Month: February 2008

That I was in Coffeyville instead of Kansas City today. Elizabeth hasn’t been feeling well and I wanted to be ten minutes instead of three hours away.

Carla isn’t going to be able to be at tomorrow’s Wednesday gathering, so while the pianist is away, the congregation will play U2 music. Interpreter has an article about U2 Eucharist (or eU2charist or U2charist), but their site seems to be down at the moment. So the simple explanation is that a U2 Eucharist is a service of “word and table” (scripture, preaching, and holy communion) where the music of the Irish rock band U2 is substituted for more traditional or contemporary hymns.

The church office will be closed tomorrow for President’s/Presidents’ Day. Does anyone know which (President’s or Presidents’) it is? In addition, I will be out of town on Tuesday for a continuing education event in Kansas City.

Rooms 005 and 006 in the basement (homes of the “Keystone” and “Rock of Ages” classes, respectively) have been upgraded with the addition of vent-less natural gas heaters. They should be nice and toasty tomorrow, irregardless of the outside temperature.

Note: ever notice how regardless and irregardless mean the same thing?

Bishop Scott Jones will be preaching Sunday, March 2, 2008. The decision has been made to try for just one service at 10:50 am. We’re doing just one service in order to have a larger congregation present. We’re doing the late service so that if someone hasn’t gotten the word of the change in schedule they can simply come back later. (E.g. if they come at 8:10 they can just come back at 10:50 and if they come at 10:50 they will be right on time.) Following the worship service we’ll have a potluck dinner and after that the Bishop will present a workshop on evangelism.

UMW Sunday was great, the women did a wonderful job. Please be sure to tell them how much all their hard work was appreciated.

Our instructor, April, is both sick and contagious.

A link from Tony Wood, Lay Delegate to Annual Conference:
http://tucksdenbighblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/parties-and-prostitutes.html

From Beyond Words:

I remember seeing a forest of giant redwoods for the first time. There were some small children nearby, giggling and chattering and pushing each other around. Nobody had to tell them to quiet down as we entered. They quieted down all by themselves. Everybody did. You couldn’t hear a sound of any kind. It was like coming into a vast empty room.

Two or three hundred feat high the redwoods stood. You had to crane your neck back as far as it would go to see the leaves at the top. The trees made their own twilight out of the bright California day. There was a stillness and stateliness about them that seemed to become part of you as you stood there stunned by the sight of them. They had been growing in that place for going on two thousand years. With infinite care they were growing even now. You could feel them doing it. They made you realize that all your life you had been mistaken. Oaks and ashes, maples and chestnuts and elms you had seen for as long as you could remember, but never until this moment had you so much as dreamed what a Tree really was.

“Behold the man,” Pilate said when he led Jesus out where everybody could see him. He can’t have been much to look at after what they’d done to him by then, but my guess is that, even so, there suddenly fell over that mob a silence as awed as ours in the forest when for the first time in their lives they found themselves looking at a Human Being.

I inadvertently shut off calendar updates a few days ago. It’s back up and running now. You can find it through the calendar page of the church website.

This Blog has a new address if you are a regular reader your probably best off leaving www.revcollins.blogspot.com as your bookmark or favorite, but if you’re at a different computer you can simply type in www.revcollins.com and you will be forwarded to this page.