Weekend Recap

First, I'll give a brief summary of our weekend, then I'll reflect on some of the things we did.

1. Friday we went to Barnes and Noble as a family. No, not to support the wholesale homogenization of American culture, but I needed to buy Karen Armstrong's A History of God for my Religion & Violence class.
2. Saturday I listened to Fr. Anthony's interview on Ancient Faith Radio, which was great.
3. Then we took the kids to a great Nature Center in Cape Girardeau.
4. Then in the afternoon we drove up to Madison, IL, to attend Vespers and stay with the Huniaks.
5. Sunday morning we went to Divine Liturgy at Nativity of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church (OCA).
6. Last night I worked four or five hours at my pizza delivery guy gig. I put 40+ miles on my car. Unbelieveable.

1. My Religion & Violence class is going to be a jarring experience as we look at essentially the worst in all three great monotheistic religions. Armstrong's gives an interesting account of the development of monotheism. She particularly disdains the western conception of Christianity. She does a less-than-average job of objective reporting of facts.
2. This nature center is big and nice. But, picture a nature appreciation exhibit as sponsored by the NRA. Everything was like, "How you can hunt [insert animal]..." Kind of comical. One nice thing, the place has great hiking trails. When Micah saw one of them he said, "can we go on an adventure? There's no dangerous species [sic] down there..." So we did. We'll have to go back some time and take full advantage of the nature center.
3. We'd never attended a Vespers service in an Orthodox Church and the Huniaks offered us beds at their house, so we took them up on it. The Huniaks have been so gracious to us, allowing us to stay in their home, feeding us, and letting our kids roam their house. And we've only known them two weeks. They're great. (btw, Huniaks, we got to WalMart and home fine :-) )
4. Sunday morning was a lot easier for us, since we didn't have to get up and leave our house at 7:30 for Liturgy. We got to relax around the house until 9 AM! Then we went to Liturgy. The kids were more of the same, asking, "Is it over yet?!" a little too loudly. They were very well-behaved for 2/3 of the service, then Amy took them downstairs. No use burning them out. They'll eventually learn to be good through the whole service. Oh, and we met the other attached priest, Fr. Oliver. He's very nice.
5. My job at the pizza place is very entertaining. I just smile and laugh at some of the off-the-wall conversations. I had the following weird deliveries last night: 1. I deliver a pizza to a big house. The adults (parents, I guess) are upstairs and say ' we didn't deliver a pizza, it must be for downstairs..' So, I walk through their house to the basement and into a room where a bunch of teens/college age people are watching TV in the dark, 'did you guys order a pizza?' Weird. 2. Apparently when someone from outside our delivery area wants a pizza we can meet them at the edge. Well, last night I delivered a pizza to the parking lot of a closed gas station. So, I'm sitting in my running car waiting, feeling conspicuous when up drives a truck, then they roll their window down. Can we say "pizza deal"?

That's the bulk of my weekend. Now I should be doing some Spanish homework.

Young Life to Orthodoxy

This week Ancient Faith Radio is airing an interview with Fr. Anthony Karbo, who was a Young Life area director and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. He's now the priest of Ss. Constantine and Helen in Colorado Springs, CO. The interview will be on at the following times:

Thu Jan 26 3:00pm CT/ 4:00pm ET
Sat Jan 28 11:00am CT/Noon Et
Mon Jan 30 7:15pm CT/8:15pm Et
Wed Feb 1 3:00am CT/4:00am ET
Fri Feb 3 2:00pm CT/3:00pm ET

As any regular readers know, I have been involved and on staff with Young Life for a few years. I'll be interested to hear Fr. Anthony's conversion story.

Whoo!

I went to my Spanish American Culture class, and it was wayyyy over my head. I could understand every few words. Anyways, I got an email from the professor telling me she had to drop me, since I haven't finished SN200 yet. I emailed her back and said that I was more than happy to drop the class. Hehe. So, I dropped that class and added Religion and Violence (Are we fur it or again' it?).
That should be an interesting class. The professor is the local Episcopal rector. I've not met him yet, but I hear he's pretty great.
Last night I had my Advanced Logic class. It's just like Symbolic Logic I ("Baby Logic"), but harder and they change just about the whole system of notation. Plus, this course involves a lot more explanation of the methods and principles of logic, rather than just learning to symbolize and check for validity all the time (but we'll do plenty of that).

This weekend will be my fourth regional Leader Weekend. It's going to be great, I'm sure. I'm going to try hard to not stir things up too much with our spiritual disciplines seminar. I probably won't even take more than one of my ikons.
Traditionally it's very cold for this weekend. Last year I got ice crystals in my beard walking to and from meals. This year it's supposed to be a high of 57. Well- no ice crystals this year. How about that?

This weekend I'll have to work hard on reviewing my Spanish and I'll have a good time teaching the seminar.
Pray for me.

Class

Yesterday was my first day back in class. What a thrill!
This is my lineup for this semester's classes:
Modern Philosophy
Symbolic Logic II
Spanish III
Spanish American Culture
Chem in our World (Intro Chem)

I'm not too worried about the difficulty of my schedule, although I am a little nervous about the Spanish American Culture class. When I picked up the book for that class, I looked at it and saw that it's completely in Spanish. I guess that makes sense, but it just scared me.
I hope the lectures are in English. I have that class today, so I guess we'll see.

This morning I'm watching the kids, then I'll go to the high school for lunch. It's getting to be more fun to visit the school, as I get to know more kids. It's hard work to walk into a school of strangers and visit. But I guess that's what's meant by "earning the right to be heard."
My awkwardness in hanging around in their school is worth it if it results in building real relationships with kids and pointing them to Christ.

Also, please keep my little brother, Noel, in your prayers. Yesterday he was sentenced to 2-10 years in prison for probation violation. Even though that's the just penalty for the crime, I still wouldn't want anything like that to happen to my kid brother. I just pray that he'll get some help for some of his things in there, and not just the usual.

St. Louis

Yesterday we drove up to St. Louis (Madison, IL, specifically), to visit a different Orthodox Church. Since we've moved an hour and a half north the church in Memphis is not the closest anymore, so we decided to try and find a parish in St. Louis to find.
Not long after we walked in one of the priests, Fr. Michael, squatted down in front of our kids in his vestments, told Alexis she looked like a princess and gave them some spiritual advice.
Our kids' eyes were big as saucers. "Who is this man in a big gold robe talking to us?"
Micah asked several times during liturgy, "when's this going to end?", and one time he said, "This song is sooo long..." We were sitting next to Lauren, the girl from SEMO, and she kept laughing at our kids' hijinks. At one point I leaned over and said to Amy, "Relax. Our kids are being at least as good as those Orthodox kids." "But those kids are little!"
After liturgy we were standing around meeting folks when the older of the two priests came and got me. We sat in a pew and visited some over our story and our interest in Orthodoxy.
After all that, we went to the Huniaks for lunch.
I can say with some authority that this was definitely our kids' favorite visit to an Orthodox Church, even though the liturgy was 2 hours long. They especially liked the chance to play afterwards.
That's the latest in our journey in, around, and to Orthodoxy.

St. Louis

Yesterday we drove up to St. Louis (Madison, IL, specifically), to visit a different Orthodox Church. Since we've moved an hour and a half north the church in Memphis is not the closest anymore, so we decided to try and find a parish in St. Louis to find.
Not long after we walked in one of the priests, Fr. Michael, squatted down in front of our kids in his vestments, told Alexis she looked like a princess and gave them some spiritual advice.
Our kids' eyes were big as saucers. "Who is this man in a big gold robe talking to us?"
Micah asked several times during liturgy, "when's this going to end?", and one time he said, "This song is sooo long..." We were sitting next to Lauren, the girl from SEMO, and she kept laughing at our kids' hijinks. At one point I leaned over and said to Amy, "Relax. Our kids are being at least as good as those Orthodox kids." "But those kids are little!"
After liturgy we were standing around meeting folks when the older of the two priests came and got me. We sat in a pew and visited some over our story and our interest in Orthodoxy.
After all that, we went to the Huniaks for lunch.
I can say with some authority that this was definitely our kids' favorite visit to an Orthodox Church, even though the liturgy was 2 hours long. They especially liked the chance to play afterwards.
That's the latest in our journey in, around, and to Orthodoxy.

Incense

When I was in high school incense was a very popular item. I remember visiting stores with their large collections of incense, mostly of the stick-variety.
Today I added a censer and incense to my prayer corner. I ordered it from Conciliar Press. I should have ordered the manual with the incense starter kit. Unfortunately, I didn't. I lit the little piece of charcoal and, after dropping it on the floor, put it in the censer and added two honking hunks of incense. Whoa. Soon fragrant smoke was pouring out, and now our entire house smells like the incense. That's not so bad, but I also apparently bought the same incense that my wife says gave her a headache at a church.
What a day.
If anyone has incense/censer pointers for me, it would be great. I mean for the incense to add to my prayer rule, not distract from it.
Pray for me.

Life

This morning I took the kids to a school screening. (Un)fortunately, they're both very bright, and so there's no preschool program offered for either of them. Micah will start Kindergarten in the fall. Alexis probably has another year or more to hang at home with me. Poor thing.
Then I took them to McDonald's for a little training in American consumerism. We had a little bit of a breakfast and they played in the Playland.
When Amy came I went to Jackson High School by myself for the second time. This time there were also three of the younger volunteer leaders. They're great. It's really weird walking around on a campus where i know barely any kids. Very nervewracking. In that way, I'm probably not very much help to my new leader friends. I'm sure we'll all do well.
This afternoon we're all driving down to campus so I can pick up my books and I've promised to buy the kids some kind of SEMO shirt. We'll see how that goes.
I start at the pizza place on Monday. Awesome. I always wanted to be a pizza guy. Next weekend I'm team teaching a seminar on spiritual formation/disciplines at the MO YL Leadership Weekend. That should be interesting.
This Sunday Amy and the kids and I are all going to church at an Orthodox Church up in the St. Louis area. Since we're closer now to St. Louis than Memphis we decided to try and find a parish up there instead of driving the three hours to Memphis to go to liturgy.
Did I mention that we got a new cat? He's from the Humane Society. He's a gray/white tabby named Ace. He's about 14 weeks old and very cute.
I've been enjoying all this time at home with the kids, but it is taking to some adjusting. I'm sure it will be a great experience for all of us.
Pray for me.

Moved

Well, we did it.
We're all moved in to our house in Jackson, MO. My dad stopped through for one day and Amy's parents were here for a week to help us with the move.
It went really smoothly. We had a bunch of help in Cville helping load the truck and were met with a bunch of help in Jackson to unload the truck.
Amy doesn't officially start work until next week, but she's going in all this week to have orientation. I guess it's going well. I know she'll do well and maybe even enjoy herself.
I am adjusting to my new stay-at-home househusband role. I fear I won't be very good at it, but the kids seem to like having me around more.
We'll see how soon they get sick of me.
Anyways, I'm at the public library writing this, because we won't be paying for any internet. If I can make it work, we'll be sharing DSL with the church through a wireless network-- if I can make it work.
That's all for now.