How to See the Sun Rise

Nelson and I have been going to this great church, Broadway UMC, about 20 minutes north of us.  It's a reconciling church in the heart of boystown, the GLBTQ epicenter of the city.  We had a church we really loved in VA and I was worried we wouldn't find another so easily this time around.  But we found Broadway and I think we could stay here awhile.  Yesterday, the associate pastor preached on the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3.  She focused on Moses removing his shoes because he was standing on holy ground.  Midway through her sermon she invited the congregation to do the same.  She told the story of a friend who always removed her shoes before entering a sanctuary because she wanted to be reminded to 'expect the holy.'  I like that.  I think it's so easy to get bogged down by what isn't happening and what we aren't seeing that we fail to recognize what is.  For me, it's getting a...

I have some seriously cool and supportive friends that made this giant, somewhat stressful and slightly uncomfortable step into the intrawebs of space quite pleasant actually.  I thank you.  Some of you have inquired as to our schlep to Chicago, so here you are.  It's long.  Like our first week. The First Week We moved in Monday, August 1.  The Saturday before we packed up everything in our apartment in D.C., begged and pleaded with our friends to help us load it all into the truck on a 99 degree day, and popped our air mattress because someone filled it with too much air.  It was me.  I hate waking up in the middle of the night with my ass on the floor and my head and legs propped up like some defunct hospital bed.  Oops.  Sunday we woke up and drove, separately, the 13 hours to Urbana.  We only got lost once and waited until we were in Illinois to do it.    Monday we woke up, d...

I am doing this in an effort to be more organized with my time, to hold myself accountable for doing purposeful things, to connect to a new community, and to find some sacred space in which to do...whatever.  But in this, my first night of blogging, I'm finding I'm incredibly stressed out.  What a lot of pressure for something that may, or most likely will not, be read by someone who doesn't already know me.  I must admit, after about 45 minutes of thinking of a witty, clever, insightful, and original title (I ended up stealing mine from Ben Sollee.  It's a great song, check it out), I started to have second thoughts about this whole blogging thing.  But I (we?) press on. I guess there aren't really any rules so I'll start easy.  I'm going to list the reasons this makes me uncomfortable.  It goes back to holding myself accountable for my insecurities and one of the blogging websites said that readers find lists agreeable.  So we're off...