Singing Owl wants to know about traveling and destinations:

1) Favorite Destination — someplace you’ve visited once or often and would gladly go again

Rome, London, and Paris

2) Unfavorite Destination — someplace you wish you had never been (and why)

Camping in a tent. My idea of roughing it is hot and cold running water, electricity, and a bed.

3) Fantasy Destination — someplace to visit if cost and/or time did not matter

I’d love to do a tour of Ireland–the whole island.

4) Fictional Destination — someplace from a book or movie or other art or media form you would love to visit, although it exists only in imagination

Middle Earth! My one exception to the running water and electricity rule. Okay, okay, may be Narnia too.

5) Funny Destination — the funniest place name you’ve ever visited or want to visit

Honestly, I can’t think of a funny one. I’m sure there are funny ones, but none is popping in the brain right now.

The picture is Tracy and I in front of the fountain at the Pantheon in Rome.

I am finally catching up my blogroll and updated pages on my website. Both the Sermon and Writing Clips pages have been updated with the writing I have done in the last five months.

Here are some wonderful sites that I have come across that I would like everyone to know about. First is Jan Richardson’s site, The Painted Prayerbook. Jan is an artist and a theologian. She chooses one ov the lectionary passages for the week, illustrates it with her art, and always has a thought provoking meditation to go with it.

Feminist Theology in an Age of Fear and Hope is a site written by several women who priests in The Episcopal Church and the Independent Catholic Church. The look at one of the passages of the lectionary from a feminist and gender equal perspective.

Conversations at the Edge with Helen Mildenhall is wonderful community of different faith, agnostics, and atheists talking about the role of spirituality in our lives.

Pam Hogeweide’s How God Messed Up My Religion are Pam’s thoughts and writings on how religion and church aren’t always what they seem to be and may be isn’t what God had in mind. Her subtitle is “Essays of discovery and disillusionment from the junk drawer of Faith.” I love it.

Pastor Scott of Pastor Scott’s Thought is the pastor of Pasadena First Church of the Nazarene. He is also one of my former college profs. His thoughts are always worth reading.

Square One is Victoria Marenelli’s site. Victoria reports on several different things in reading, music, and culture through her feminist eyes.

So what are you reading? What sites have caught your eye lately?

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

The breast cyst was removed today. Surgery went very well, and I am at home. I feel pretty good, and the pain isn’t bad. Thank you for your prayers.

Shawna

Singing Owl says: Yesterday I had two separate conversations in which people were musing about how much change is occurring. The WW II generation, of which my mom is a part, went from horse and buggy to automobiles, saw the lessening, or even the end of many diseases, went from widespread use of kerosene lamps and outhouses (in the country, and most folks were rural)) to a totally electrified and plumbed society. The fastest means of communication was a telegraph. The second conversation–gulp–was about MY generation and how much change occurred in the last half of the 20th century. The person said his 13 year old had not seen a vinyl record album until a few days before, couldn’t remember a time without cell phones, and on and on.

As for the questions!

1. What modern convenience/invention could you absolutely, positively not live
without?

A laptop computer. I do not wish to write muliple drafts on a typewriter, and I love the freedom a laptop gives me. Yes, I do remember typewriters, and I have written papers on them. Long live laptops!

2. What modern convenience/invention do you wish had never seen the light of day?
Why?

Honestly, I can’t think of one.

3. Do you own a music-playing device older than a CD player? More than one? If
so, do you use it (them)?

No, we don’t. I gave away my cassette players before we got married because we didn’t have room. We now have a clock/radio/CD player and 2 MP3 players.

4. Do you find the rapid change in our world exciting, scary, a mix…or something
else?

A mix. I like a lot of the changes but I don’t think we developing ethics along with the technological advances we’re making. That scares me.

5. What did our forebears have that we have lost and you’d like to regain? Bonus
points if you have a suggestion of how to begin that process.

Community. You used to know all your neighbors. So I guess I need to start getting out and meeting my neighbors.

We are back from vacation, and getting back to the normal schedule. At least I am. Tracy is in D.C. for a check-up. He should be coming home tomorrow. Then he can get back to his normal schedule next week. Church services will resume this Sunday.

An update on the bump under my right armpit. It is a cyst–a large one which has grown around some tissue. It is also benign. I will be having outpatient surgery on May 1 to have it removed.

I had a lot of time to think about rest, and I’m reading Marva Dawn’s The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World. I told Tracy that it was nice to rest and not feel guilty about it. I always feel guilty for taking a couple of days off. I feel guilty about far too much, and I need to stop. I will be blogging more about rest, Sabbath, and guilt. What about you? Are you able to take a day or two off just to rest, renew, and revitalize? Do you feel guilty about not doing something–anything?

I’m heading to Phoenix in a couple of hours to see friends. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

Mother Laura says: We are right in the middle of a move–only twenty minutes away, but we’re still a mix of busy, excited, nervous and surprisingly full of grief about what we’re leaving, for me at least. So this week’s Friday Five asks about your experience of the marvels and madness of moving…

1. How many times have you moved? When was the last time?

I don’t now how many times we move when I was a kid, so I’m going to go with the adult years. I’ve moved six times since 1994. The last time I moved was in ’06 when I married The Hubby. We decided living in the same stat would be a good thing. 🙂 I moved from Kansas City to Chicago.

2. What do you love and hate about moving?

I love the decluttering, and I hate everything else.

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?

I wish I had money to hire movers. I’ve always done it myself with help from wonderful, gracious, and did I say wonderful, friends.

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?

A back brace and lots of Bayer Back and Body. Or yeah, and a good set of tennis shoes.

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?

I am moving away from being so negative about myself and seeing myself more as God sees me and in a much more positive light.

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what moving means to you.

Under the Tuscan Sun. I would so totally buy a villa in Italy on a whim! Or Spain for that matter. And yes, I would still hate moving. 😉

Photo by CBIdesign.

I am back to my office hours this week, although I am changing the time from 2-4 p.m. to 3-5 p.m. Those hours work better for me, and gives me to time at the library if I need to do research.

I will be at Caribou Coffee at 8th and Wabash today 3:00-5:00 p.m., and at Hi Tea on 10th and State on Thursday. I hope everyone has a good week.

Shawna

Singing Owl wrote: Lingering effects of a cold have me watching more television than usual. There appears to be a resurgence of the old daytime staple–the quiz show. Except they are on during prime time, and a great many of them offer the chance of winning one million dollars.

I think it started with Regis Philbin and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” but now we have a half dozen or so.

My husband and I started musing (after watching “Deal or No Deal”) about what we could do with a million dollars. I thought I’d just bring that discussion into the Friday Five this week. It’s simple. What are five things you would want to do with a million dollar deposit in your bank account?

1. Pay off parents’ homes.

2. Invest.

3. Buy larger place where we can take one room, put in floor to ceiling bookcases with the ladders that slide along the bookcases. 🙂

4. Buy books! We’ll have room for them.

5. Travel, travel, and travel.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

The NIH chapel this morning was beautiful. Sitting among people who were so sick, and yet so filled hope, this was an Easter where the resurrection, its power and hope were center stage, believed and proclaimed in full faith. I didn’t preach this morning, but I wanted to post one of my favorite Easter hymns: “Christ the Lord Is Risen, Today” by Charles Wesley.

“Christ, the Lord, is risen today,” Sons of men and angels say! Raise your joys and triumphs high: Sing, ye heavens; thou earth, reply.

Love’s redeeming work is done; Fought the fight, the battle won: Lo! the sun’s eclipse is o’er, Lo! he sets in blood no more!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Christ hath burst the gates of hell: Death in vain forbids his rise, Christ hath opened Paradise.

Lives again our glorious King! Where, O death, is now thy sting? Once he died our souls to save; Where’s thy victory, boasting grave

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Following our exalted Head: Made like him, like him we rise, Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.

King of glory! Soul of bliss! Everlasting life is this, Thee to know, thy power to prove, Thus to sing, and thus to love.