and across the nation I presume). In our neighborhood, thanks to some people who are much more organized than me, there was a progressive picnic starting at one end of the neighborhood for the main course and moving to the other end for dessert. The fire truck and ambulance came as well as city council representatives. Games and grab bags for the kids and gift certificates from local merchants added to the festivities.


But, of course, it was talking to the neighbors that made the night fun.


I know that not every neighborhood across the nation, or even in my town, participated in National Night Out, and I know that as a society we're more mobile and less likely to know our neighbors and that books like "Bowling Alone" (which I haven't read-but have read about-how's that for lazy) talk about how we are less engaged in our communities, but tonight between Third and Fourth St., from Cedar down to Dakota,

First time, kind of shy

Hello. This is my first time writing on a blog, well, not technically true if you count a one sentence response to a picture posted on another blog. Already lying in the first paragraph. Dang it.

Now I've got to make all kinds of important decisions about fonts, colors, size of type--never mind the topics and opinions.

I'm not a real stick to it kind of person so we'll see how long this lasts. Hopefully longer than any diet or exercise program I've tried.

Now that I've gone through a bunch of the fonts I think I've decided on "arial" as my favorite. No need to get fancy with the color or size.

I've been inspired to start a blog by several that I've been reading lately--"lutheran chik's L word diary", "a place called B.L.O.G.", "Time's Fool" and others.