What a treat

Sunday mornings start pretty early for me. There is a lot of work that goes into the last minute details of putting worship together. On a good day an early start means I have a few minutes to reflect and pray before worship starts. On a not-so-good day, I have just enough time to fix the last minute glitches that have popped up since Saturday night.

What was a treat this morning was the change brought about by the end of daylight savings time. I actually got to drive in with a little sunshine. That's nice.

peace,

will

Retreating... for a day

I am off today for one day and night retreat in Port Aransas. The retreat is called, "A Day at the Sea, Listening for God's Word for our Lives." I don't do this sort of thing enough. I really think that getting away to something like this is necessary every so often in order to maintain one's spiritual health. Life is so stressful and hectic. Our spiritual health can help us keep it together and keep our lives focused on God through all the stress. However, we need to occasionally step away from the stress and clutter in order to recharge our spiritual batteries.

A spiritual retreat can take many forms. I am a contemplative type, so I am often recharged by getting away alone somewhere to read scripture and pray and rest. However, even I occasionally need an more organized event where I am surrounded by other people doing the same thing. It helps keep me accountable to actually use the time to reconnect with God.

peace,

will

Won't You Tell Me How to Get Back to Sesame Street?

I keep finding new unexpected perks to being a parent. My latest discovery is that on the rare days I get to stay home with the boy, I get to watch Sesame street! Thanks to technology I can TiVo it everyday and the we can watch it whenever he is in the mood.

I still love Cookie Monster!

peace,

will

More Reading, Less Sleeping

So I am posting in the middle of the night because I decided to finish the last few chapters of John Grogan's Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog.

John Grogan, who most of the time in a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer is an excellent author and has done an amazing job of capture the essence of the complex relationship humans have with dogs. If you are not a dog person, this book has some funny moments and even some emotional and thoughtful passages. However, if you are a dog person, I mean a dyed in the wool, have considered your dog in the purchase of a mattress or a car, have rethought vacation plans to for the sake of your dog, have photos of your dog on the desk and the dresser, buy your dog a new toy at Christmas and maybe on her birthday sort of dog person, this book will make your heart laugh and cry. It is laugh out loud funny and heartwrenchingly thoughtful.

I want to thank Kathy for lending me this one. I was reluctant to buy the book because I thought it might break my heart, which of course it did. People who know me well know that I am fairly stoic. The only things that have much of a chance of bringing me to tears have to do with dogs.

peace,

will

Reading Updating and Explaining

It is my practice to keep a list of books I am reading over on the right side of the weblog. (Scroll down a bit if you can't see it or up a bit of you are reading an old post.) It is my practice to add a book when I start, take it off when I finish and the write a review. As usual I have fallen behind and I realized that the books on the "What Will is Reading Now" list have been finished and back on the shelf for a while. So I have replaced them with what I am reading now and am working on reviews for the other ones. I will post them when I am done. (Unless I get sidetracked again. That tends to happen.)

peace,

will

Where's Will? Doh! (Sorry for mixing pop-culture metaphors)

I am off to Port Aransas tomorrow to speak to the the Corpus Christi District Professional meeting about creating discipleship systems.

This is similar to the training we did at the Grace leadership retreat earlier this year and I am looking forward to presenting the material to a group of pastors. (Pastors are the toughest audience though.)

peace,

will

A Little Help

A couple of people are having trouble listening to the audio sermons online, so I am asking for a little help. If you have a chance, go here:

gracesermons.blogspot.com

click on the little play button for sermon 31 (or scroll down and pick any sermon) and let me know if it works. If you feel so inclined to do so, please e-mail me (pastorwillrice@gmail.com) and let me know what your results were. It would also really help if you could tell me what browser you use (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) if you know the version, that would be even better. It would also help to know how you connect to the internet. (i.e. dialup, cablemodem, dsl, office network, etc.) Thanks for your help!

peace,

will

A couple of sermons

I finally got around to posting my sermon that I preached at 8:30 on World Communion Sunday. There is no audio for that one. I have also just posted the text and audio for this Sunday's sermon.

Sermon #30 - World Communion Sunday - "One Body"
Sermon #31 - "Deep Casting, Abundant Sowing"
Sermon #31 - Audio

peace,

will

Here is what the weather is like where I am from

My home of Western New York is digging out from a record-breaking October snowstorm.

You can read about it here:

Western N.Y. Digs Out After Record Snow

My father says it was made especially bad by the fact that the leaves are still on the trees. The wet snow stuck to the leaves and brought limbs downs knocking down the power lines.

It all makes the mosquitoes seem not so annoying.

peace,

will

Sunday Preview

Sunday, October 15th 2006
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Sermon Title: "Deep Casting, Abundant Sowing"

What does my experience fishing in South Padre Island have to do with the Gospel's call on our lives? Come and see this Sunday as we talk about fishing, sowing, and ministry.

Fall is certainly here, with a little hint of cooler weather and lots of activities at Grace. If you haven't been around in a while, come and see the beautiful pumpkins in the pumpkin patch and learn about all the exciting things taking place at Grace!

See you Sunday!

peace,

will

Is it the end of handwriting?

I saw this interesting piece in the morning's Washington Post:

The Handwriting Is on the Wall

It raises the interesting issue of the demise of teaching penmanship is schools due to technology and what effect that might have on society. I had penmanship instruction in school, I learned cursive, but I realized a few years back that I have forgotten how to write in cursive. Perhaps I should switch to a handwritten blog to get my skills back.

peace,

will

A Picture in Search of a Caption

Since he was riding on my back, I don't know what was going on with Joshua at this moment, but the picture is just too funny.

peace,

will

Vacation Recalled

Alisha is sorting through the vacations photos. This is sunset from the deck of the place we stayed.

peace,

will

I'm back

In case you were waiting... I am back from vacation, back in my office, ready to get back to work. As usually, another week with too much to do and too little time to do it. But, of course, there are always a few moments to post, even if there isn't much of value to say.

peace,

will

More Vacation Reading

My good friend Jen Austin has her first book out and vacation finally gave me the time to give it the attention it deserved. I read it before it came out, but read it in bits and chunks and missed the flow. Jen has asked me to write some things for the promo material for the book. I thought I would use the blog as a place to try out some of my thoughts.

If you are interested in the book, you can purchase it here:

Jen Austin - Coming Out Christian - Finding Wholeness in Faith and Sexuality

Here is the rough draft of my review:

As a pastor, I spend a lot of time trying to help people to read the Bible. I try to get them to understand that the Bible is a story of the history of God'’s people and their struggle to be God'’s people. If we read it that way instead of as a list of legalistic and contradictory codes of conduct we start to truly see who God is and who we are.

I believe that the Bible is perfect the way it is, but I don'’t think that we are done telling stories. In order to continue to grow we must continue our struggle to be God'’s people. In order to do that, we need to share our stories, our stories of our own struggle to be faithful to God and to each other.

I try to be patient with the intolerance of others, but I try to help people understand our need to hear each other's stories. Before one can even begin to understand how someone else lives in relationship to God, one must hear their story. One can not proclaim someone as sinful or Godless or anything else unless they truly know them.

JenÂ’s story of her struggle to understand herself and her creator shows us what can happen when we truly put our faith and trust in God and the struggles that can occur when anyone, gay or straight turns their back and fails to accept the unconditional love that God offers us all.

Jen truly helps us to see the broader understanding of sin as she leads us through her struggle from seeing her homosexuality as a sin to seeing her failure to accept God'’s unconditional love as the sin. In not accepting God'’s acceptance, Jen had separated herself from God much more than any violation of some misconstrued law from Leviticus could. It was only by starting to realize that God had made her and loves her as she is that she was able to fully embrace God'’s love.

When you read this book, sexuality gains such a deeper definition. It is far more than our impulses toward the opposite or same sex, it is something that exists at the depth of our soul, something given to us as a gift from God. Jen seems to understand this and treats her sexuality accordingly with a much better sense of the presence of God than most heterosexuals Christians I know.

We should consider it a great gift the Jen has felt obliged to share her story with us. In it, we can find ourselves, God, and love that surpasses the rules and boundaries that humanity has placed on it.

A little time off... a little reading

I feel like the "What Will is Reading Now" section on my weblog has remained static quite a while. For me, I actually find it helpful to have those books sitting there for everybody to see. It hold me accountable to always be reading and it removes the temptation to just put a book back on the shelf (unless it is really bad, in which case I will put it back on the shelf and then write about how bad it was.)

Last night, I finally finished Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Gilead won the Pulitzer prize, which I totally understood when I finished it but not always when I started reading it. The book is written from the perspective of a elderly pastor writing to his young son before his death. The pastor was remarried to a much younger woman late in life and regrets that he will not watch his son grow up, so he leaves him with these words.

As I was reading the book, I thought it was really slow, but then I realized that it was sort of my fault. I was trying to read the book in little snippets, mostly before bed. The book has no chapters, although it is broken into some short sections, but I guess I really like chapters for pre-bed reading.

Once I got away and was able to read in larger chunks, I realized what a fantastic book it is. It contains a very deep theology and an clear glimpse into the life and mind of a rural pastor. In this fictional account of a father's last words to his son we get an amazing look at some pretty heavy theological concepts like sin, grace and forgiveness.


Off I go. More reading to do.

peace,

will

Greetings From South Padre Island

Alisha, Joshua, Bodhi, Violet and I send our greetings from South Padre Island. In this pictures Alisha is behind me taking the picture and Bodhi is in the surf somewhere. See y'all soon.

peace,

will

Making Up Stuff to Worry About

I get a lot of emails and I actually try to read them all. I am still amazed at the number of forwarded emails I get warning me about things that are just not true. There are so many things in this world to worry about (apparently even spinach) that is amazes me that people find pleasure in making more things up and then spreading them around the internet. In a way, these warning are a form of computer virus in that they are designed to be spread eating up bandwidth and, in effect, slowing down the world wide web.

Here is one of the latest making its way around the web:

Southern California law enforcement professionals assigned to detect new threats to personal security issues, recently discovered what type of information is embedded in the credit card type hotel room keys used through-out the industry.

Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from the Double Tree chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft Presentation was found to contain the following the information:

• Customers (your) name
• Customers partial home address
• Hotel room number
• Check in date and check out date
• Customers (your) credit card number and expiration date!

---

This would be a very important warning, except that it just isn't true! Check out this article about the issue on snopes.com:

Claim: Hotel room keycards are routinely encoded with personal information which can be easily harvested by thieves. - snopes.com

Just doing my part to help you worry less.

peace,

will

One More Sermon, Then a Nap

I am on vacation next week and things are a little different here at Grace this morning. The choir from Oak Hill UMC in Austin, where I last served is singing this morning in worship. The will present Robert Ray's Gospel Mass during 9:45 and 11:00 worship. It is going to be fantastic.

As to not ask them to perform three times in a row, I will be preaching at 8:30. Today is World Communion Sunday, so I will be preaching about our oneness in Christ across the globe. Since most of you won't get to hear this sermon, I will try to post the audio version on the weblog before I leave for vacation. If not, it will be there when I get back.

peace,

will