Terse Week 5

preaching slump? forgotten how to paint a picture with words?
listen to Alexander McCall Smith's The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency on audio books.
Smith helps you see, taste, feel and smell Botswana.
good stuff.

St.Casserole

2008 Festival of Homies

Who is going to the Festival of Homies this year?


I'll be there.



St. Casserole

Picture is from the 2008 Festival of Homiletics website.

I'm off to the College of Preachers Monday to hear John Bell. I'll preach two sermons to people who I pray will be gentle, kind, and deaf.


You are thinking that I'm doing AN AWFUL LOT of Continuing Ed. these days.


Correct. I'm making up for about ten years of staying home with children and going to nearby events like the Turnip Preaching and Mule Pull Festival or the Karaoke Bar and Grill Homiletical Hash Run. I can't forget to mention the Delta Blues and Bible Thumpers Conference, either.

Up at the Hogwarts Meets Jesus building, I'll be grateful to see Stacey and another favorite blogger who has a cat with extra toes like my Dubby.

Wish I'd see you, too.

Love,

St. Casserole

The proper homiletical accountrement for sermon writing:



in Winter, the pink bathrobe with coffee stains and big pockets. In Spring and Summer, the beltless blue seersucker thrift store robe



highlighters and theUniball gold pen with teeth marks



quiet, no phone calls



cats, only if sleeping and off papers



coffee, iced tea or diet coke unless one is drinking water during Lent



do not brush your hair*



Bibles, exegetical research materials, books of poetry, P.J. James and a newspaper**



St. Casserole

*if you brush your hair, you may be tempted to run out of the house
**you-know-who suggested this

What a wonderful Advent Retreat! Woo! Woo! Everybody relaxed, ate, read books and played. Laughed often, napped well and stared at the Caribbean water...

Now I focus again on the Fourth Sunday of Advent tomorrow. I changed from the Matthew text to Luke on the ship, then re-wrote my sermon. Sermon prep on a boat deck thrilled me although I had a difficult time hearing myself over the reggae and rock music from the band. Being dour Calvinist, I pushed away all offers of umbrella drinks for iced tea and kept writing.

No one asked me what I was doing. Being dour rather discourages questions.

I thought of you all while I was gone. Glad to be home again.

St. Casserole, Living a hard life...

Rev. Bird Dog says he gives up the ministry every Monday following Easter Sunday. He says he gives it up, without a backward glance....until he gets rest.

Is Daylight Saving Time a governmental reminder that we are exhausted? Around the Casserole home everyone is worn out. We go to bed earlier and stomp around cranky through these short light days. If I didn't love them, I'd holler at them about being crabby and turned inward through the early Winter days.

James Howell writes about "Staying Power" in the Oct. 30 Christian Century. Howell tells the story of the night he decided to leave the ministry which turned out to be the night he decided to stay in ministry. He doesn't say when this night occurred but it may have been in November.

I imagine he was tired. Aren't we all just aching for a deep sleep and several good naps?

It's Advent almost. I will put aside Luke and the current lectionary to sprint with delight to a new year of texts. Not that I haven't gotten more out of the Luke year than I ever have before but because I am tired of trying to compose sermons to bring Jesus' words to a tired and worn-out world.

I head off to Manhattan next week for my Annual Shopping, Food and Theater Pilgrimage. Miss P. and I have nothing planned: no tickets to see Radio Music Hall or TV shows or anything. She's worn out, too.

Ministry is tiring. Frustrating. Provoking of anger, rebellion and chaos. Writing sermons makes me feel like a beginner every week even though I have years of experience.

Stay and rest, people. Stay and wait, people. Stay and watch, people.

St. Casserole

I've been off line with AT&T modem problems. My modem went bad.

Workers are here at our home caulking, repairing and standing around looking at potential job areas.

John Calvin (pictured left) inspires me to proceed as best I am able, with God's grace, forward.

Nothing much else to report except my sermon which is mostly in my head but will be on paper tonight.

Yours,

St. Casserole

Laundry, tons of laundry to do today. Being gone for a week means the house is knee high in trash, dirty clothing and bottle caps on every floor. Whistle the Cat keeps bottle-cap soccer going all the time.

I felt rested today. I hit the wall Friday night, all day Saturday and after the hours on Sunday, felt that I should crawl to a corner and just snore. Not that I snore. If I did make any noise, it would be a gentle purr so comforting to the hearer that he wouldn't remember it the next morning.

The YCW Conference wore me out. I love all of it but kept later and earlier busy hours than I do usually. I was the one to tell all the party gals to "go to bed" Thursday night after the second shift of partiers began to laugh like monkeys.

I'm missing the conference women. I loved their voices, ideas and energy for ministry. I loved hearing different ways of approaching preaching with our leader and feel that the combo of Festival of Homies in May and this Testimony conference have upped my preaching mojo.

Here's a note for Zorra: thanks for letting me know that "fireball eucharist" is from Walker Percy and means "fibroids in the uterus". I woke up the other night, before I read your comment and thought, "Rats! I got that wrong!".

Yours,

St. Casserole

As I ponder weak and weary,
the sermon that is bleak and dreary

Here's some comfort for you preachers this morning: Dr. James Forbes, newly retired pastor of NYC Riverside Church, gets criticized for his preaching. See today's NYtimes.com for the article.

Is there hope for the rest of us if this wonderful homiletician has church members who don't like his preaching?

Whoa. He's one of my favorite preachers on the planet. I heard him first, in the 70's, at Columbia Seminary and to this day, I can recall what he said. He's a native North Carolinian (why is it that so many great preachers are from NC?)whose sermons are a wealth of intelligence, love of the Gospel and prophetic witness.

What do those crabby Riversiders want? A lock-jaw speaking, thin-lipped dry preacher?

Puleeze! Let's just say that we all may take comfort when even Jim Forbes has detractors.

I'm off to Little Church in a few hours. God willing, my sermon will come together before I cross the town limits,

St. Casserole