Living Life in between the in-between
So it’s a strange name. Yes this is true. But there is a reason. I don’t know if I can make sense of it, but hopefully it will make some sense. It always seem as though the church isn't relevant enough…or maybe too relevant… Now, I don’t want you to think that this is another obligatory “church bash, culture bash, the author just has way too much steam between their ears and time on their hands blog.” That’s not the point of this. This is a safe for struggles to take place. A place for questions to be asked. Some answered. Some not. A place for hope. A place for despair. A place between faith and doubt. A place between the church and the world, between seminary and the church, between seminary, the world, and the church. The “about me” will have some more about me…I suppose. But here I want to lay out some of the basics. The Vision - The vision for this place is for us to engage together things that make sense and things that make no sense at all. This is not, let me tell you what I think. This is a “let’s talk about this” format. The layout Monday Morning- Nobody likes Monday mornings. Even working in retail or food services where you don’t really have a weekend off anyways, Mondays still feel…like Monday. This weekly post will be something to engage and think though the rest of the week. To summarize a quote I read, but can’t bring to mind, “You should not read a book and leave unchanged” Typically it will be engaging Scripture, a church tradition, someone much smarter or braver than me. Whatever it is, it will someone or something that provokes us to think (hopefully live) differently. Thursdays - No special name for this. It’s just Thursday. Doesn’t even have a cool place in our week. We all dread Mondays, Wednesdays are Hump Days, TGIF, Saturdays, then Sunday Funday. The only thing Thursday has going for it is ABC’s TGIT (and ABC, we know what you’re doing, and we don’t like it). On Thursdays we will engage something ordinary, something we have all encountered in the news this week, or perhaps something that we all go through. This is just another Thursday for us to gather and talk about what’s going on around us. Table Talk - This won’t be a weekly post, but a monthly table dinner, where we will gather together around table, lean in close, and talk about real life. Not using technical words that seminary might have or catchy titles VOGUE might have. It is a place to gather around the dinner table, enjoy some satisfying homemade Apple Pie, laugh, cry, be frustrated and encouraged as we talk about real life, and listen to one another. The Name I still think the name is weird and cheesy, but my wife likes it. So here is a quick explanation. Less than a year after going to church, I began majoring in Biblical Studies (a field which still doesn't even make sense to me). I now find myself in seminary and this strange desire to continue studying the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus and Numbers. Yup those books we all either skip over or give up on our Bible in 1 Year plan, those are the ones. But I like them. Anyways, very quickly I found myself studying the Bible and culture critically. So that’s the ‘theologian’ part I suppose. My friends who majored in Theology would be disappointed with my use of the word, but alliteration works pretty swell on the internet and I couldn't find anything clever for Bible other than Bible Blog. I passed on that. So that toddler part. Well, I quickly found myself so critical of the Bible and so critical of the world that I lost touch with people. Now, my daughter taught me this next part. She loves people, like anyone. No stranger danger at all. It made Disneyland stressful for a while. But she also knows that she is loved by God (at 2 already!). We have some Bible verses that she recites at night. One of them is Psalm 45:11, but she replaces the pronouns and says “The King is enthralled with my beauty, honor him for he is my Lord.” She owns that verse for herself. So the name. Toddler Theologian. While we are called to be critical of the world and church, we are also called to know that God is devoted to us, even when it doesn't make sense. So this is the tension we live in. This is the in-between we feel daily. The world is not quite as the world should be. The church is not quite as the church should be. And God…well what do we do with God then? Let’s talk about it together.
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