Category Archives: Personal Note

Tinkering School

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This is not inherently Presbyterian, and not really religious or spiritual, but just too good to pass up.  And maybe there is a tie-in, but back to that in a moment…

NPR this evening had a piece on Tinkering School.  This is a summer camp where 8, 9, and 10 year olds can use power tools and build “good” projects.  No sheltered “safe” activities here. At this camp the kids play with fire and knives.  The kids can learn to take risks.  There are no set or structured programs.  The rule is that there must be “good” projects.  These are not projects that are “pretend something else.”  If they want to build a bridge, it will be a real bridge that they will walk across.  If they build a boat, they will put it on the water and get into it.  For an experimental scientist like me this sounded like a lot of fun.  I appreciate my dad teaching me how to properly use power tools as I was growing up.

So, to keep to my usual topic, are there analogies or parallels we Presbyterians can draw here?  If you see any feel free to comment, but a couple that come to mind for me:

1)  My son the YAD got to get his hands dirty at GA this year and do the “real” work with the “elder” elders.

2)  Since we believe in the “priesthood of all believers” this means that anyone in the church can play with the “power tools” right along with the “professionals.”

3)  G-3.0400, The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.

Just a few thoughts.  Add a comment if you have others.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

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Fifty years ago today my parents were married at a historic Presbyterian Church.  They now have many great years together, three children, three children-in-law, five grandchildren, and lots of friends of which many have been with them through the fifty years.  It is a marriage well practiced and lives well lived.

Looking at our family, it is in some ways a cross-section of the mainline churches today.  Now there are some differences, one of which is that we, my parents and all my baby-boomer siblings and all the grandchildren, are presently active in churches.  But in the youngest generation the mainline is losing its hold.

With my parents, myself, and my siblings, we take the mainline church seriously.  Besides my service as an elder, including the stint as a presbytery officer and now the synod circuit, my parents are elders and deacons.  My wife is an elder and deacon as well.  My sister is an elder and her husband is a Minister of Word and Sacrament and was a TSAD.  And of course, their grandson is, at this moment, a YAD.  From the foundation and example my parents gave us we have continued to find our connection to Presbyterianism.

So Mom and Dad — Congratulations, thank you, and well done!  Love Ya!

What’s Shaking in San Jose?

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First, this is what you get when you have a GA Junkie that has just turned in his course grades and now has a bit more time on his hands…

Second, if you are coming to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly in San Jose from some place else in the country where you don’t worry about earthquakes and the thought of earthquakes may be worrying you, you may not want to continue reading.  On the other hand, “knowledge is power” and having this info may help calm nerves.  (And you can think of that “may” in our polity sense.)

In case you haven’t caught it from one of my previous posts, my day job includes earthquake geology.  And you might have noticed in the GA Program that on Monday afternoon there is “Mission Tour 4: Hike through earthquake country” that includes a visit to the San Andreas fault.  (And no, I’m not planning on going since I’m there for the GA business.)

On the plus side, I would encourage you to be aware of earthquakes and be prepared for them.  The mantra here is “Duck, cover and hold,” although I joke with my class that “Don’t Panic” works too.  That is duck under something solid, cover yourself with that solid object, and hold on to it so it does not shake away from you.  Standing in door frames is not the current preferred safe zone since we finally figured out that most door frames also have a door attached to them and sometimes that door wants to use the frame with you so people were getting hit by the door.  If you want more info, the standard reference around these parts is “Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country,” and check out the San Francisco edition.

If you want more info:  There is the real time earthquake map of the San Francisco area and a slightly different map with more around San Jose.  There is also a page on Bay Area Earthquake Probabilities from the USGS.

Around here we usually calculate probabilities on a 30 year time period, as in there is a 99.7% chance that California will have a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake in the next 30 years.  And around here that is not called a forecast, that is a reminder.

What about for next week?  Well the good news is that there has not been a large one in the area for a while so there are no really active aftershock sequences to provide any shaking.  As for regional quakes, based on regional probabilities there is about a 10% chance that the San Francisco Bay area will have a magnitude 4 or larger earthquake in any given week. (If you want the gory details, the G-R magnitude relationship, based on the last 20 years of seismicity, is log N = 6.04 – 1.33 M.  N is the number of earthquakes in a year larger than magnitude M.)

But “California does have its faults” and San Jose is sandwiched between the big ones in the Bay Area: the San Andreas about 15km to the west and the Hayward and Calaveras faults about 10km east.  Running some rough numbers based on the State of California fault information for the area the San Andreas fault to the north and to the south, if treated as separate earthquake sources, could each produce something a bit over a magnitude 7.  No surprise here since the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake was a 6.9 on that southern segment.  The Calaveras and Hayward faults are about the same.  But the closest fault to the west is the much less active Monte Vista thrust fault about half way to the San Andreas.  Add up all their probabilities and you get about a 0.03% chance of having a large earthquake on one of these faults in the next week.

So there you are — Welcome to California.  And I’ll see you there.

Then
a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the
rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind
there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. – I Kings 19:11b, 12 NIV

Some fun stuff from Yesterday

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Several fun things from yesterday, some of which is actually on-topic…

We spent the afternoon at a NASA viewing event for the Phoenix Mars Lander.  Having worked on the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander Mission, the older sibling of Phoenix, it was great to see this lander come alive upon landing.  Congratulations to the Phoenix team, especially my friends from MPL who now have a success.  The Phoenix did rise from the ashes of the MPL.

Family fun:  Going through the usual ritual on the way home from church…
Dad to middle: What did you learn about in class today.
Middle: [The youth director] talked about Calvinism.  TULIP and all that.
Youngest:  Why would you talk about eating other people?
After the laughter calmed down we explained the differences between cannibalism and Calvinism.

From the Media:  Fellow bloggers, if you don’t see the comic strip Bizarro in your news paper or news feed, check out Saturday’s cartoon on-line from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  And if you like a nice turn of a religious phrase, Sunday’s is pretty good to.

And not only do I worry about the details in Presbyterian polity, but I try to cover the details elsewhere as well.  For this one day of the year I own a flag for my house which is not fixed on a pole but attached to a line so that I can observe today’s flag etiquette of “half-staff until noon.”  So, on this Memorial Day, we are keeping Scott’s and Cory’s families in our prayers along with the families of all the other’s who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  God Bless!

What Happened to “Sinful”?

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Over the last ten days there has been a lot of discussion about “Sin” in the media and out in the blogosphere.  What there has not been a lot of discussion about is being “Sinful.”

In an obligatory Holy Week piece USA Today has an article on “Has the ‘notion of sin’ been lost?”  This caps off a couple of weeks that have seen a governor resign for indiscretions, his replacement admit to his own arguably questionable actions, and the media spin an interview with a Vatican official about modern responsibilities into a list of the “new seven deadly sins.”

But as I read through the USA Today piece I kept thinking that “this is missing the point.”  What the article talked about was the view of sin as a list of things we should or should not do.  A recent survey by Ellison Research shows that if you put together a list of sins some are roundly accepted on the list (adultery by 81% of Americans, racism by 74%) and some are struggling to be recognized as wrong (only 30% think gambling is).  But while it is one thing to come up with lists of specific actions, what the USA Today article dances around is the larger question of what is Sin anyway what about humans as Sinful beings.

There are hints of the larger view in the article.  The Rev. Albert Mohler is quoted in part as saying “I wonder whether even some Christian churches are making the connection between Christ’s death and resurrection and victory over sin — the linchpin doctrine of Christianity.”  Note that he said “sin” as a singular, a condition or concept.  The article just keeps on going with the lists.

Later on the article gets closer with material from Michael Horton:

People have to see themselves as sinners — ultimately alienated from God and unable to save themselves — for Christ’s sacrifice to be essential.

and from Pope Benedict XVI

“People who trust in themselves and in their own merits are, as it were, blinded by their own ‘I,’ and their hearts harden in sin. On the other hand, those who recognize themselves as weak and sinful entrust themselves to God, and from him obtain grace and forgiveness.”

So the measure of sin is not ourselves but God.  And our ultimate condition as humans is that we are sinful and unable to save ourselves.  It is not about committing sins that are on a list.  It is about our Sinful human nature.  If sin is only about what society says I should or should not do and I can work on that myself, this weekend is just about jelly beans and chocolate.  If we recognize that there is no way we can save ourselves, that we can not even come close to what God requires, that we have violated the image of God in us, and that we can not be saved by our best efforts but by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then this weekend becomes a joyous spiritual celebration.  When it comes to sin and our sinful nature we don’t want “fair,” we need Grace.

So from the Westminster Shorter Catechism

Q. 14. What is sin?
A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

Q. 16. Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first transgression?
A. The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression.

Q. 20. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?
A. God, having out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of
sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.

Q. 25. How doth Christ execute the office of a priest?
A. Christ executeth the office of a priest, in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and reconcile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us.

Q. 84. What doth every sin deserve?
A. Every sin deserveth God’s wrath and curse, both in this life, and that which is to come.

Q. 85. What doth God require of us, that we may escape his wrath and curse, due to us for sin?
A. To escape the wrath and curse of God, due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.

Thanks be to God for the gift of His Son.

Have a meaningful Easter Weekend.

Arthur C. Clarke: 1917 – 2008

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This is know as Clarke’s Third Law and is one of his most quoted statements, at least by me.  (Right up there with HAL’s line “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”)

It comes from Arthur C. Clarke, the noted science fiction writer who passed away yesterday.  There are numerous tributes and remembrances of him in the news and in the blogosphere so I am not going to attempt another one.  But personally, I have always admired his writing for the scientific accuracy and depth and the timeless themes.  Reading science fiction as I was growing up had a major impact on me and Mr. Clarke was a part of that.

This line, however, touches me in the day-to-day of my life when I am dealing with computer users in my department and family.  After “fixing” a problem with a click or keystroke and they ask “how did you do that?” I have to decide if I have time and they have patience for me to fully explain it, of just leave it as magic.  The perils of being a professional geek.

For the record, the other two of Clarke’s Three Laws are:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something
    is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Happy Feast of Saint Patrick Today

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Today I wish you a Happy feast of Saint Patrick, Bishop and Confessor.

But wait, that’s on Monday.

Well, for the vast majority of the world it is, but in an interesting application of “The Rules” that a GA Junkie would appreciate, if you are “observant,” then today is the day to celebrate.

You may have heard that in predominantly Roman Catholic areas there is a problem because Holy Week starts tomorrow and nothing trumps Holy Week in the church calendar.  To be specific, this is all laid out in a set of rules known as the General Rubrics (GR).  On the Roman calendar this Monday, March 17, would be the feast of St. Patrick except that is a third class feast day and since Monday of Holy Week falls on the same day this year and it is a movable feast of the first class with very high precedence [GR 91] then St. Patrick’s day is “commemorated or omitted altogether” [GR 95].  It gets a bit more complicated on the church calendar since there is an allowance for saints that are patrons of a particular city or nation making the feast day one of the first class in those places [GR 57(a)].  However, this is still not good enough to trump Holy Week since the patron’s day comes out twelfth in the order of precedence and Monday to Wednesday of Holy Week are in seventh place.  (For reference, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are highest precedence and Ash Wednesday is also in the group that is seventh.)  In this whole precedence and rules thing, the rule would be to celebrate the feast of Saint Patrick on April 1. (Quick version: Rescheduled feasts are to be pushed after the day that displaces them but both Holy Week and the week following Easter Sunday have higher precedence (the week following Easter just barely) and then there is another displaced feast of higher rank to be celebrated first on March 31.)  There are a couple of variants floating around which would move it earlier, but technically it should go later.

Well, you can’t just omit St. Patrick’s day in some parts, and April 1 was too long to wait, so a compromise was reached by the Irish bishops with the approval of the Vatican to celebrate it today.  See, the PC(USA) is not the only ones with “creative polity.”  And of course, secular celebrations will go on virtually unaffected.

I personally find feast days helpful as a spiritual exercise, but not in a veneration or patron saint sense.  As regular readers know, I welcome All Saints Day (November 1) as an opportunity to remember those that I have know who have been a spiritual inspiration to me and are now part of the Church Triumphant.  In the same way, I appreciate the historical saints, beatified by a particular church or not, who are a witness to the faith and can encourage us in our “running the race” and “fighting the good fight.”  May we be found faithful as well.  Sola Dei Gloria

“The Sledge Hammer Did Not Do The Ceiling Any Good”

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Don’t you love church renovations?

My son is part of the tech crew at church and spent his day off from school on Monday helping redo the sound system in our sanctuary.  And he come back with stories to tell.

Now, the church leadership was not crazy.  As much as one person thought it could be done by the tech crew alone the Session said that they would spend the money not just for the new equipment and supplies, but also for a professional to coordinate the project and hire competent sub-contractors to do the more difficult work.  I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what might have happened if we left this as an inside job, but let’s just say that it is getting done mostly on schedule and we are all still friends.

However, there are a lot of details and minor jobs the tech crew did.  So my son spent the day assembling equipment racks, taking down old ceiling speakers (each one mounted differently), and helping snake wires through walls.  I stopped by a couple of times to cause trouble:  Asking about the integrity of the worship space, commenting on the color clash between exposed audio wiring and the stained glass windows, joshing them about the number of holes they were putting in the walls.

All-in-all it went well.  It was not a “Murphy’s Law” kind of day although it did have its moments, according to my son.  One was when he and another member of the tech crew were taking down the speakers and one was particularly stubborn.  A few hits with a hammer and it was out, but not before covering them and the choir loft with debris.

The title of the post is from my son telling about the biggest problem of the day.  One of the contractors was on a lift opening up the speaker enclosure above the chancel.  It was a three hand job for one guy on the lift requiring a hand on the sledge hammer, one on the bracing, and one on the cover being removed.  Well, the contractor missed on one swing, put the sledge hammer into the chancel ceiling raining paint chips and plaster down on the chancel.  We’ll see if it gets patched by Sunday and if not how many people notice.

The Church and New Technology — The Thrill and the Threat

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Today I had an interesting synergy of several items that got me thinking and reading about technology and the church.  In my web surfing today over lunch I read or found:

All of this got me going on my comments on the Church in a Web 2.0 world.

Bruce and Shawn have some great points about what churches are (should be?) doing in the new technological environment and how it fits with our past concepts.  I’ve got a few extensions:

First, as Reformed churches, we are a people of community.  Our religious life and government are completely about community.  Web 2.0 is also about community, but about a community that is not necessarily all in the same geographical place but in the same virtual place.  But since the gathering is virtual, does this still reflect the new covenant community that we are called to be?  Maybe, maybe not.  I’ll save that for another time, but note now that the question is there.

Second, in my coverage of Presbyterianism globally on this blog, I think I can say that many Presbyterian branches have nice web sites, the new EPC site being an example, but the best Web 2.0 interactive site I can think of is the Free Church of Scotland Online Forum.  The PC(USA) now has some limited blogging, such as Linda Valentine‘s which does get interaction in the comments.  But at what level should we expect the online community to be built or gathered?  If it is indeed “viral” (spread by non-standard communication) we would expect to see the communities organized around affinity groups or distributed across several nodes (blogs?).  Don’t expect things to be the way they used to be.  But this is fully compatible with ministry being carried out at the most practical level closest to the congregation and with being a missional church.

Finally, a brief comment on bringing in a younger audience.  While I fully acknowledge that Web 2.0 will get the attention of a younger generation, and it might get them in the door of a church, will it actually have an impact on the age of those involved in Presbyterian government?  I would note that Bruce and Shawn are both ministers.  They do church as a profession.  For elders, it is a vocation, and we usually have to have jobs to pay the bills.  I was fortunate that I have a wonderful family that is supportive of this crazy Presbyterian government stuff, and I have been blessed by an employer and supervisor who have provided me with the flexibility and generous vacation days to actually follow this calling.  It is the unfortunate situation that many younger Presbyterians, while they might serve on their church sessions, and follow all this Web 2.0 stuff, are too busy with a young family and young career to have the time necessary to serve on a Presbytery committee, to say nothing of taking over a week’s vacation to be a commissioner to GA.  Yes, elders of any age must make a choice about being active in the government of the church, but once we are older, we have accumulated the necessary vacation, and our career is more stable, then we have a greater comfort level being active, especially being GA commissioners.

For the last 15 years I have frequently been the youngest elder in the room at governing body meetings and committees.  I have taken it as a part of my calling to encourage younger elders to become active in church government above the session.  And to encourage governing bodies to modify the way they do things so that younger elders are able to participate around their jobs.  A couple of presbytery committees have moved their meetings later for me and others, much to the dismay of some respected ministers who wanted to get it out of the way early in the day.  But if you want younger elders, you must compromise for them.  You can expect them to compromise some as well if you make the effort to show you are serious.

Anyway, my contribution to the discussion for now.  I think this one has legs and will continue for a long time to come.  As I look at this post I think I raised more questions than I answered.  And about all this new technology…  Way back in 1997, as an elder commissioner to the 209th General Assembly, I believe that I was the first GA commissioner to post my comments and pictures daily to a web site for my presbytery to read.  I have it archived and I’ll find a place to repost it some day.  Ya, I was always this geeky.

What’s in a name?

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I don’t know how many of you struggle with the labels that we use to describe each other, particularly in a setting like this where we need to concisely describe different sides in a discussion, debate, or controversy.  While I try to minimize it, there are times that I just can’t avoid the “liberal,” “conservative,” “progressive,” “evangelical,” etc. labels.

So I was amused by the November 23 and 24 Prickly City comic strip that has a bit of fun with that.  Hope the link works.  Enjoy!