Five years ago, during the fall of my first term in Seminary, I took a class called “Speech Communications in Ministry 101.” In it I found out just how terribly awful I am at the use of my voice as an instrument.
Not so with these guys. (Warning: there is one crude phrase about halfway in. Interestingly, it isn’t a laugh line itself, but is there only to set up the next two lines.)
I used the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” a couple of months ago at a ministerial meeting. One of the local tribes recently decided that California didn’t have enough casinos yet, so they’re building a new one in Twentynine Palms.
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Well, I just shelled out the money for an upgrade to version 8 of Accordance. I may discover more later, but I already know of three compelling features.
First, when you have two panes open, it will highlight the words in one that correspond with the ones your mouse cruises over in the other (assuming both texts are tagged).
Second, it will let you adjust the leading.
Third, fuzzy searching. I don’t know how good this will be, but I know I need it. My problem is that I remember there’s a verse I want to find but I don’t know what translation it’s in. For example, I search for “Jesus wept” and get the “no matches” dialog, because I normally use the NRSV, where John 11:35 reads “Jesus began to weep.” (Inexplicably. That verb must be the “aorist of but-it-ought-to-be-imperfect.”) Then I say, “[curses] it” and ask Mr. Google to find the verse for me.
It’s been a couple of 2-3 years since the last time I played with Google Calendar. At the time, I thought it was interesting, but not compelling enough to migrate away from iCal. (Or even go to the trouble to integrate it with iCal.)
Today I played with it some more, and I liked it. Not least because it enabled me to publish a calendar that I could then subscribe to in iCal. This might have been one of the reasons I didn’t like it back then: I didn’t have any truly public calendars. Today I do, both at the church and with some of the other organizations I’m part of. The only thing I used to want to share was my personal calendar, but I didn’t want to make that public, and my wife refused to get a gmail account. Anyway, that’s history, and now I see how wonderful Google Calendar is. My bad.
Anyway, now that I’m a late adopter, I want to point out something else I like about Google Calendar. Take a look at these two events. First, iCal:
Now compare that with Google Calendar:
You see the difference? In the month view, Google shows what time the event is. If iCal could do that it would be a huge win.
Another thing I like about Google Calendar is the extra views: 4-day and Agenda.
And, frankly, it isn’t any harder to edit an existing event in Google Calendar than it is in iCal. In fact, iCal has gotten harder to work with in Leopard. Brilliant decision that was.
A member of my congregation forwards all his viral email to me. I don’t mind; I’ve been deleting email since 1979, so a little more won’t kill me.
This one, however, was so bad I felt I had to comment on it:
People keep telling me I need to turn the knob to 11. Easier said than done. Also, I need to quit trying to lead in program development and instead to lead in theological reflection. If I do that at all well, then programs will follow. (Sigh.)
Anyway, it’s been an awesome conference. It was good to see so many PTS people and to meet some non-PTS folks. Worship at Miller was excellent as always.
Here’s what Stanley Hauerwas has to say:
No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to all children when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian maturity is marked, such as eighth-grade commencements. Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits far too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own. [1]
The former PM speaks out:
One of the oddest questions I get asked in interviews, and I get asked a lot of questions, is: Is faith important to your politics? It’s like asking someone whether their health is important to them or their family.
From my sermon this morning:
Some excerpts from the text:
I’m having fun with my toys
and I don’t want to share them.
It’s hard to share.
Could I do it?
Maybe, if I really tried.
I can share when I want to.
I can do it!
I did it!
I’m reading Chasing Daylight and liked this:
Long before September 11, I made it my personal mission to crusade against a long-standing Christian cliche. … I lament that it has become an accepted part of pop theology that the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God. …
… [T]he center of God’s will is not a safe place, but the most dangerous place in the world. God fears nothing and no one. God moves with intentionality and power. To live outside God’s will puts us in danger, but to live in His will makes us dangerous. … When we begin to seize our divine moments, we do not begin to live risk-free, but instead become free to risk.
This from the last page of chapter 6, “Risk,” on p. 151 of the paperback edition.
