It seems that the professor that I was in conversation about the project has since launched his own online religious community with a membership rate of $100 a year. With your membership in that organization you get 2 weekly devotional blog entries and the occasional article on a Christian “practice.” The weekly devotional bits are about 500 words a piece so, as a member you are paying $100 for a little more than 52,000 words and about 10,000 additional words in these occasional articles. Members are also able to pay a slightly discounted rate for quarterly online workshops.

I am still interested in launching this sort of blog/community, but I would like some input from my friends and readers. My hope would be to write a devotion Wednesday, Friday, and a longer sermon like text on Sunday, this could be expanded as readership increases. Then have regular features posted Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Lastly, I would hope to release a “Bible” or other sort of group/individual study either every other month or quarterly. I do have additional plans for growth as readership increases and the income from the site would allow me to transition from Full-time Residential Skills Trainer to Full-time religious blogger/community moderator etc. Future thoughts include online seminars, books with members paying cost of print, podcasts/livestream “shows” and additional authors and content.

My question then is would you support/join such a site and would you be willing to pay somewhere between $25-$50 a year?

What additional information would you like to have?

For those of you who don’t know, I work overnights. Out of an eight hour shift, I probably have about 4 hours of work to do (that might even be on the high side). I do some cleaning, cooking, hourly bed checks, documenting on residents, and finally I do a lot of wake-up prompting of residents.

So, what do I do with the other four hours? I try to find a lot of other random work to fill the other four hours, I might do some writing, and I do a lot of thinking. Throughout the entire shift I listen to podcasts and audiobooks.

The thinking thing though is what I want to talk about. I have been having a great deal of thoughts about Biblical interpretation and also theology. Who would have guessed that the person who dedicated 6 years of education to religion would find their “resting” mind playing games with theology?

One thing that I keep coming back to are alternative readings and understandings of Biblical texts. When I am reading and contemplating the text, I try to ignore everything I have been told about the text. I try to forget the sermons and classes that I have had on the topic and just read the words, in English or Greek.

One thing that I am starting to realize is that regardless of the flavor of Christian you are, most of what you believe the Bible is telling you, isn’t really there, or isn’t the most reasonable way of thinking about the text. If we focused more on what the Bible is actually saying and less on what other people have said about the Bible, Christianity would have a very different shape.

That leads me to a question that I have been struggling with. Which is more important: the Bible’s message, or the Church’s message about the Bible? What is odd is that the groups that are more likely to say that the BIBLE is the most important are most likely to find their understanding of the Bible most tainted by the traditions surrounding the text and not the message of the Bible itself.

Anyhow, none of this is really the point. He ended his program by discussing a letter he recently received from some “friends.” These friends are disappointed and disillusioned. The presenter blamed this disillusionment on 24 hour new programming, somehow, news is the enemy because it allows people to have greater access to the wider world. Too much information is depressing because it inundates the viewer with too many events, mainly negative.

His response to these friends was that he has “some certainty that God might still be on [God’s] throne, and when God is in power, some good can still happen. While God is on his throne the People of God are sometimes kind, sometimes compassionate, and can sometimes still do good.”

What does it mean to be the “People of God?” My understanding of being Christian involves action, doing, being God, Christ to the world. We have a particular vocation to manifest the love of Christ for a world that sorely needs to be reminded of God’s love. Yet, if I take this radio host’s statement at face value, the best that the People of God can do is be a part-time People of God.

I admit that as humans, we often fail to do the will of God, but the fact that we fails doesn’t mean that we should settle for second best. We shouldn’t just “sometimes” try to do the will of God, we shouldn’t strive to only “sometimes” be the People of God. Being a People of God, being Christian is our primary task, it is our full-time vocation.

Now, I have an assignment for you, the reader. Write an essay of 2000 words or less, post it on your blog or send it to me, I will link to it or include it here as a guest blog.

When I look around the garden I am sort of frustrate to see that we are really the only ones experiencing the difficulty with the weeds, be they grasses, or the former inhabitant of the plot, alfalfa. It isn’t that the other gardeners have been out weeding more or are braving the miserable weather, but instead they are using herbicides. K. and I have made a decision to try to be as organic as is possible. The added work should mean we have a healthier garden, but I am thinking that I need a much better way of weed prevention. I am thinking of finding somewhere that has a lot of newspapers for recycling and laying down a layer of paper in the rows, that should save some time and also add a bit of matter into the garden.

In some more exciting news today I harvested our first fruits (by that I mean veg). We planted some radishes some weeks back and they are already available for harvest. They are beautiful things. We went with “French” radishes, so they are long and cylindrical rather than spherical. I had to try one of course and was surprised by the strength of the flavor. I am used to a bit of a peppery bite, but this was incredible. The pepper flavor was so strong that it almost brought me to tears. It seems odd, but I think that in the next few weeks, I will be substituting radishes for pepper.

Once the sun rises, and K. heads to work I am going to head out to the garden and do some more planting. By the end of the day I hope to have everything in, except for the flowers K. wishes to plant.

K’s cute little signpost row markers fell apart and the labels washed off in the rain and sun. Sad, but inevitable with our luck. Today I am going to put in some more traditional and practical row markers. Nothing nearly as fun, but they will hopefully do the job.

Last November this congregation held a “first” of two votes to leave the ELCA, the vote failed, but the margin was quite small. By mid-December a small body had formed and signed a petition to hold a second first vote. That vote occurred in early February, and the motion passed to leave the ELCA with around 80% voting in favor of abandoning the ELCA.

This Sunday (May 15th) is scheduled to be the second vote to leave. If it passes the congregation ceases to be a part of the ELCA and will become a congregation in the newly formed North America Lutheran Church, a body that formed in protest against the 2009 church wide decision to ordain homosexuals in committed same gender relationships.

I am fairly certain that the congregation will choose to leave the ELCA. My wife and I still hear members attack the ELCA and the idea that “God could love gays.” However in the mail today with the announcement of the vote there was also a letter from several members of the congregation that support the ELCA. They are calling for the congregation to remain part of the ELCA because they do not want to see the congregation divided. I was excited and proud to see my supervisor and a member of my organization’s cabinet as signing members to this letter.

For me the fate of the congregation has become a foregone conclusion, but I wonder what these members, and others like them, might do when/if the congregation votes to leave the ELCA. Will they remain in the congregation and follow it into the NALC, or do they plan on leaving the congregation for another, or a new congregation?

I think that I will approach them, probably in a letter since I work nights and ask them their plans and if they are wanting to create a new mission church as part of the ELCA I will offer to help them create services and curriculum.

I hope that this Sunday brings a vote to stay in the ELCA, but if it does there will continue to be “first” votes until the congregation is wore out.

We planted two varieties of potatoes,  two varieties of onions, scallions, radishes, peas, lettuce, garlic, carrots, cabbage and Swiss Chard. Several of these are only the first plantings and a second planting will happen mid-summer or so.

It is a good start. The first plot (15ftx20ft) is nearly full, we left some space for four rows of sweet corn at the back. As we were planting we realized that in order to plant everything we desired we would need to subdivide the second.

In a couple of weeks we will plant the corn, and then the second plot. The second plot will have beans, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and probably a second planting of various salad greens along with the flowers.

It is crazy how fast a garden fills up when you hope to grow much of your own veg. K. was even joking that next year we might need to get three plots. Not sure about that, we’ll need to see how this year’s gardens go. It is quite exciting to start the season.

K. did a little craft project for the garden already, she made little row markers, they look like something straight out of Mr. Rabbit’s garden in The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Last year we had some difficulties keeping up with the garden. We planted late, we had nearly constant rain for weeks on end, and then as our veggies started to ripen thieves crept in stole some of our produce.

But that was last year. This year we have two plots, a whopping 600 sq feet of garden paradise. That is 6 times larger than last year’s garden. The plan is to dedicate at least an hour a day to working in the garden, it might even mean working in the rain and mud.

Why did we decide to increase the size of our garden by so much? Well, this year the garden plots are much cheaper and larger. Last year the cost was $30 for a 5ftx20ft plot. This year the garden is 15ftx20ft per plot, and the cost per plot is $20. That sounds at first that we have paid more this year than last, but this year at the end of season, so long as you have kept up with the garden and help cut it back at the end of the year, the $20 a plot will be refunded, so essentially the use of land and water is free as long as I put in the effort.

Today, I went for a walk towards the community garden and discovered that the plots are all tilled and ready for planting. There are 14 separate plots, but that doesn’t really tell us how many participants. That is up from last year’s 9 plots.

My plan is to spend some of my morning tomorrow planning, plotting, and hopefully planting some of my seeds. My goal for tomorrow is to start the potatoes, onions, garlic, corn, and possibly other seed started plants.

One of the plots is designated for edibles exclusively. The other is for K. She wanted a garden for flowers, particularly for cutting and photographing. We also hope to add some “whimsy” to that garden with some odd craft projects (faerie houses for example).

Maybe I will be able to get K. to come out to the garden with me tomorrow and take some photos.

My hope is to document this season better.

I graduated and within days the government announced that the nation, and the world were entering a recession. The first jobs to be cut that I had been trained for, the directors of faith formation and Christian education. I really wasn’t qualified to teach, unless I received more education, so I began looking for work as a youth minister.

Turns out that when everyone is losing their jobs, every out of work, overweight Christian male becomes a “youth minister.” I sent out hundreds of applications and resumes. I had a few interviews. It turns out that when the economy is tanking, so is congregation giving, so my education turned out to be my liability. Since I was actually educated I commanded a higher price. A price most congregations just could not afford. I was lucky to even be noticed, one congregation that interviewed me had 1200 applicants, 4 times their weekly attendance.

So, I found out that following my passion, discovering the color of my parachute, has only led to a highly educated human. Really that is all that my education did, it thought me how to be human. It left me with little career options and few skills to convert into vocational advantages. It thought me to think independently and to write, and well quite a bit of useless information about religion, particularly the history of Christian thought.

In thinking about what these skills prepare me to do several options have come to mind.

1. I could write a blog about being human, maybe teach some other people about this valuable skill.
2. I could create an online community of like-minded Christians longing for community and additional support on their faith quest.
3. I could start some wacko cult, steal the brainwashed mass’s money while preparing them for JEEEEE-SUS with a cocktail of kool-aid and cyanide.

I have chosen to work on the second option,  but, beware, if the Church of the Holy Other starts knocking on your door, don’t drink the pink lemonade, it means that I’ve failed or given up on the community.