(ps – I’m going to this!!)

From: Congressional Inaugural Committee <info@jccic.senate.gov>
Date: Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 18:11
Subject: Congressional Inaugural Committee Issues Inaugural Advisory
To: Chris Ridgeway

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Congressional Inaugural Committee Issues Advisory WASHINGTON, DC – In the remaining weeks before the 56th presidential inaugural, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC) will be issuing a series of advisories to help people who plan to attend the swearing-in ceremony. The following is a special alert for those people who will have tickets to the swearing-in, but may have questions about getting to and from the event that morning. Because of the large crowds and the potential for inclement weather, those people with special needs are advised to pay careful attention to these details. Timing While the actual swearing-in will take place shortly before noon, the formal program begins at 11:30 AM and the musical prelude and seating will begin much earlier. Security checkpoints will open for ticketed guests at 8:00 AM, and the committee advises arriving no later than 9:00 AM to ensure that you are through the checkpoints by the time the program begins. Screening will end when the program begins at 11:30 AM and late arrivals will not be able to enter the grounds. Getting to the Swearing-In Getting to the swearing-in ceremonies that morning will be very difficult because of the large crowds. In addition to the 240,000 ticketed guests, a million or more people are expected to view the inauguration from the National Mall between 4th Street and the Lincoln Memorial, along with hundreds of thousands of others who plan on watching the Inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. We recommend planning ahead, but also caution that any plans made in advance should be double-checked in the days and hours prior to the event in case of changes to transportation schedules, street and other closures, and other factors that may impact your travel plans. We also recommend developing back-up plans in case your original travel plans need to be changed at the last minute. The District of Columbia’s inaugural website will have the most up-to-date information on road closures and other travel alerts. We recommend that guests bookmark the site, http://www.inauguration.dc.gov/index.asp, and check it frequently for changing information. A security perimeter will be established around the U.S. Capitol and the parade route on or before January 20, 2009. Subway stations, bus stops, and streets within that perimeter will be closed. Street closures throughout Washington, D.C., will make traveling by car or taxi very difficult. Bridges from Virginia crossing the Potomac River into Washington, D.C., as well as major roadways from Maryland into Washington, D.C., may be closed to all but bus traffic. Following are recommendations on how to get to the swearing-in ceremony: Within 2 Miles of the U.S. Capitol For those people who will be staying within 2 Miles of the U.S. Capitol, walking to the swearing-in ceremony will be the most reliable method of reaching the ticketed seated and standing areas. Be sure to carefully plan your return trip as well – it won’t be possible to cross the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route, except at designated points and Metro will be extremely crowded. For some people bicycling may be an option to get close to the U.S. Capitol. While bicycles will be prohibited within the security perimeter on January 20, 2009, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) is working on a plan with city officials to have bike valet stations available outside the security perimeter near the swearing-in ceremonies and parade route. More information is available at: http://www.waba.org/index.php. Beyond 2 Miles of the U.S. Capitol Use public transportation to get you as close as possible to the U.S. Capitol and walk from there. D.C.’s subway system will be running “rush-hour” service all day, but is expecting “crush-level” crowds. Be prepared to wait for space on a train for long periods of time, during which you will have to stand in close proximity to several thousand people. Many Metro escalators will be closed due to crowding and individuals will need to climb Metro stairs or wait to utilize the small number of elevators at Metro stations. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) plans to run Metrobuses on Inauguration Day. Check its website, www.wmata.com, for information regarding routes and schedules. As with any other travel planning for January 20, please allow extra time and prepare a back-up plan. AMTRAK, www.amtrak.com, and regional commuter trains, Virginia Railway Express (VRE), www.vre.org, and MARC (Maryland) Commuter Train, www.mtamaryland.com/services/marc/, will be operating reserved trains on special schedules and are expected to sell out well in advance of January 20. Please visit their websites for more information. Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities There will be no vehicular access or parking in the areas around the Capitol on January 20, 2009. This includes vehicles with special disability license plates or tags. While there will be locations outside the perimeter of the Capitol that will be designated as drop-off points for persons with disabilities, traffic conditions and restrictions may make reaching these drop-off locations extremely difficult. As noted above, public transportation is expected to be running at “crush capacity” and WMATA has informed us that while Metro Access will operate for its regular customers, they do not expect to be able to provide pick-ups for people after events. There will be designated areas for people with disabilities in each of the ticketed seating areas on the Capitol grounds, however these areas are limited in size and available on a first-come first-served basis. Persons in wheelchairs or utilizing walkers should be aware that they will need to move across bumpy surfaces, grassy areas, and possible icy areas (depending on the weather). Other Important Considerations The weather in Washington in January is usually quite cold and often rainy or snowy. Please think carefully about whether you can stand outside in cold weather in a large crowd for up to six hours, and whether you are ready for long delays getting home afterwards. Regardless of the weather conditions, umbrellas will not be permitted in the ticketed areas. Other prohibited items include, but are not limited to: Firearms and ammunition (either real or simulated), Explosives of any kind (including fireworks), Knives, blades, or sharp objects (of any length), Mace and/or pepper spray, Sticks or poles, Pockets or hand tools, such as “Leatherman”, Packages, Backpacks, Large bags, Duffel bags, Suitcases, Thermoses, Coolers, Strollers, Laser pointers, Signs, Posters, Animals (other than service animals), Alcoholic beverages, Other items that may pose a threat to the security of the event as determined by and at the discretion of the security screeners Bring with you any medications that you need because there will be very long delays in getting to and from events. Be aware that it may be difficult to talk or send pictures from your cell phone, according to wireless companies. Please use text messaging to send critical messages.     #### You subscribed to the JCCIC email list at http://inaugural.senate.gov to receive important updates and information about the January 20, 2009 swearing-in ceremony, updates about the website, or press materials about the Inauguration. The JCCIC is committed to responsible information handling and will respect your privacy. We will not share your email address or other contact information. You may opt-out of electronic communication with us at any time.  Our mailing address is: Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Our telephone: 202-224-2228 Add us to your address book

As communion with the Sunday paper has replaced church-going [she writes in 1979], there is a tendency to forget that sermons had a one time been coupled with news about local and foreign affairs, real estate transactions, and other mundane matters. After printing, however, news gathering and circulation were handled more efficiently under lay auspices.

Such considerations might be noted when thinking about the ‘secularization’ of ‘desacralization’ of Western Christendom. For in all regions (to go beyond the 18th century for a moment), the pulpit was ultimately displace by the periodical press and dictum ‘nothing sacred’ came to characterize the journalist’s career.

She goes on to note that print culture broke the link between community and communication (we don’t often gather to hear the public speech at church or areopogus).  But “communal solidarity was diminished; vicarious participation in more distant events was also enhanced… links to larger collective units were being forged.”

Elizabeth Eisenstein still hold the definitive work the subject matter defined by her book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Volumes 1 and 2 in One).

In Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal this past week… missional has reached buzzword status to the point where it doesn’t mean what we meant when we started. I’ve noticed this around my seminary: I recall using it in conversation this semester to describe some of my ecclesiology, and several people agreeing in a way that was pretty sure we weren’t talking about the same thing. In this case, it was mostly just about social justice… which is part of it… but… his article is better than me trying to re-write it.
———-

Defining Missional (full article)
The word is everywhere, but where did it come from and what does it really mean?
Alan Hirsch | posted 12/12/2008

It has become increasingly difficult to open a ministry book or attend a church conference and not be accosted by the word missional. A quick search on Google uncovers the presence of “missional communities,” “missional leaders,” “missional worship,” even “missional seating,” and “missional coffee.” Today, everyone wants to be missional. Can you think of a single pastor who is proudly anti-missional?

But as church leaders continue to pile onto the missional bandwagon, the true meaning of the word may be getting buried under a pile of assumptions. Is it simply updated nomenclature for being purpose-driven or seeker-sensitive? Is missional a new, more mature strain of the emerging church movement?
…
First, let me say what missional does not mean. Missional is not synonymous with emerging. The emerging church is primarily a renewal movement attempting to contextualize Christianity for a postmodern generation. Missional is also not the same as evangelistic or seeker-sensitive.
Full Article

And don’t miss downloading his pdf chart of missional books for the last 10 years.

So if you Google for reviews on The Submarine’s second album, you don’t even get the one I wrote (maybe if you kept up, but I only looked for five pages). And it’s all because of this Apple ad:
So this is my post where I strut and say that I was way ahead of everyone being all cool—I wrote my review this past summer, giving these super-poppy kids the thumbs up. Hardly shook up the world.  But hey it’s my blog, so I gotta work the cred any chance I get. 

Anyway, here’s what I said then (for Innocent Words):

The Submarines
Honeysuckle Weeks
(Nettwerk Records)

Hip-SoCal-popsters are all over The Submarines, the Weepies-like, boy-girl duo that showed up via (sigh:) Grey’s Anatomy and had done the NPR interview and released an iTunes exclusive cut before most 20-somethings could get an intelligent blog post sketched up in draft.

The sound is Fiest meets Postal Service with a touch more cheese, which is what you’d expect from a love-struck couple that produced their first album by breaking up and simultaneously penning songs about it. Back together, their second effort Honeysuckle Weeks proves that John Dragonetti knows his programming—his beat loops and square-wave tones (beep! boop!) provide the arcade layer and fun, while Blake Hazard (she’s the girl) slips the in the poppy charm. Though both sing, Hazard’s vocals dominate the tracks with cute-smart lyrics about a relationship that went bad for a time but is happily back on course. Occasionally gag-able (Every day I wake up ~I chose love ~ I chose light) , but not infrequently insightful (maybe we’re strong, but maybe, maybe we’re wrong), the pop duo finds the hook buried in every song and charts it with las, ahs, and the occasional underwater glockenspiel.

While I could do without a few of the extra claps, the couple is enigmatic (she’s the great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald) and have an electronic whiz-kid thing that’s tightly produced and even Beatles-aware. Toss in a few more socially conscious themes (“You, Me, and the Bourgeois” dogs plastic bottles and sweatshop clothing) and The Submarines dive deep enough for a second play.

It’s rumored that Steve Jobs hand-picks all the Apple songs for their commercials.  I’d like to pick on him for that, but I were in his position, I’m sufficiently self-inflated about my own music taste that I probably would too.  (although on Honeysuckle Weeks, I gotta say track 5—”The Wake Up Song” is even better than “You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie”).

My brain is close to 100% fried from finals week and end of term writing. Here are some birds that were sitting outside my window.
(they’re prolly better if you click the blue link to jump over to my picasa album, instead of viewing really tiny here)

I believe that this concept of a distant, primarily unknowable God is at the heart of postmodernism. The major proponents of postmodern approaches to human communication rarely contend that there is no higher power. They simply assume that such a power cannot be known intimately by human beings, since sacred texts are presumably just as prone to deconstruction as any other texts.
…
The more I study Hebrew and Christian traditions, however, the more struck I am by the ways that these monotheistic faiths incorporated deconstruction within their understanding of ultimate reality. I make no joke when I say that the account of the fall from grace in the beginning of the book of Genesis can be “read” as both an explanation and description of the cosmic disconnect between symbol and referent. From what I can tell, Adam and Eve represent the first postmodernists as a result of their alienation from God. Ashamed of their disobedience, they feared both self-revelatory and God-revelatory discourse.

Quentin Schultze, “The God-Problem in Communication Studies” Journal for Communication Research 28 (March 2005), 13-14

Last night at midnight, I e-mailed a professor a end-of-term reading report, and “knocked out” my third class.  Worship and OTII both I’ve completed too…  each a relief.  But my independant study has become more of a monster than I thought it would… not only do I have about 25 hours of logged work to finish for the end of the semester, but I have a syllabus assigned 6,000 word paper that has melted down and really has almost nothing on paper.  My initial plan to tackle this thing has fallen apart in my mind, and I’m struggling to pull together the pieces to create something with enough coherence and quality to turn in.   I started realizing this at the beginning of the week, and took the frustratingly difficult step of asking for an extension, which I’ve never in my memory ever had to do before.

So that doesn’t feel very good.  With the extension I’ve received, I’ve got five days to put this together, but I’m already mentally on mile 24 of the 26.2 marathon, and I’m not sure I’ve got the powerbars left to keep going.  I’ll have to, but I’m scratching this out at the very least to remind myself how much I love the end of term. 

okay… more working, less writing on the blog.

Woke up this morning to the news that our governor was arrested by the FBI and US Attorney on charges of trying to get paid for Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat.  That’s big news. Though some people have been saying for years that the government was corrupt (heck, Frm. Gov George Ryan is in jail), it’s such a repeated theme around here that it’s hard to know what to believe and what’s trumped up to get elected.  An arrest is way more definitive, I guess.

For fun, I ran to the big Chicago news sources to see what photos they would run of the governor.

Looking at the history of preaching, I find that I identify with streams of thought that are more minority than some of the more common Greek-rhetoric influenced theories of how preaching should work. But occasionally I find quotes that really match my heart on this stuff, this one from 1877 England:

I think one great need in our pulpit ministrations is naturalness. … Many are miserable in their inmost hearts, who are light-hearted and gay before the world. They feel that no heart understands theirs, or can help them. Now, suppose a preacher goes down into the depths of his own being, and has the courage and fidelity to carry all he finds there, first to God in confession and prayer, and then to his flock as some part of the general experience of Humanity, do you not feel that he must be touching close upon some brother-man’s sorrows and wants?… Does not the man feel that here is a revelation of God’s truth as real and fresh as if he had stood in the streets of Jerusalem, and heard the Savior’s very voice?

(F. W. Robertson, Sermons Preached at Brighton. 1877. Preface, ix)