Highlights from Memorial Day Weekend

This past weekend, Amber and I went with a couple friends to see the Cubs rout the Pirates on Friday night (good thing we went that night as the Cubs lost the next two in extra innings!). It was a fun night and an active game as baseball games go as the Cubs scored in virtually every inning. As always, the view of Pittsburgh is great from PNC Park (the tickets are cheap too!), and this night's game ended with a great fireworks display.

Then, on Saturday, while Amber's car was getting some minor repairs (to the tune of over $400 - eeek!), we decided to take a road trip to Baltimore and quickly reserved hotel rooms for two nights. We found some decent hotels at a great price out by the Baltimore airport, which was only a ten minute drive from downtown (which beats paying for overnight parking downtown!). So, four hours later on Saturday night, we were walking the streets of downtown Baltimore by the harbor of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore's skyline isn't as spectacular as Pittsburgh's but the harbor sure is an added bonus - as well as the amazing crab cakes!

Overall, we didn't really do all that much while in Baltimore. We walked, shopped, checked the parking meter to ensure we didn't get a ticket, enjoyed the cable TV in the hotel room, and took pictures of the various museums from afar as opposed to actually paying the cost of going in. Baltimore has several museums around the harbor including the USS Constellation, a ship that seized 14 slave ships and freed over 400 slaves while it was in use.

In the cultural district, we viewed the first monument to George Washington, found a monument commemorating the French soldier, Marquis de Lafayette, who supported Washington during the Revolution (and happens to be the person whom my hometown is named after), walked through the Peabody Institute, and strolled by some of Baltimore's other museums.

In the evening, we walked around downtown again, struck up a long conversation with a homeless man (we noticed a lot of them actually) and gave him a couple dollars, and took a picture of the boyhood home of Babe Ruth. Other than that, I just enjoyed taking pictures.

On Living Green

So, I've been spending a lot of time working around the house this summer amidst furthering my graduate studies. Yesterday, I spent a good deal of the day planting some of our seedlings in our garden - which I tilled by hand with a hoe. It was definitely time for us to start planting them since they were starting to overtake our kitchen counter, we no longer had enough flourescent lights to help cover them all, and some of them weren't doing well in the organic soil we had them in. So the thought occurred to me that I'd take ya'll on a little tour of our attempts to live green (AND save money!):

Of course, one of the obvious things to do is to recycle. Unfortunately, Mt. Lebanon only recycles Plastics 1 & 2, glass, and aluminum, but hey at least it’s a start.
Pittsburgh's recycling program is much broader, so we actually have a little collection of other plastics, paperboard, and cardboard we hope to take to a recycling site at some point. We also try to reuse plastic water bottles and run them through the dishwasher before recycling them, but we’re rethinking this one as it’s not the safest of things to do.

Then, there's our huge collection of plastic grocery bags. Thankfully, there is a grocery store nearby that serves as a collection site to actually recycle these things, but rather than contribute to this massive waste of plastic (which take some 1000 years to decompose), we've finally bought some of those reusable grocery sacks... now if only we can consistently remember to take them with us to the store!

Next, there's the pile of recycled paper we have. At the nearby junior high school, there's a "paper retriever" we take these to periodically. There's actually another printer paper sized box in my car full of paper to recycle, that I took over there a week or so ago, but the retriever was so crammed full, that I had to wait for another day. We also try really hard to salvage all the printer paper that has printing on only one side and use it to print out things that aren't important, make grocery and to-do lists, etc.

Then, there's our wonderful compost pile Amber convinced us to start. It begins with putting our table scraps in our 5 gallon bucket... yuck. And then, combined with yard clippings, dead leaves, and so forth, we have a growing little pile outside. Its just a big pile of nastiness right now, but in a year, it will be usable compost (hopefully!). Combined with our recycling, its amazing how little we take out to the curb each week for trash day. Most weeks, we have one trash bag and that's it.

Next, we have our seedlings and garden. Two summers ago when we owned a house in Indianapolis, we had a bumper crop of cucumbers (well, until they got diseased...), yellow squash, zucchini (mmm, zucchini bread!), one lone pepper (stupid rabbits!), and more tomatoes than we knew what to do with. That time, we purchased all the seedlings from nearby greenhouses. Now, we started from the ground up with seeds in our dark basement which were then moved under flourescent lights in our kitchen when they started to sprout. Again, trying to reuse, we scrounged the house as much as we could to find containers we could utilize as temporary plots. Thus, many of our seedlings started in old plastic containers that used to contain ricotta cheese, sour cream, and shredded cheese, along with styrofoam cups from Panera Bread and Hampton Inn that I had picked up at some point and finally had a reason to use. We even used some of our rubbermaid containers that had AWOL lids.

We were totally amazed at how many plants came up. At one point we had a dozen zucchini, a 17 yellow squash, 5 cucumber, 35 peppers, and 98 tomato plants (ok, so Amber really likes fresh tomatoes!). We managed to contribute about half of them to our church which has been selling seedlings to raise money for their urban farm where they are trying to reclaim unusable land in the city of Pittsburgh and use it for something redemptive. Then, we gave some away, some died (sadness!), and others have relocated to the garden where we hope other seedlings will go once we think they're ready. It's kind of scary taking them outside. Kind of like a mother bird kicking her baby out of the nest - You're afraid the cold air might kill them or the hot sun will wilt them... so we'll see what happens!

And there’s our “wild garden” – well, actually its just wild mint growing all over our yard – yes, right next to the huge hole in our driveway wear the neighborhood squirrels, chipmunks, and even raccoons frequently visit. I’ve been able to boil some of it to make some GREAT-tasting mint water.

There are still other things we've done too in order to live more green and conserve energy. We try to unplug things that we don't regularly use, such as our computer printer, toaster, blender, DVD player, and paper shredder, as unbeknownst to a lot of people, you're often paying for a little electricity even if things are just plugged in without being on. We turn off our computer screen and try to turn off lights when they're not in use. The thought occurred to me the other day that if Amber and I stay in the same room, even while doing different things, we can use a lot less light. During the day, I try to use as much natural light as I can instead of having lights on in the house too. We keep our thermostat down lower than is typical and I just wear a sweater (Amber doesn't like that one too well). We try to wash our clothes on cold whenever we can and try to limit having water running too long or more than we need. Heck, I've even found a way to collect rainwater in order to reuse that - all our other gutters drain underground, but here there's a hole in our gutter and drips unto our sidewalk! LOL.
We've also tried to cut down on our impact on the environment in the chemicals we use. We've switched to environmentally friendly detergent for our clothes and dishes by Biokleen and Seventh Generation, which is a bit more costly, but we've managed to by them on sale and with coupons which helps. We've also tried to limit our use of draino in unclogging our bathroom sink, which seems to clog up about every week. I've managed to create a pipe cleaner out of old guitar strings which I use to essentially "floss" the drain as much as I can. Then, I use boiling salt water as a more environmentally-friendly (and cheaper) means of unclogging the drain. A mixture of baking soda and vinegar supposedly works too, but I've had difficulty being successful.

Other money saving tips we've tried to do: Aside from owning Honda Civics, this past year, I've walked and used public transportation as much as I can. Last night, we needed to take a walk, and decided to walk to Library instead of making an unneeded car trip. We've also started paying more attention to the grocery store sales and only buying what is on sale, and have decided to get the Sunday paper for the sole purpose of getting the coupons. In Pittsburgh, there are a few grocery store chains and have found that those that don't provide the gas perks on your food purchases (which is basically a scam and largely caters to those who drive big-ass SUVs) are WAY cheaper.

I think I've exhausted our list. If you have some good ideas for going green that I haven't mentioned, I'd love to hear about them!

Finally Up For Air...Although the Allergies Make It Difficult to Breathe

So Monday, I turned in my final paper for the semester and today was my last day of work in the graduate office. And thus, I am finally free to write another blog...after a month and a half hiatus. And alas, that means there's probably no one out there left to read this. Oh well, a recap of my crazily busy life is in order at least for my sake:

After my last post, my family celebrated Easter here with us in the 'Burgh. Not everyone was able to make it out, but we had a lot of fun, some REALLY good food (rack of lamb... wow!), and also nearly froze to death while cheering my brother on in a college club team bicycle race (who schedules a bike race over Easter weekend anyway?! At least it brought the family to us).

The next weekend (March 28th) I took a roadtrip to Lexington, KY to speak at another graduate conference at the University of Kentucky. This made it the third weekend in March that I spent over ten hours in a car. And what a road trip it was. Before I even left, I knew there was something wrong in my car, but I just avoided it all week before I was to leave on Friday. So, when I got my little 1995 Civic (which I rarely drive) up to 60 mph on the interstate for the first time since our move to Pittsburgh, I thought the car was going to fall apart. The whole car was shaking and rattling loudly. I stopped on the side of the road and couldn't see anything. Finally, after driving a little longer (at no higher than 55!), I started calling brothers in hopes that one was near a computer and could get me directions to a mechanic. Finally, I reached Brandon and he was able to get me to a Monro Muffler in West Virginia - yeah I drove like that for an hour! It turns out, one of my tires had gone bad. Literally, the steel cable inside the rubber of my tire had collapsed, so my tire was incredibly lopsided. Thankfully, they were able to replace the tire, and I was on my way an hour later. The rest of the trip was pretty inconsequential, but the evening drive through Ohio in my little green car while listening to my favorite songs reminded me of the many times I drove back and forth between Indianapolis and Cedarville to see Amber while I was in college. Oh, and the conference went really well too!

Which brings us to April. The first weekend in April, two good friends from Indianapolis came to visit us. So, we had a great time catching up and showing them all the cool sights of Pittsburgh (Thanks for coming Adam and Beth!).

After our friends left, and for the next three weeks, most of my time was spent researching, reading books, and writing papers. I'm not very good multi-tasking or making a little progress at a time on several papers at once. Not only, do I feel like I'm not getting anything done; when I go back to a different paper, I also have to reread everything I've done so far again to figure out where I am in my argument. So, from April 6-10, I worked on a paper on Edmund Husserl... can't say I'll be taking a class on him again any time soon. From April 7-17, I wrote on Heidegger's Being and Time - one of the most influential philosophy texts of the 20th century... which I'm sure would mean a lot more to me if I had had a teacher that new what he was talking about (he hadn't taught the class in 17 years!!!). And from April 18-28th, I finished with a paper on Emmanuel Levinas, my personal favorite who I can see myself studying for the rest of my life. So... after a semester of "phenomenologizing myself to death," at least I can say some benefit came from it... now I just have to wait for the grades... ugh...

On the Tuesday of Holy Week

[And now, the rest of the story...]

The next day, Jesus reminded the Jews of the covenant in Deuteronomy to love God with all their heart (Mt 23:37; Dt. 6:5), but they could not see that the one they were called to love was right before their eyes. Jesus looked around at those in the temple and lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Matt 23:31-39). The lights were on; no one was home. The Kingdom was still in chaos.

That night in Bethany, Jesus was anointed by a woman – finally the worship he was supposed to receive. When the disciples complained that the perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor, Jesus responded, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 26:10), again a direct blast to them for not keeping the covenant of Deuteronomy which states, “However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance he will richly bless you” (Deut 15:4).

Two evenings later, Jesus celebrated the Passover. Then, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where the “Suffering Servant” cried out to the Father, “Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress… My times are in your hands… Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love” (Psalm 31). There was the Betrayal. The Trial. The Cross. The Darkest Night of the Soul. The Tomb. But as verse 16 is not the last verse of Psalm 31, Friday night is not the end of this story either. Don’t forget, Sunday’s coming.

And even today, Jesus is still calling us back to his covenant. Through the new covenant of bread and wine, body and blood, Jesus is calling us to worship, to love the outcast, to care for the poor, and to bring about his kingdom of peace. So as you reflect on Christ’s passion this week, share in Jesus’ song of lament and pray for the day all the nations proclaim, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’

On the Monday of Holy Week

The day after Palm Sunday, Jesus walked the same path down the same mountain through the city as he did the day before, but there was no fanfare on the road or at the temple. All that greeted him was a fig tree with no fruit – a symbol of the spiritual climate of the people who did not turn their hearts toward them. Jesus turned to the plant and exclaimed: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” He struck the land with a curse.

In the city, he cleared the temple of the money changers who had made it a den of robbers rather than a “house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17). This was a direct reference to Isaiah 56:6-7, which states, “And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him…and who hold fast to my covenant- these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

This was a direct reference to the covenant! You see, the Temple in Jerusalem at that time was surrounded by four outer courts which were considered more sacred as you came closer to the temple, entering from the east to west. Depending who you were, you could only get so close to the Temple, which is clearly indicated by the names of the courts. The first court one would come upon was The Court of the Gentiles, then The Court of the Women, the Court of Israel, and the Court of the Priests. These merchants who were exchanging money were set up directly in the Court of the Gentiles making the only area for Gentiles to worship completely inaccessible. They couldn’t come close to the temple, let alone offer sacrifices. God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12 was that he would be blessed in order that he might be a blessing to all nations. Israel had forgotten the covenant.

When the chief priests and the teachers of the law heard what Jesus had done, they began looking for a way to kill him (Mark 11:18). Jesus had expected welcome and worship; he received only murder plots. Jesus prayed in his heart, “Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors… I hear the slander of many; there is terror on every side; they conspire against me and plot to take my life” (Psalm 31:11, 13).

Palm Sunday

[This is a continuation of my previous post (or part II of the message I gave tonight at my church).]

After Ezekiel came Malachi, through whom God promised to the Israelites, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come” (Malachi 3:1). The one who established his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David would return… The Old Testament ends with a summation of this covenant as well as an eerie foretelling”

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel. See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” A curse: a reminder of the blessings and curses outlined in Deuteronomy.

But after Malachi… there was only silence. The silence of God for over 400 years. These were tumultuous years for Israel. The governing of Israel was passed along from superpower to superpower. Persia. Greece. Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the temple. Rome. Amidst these political occupations, forgotten as though dead, Israel cried out for deliverance, for a Messiah who would rescue them. “Let your face shine on your servants; save us in your unfailing love.”

Then, suddenly, he came. A man out in the desert wearing camel’s hair shouted to anyone and everyone that would listen: “Prepare the way of the Lord!” A few years later, six days before the Passover, he spent the night in Bethany at the home of his good friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
The next day, Jesus “came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives” the mountain standing east of the city of Jerusalem. There, the Son of David sent two of his closest friends on a mission who brought back for him a donkey for him to ride and show that he was “the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 28:38). So Jesus came from the way of the east, rode down the mountain, and headed towards Jerusalem by way of the gate facing toward the east. And as the people saw their new king, they rejoiced and sang and shook the earth with their noise. And as he rode, the crowd proclaimed, “glory in the highest” (Luke 19:38), but the religious leaders were in disbelief and rebuked the crowd.

But as the one who came to restore peace to Israel “approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes.” (Luke 19:41-42). And if you could listen to his heart, you could’ve heard him pray, “My eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.”

Then Jesus “entered Jerusalem and went to the temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late,” no one was there (Mark 11:11). No one was ready for the glory to return. No one was ready for a new spirit. No one was interested in renewing the covenant. They only wanted a king who could overthrow the powers of Rome. Ezekiel’s vision was left unfulfilled. Needless to say, Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” was not so triumphant.

In Preparation for Holy Week

Today and over the course of the next several days, I will provide excerpts from my Palm Sunday sermon I am giving at my church, The Open Door, tomorrow night. Here's the first entry. It is a narrative that combines elements of the history of Israel and the story of Jesus with Psalm 31:9-16, the Psalm given in the Presbyterian Lectionary for March 16th, 2008.

* * *

We begin with David – and what better place to start when considering the Psalms? When King David, one of the possible authors of this Psalm, was approaching death, a squabble arose as to which of his sons would be appointed king in his stead. The Kingdom was thrown into chaos. Now in that day, when a king wanted to make known who had his special hand of blessing, one way he could do it was by placing that individual on the king’s foal. So, in order to show that Solomon was the heir to the throne, and to restore peace back to Israel, David sent three of his closest friends with an order that Solomon be placed on the king’s donkey and that he ride down through the city. And when this happened, and the people saw their new king, they rejoiced and sang and shook the earth with their noise (1 Kings 1:32-40).

When Solomon became king, he built a temple to be a house for Yahweh, the God of Israel. And when the priests brought the ark of the covenant to the temple, “the glory of the LORD filled the house” so much that the priests had to back away from the building (1 Kings 8:11). God had entered the building, giving evidence to his covenant relationship with Israel.

But Solomon, and the kings who came after him, led Israel into evil and away from their covenant with God. The Lord sent prophets to the people to warn them and woo them and turn them back from their wicked ways. But their hearts became hardened, the temple became a place of empty ritual, and rarely did anyone recognize their plight and cry out to God: “Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief.”(Ps. 31:9).

God sent Jeremiah, the other possible author of this song, but the people would not listen to his words either. And on the day the army of Babylon destroyed the city of Jerusalem and ransacked the temple of Yahweh, Jeremiah lamented, saying: “The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary… We have suffered terror and pitfalls, ruin and destruction. Streams of tears flow from my eyes…” (Lam. 2:7, 3:46ff). And he very easily could have prayed, “My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak” (Psalm 31:10). The covenant had been broken.

That day, a prophecy of Jeremiah’s came true – that Jerusalem would “fall and be shattered like fine pottery” (Jer. 15:34). In 586 B.C. the remnant of Israel was taken into captivity by Babylon, the entire royal family was put to death, and soldiers shackled Judah’s king and gouged out his eyes. And all Judah cried out, “Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors; I am a dread to my friends— those who see me on the street flee from me. I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery” (Ps. 31:11-12).

There in exile, God appointed a new prophet, Ezekiel, to tell the people to repent and look to the Lord to restore them and bring them back to their land. God gave Ezekiel visions, and in one of them, Ezekiel relived the day of Jerusalem’s fall. And as the gates of the city were stormed, the “glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple” (Ezekiel 10:18). Then, “the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain which is east of the city” (Ezek. 11:23). God had left the building. But before the Lord departed entirely from Jerusalem, he promised that he would keep his covenant with Israel. One day, he would bring them back to their land and give them one heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 11:17-20). And God would renew his covenant with them and return to the temple: “The glory of the God of Israel was coming from the way of the east… And the glory of the LORD came into the house by the way of the gate facing toward the east” (Ezek. 43:1-4).

In 536 B.C., a group of Israelites were released from captivity and allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. The promise would be fulfilled! With no wall, no formidable army, and no real city to speak of, the Israelites had to build the temple in utter fear of the unfriendly neighboring people groups surrounding them (Ezra 3:3). All they could do was trust the Lord who had been faithful enough to bring them this far. They prayed: “I hear the slander of many; there is terror on every side; they conspire against me and plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me” (Ps. 31:13-15).

This new temple was nowhere near the prestige and glamour of Solomon’s. In fact, there were some old men in this small band that remembered the old temple, who remembered the glory days. At the temple dedication, while many shook the earth with their shouts of joy, the men “wept with a loud voice when the foundation of [the] house was laid before their eyes… so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people” (Ezra 3:12-13). The lights were on; nobody was home. There was no glory in this temple. Would Ezekiel’s final vision remain unfulfilled?

To Be Continued...