Various and Sundry
So I spent my first night alone in my big, empty house. Initially, I felt very lonely, but quickly diverted my focus on patrolling the place to see where I should begin my work. I picked up a new vacuum cleaner, which is a total piece of shit on the carpet, forcing me to go in search of parts for my old one. Miss Maddie enjoyed the greater degree of freedom of free roam of the house, since I no longer have to worry about her being with people who won't pay attention to her and train her. She also got to spend the night outside of her crate, which is a pretty good thing, except for the hour she spent between 4 and 5 am licking herself at the foot of my bed.

All in all, I am embracing a new routine of going to work, giving it my all here, coming home to take care of my little, four-legged princess, and organizing the tasks I need to start working on to get my house transformed into a home that will be a refuge for my family biological and in Christ. Room by room, I am hatching masterful plans to use my space to its best effect.

Projects that are at the top of the list:

1. Reconfigure the basement into a workshop for getting the other stuff done. I'll be moving walls, mostly, so it shouldn't be a big problem.
2. Setting up a second floor office for myself.
3. Switching the dining room and TV room so that I can fit more people around my table.
4. Installing countertops and shelves in the sunroom to start growing some houseplants. I love doing that stuff, and I have some literature for forcing bulbs to bloom inside during the winter. I will be growing daffodils, hyacinths and tulips.
5. Putting an opening into the dividing wall between the sunroom and breakfast nook to allow more light and interactivity in my kitchen space.
6. Setting up a workout room on the second floor.
7. Putting up hooks and shelves for coats and hats in the entryway.

Before I do any of that stuff, however, I need to clean, clean, clean. Nothing has been done for well over a month while the exodus of D was taking place. Now I am much, much more motivated to bring this dump up to my level of cleanliness.

Shifting gears, I wanted to write a bit on the Jerry Bowyer afternoon talk program on WORD-FM. When I first wrote about Jerry, my perspective was completely colored by my knowledge of the events surrounding his divorce and re-marriage. After listening to his shows for three months, I have to say that my opinions have changed quite a bit. Jerry is a very knowledgeable person in a variety of areas - politics, theology, church history - and is very capable of conversing intelligently with people from all sorts of traditions. Additionally, he's not as hostile to things going on as Minto was. That aspect is a bit of a double-edged sword for me, as he tends not to take real strong stands on significantly questionable theology that many of his callers seem to have, but that has also tended to elicit a much more varied response and open dialogue.

It appears that Jerry is now an Episcopalian, which tends to lead to a lot more discussion surrounding the history of Christian liturgy and the origins of various theological traditions and worship practices. Which I find intensely interesting.

As I've continued to tune in, I've found myself wanting to dig deeper into these things myself. For instance, although (like The Unseen Blogger), I could probably never become a Catholic, I am beginning to believe that many of the practices of the RCC and other liturgical denominations have major benefits for those who could implement them in their approach to God with integrity and understanding. Confession, for instance, is something that is sorely lacking from most evangelical contexts. Confession, as I understand it from Scripture, is BOTH to God and to OTHERS. The RCC practice of confession seems to take into account what evangelicals consistently miss. You can't just go around confessing your sins to everyone with whom you happen to enter into a conversation. Most Christians that I know simply can't be trusted to not use that information in some way that will come back to hurt me. Moreover, even those whom I do trust aren't getting the whole story most of the time because of the enormous amount of shame that goes along with having committed sin in the first place. And yet, the impulse to go to another person with my burdens can at times feel overwhelming. It almost feels as if I NEED to tell someone else. The RCC structure of confession takes those feelings of need, shame and mistrust into account by virtue of the priestly vow of confidentiality. Anyone who is burdened can walk into just about any Catholic church during confession times and have access to this gift. It gets a little squirrely for me when you get into penance, and I would avow that you can choose any believer as a confessor, as long as the trust and confidentiality are present.

There are a bunch of models within evangelicalism that seem to try and get at this. In our church, we have something called the Triple Cord program, which is really an accountability and prayer group of around three men. Some of my friends meet every week to hold each other accountable for being mentally faithful to their wives -- i.e. - not checking out chicks all day long, wondering what they'd look like naked, and focusing on the way other women arouse you when you're trying to make love to your wife. I think it's fair to say that this is a prevalent issue among any man with a pulse. I know it is with me. But what about those deep, dark things that you struggle with that may not be easy for others to hear and still maintain a loving attitude towards you? It's clear to me that Scripture teaches us that the only way to be free of these issues is to continually bring them into the light until they disintegrate in the Spirit's purifying fire like a vampire dissolves into a dust pile if they get caught outside at daybreak. Part of that process has to be confession to another person. Studies have shown that actually calling a thing what it is, without clarifying or rationalizing, is critical to breaking out of destructive patterns.

Anyway, I've become an interested listener of the Jerry Bowyer program and believe that there is a great potential to have certain conversations that need to be had within the Christian community surrounding the 'Burgh. I'd also be interested in starting some conversations about how sincere believers and followers of Christ can borrow and use traditions other than their own, as opposed to taking militant stances in attacking the things they either don't understand, aren't called to embrace, or reflect conclusions of practicality to which they've not yet arrived.

It's becoming very apparent to me that this is one of the biggest problems facing the church. Reformation is needed, but prior to reformation must come understanding, humility and submission to the reality that none of us knows everything.
- posted by The Drake @ 10:31 AM