Coffee Hour

Last blog reviews of 2004

Somebody emailed me to say I should work more of my personal life into these reviews. I have no idea why any of y’all might be interested in that, but I can comply.

First of all, the answer to the three most common personal questions people ask:

1. Yes, married life is great
2. No, we’re not having kids. Ever. You think we’d be great parents? That’s sweet. But we wouldn’t. We’re very selfish. And we have bad genes.
3. Well, actually, we didn’t take a honeymoon. Yeah, we paid for the wedding ourselves.

The holidays are almost over and life is getting back into a routine. I love routines.

Oh and I got a new cat. His name is Cool Disco Dan.

Peter Bowden writes about a really useful topic in Adventures in Small Group Ministry: When a catastrophic news event occurs, should you scrap a regularly scheduled discussion to discuss it? After all, no one can deny that people needed to talk soon after September 11 and the members of a group that met regularly could do one another a lot of good by airing their feelings. On the other hand, some people would make the latest shift in poll numbers in a presidential election the topic every week, which would make religion discussions hard to fit in. Bowden’s guidelines sound reasonable to me. Check them out.

Sniffle. Me and the Boys reports that Jerry Orbach, better known as Detective Lenny Briscoe from Law and Order, has died of prostate cancer. Briscoe was tough and wise and inexplicably sort of hot. And he was the dad from Dirty Dancing.

MyIrony has a survey asking people if they have spiritual mentors. Fifty percent of respondents have said “Yes, an informal one.” Interesting.

Tom Schade is taking on Bill O’Reilly in Prophet Motive and doing a nice job, taking the side of those who would say “happy holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”

Lots of people have written about the tsunamis, but none more nicely or thoughtfully than Adam at Unity.