Last night, I was an idiot. Let’s just summarize the story by saying I drank a $9.99 bottle of 2005 Australian wine. This morning I drank a lot of water and had several Tylenol in preparation for church.

Confession is a weekly part of the church service. The pastor gives us a few moments to pray to God before launching into a generic confession for all of us. I never know how to summarize all I’ve done wrong in the brief time we’re given to confess. “God… all of this…”

The assistant pastor knew I had no one to spend Christmas with so he found me an invitation to spend Christmas with a family from church. I don’t know any of them well, but they seem like a nice family. It’ll be weird being the outsider and the “new” guy, but I just want to have somewhere/anywhere to spend the day without wrapping myself in a selfish bubble of self-pity and woefulness.

I also talked to The Pastor’s Daughter after the service today. She invited me to lunch with the pastor’s family. We ate at a nice Mexican restaurant. The pastor’s wife asked a lot of intriguing questions.

“Is your family full of love and grace?”

Yes, yes they are, and I realize it more every year that passes by. And that’s why I miss them so much this Christmas.

The lunch went fairly well other than feeling awkward and out of place. It might have to do with being asked questions about love and grace when I sat there thinking about how much love and grace I was being shown despite the wickedness in my life. Going from Saturday night wine-drinking binge to lunch with the pastor is a strange transition.

Then again, everyone who passes into Christ’s love ultimately undergoes the same transition.

Well, something to think about. I want to straighten things out, but it’s hard.

Merry Christmas to you all and thanks for reading my glass-half-full musings.

Update: Irony of irony. From my landlord for Christmas I did receive a bottle of wine and some Guylian dark belgian chocolates. I’m thankful for the chocolates.

Tags: alcohol, church

After about six days w/o any power or electricity, I have returned to the Electricity Age. I managed to clasp onto the information age through my wireless phone which, amazingly, never lost service (thanks VZW). I must also give thanks to the friends who provided me heat, food, and showers.

So here’s how it all went down.

Wednesday: The power died before I got home. It came back on sometime before 3AM.
Thursday: The power was on when I got home, but died sometime around 5AM.
Friday - Tuesday morning: No power at all.

That is until tonight. It’s still cold as hell and nothing in the freezer is yet frozen so I assume it only returned recently. However, the heat has never worked in most of the basement. I’m glad it’s on in my room again!

Saturday I was fortunate. I called up a family I know in Seattle and was offered warmth in their Purple House. I drove over and spent most of the day there. It actually worked out really nicely. After I showered, I was invited down to the neighbors house. The neighbors are non-practicing New York Jews who had a fine spread of NY bagels and smoked Nova Scotia salmon. Add salmon to my list of favorite raw meats. Combined with the food, I received a dose of Pacific NorthWestern liberalism. Talk of war, a president gone bad, and Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct consumed the time.

They even asked my opinion on the war and why I stood behind it. Or, rather, why I used to stand behind it. Where’s the plan for victory? Where’s the plan for stability? There is none.

After that, I hung around the Purple House for a bit and then went for coffee and soup with the family’s daughter. She recently returned from two years in Guatemala so we had quite a lot to talk about related to her experience there, international politics in general, and many other things. I enjoyed it.

Sunday is another good story. Church in the morning was interesting. There was no power atthe church building yet so after Sunday School upstairs and slightly shivering, everybody gathered downstairs with candles and flashlight. One of my roommates is a British-American. His mother (a British-Frenchwoman) is renting a local condo during the Christmas season. She happened to have power. I was invited over for dinner. (And, of course, I took a shower and charged my phone.)

The dinner was quite nice. We ate Squash Soup (made from pumpkin and assorted spices), pasta (emphasis on the short “a” sound), and bread. Wine or sparkling water for beverage choices. For dessert, mincemeat pie and ice cream.

The guest list at this dinner was quite interesting as well. My roommate and his ex-wife and two kids were there. His mother and her partner (a French man) were also present. Rounding out the guest list were a couple of older Anglican men who I strongly presume to be homosexual.

So that was an interesting night as well.

And I’m hungry and tired of typing so you’ll forgive me if I run off and celebrate my newly resurrected microwave and all of it’s amazing powers.

Tags: church, electricity

I’ve been to the same local church here three times now. And I like it. I’ve been encouraged by some friends and family to “look around” and find a church that will provide good teaching and opportunities to meet other people.

Fortunately, the first and only church I’ve been to has:
1) An excellent pastor — the sermons have been focused on scripture and teach the word of God. If there’s any higher qualification for a pastor (without excluding the direction of 1 Timothy 3), I know it not.
2) Good people — In the three weeks I’ve been at this church, I’ve had more people introduce themselves to me than at my entire stay of several months at some previous churches. This is a huge issue for me. I don’t want to attend a church where I’m a nameless face or a faceless name.
3) Bluegrass — though the service consists mostly of hymns, they work in some worship songs. In addition to this, several members of the church form a bluegrass group. They’ll be playing a show at the church tonight and I have every intention of attending. I won’t say I’ve ever delved deeply into bluegrass music or culture, but the subtle brushes I’ve had with bluegrass have been pleasant.

In other musically-related news, Sufjan Stevens’ (Wiki) “Songs for Christmas” compilation is pretty dang sweet. It’s a 5-disc, 42 song behemoth filled with indie/folk versions of Christmas classics and traditional Christian favorites including We Three Kings, Joy To the World, Away in a Manger, and many others. He also works in a few songs with original content that fits quite well. My favorite song, thus far, is his rendition of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” I encourage you to give it a listen by clicking play immediately below. If you like it, I would encourage you to buy the album and bolster your collection of Christmas music. There’s only so much Mannheim Steamroller you can listen to.

Tags: church

I could not have asked for a better Sunday. The weather was crisp, but not too cold. The sky let out no rain. As November managed to set the record for rainiest month in Seattle history, it appears God has determined to give us a brief reprieve from precipitation.

Despite my initial reluctance to crawl from bed this morning, I woke up, prepared for church, devoured a few bites of French bread, and drove there. It happened to be a special Sunday at the church as they installed a new assistant pastor. The sermon was delivered by a Canadian pastor who mentored the man. Apparently he’s originally an American, but I am not familiar enough with Northwestern accents to tell where specifically he was from.

The Canadian pastor preached a fine sermon wherein he disparaged postmodernism’s denial of truth by comparing it to architecture. You can build a postmodern museum with pillars supporting nothing and staircases leading nowhere, but even in this structure the foundation must be solid or the building cannot stand.

Afterwards, lunch was served. I appreciated this as much as any bachelor who tires of his own lack of decent kitchen or cooking skills. It also served as a good opportunity to meet other parishioners.

There was a quite humorous moment that occurred during lunch. A couple tables away from where I was sitting, I could here the head pastor saying something about “he’s from Colorado” and something else I couldn’t make out.

The pastor then asked me a question.

“Would you like to meet my eldest daughter?” I heard a couple people laugh quietly.

“Sure,” I replied quickly.

Tags: church

This is the first time I’ve used an iMac since I had Jake’s old clunker at Jacksonville, FL, during the summer of ‘04. I appreciated the clunker then and I appreciate this computer now.

Coming at you Live! from Seattle, heeeere’s… me!

I’ve had an adventurous day. Adventurous, at least, for me. I’ve never travelled anywhere completely alone before. Today I took a bus to the airport, boarded a plane, and flew to Seattle all by myself. I’m finally grown up and it only took 24 years. Now if only I could move out of my parents’ house things could be perfect.

So I’ve already seen a few interesting sites. Tim, who I know from Jax STP 2004, picked me up from the airport. We decided to Pike Place Market to get some food. We didn’t end up checking out the market, but we walked around for a bit. During the walking, we happened to walk by the first-ever Starbucks coffee shop (still operating!) until we found a Japanese restaurant to eat.

Nothing like raw salmon to make my day go right. Mmm, mmm… oishi.

I went to church at Mars Hill after that. It’s “contemporary” in the way _contemporary_ should be: rocking. And by rocking I don’t mean watered-down, sold-out, and shallow. This sermon packed more solid teaching than I’ve heard in the last six months (probably ’cause I haven’t been to church much). I enjoyed it.

Now I’m staying with some people I know up here. I’m exhausted from adjusting my sleep schedule to normal hours so ineed to get to bed.

I wish I had an easy way to send photos from my phone to this blog. I’ve had trouble with it so far. If you’re on Facebook, though, you can look at my mobile uploads and I’ll be adding photos there throughout this trip. For the rest of you, I’ll put some up here on the site later.

By the way, the big Job Fair is on Tuesday so please pray that it works out well!

Tags: church, food, iMac, Mars Hill, Pike Place Market, Seattle, travel