Monday moan

There are two more posts on Into the Silent Land coming, but first let me release a long, low gasp of day-after drudgery...

• Were you aware of the "Super Bowl" yesterday? Ha! How could you not be, right?! We enjoyed getting together with our daughter's family and took in the spectacle (at least into the third quarter). I once considered this the pinnacle of American life. What's not to like about a reason for folks to gather together over food and entertainment that seemingly offered something for everyone: sports (the game), music (the pregame & halftime shows), and artistry (the commercials). So why does this year seem so different?
• For starters, maybe it's just me, or my age, or maybe I've just never been aware of how really out-of-step this spectacle is with stuff-of-earth reality (much less the ways of Jesus). I mean, we have two franchises built on capitalistic greed, owned by billionaire families (the rich get richer), who in slightly different ways have weaseled their way into the hearts of 'Merica's pocketbooks, in a sport known to cause harm and crippling disability to its participants, in a league steeped in ol'-boy injustice, who've created an event built on all the consumerist, celebrity-culture-driven slatherings of the worst vices known to man... and, gee... what could be wrong? I mean, as I sat there on the couch with my grandkids in the room I started to feel a little "dirty." Like, we weren't being offered something... We were being manipulated. Maybe worse: bought & sold! It simply started to feel... too much. Not that I want to be the morality police or a bible thumping holy-roller... I suddenly started to feel like a foreigner in a strange land though. Like, what's going on? What have we become?
  
• I don't know. Maybe it had something to do with finding out marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum and his coach were killed in a car accident in Kenya. Reading about his humble life and upbringing is a pretty sharp contrast to what was happening in Las Vegas (of all places to hold the SB). Couple that with news of the shooting at Joel Osteen's megachurch in Texas where an armed woman was killed by church security (who apparently also shot a small child; and it's unclear yet how another man was wounded)... And the Houston police chief right away blaming the woman for the child getting shot, and... can you imagine someone being gunned down, DEAD at a church service!!!!! Jesus!
  
• Personally, though, and maybe ironically, I'd like to not let all the above sidetrack me from what happened at our church gathering yesterday. We had several people get baptized. And one of them was the pastor! Yes, he'd been baptized as a child, but I was proud of him for doing something a lot of pastors I know either don't have the guts to do, or congregations that would allow it. He likened it to the bus driver informing everyone on board that he needed to go get his driver license. To me it was a humbling gesture that we are always on journey and God can do crazy stuff at any time and through all kinds of different ways. I felt honored to talk about it with him before he took the "plunge." 

So, there's just a few notes to get the week started here. I have begun reading Life Together by Diethrich Bonhoeffer. I've read much about this book, but don't believe I've ever actually read the real thing (or, in this case, a translation of it).

Carry on.