The internet is a time machine.

A friend's post on Facebook today about Kierkegaard reminded me of the title of this blog, and thus, this blog.

I just read all the posts and comments.  I'm amazed I was even able to stay engaged long enough to have several posts on a blog.  I started a blog for the church as a way to follow up on sermons, and I was able to post maybe 2 or 3 times before forgetting about it all together - that seems to be the problem with virtual communities, you don't pass them in the hallway at work, meet up at the coffee machine, or see them at home, and thus, they are easy to forgot about.

I am posting this 6 years, (6 years!) after my last post here.  That is why I say in the title of this post that the internet is a time machine.  By reading my entries and the comments I am transported back to my graduate school experience at Vanderbilt.  Exciting times.  Now as I intend to apply to D.Min programs I look forward to perhaps reigniting some of the intellectual spark I felt in graduate school, and the spiritual energy that accompanied it.  Now I have the advantage of being able to study and maintain a full-time job as a pastor, hopefully marrying the essential (work/salary/not uprooting entire family to enroll in PhD program halfway across the country and to still likely end up being a pastor anyways) with the fantastic (studying, readying, writing about practical theology/psychology/pastoral counseling/homiletics).

So long, blog.  It's back to work for 2013 Craig.  Send some curiosity and energy this way some time.

yikes

fred phelps makes me want vomit. While I often believe that God will renew all things and nothing will be lost, I do wonder about those who spread hate in the name of Jesus - hate, of all things! ahhhhhhh

thoughts?

beginning, again.

thats right. i've decided to give this thing another try. mostly because chris has one now, and at least one person may read it.

status: 3rd semester of Master of Theological Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity. i am variably getting wiser and dumber at any moment. wiser - constructive theology. dumber - continential philosophy. no, i am not saying, though i may have implied, that cont phil is 'dumb', but that it has at times humbled me to the depths of the intellectual abyss. i hear that that is not altogther uncommon for the material we are working with. its the down-going that i need; rebirth. anyway, i am definately a theologian in my essence, and thus, constructive theology is fun going. I dont even need my meriam webster online dictionary to get through the reading!

by the way: the 'ever changing eye' is taken from kierkegaard's Either/Or from the 'aestheticist' who, though he is an asshole, has some wise things to offer about having a good time and fresh view on life. it is the ever changing eye, or, the ability to see things constantly new and differently, that makes for a creative and vigorous life.

i must pick out some tired worship songs for worship service tonight. im stuck between a weariness of the songs that i have been doing - the ones that people know - and being desirous of the songs that people dont know, which are inevitably the best ones. but, thank God that presbys know hymns.

forget you hippies

love love love

its what we should be known for

updates

im still having thoughts- im just not posting them any longer due to lack of participation.

recent discoveries:
starbucks coffee (as superior to other coffees made readily available to consumers)
love for things familial

peace in the middle east. attachment in the east. compassion in the west.

Absolutes?

what do you think about this:

"The Absolute, the Holy-itself, transcends and judges every religion. The ultimate in being and meaning cannot be limited, cannot be caught in any particular religion, in any particular sacred place or by any particular sacred action.But even this statement, that God cannot be caught in any particular religion, could have been made only on the basis of a particular religion, a religion able to transcend its own particularity and, because it can do this, having perhaps a critical power in relation to other religions." -Paul Tillich

Can Christianity be such a religion? (keep in mind 'critical' is a used in a neutral sense here)

continued

"Two staff at a university in the United Arab Emirates were sacked after one of them, an American, made copies of the cartoons (the ones depicting Mohommad) in an attempt to spur debate among her students. Her colleague, a British man, was fired when he defended her. " msnbc.com

God Help Us. How are we to overcome ignorance and hate if we cannot discuss them using specific examples? and in the classroom no less, hardly a mass-media outlet.