Life at 3 miles an Hour

I came down to visit an old friend this morning.  My honey is spending some time with a friend on the East coast this week during Spring break...and by East Coast Spring Break I'm not referring to Panama City or any sort of beach like destination.  I, however, am at the beach; my friend being my Starbucks hangout of former days.  The sun is out and glowing a faint orange on the snow caps and the ambitious ones are on bikes or on foot.  I wasn't intending to write anything this morning...just going to hang for some early coffee before entering the realm of office, work and all things pastoral.  It's pretty unavoidable though, the writing I mean, when you are sitting as a spectator before a sight like this.  It makes me feel better in the days when my better half is not around.  It makes me, even though I fight it, not want to be a spectator.  I see the runners pacing themselves along the sea wall.  I see the cyclists optimistically pumping the...

In the place where most of my writing takes place lately, I have a ring side seat to listen in on the various ways that people want their coffee prepared.  Two words generally come to mind each and every morning that I sit here.  "High maintenance".  I mean really, who came up with the thousands of variations of drink/flavor/milk/temp options?  And how many tries does it take the average person to come up with a 3 minute spiel for a single order?  And what did we possibly do before it was discovered that when one was finished smoking hemp, one could actually drink it as milk?  How do you milk a hemp plant?  Maybe that was in one of the out takes from "Meet the Parents".  The longer that I sit here, the more I admire the baristas who juggle these orders from people who obviously desperately need them.  I feel very boring when I can walk in and know that my drink can come lovingly without me even speaking it.  Not only that, they know what...

So yesterday my wife started a new 2 year lockdown with Sprint by getting a new phone.  She has now joined me in the land of iPhone.  It seemed like a logical step considering her love affair with her iPad.  Anyway...we really only intended to "look" at new phone options in the midst of a walk past our neighborhood Sprint portal.  We were going to look, leave, consider, return, purchase.  However, in communicating her desire to spend literally nearly nothing on this exchange due to the near mortgage cost of her current but disappointing EVO, the customer service rep made a brilliantly calculated move.  He offered her the iPhone (remember the iPad ) for free.  Since I'm the only one alive who would jump at that quicker than she,  needless to say, he had her at free.  Remember that I have already stated that we were not prepared to actually grab a new phone...we were on a walk after all... And if you realized my age, you'd appreciate how import...

"One of the hazards of being a pastor is that you are continually exposed to Gods prompting and movement.   It may be through the constant evaluation of His word, through sermons offered and received.   It might be through prayers offered and answered.   It might be through interaction with people whose paths you cross.   It may be a combination of them all.   Joanne and I have discovered in our lives that these promptings can begin as whispers, but eventually can become a relentless pushing that becomes difficult to ignore.   The process has been the same every time we've been led in our ministry lives.   It's how I ended up leaving an engineering career to pursue ministry.   It's how we landed at a younger church in New York.   It's how we ended up at an older church in West Seattle.   Over the course of 24 years we've learned what it feels like to be called.   It is important for you to know that Pastors are not immune to God...