I'm pulling this directly from a brandywine books blog from last week, but expresses my feelings toward the current weather so well, especially the last paragraph. Check out the youtube link if you can. Quite funny


Warming up Mom
Posted by Lars Walker @ 7:33 pm EST
Filed under: General, Goofing
The Minnesota blog Freedom Dogs posted this YouTube video yesterday, and I forwarded the URL to several people, because I thought it was hilarious. Maybe you’ve got to live up here to appreciate it, but this is gritty, slice-of-life filmmaking.
By the way, Minnesotans for Global Warming is a real group. They’re planning a rally at the state capitol this weekend. I’d be tempted to go, except it’s so cold this time of year. Today was quite nice, actually. The mercury rocketed up to about 40° F. (that’s about 5° Euro). Driving home, I saw people sitting at outside tables at a coffee shop (they were wearing parkas, but they were nevertheless drinking their coffee outside). But it’s all a cheat. All tease. Tomorrow the high temperature will be 25 or 30 degrees lower than today. And the high Wednesday will be about zero. Then it'll ease up a little, but there’s plenty of freeze left in the freezer.

That’s why I think nature worship will never catch on in Minnesota. If you live in California, you might be able to join some animist cult and delude yourself into thinking Mother Nature is a soft and indulgent sort, a nurturer. Up here we know her better. We figured out long ago that if she doesn’t take her medication regularly she’s likely to wander out of the house in her nightgown, and sometimes at night you hear her playing with the cutlery in the kitchen, and you wonder…

my weekend

My weekend consisted of shoveling, staying warm , flying, watching movies, and entertaining JAC. Not too bad, eh?

Why I'm a Lutheran

Came across this in the Summer 2007 Christian History & Biography "The Gospel According to J.S. Bach" in an article comparing Luther's and Bach's love of music and desire to use music to glorify God.

First of all, has anyone read anything by or about Christopher Brown. The article says

Against Catholic tradition, Luther insisted that all the people of God sing, not just the priests and specially prepared choirs. Modern scholars like Christopher Brown have argued persuasively that congregational singing, perhaps more than any other single factor, secured the survival of Protestantism in Europe. Although Luther's own musical standards were relatively high, his great concern was what could be called the musical priesthood of all believers. Because God's grace in Christ was for all, all should sing. Because Christ made his people a royal priesthood before God, the voices of all priests (that is, all Christians) should be raised in song.

As most of you can well attest, I do not have a great voice. However, I have long felt that one of the true joys of a weekly worship service is getting to sing with like-minded people. Really, unless you belong to a choir of some kind, where else do we get to sing together? Where else does ability matter so little. That act of standing and singing together to open and close a service binds us together, in a way that a lecture, or even a concert does not. I love that idea that part of being the royal priesthood Peter talked about is that we get to sing. Not because we are sons of Levi, or a cloistered monk, but because it's one of the gifts we received when Christ ripped the curtain.

OK, the second quote from the article I really like is this.

Theological student and writer Sarah Hinlicky Wilson recently explained why she is a Lutheran: "The only reason I follow Luther, as far as I can figure, is because Luther followed Christ. . . . The Jesus I get in Scripture and sermons and hymns and sacraments is there because Luther told his evangelical followers to give Jesus away freely in them."

Do you like that as much as me? I think that the "evangelical followers" she refers to encompass a whole lot of those who came after him, and certainly Luther is not the only church leader who followed Christ, or encouraged his followers to "give Jesus away freely" but the idea that Luther was the first and certainly one of the strongest proponents of giving Jesus away freely in sermons and hymns and sacraments and the fact that the Lutheran church to which I belong also believes this is a big reason why I belong to it.

I'd love to hear your ideas on this. Am I completely off? Did either of these strick you they way they struck me? Has anyone else read anything by either of these scholars that either supports or contradicts what I got from it?

(P.S. to Mom, re: Soli Deo Gloria from the hymnal at that fantastic Christmas Eve concert. It means "to the glory of God alone" as in only to God, not only glory to God as in "I'm doing this only for glory to be given to God". We were right :-)