I’m sitting here with the laptop tonight, as a fire slowly dies in the hearth across the room, catching up on Rachel Maddow, finishing off a glass of red, and still feeling the glow of a big moon, hanging low in the sky that was simply gorgeous.

With that, a few synapse clippings for you, on this mid-January night….

The cleaning project that I blogged about the other night continues unabated. Friday, I framed about ten pieces of art, and hung them on the walls….moving around other pieces. So far, we’ve made major changes to the study, the dining room, and our bedroom. Interestingly, Maria has also taken an interest in cleaning up her room too.

Right at this moment, our house is probably as straight and clean as it’s been in the seven-plus years that we’ve lived here.

Listening for God: Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith
Mondays at Northaven UMC, 6:30

This is a class that I’ll be teaching this winter, which takes short stories and chapters from famous authors, and “listens” for the ways we may, or may not, hear God working in them. The goal is not to lay theological thoughts on top of a text, or reinterpret them in some doctrinal way, but instead to hear the ways that issues of spirit can intersect and be present.

Authors in this session will include: Flannery O’Connor, Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, Richard Rodriguez, Raymond Carver, Alice Walker, and others.

We had our first session Monday night, and I was so pleased to have 27 persons show up! If you’d like to join us, contact me, or simply feel free to come by this coming Monday.

We were honored to host an interfaith prayer service at Northaven this past Tuesday afternoon. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, American Indians, and many others came together to offer prayers for the situation in Gaza and Israel. Robin Hackett offered her great version of “Imagine.” I got the chance to pray, and to play my song “Ishmael and Isaac.”

It was a marvelous afternoon of prayer, and Mike Ghouse has posted some pictures here. It’s a great honor to be able to hosts these kinds of events. Last Tuesday also just happened to be “Epiphany,” a day in our tradition where people of differing faiths gathered together, followed a star, and shared their gifts. A very fitting night.

Speaking of my song, the video has been getting some nice hits, and several requests for a downloadable version. So, I’ve uploaded a couple of hi res versions, and updated the blog entry. Feel free to check it out, and to download it if you’d like to share it with others.

You all know that I am a huge Longhorn fan. And most of you know that Texas was one of the main school that got screwed by this year’s BCS process. So, I am all for making things right. But, this is ridiculous.

Wait…isn’t Joe Barton, a conservative Republican, who believes in keeping government out of our lives?

Whatever.

I’m for a playoff. But this isn’t gonna really help anything, is it?

Our Connections Band founding members met last Thursday, and we’re meeting again this Thursday. We should be able to announce a whole new raft of shows perhaps as early as Friday. We also hear that they’ll be a major story about the band, running in the UMR soon. we’ll keep you posted on that too.