Christmas Tumbleweeding in Florida

Wandered on down to Nashville in the rain and put ourselves to bed in the Holiday Inn Express eating grocery store food while watching TV. We "stayed up late" (10 PM!)

Headed south the next morning -- a decision comes soon---Westerly to New Orleans or Easterly to Florida...
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After a passable night near the Florida border (By passable I mean everything except the hour-long debate between two guys outside at 2AM and the baby next door whining itself awake at 5:30 AM) [Bless all those moms with babies]...
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We had some sun and book-reading knowing that rain was coming.... we headed into Florida and the rain returned... "but it's a dry rain" ;-) Well, at least a warm rain.
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We're having fun wandering about.... pretending that the journey is the destination..... stopping now to get a 1 lb "WhatABurger" for our lunch and then we're thinking of wandering through Ocala National "forest" then down the East coast... or not, or maybe...whatever....

Merry Christmas Eve!
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We drove on Daytona Beach, something I did at age 12 the last time…. it is still drivable... we did some bird watching then kept driving south on A1A down the tiny slit of land out in the ocean until we ran out of hotels. Finally found a Dirty-Day's-Inn where other homeless people were staying... up that is.. the big evening Christmas party lasted until 2AM but with earplugs we outslept them and awoke late ... walked on the beach again, saw more birds...
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Now south some more and toured Hobe Sound Bible College which was more than we expected... even saw a guy wearing SHORTS on the campus—whew! Otherwise a time tunnel--circa 1955.
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Then westerly to Lake Okeechobee remembering a campsite there in 60 MPH winds in the 70's... now North to Lakeland where we plan to spend the night.
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Sharon's sprint access allows the shotgun rider to dial up the Internet to monitor the roads, look up questions, resole arguments. or send emails -- while the other person is driving... not many emails for me—I’m on vacation.
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Big rains this afternoon amidst tornado like clouds--no problem, we're from Indiana they looked normal to us. (though we found out later they blew away many roofs)
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Next day, dodging Tornados we headed north again. Wound up near Winterhaven and took in a spy movie in the evening....
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Next morning by 10 am we're off tumbleweeding again, the first shower-per-diem passing a while ago... today we're going to look at an historic Holiness site I visited as a child-- Lakeland Holiness camp meeting--if we can find it, then maybe let the wind blow us past another major holiness tourist site--Brooksville (AKA Headquarters.alt)
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Floating with the current we found Lakeland Holiness Camp Meeting grounds, a place I last visited at age 12. Sure enough, while everything else changes, an independent camp meeting is predictably the same. It is sort of a "poor man's Brooksville" or I should say a "Brooksville for the separatist holiness movement folk"... that would be those who still don't cut their hair(women) but they allow themselves expensive cars--Caddies, Lincolns, and super-Buicks...interesting where one denies or allows excesses --all of us do I suppose. The "cultural Holiness movement" is holed up in places like this awaiting.... awaiting something.
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After this we drove through WesleyenBrooksville and "did every street." We were delighted to see how that place has developed. They have another bunch of acres with $150,000-$200,000 homes springing up like weeds.... "Wesleyan Village" is for the NextGen of retirees.... impressive....

It is a symbol of one of the things I LIKE about the old-folk-Wesleyans.. across the board when the chips were down that generation voted with the next generation rather than protecting its own preferences and possessions... these are the folk who permitted youth conventions to look like rock concerts and hired the teens to rake their leaves to get money to go to them, these are the adults who swallowed their own music and let "praise choruses" dominate worship...they paid for buildings they didn;t need for themselves... and so much more....this is just one more example here in Brooksville-they risked having a bunch of their own camp-meeting-type cottages on the market unsold so that they could expand for the next generation... they knew the next generation would not retire in camp meeting cottages or rusty trailers ….so now the boomers will have a tidy place to retire to.... that match the laymen's houses and parsonages they had in life....the boomers get everything.
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Then we hastened to Gainesville and fell asleep in our hundred dollar beds....we like Country Inn & suites best... then drove the next day to Knoxville where we had a delightful breakfast with Jim & Tommie Barnes, former Pres at IWU cum educational consultants afterwich we drove all the way home to our beloved Marion and returned to our own beds at the end of a week of wandering pronouncing it a good 2700 mile ramble.
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Now we are catching up at home and are headed to Houghton where Sharon is the feature speaker at some sort of adult education conference this coming week --so hi to all my friends who are getting to Florida a week after I left.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee! Grades are in!

Christmas break is here! WHEEEEEEE!

1. I turned in my grades yesterday (we now do that on the Internet instead of with the "blue envelopes" so I can do it from home.

2. Today we faculty hung around and chatted sans students--it is like youth camp the day after the campers leave.

3. Tonight the President has a reception for all IWU employees (850+ people) and their families. We eat little deserts and goodies and visit and just generally have an "office party" with 1500 people attending. Best of all the President gives everybody a Christmas check. It can be a really NICE check some years (last year it was 750 bucks!) but even nicer than that--every single person gets the same check--from a janitor or secretary to a Vice president. Everybody thinks that's cool--especially people or earn ten bucks an hour! but we all like it.

4. Students are hearing from seminary. I'll let them share it first but for now the numbers:
1 - Princeton Theo. Seminary
4 - Duke Divinity school

5. Tomorrow is Commencement. So actually I'm not done yet--I have to put on my fancy dress and walk the aisle tomorrow and bid farewell to some of our seniors.

--gotta go get my check now... ;-)

Old people in chapel

Today in chapel a funny thing happened. We had African-American choral music leading the first part of worship. They led with a classic hard-driving AA style that made normal chapel music look like old fashioned hymns.

Guess what happened. The audience stiffed them. Really! The students at IWU simply stood (or sat down, like nine students near me did) and watched the leaders try to get them involved. At one point the AA leader with one of the microphones called, "Hello--are you out there" but to no avail. 90% of these broad-minded students who criticize old people for being narrow-minded about worship just wouldn't play along when it was't their worship music--they acted exactly like old people do when urged to "get into it" and sing the newer songs. I counted a whole section--not more then one out of ten students "got into it." that's it.

Then everything changed. After 25 minutes of AA music the group sang one of the songs on the "student approved list" --you know tone of the 25 songs we do over and over in chapel. --It is almost like the students have a list of approved songs like the school has a (short) list of approved "R" movies students can watch. If the song is not on the list they all somehow know they should stiff the leaders.

Are these are the same students who complain when THEY lead worship that the old people "don't get into it." Are they any different than a bunch of old people in the first service who stand non-committal when the young worship leader is urging them to join him in his favorite worship songs???

How can this be?

Final Approach

We’re on the final approach now toward the end of the semester.

1. Had a neat Thanksgiving with both sons & Families home. We had a real turkey one day and a giant ham the other. We exchanged gifts and I got a bonus gift of a whopping head cold from my granddaughter Karina.

2. I finished grading all the “Drury books” for Church Leadership today—tried a new thing (having them due before Thanksgiving). Really makes for a softer landing.

3. The head honcho of the theological Accrediting association is here today to chat about a potential seminary – still at the “unofficial chatting” point.

4. That’s about it around here… I’ll be buried in papers the next two weeks….

The book will happen!

I sent in my sample chapter of the book on the Apostle’s Creed and my publisher went for it. OK what this means now:

1. Now I must schedule the entire book writing and rewriting between now and August 15 when final copy is due. That must allow for writing 12-15 chapters and then the arduous task of about ten rewrites.

2. I have to put finishing the “Trail of Death” walk manuscript on hold for a while—OR I might work on the final “sidebar essays” for that as recreation—we’ll see.

3. I have to eliminate 300 hours of other stuff in order to add this book—I’m making a list now.

……… I’ll keep you up to date-not that you are waiting with bated breath ;-)

IN OTHER NEWS…

1. The semester is in its final mode… flaps are down, and the runway is in sight. Students are requesting prayer for being “so overloaded” and believe they will never again be this busy (heh heh heh… if they only knew….;-)

2. Steve Lennox is preaching almost every week in chapel—and he is getting even better—I’ve only missed one so far this year.

3. The religion division is working on hiring two or perhaps three additional professors next year along with anticipating Bud Bence coming back to the division.

4. We are seriously talking about founding a seminary at IWU… while it is still at the exploration stage, it is exciting to see the new ideas that will change “seminary as we know it” and make everyone who has not gone to seminary yet want to go.

5. Dave and John & families are coming here for “Thanksmas” our every-other-year family celebration (we do a family Christmas-at-a-cabin the other years.

6. I am looking forward to going on vacation “toward” Key West with Sharon Christmas week, then “coming back through Houghton, New York where Sharon is speaking.

7. I got next semester’s schedule: Intro to pastoral Ministries (again!) along with leadership, LCE and curriculum class.—sounds great!

8. I am gearing up to read a mile high stack of “papers” (AKA “Drury books”) coming in starting Thanksgiving week.

9. Everything else in Marion is ordinary.

Today I am missing Mark & Jess, Paul and Brooke, Josh, Cece, Steve, Kaylee, Jeremy, Andrea, Jared, Rudy, Marcelo, Kevin, and Sam...

For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?
--1 Thessalonians 2:19

Time to write a chapter of this new book

I HAVE BEEN RESEARCHING and reading for more than a year to write something on the Creed (mostly Apostle’s though including Nicene). I wrote a proposal to my publisher and they are interested and want a sample chapter before they issue a contract. That makes sense because I live in a non-Creedal denomination—why would they want a book on the creed? My goal is to write in a different style, less “instructional” and more devotional and praise-inspiring. We’ll see if I am up to that.

ANYWAY yesterday I finally knocked out a first draft of chapter two: “Creator of heaven and earth.” I usually don’t start with a front chapter in a book and didn’t here (e.g. I believe, or Father or Almighty).

IS IT ANY GOOD? Who knows? I can’t tell. A writer does their best and lets it to editors and reviewers to decide if it ever meets the light of day, then of course my readers will decide if they agree with the publishers.

IF IT NEVER GETS PUBLISHED I’ll probably write it anyway. I am in the stage of life where the core beliefs of the Christians are more important—an old fellow is not required to believe anything at all to keep his job or advance politically. As my fellow boomers approach their 60’s and later they too will have to determine all over again what they really hold personally and not just what they held due to their association with friends and family. So we will be just like the 20something folk—examining their core beliefs and either affirming them or walking away in unbelief. Those who already went through a meltdown in their younger years often hold firm through this echo effect, those who never faced the big issues sometimes lose their faith in their heart and never tell their spouses or people at church—they die secret agnostics and secretly in spiritual despair.

I ALREADY KNOW WHERE I’LL COME OUT, because I’ve already come out on this—I hold firmly by choice to the “Common Ground” that Christians everywhere at all times have always believed…. (my working title for this book). So I’ll be writing an uplifting book reminding us all what we Christians all hold in common—and always have. The last year or two’s research reading for this book has been filled with the likes of Alister McGrath, Luke Timothy Johnson, Ray Prichard, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Hans Urs von Balthasar, William Barclay, Martin Luther, Emil Brunner, Karl Barth, Thomas Aquinas, & Augustine. I can’t go wrong reading these people—even if I never wrote a book at all!.

(AS FOR SCHOOL and classes there is no special news…we’re in the doldrums after mid term… this week we start registration/advising for second semester and there is an FNL… nothing else of significance… it is the quiet before the final push of the semester….)

Monday Afternoon with Yoder

Monday is my “reading afternoon” and has been ever since, well, ever since last week. ;-)

Today I read John Howard Yoder’s “Body Politics” which my son John assigned to me. Great read!

In this book Yoder covers five practices of the church which are “sacraments yet not sacramentalism” with a mind-bending Anabaptist approach to each that if the church took seriously would be a “witness to a watching world.” They are:
1. Binding and loosing
2. Baptism
3. Eucharist
4. Multiplicity of gifts.
5. Open meeting

But don’t get the idea that these titles cover the content of the book—the way he bends these five practices to describe what the body of Christ should look like is wonderful. What a wonderful afternoon. The book is a little book and fairly inexpensive… I hope you read it (if you are reading this and a recent graduate and want to see the church be something more than it is, or you are disillusioned even...you’ll want it).

It is less than ten bucks newfrom Amazon—less used.
Neat read!

Fall Break on the Knobber

Just returned from Fall "break" on the Knobstone Trail. Sharon and I hiked with Ross & Karen Hoffman. This is Sharon's first hike since her knee operation and she did fine. We got on the trail in mile 11 at route 160 (where the other three had hiked to several years ago) and walked to mile 21--then headed cross-country bushwhacking through the woods "to a road we think is over there somewhere." We came out of the woods right at the end of the road, walked out and hitched back to our car. We plan to do a leg each fall break from now on, knees willing.

It was a brisk day (frost in the morning, warming all day to 70 degrees for a moment) and we had a great time. (We knocked down several dead trees for you Mark & Jess)
I'll post a few pix.

Sharon's Damascus Road experience?

Mid term is here!

Half way. 13.1 miles of the marathon is done!

I just left campus for “fall Break”

1. It really isn’t much of a “break” for me..I have a boxful of midterms to grade—with midterm grades due Monday at noon. Rats!

2. I’m headed off with Sharon along with Ross and Karen Hoffman tomorrow to hike on the Knobstone Trail.

3. On Monday we begin our second half—which is always shorter then the first half.

4. Students are getting better sleep then they used to—at least those I teach. Are they smarter?

5. I let the seven groups in Church Leadership create their own group-mid-term questions from which I made a tailored midterm. Interesting but too many hours work for me. Never again. ;-)

6. There are no more “Health center excuses” at IWU (unless you have some serious communicable disease) so that hits some students hard now. Had a senior student who is my advisee today withdraw form a course in another division where he missed three classes already… and lost 7% of his grade for each class—a whopping 21% price tag for his flu. Now he will stay another semester and finish in December. Boy that’s rough. (But it was in the syllabus so he has no recourse). Rats!

7. Marion is on Daylight savings time now—which means we go to 7:50s in the dark.

8. I think I might be getting a section of Intro to Pastoral Ministry back next semester. This is way cool—I loved that course. Not a final decision yet.. Boss man (Dave) Smith is deciding.

9. Today was bosses day and I ate two doughnuts and enjoyed them.

10. Sharon and I went “out” to Baldwin for dinner tonight. Seems foolish to current students, but past ones will understand. ;-)

11. I’m missing people this week… people like Paul Kind, Mark Schmerse and Jess, CeCe, Brooke, Kevin Julie, Josh… so many others. But this is the life of a professor… love ‘em & they leave ya. It is supposed to be that way.

Semester 1/3 over (personal update)

We’re at the third point of the semester here. Remember—this is when the clamps start turning down. Next week we have mid terms. A week from Friday we head off on Fall “break” (actually only a single day). I’m preparing for mid terms now.

1. September was a bear for me. I have all but one of the seven(?) writing assignments done now—doing that one this week (I hope).

2. On October 31 I have a sample chapter of a new book I’ve proposed due—on the Apostle’s Creed. If it flies with the publisher then I’ll plunge into actually writing what I have been researching the last 18 months.

3. David, Kathy and the grandkids were here for homecoming—which was great!
Recently spoke to northern Indiana gathering of Salvation Army—sorta like another homecoming since I worked for them 4 years in the 1970’s

4. I’m on day 12 of a lousy cold and hacking cough [I’m giving it 21 days to go away then I’m getting discouraged]

5. Saw lots of precious alums at homecoming—now that they are gone I’m sad.
It is 70 degrees here in Marion—like summer. Blankets on the lawn even.

6. Having gotten cable TV on a special $2.95 per month deal I am making a commitment to waste one hour every day watching TV to see what I’ve been missing these last few years.

7. All other news is not ready for release yet.