Disaster Area

Women and the Church

There's been so much swirling around in my brain the last few weeks that I feel guilty about not getting around to writing about some it. A lot of it has been prompted by the role of women in the church.

It started back in September when I had a chance to spend half a day with Maggi Dawn over in Cambridge. One of the many things we talked about was sparked by a question she asked me about the feminization of the church – basically, has it alienated men?

My short answer was that the church has always been run mostly by women, they just haven't been able to hold the reins of leadership officially for most of church history, and even today there are only limited parts of the world where they are allowed (almost) equal power.

This is a huge issue, because the vast majority of the Emergent/Emerging Church (not a) movement is dealing with the issue for the first time, being comprised mostly of people emerging from a fundamentalist evangelical perspective where women can basically do anything they want, as long as it's limited to making the coffee after church.

One More Reason to Love Google

Have you ever watched a TV ad and been struck by the music used, but you have no clue what it is? Happens to me all the time. One current ad that intrigues me is the Cingular (oops, now back to AT&T again) ad for the Samsung Blackjack phone. It took a bit of digging around on Google, but I found a terrific website for just the occasion - "Music from TV commercials". Lots of vintage TV ads in there, too, with links to them on Youtube, no less.

Turns out the music in question is Stinging Sitars x9 by Anjali, available on iTunes. There, that was easy.

Catching Up

Wow, two weeks of radio silence. You probably thought I'd been captured by aliens or something. Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid, but it has been a busy couple of weeks.

Jan 2: First day back at work, except it was a short day and I worked from home.

Jan 3-4: Offsite work meeting on the Seattle waterfront. Very interesting.

Jan 5: Start teaching airplane design at the University of Washington.

Jan 6-7: Weekend!

Jan 8-10: Trip to the AIAA Aerospace Sciences meeting at Reno, NV. Gave a couple of presentations (Mentoring, Interviewing), attended various committee meetings. Flew back the night of Wednesday Jan 10, landing at Seattle in a snowstorm. Had to execute a go-around on landing, which got everyone on board nervous. Remember whan passengers routinelya appluaded on landing? Well, most people did this time, too. There's nothing quite like a minor brush with mortality to make you realize that life's still mostly fun. Then I had to brush four inches of snow off the car and ended up taking three hours to drive the 10 miles to get home. Speed from Reno to Seattle: 500 mph. Speed from Seattle to home: 3 mph.

Jan 11: Snowed in at home. Fortunately, high speed internet, webex and telephones still worked, so I could still be productive.

Jan 12: More teaching at UW, went straight from there to staffing a Diocesan youth weekend at St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle (the ugliest cathedral in the known universe... but don't just take my word for it. Ship of Foools mystery worshipper says: "Unattractive and confusing contemporary exterior, a combination of stone, wood and brick." What they fail to mention is that it has all the attractive qualities of the 1930's concrete blockhouse it really is. Are the 1930's really that contemporary?)

Jan 13-14: Still at St Mark's. Get home Sunday around mid-day to catch the Seattle Seahawks playoff game (they lost.)

Jan 15: Finally make it into work! But it snows again overnight, leading to...

Jan 16: Snowed in at home. It's really not so much the snow, as the ice it turns into as soon as anyone drives on it. Fortunately, temperatures are climbing above freezing, leading to:

Jan 17: Work again! Followed by leading youth group, which had been canceled the week before due to the snow.

Which brings us up to date. There you go.

Happy New Year

Um, yeah, I guess that sums it up.

2007, it's like James Bond's number, but with a "2" in front. It's also the day of the month I was born, with two zeros in the middle. Coincidence? I'll let you be the judge.