In case you were wondering...

the cake turned out really well. I think the secret was lots and lots of chocolate mint icing. :)

Piece of cake

Have you ever wondered where the expression "piece of cake" comes from? Or why it means something really easy? I mean, I love cake, and eating it is definitely easy, but making it... not so much. Especially when you're house-sitting and not in familiar kitchen territory. Or starting a new job and haven't made it to the grocery store yet this week.

I'm going to a vegan dinner tomorrow night, and I wanted to make something from one of these many vegan cookbooks I've been checking out from the public library, skimming periodically, and returning. I picked "Kentucky Velvet Cake" from The Garden of Vegan, by Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer, because it sounded tasty and fairly easy, and I had all the ingredients already. The plan was to then make a mint chocolate icing to frost the cake. And I'm house-sitting for 2 weeks.

So I brought all my cake stuff over with me, and planned the timing carefully... I'll be going straight to the dinner from working my new job tomorrow, so I had to make the cake tonight. After choir rehearsal. The chocolate chips took longer to melt than I expected, and I may have over-stirred a little, but otherwise the batter came together pretty well, I think. I had just enough soy milk left in the carton to make the 1/2 cup required.

I went to put the cake pans in the oven, only to find that setting the oven temperature isn't enough to turn it on - there's another knob that has to be turned from "Off" to "Bake." So the oven wasn't preheated after all. Having no idea what impact this was likely to have on the consistency of the cake, but not having much choice in the matter, I set the oven to start heating, set the timer to be ready once the cake went into the oven, and put away the dishes and utensils. The oven heated pretty quickly, and I put the two cake layers in the oven, and turned to the icing recipe.

Turns out the icing calls for soy milk, too - and I had none left, not even the 1/4 cup listed in the recipe. So I went to work on some email and worship planning.

Approximately 35 minutes later, the lovely chocolatey smell coming from the kitchen was starting to change to something a little less sweet... I went in to check and realized I never started the timer!

So my cake is a little overdone. And unfrosted. So I'll have to make frosting after work tomorrow (at the location of the dinner... fortunately, I'm dating the host, so he probably won't mind!), set it to chill during dinner, and frost it right before we eat it - assuming it turns out to be edible. Sigh. The best laid plans... rarely turn out to be a piece of cake!

Updates: New job, CROPWalk, filling in

Yes, after a couple months of searching, applying, and interviewing, I have a new job. Starting tomorrow, I will be serving as Administrative Coordinator and Grants Manager for Family Voices of Colorado, a small grassroots organization (and local affiliate of a national network) that does advocacy for families whose children have disabilities or other special health care needs. Yay for employment!

I'm also trying to recruit sponsors for CROPWalk, which I am participating in with my church next Saturday. We walk 5K/3mi through the neighborhood, raising funds to fight hunger in the local area (northwest Denver) and around the world. If you would like to help out, you can visit my donation page.

And, because life is better full than boring, I'm filling in at church while our senior pastor is away for a couple weeks, so today I was liturgist, next Sunday I'm preaching (and kicking off our Stewardship Campaign), and the week after I'm coordinating several pieces of the service for Laity Sunday. It's all lots of fun and very meaningful, but the downside of starting a new full-time job in the midst of this is I no longer have quite so much leisure time to do things I'm not exactly paid for! Ah well. I've read lots of novels over the past month already anyway.

Ah, transition

So, after spending the four days of our closing retreat talking with the volunteers about the stages of transition, I now get to go through one myself! God is such a joker sometimes.

Some of the details are still being officially worked out, so I probably shouldn't share too much just yet, but I will say that the volunteer program I have led for the past year has had success in every area - except raising a continuing source of incoming funds to sustain it over the long term. So we are officially moving into a multi-year planning phase, led by the Board, during which there is not funding for either staff or volunteers. All of this means that I am in the market for a new job, though I'm okay financially for a couple more months.

Add to that some changes in my parents' lives over the past month - my dad was laid off, and my mom is getting remarried next year - and it feels like this is a bit more of a curve in the road than I was expecting at the moment! Over all, though, I think it will work out okay.

On the plus side, I may have more time to keep this blog updated more regularly...

Museum of Creationism

Did you know that dinosaurs and humans were created on the same day? That originally, all dinosaurs were herbivores, and that Noah's flood is the cause of fossils?

These truths, and many more, are now on display in life-size dioramas at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. See in words and pictures why the Word of God is a more reliable source of information about the formation of the earth and all that lives on it than scientific evidence or theories of evolution. Learn how Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of Eden, and some dinosaurs became carnivorous as a result of sin entering the world.

Read the New York Times review, or see photos at Beliefnet.

Or convert to pastafarianism now, and learn how bringing back pirates may help combat global warming.

Young Adults: Apply to Serve with GraceWorks Community

Young adults (age 18-30) are invited to commit one year to serving as volunteers with GraceWorks Community: The Bishop's Young Adult Initiative for the Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone Conferences of the United Methodist Church. Participants work full-time at local non-profit organizations in Cheyenne, Wyoming, engaging in direct service and advocacy with persons who are poor and marginalized, while living together in intentional community.

Young adult participants share a house and a simple lifestyle during their year of service. The Bishop's Young Adult Initiative provides housing, health insurance, a food and travel allowance, a monthly living stipend, and an education award at the end of the year. Volunteers have regular opportunities to reflect on the work in which they are engaged and the gifts and challenges of community life, while local congregations provide hospitality and support. In keeping with Wesleyan tradition, volunteers are encouraged to make connections between spiritual growth and "social holiness" as they learn skills for servant leadership in church and community.

Service placement possibilities include Boys and Girls Club, Interfaith Hospitality Network (providing shelter and resources for homeless families through religious congregations), COMEA House (emergency shelter and transitional housing), Cheyenne Community Clinic, Court Appointed Special Advocates, and ARC of Laramie County, among others.

Volunteer applications are now available for placement this August. If you or someone you know might be interested, please contact Kerry Greenhill, Director, at 800-536-3736 x153. Visit www.graceworkscommunity.org to learn more, or to download application forms.

Tell Us the Mission

I recommend this great spoken word video asking important questions about the war in Iraq: http://tellusthemission.org/. It's also a contest for what should go on the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was hung on that aircraft carrier four years ago.

Taking it to the streets

In case you haven't already heard about it, I want to plug Sojourners' Pentecost 2007 conference, which will be held June 3-6 in Washington, D.C. Senators Clinton, Edwards, and Obama will be present for a presidential candidates' forum, and some great religious leaders will speak on topics relating to social justice and advocating for the poor. There's an Emerging Leaders track for people age 30 and under, and scholarships are available if you register by May 4.

I can't go, as I'll be traveling that weekend, but I encourage anyone else out there who is interested in the intersection of faith, culture, and politics to attend.

Prayers for the campus community in Blacksburg, Virginia

At times like these it is difficult to know what to say, or how to pray, except "Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy."Blacksburg, Virginia may seem a long way from the Rocky Mountain Conference, but in this week in April many are remembering the Columbine shootings here in Colorado eight years ago. Violence and grief of this kind affects us all in some way.

Let us pray for the family and friends of those who were injured or killed, and for the whole community of Virginia Tech and Blacksburg. I would also ask your prayers for young people across our country and around the world who have lost hope, those who feel alienated from the human community or from God, those who see no solution to their pain and anger except inflicting pain on others and ending their own lives.

Let us pray, and work, for a society where pain and anger are met with compassion and find expression in a nonviolent struggle for justice. Let us be instruments of God's peace in our broken world.

Praying is living

Okay, this is shameless stealing, but I get Sojourners' Daily Verse & Voice email, and today's was too good to keep to myself:

Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you freedom to go and stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday morning or a as a frame to surround mealtimes. Praying is living.

- Henri J.M. Nouwen, from With Open Hands

I have struggled to make prayer a regular part of my life beyond mealtime grace and "arrow" prayers (the "help me!" and "thank you!" that come almost spontaneously at times during the day). I know that prayer helps to ground me in the reality of God's love as few other things can, and that I tend to act and speak more thoughtfully, less anxiously when I have regularly cultivated an awareness of God's presence. But like exercise, intentional prayer too often seems like one more thing to schedule into my already busy day, and I let it slide for too long. Then, when I feel overwhelmed or afraid or lonely or irritable, I realize that in addition to the external forces acting on me, I have not been connecting with God in a way that could ameliorate some of those forces. As a minister, I think that puts more than just my own wellbeing in jeopardy, and I am embarrassed to admit my falling-short in faithfulness. Thank God for grace.

Beyond this confession, I also want to share something I read recently that was a kind of "aha!" moment. I'm not sure where I read it, I think one of the 43 library books I have checked out at the moment (yes, 43), but the author says that the spiritual practices or disciplines that work for you now may not be the ones that fed you 5 years ago, or the ones that will nourish you 10 years down the road. It seems obvious once it's said, but somehow I had in my mind this idea that figuring out how to live "a spiritual life" meant finding a way of ordering my days and weeks and years that, once found, would continue to serve me consistently throughout my life. Okay, if you had asked me in those words, I might have thought about it enough to say, "Oh, probably not my whole life, since I expect to do different kinds of work and ministry about every 5-1o years..." but it wasn't something I had focused on enough to see the disconnect in my own thinking.

Now that I have, though, I have the same sense of relief I had when I realized God didn't necessarily have a scripted plan for my life that I had to figure out and follow or risk seriously disappointing God. If there's more than one way to live that's pleasing to God, if there's a way to order your spiritual life that may change in a couple years, it takes off the pressure of perfectionism, one of my great temptations. And this is what prayer can do for me, too: remind me that it's okay if I'm human, if I can't get everything just perfect on the first try - and if other people are human too. That's how we're supposed to be. Let God be perfect, try to love people, and do the best you can.

New look - and why are only men supposed to be "wild"?

I was intrigued by the blogger.com information about updating from templates to layouts, so I'm trying this out... I even figured out how to post feeds from other sites I like!

In other news, I read today a very insightful commentary on John Eldredge's sequel to Wild at Heart, about men's spirituality. The new book is called The Way of the Wild Heart, and describes six developmental stages of masculine identity. Seminarian Clifton Walker Stringer has written a theologically sound critique of Eldredge's central premise, arguing that the adventure-battle-beauty paradigm for masculinity is based more in classical mythology than Christian Scripture or the life of Jesus.

Wyoming in springtime

Well, my trip to Montana was great - met lots of great people, including some who are thinking about applying to my volunteer program, and saw some really beautiful countryside. Then yesterday my friend/travel partner and I left Billings to drive back to Denver... and made it 120 miles to Sheridan, Wyoming before God/Mother Nature/WYDOT conspired to keep us here a couple extra days. Seems there was a fuel spill on I-90 that turned into a multi-vehicle accident (serious but no fatalities), so they closed the interstate yesterday morning for that - and the blizzard we're in has kept it closed ever since. I think we're at about 2 feet of snow here now, with up to another foot still falling.

We're hoping things will turn sunnier tomorrow, but for the moment we're pretty well set up in a motel with cable, internet, fridge and microwave; we made it into town for lunch and got some groceries to improve on our leftovers for dinner; and the breakfast buffet here has a wafflemaker! :) So all in all, things could be a lot worse.

But I've been on the road for 9 days now, and tomorrow will be day 10 of 8, and I'm pretty eager to be back in my own bed soon. Sunny prayers are appreciated...

Travels in the wild, wild west

I've been traveling a lot this month - more than I prefer, really, but the trips have gone well so far. I participated in a Residency in Ministry retreat for probationary clergy that was informative, restful, and fun as I connected with others going through "the process" toward ordination.

I drove to Kemmerer, Green River, and Rock Springs, Wyoming, to talk about GraceWorks Community, the volunteer program I run. In addition to spending time with some wonderful people, I got to see the Flaming Gorge Recreation Area south of Rock Springs/Green River (into Utah), including some young bighorn sheep butting heads! (I'll try to get a picture up next week.)

I led the winter retreat for GraceWorks at Templed Hills Camp near Woodland Park, Colorado, and felt like we did pretty well at re-connecting, re-newing, and re-framing how things are going - as well as getting some good feedback from the volunteers on how to improve the program.

And on Wednesday I leave for an 8-day trip to Montana, where I'll be talking about GraceWorks with young people in colleges and with folks of all ages in churches in Missoula, Helena, Bozeman, and Billings.

I can't really remember what my apartment looks like (which is maybe just as well, since I don't have time to clean it either), but other than that, life in the west is pretty darn good.

Here I am!

In case you were wondering where I've been for six months... I'm still here! Trying to keep my head above water, but life is good if very full.

Thanks to Mike, Donna, and Alwen for your comments on my last post. Sorry I've been so tardy in responding. I really enjoy hearing from others with similar interests and passions, especially those who happen to be authors of poems I post...!

I encourage all of you to check out First Freedom First if you have an interest in preserving religious liberty in the U.S.

In this Lenten season, I also invite reflection on how your daily choices are connected to the well-being of others around the world and to the earth itself, from the labor rights of textile workers in China to the pesticides used for non-organic farming in Iowa (and every other state). To learn more about how you can be involved in change, visit Bread for the World, which sponsors an "Offering of Letters" to political leaders each year. This year's theme, Seeds of Change, addresses the need for a farm bill that takes strategic steps to reduce hunger and poverty in this country and in developing countries. Bread for the World sees personal involvement in legislative advocacy as "a sacred act of citizenship" when you communicate how your beliefs and values relate to the issues facing our leaders and communities today.

I can't promise I'm back to posting regularly, but I'll try not to let six months go by in silence again!

Blessings to you all.