Retired Pastor Ruminates

Monday, October 19, 2009

Three Blogs I like and Why I Like Them

Like my blog itself my Blogroll of favorites is pretty eclectic. I have some heavy-hitting theology blogs, such as Jason Goroncy’s magisterial Per Crucem ad Lucem. Jason teaches theology in New Zealand and started this blog when he was a graduate student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where I did one of my sabbaticals. He is also a P.T. Forsyth scholar and has done the world a great service by making that great man’s corpus available on the web. I have described this as a theology site on steroids. Jason posts almost every day, has a faithful cadre of insightful commentors, and for theologs and ministers it is well worth visiting.

To go from the sublime to the ridiculous, I just love Princess Lolly (aka Keely Flynn Schoeny)’s eccentric Lollgag Blog, whose sub-head wisely asks “Is this truly the best use of your time?”

In the interest of full disclosure I have known Keely since she was a young girl. I baptized and confirmed her. She is one of four very sharp and talented sisters, but Keely was always the really funny one. She is now a nanny, sometimes actor, and aspiring screen writer in Chicago, and about to have her first baby any day now. Her adventures as a newlywed, with pregnancy and looming motherhood are a hoot. Her class observations about some of the other mothers’ attitudes toward her as a nanny are poignant, but she finds humor even there. Imagine a younger, hipper, Erma Bombeck.

Finally Janet Batchler, the gal who brought you the Church History in Four Minutes video, which I recently posted, has a very cool blog called Quoth the Maven (echoes of William Safire.) I discovered her by way of the church history video, and knew that the quality of that work indicated some professional expertise. Sure enough, she teaches film writing at USC. She is also a churchperson and a mom, and, like Keely, mines the quotidian for humor and insight. Check out this post on her son missing the bus for his school retreat and her driving all day to get him there. Talk about going the extra mile.

In any case these are just three of my favorites, and I will feature others from time to time.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

My Top Ten Suggestions for Red Sox Fans with Time on their Hands

The Boston Red Sox failure to advance from the divisionals means some of us suddenly have time on our hands. So here's my Lettermanesque top ten things to do with your time:

1. Remember that book you always wanted to read, but never did? Then they made it into an iconic movie, and you didn’t want to see the movie until you’d read the book, but never did? Now’s your chance. I’m reading The Remains of the Day.

2. Re-read something you really love. I’m re-reading The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson and it's even better the second time.

3. Climb a mountain. Around here Mt. Greylock, while technically not a mountain, is pretty impressive this time of year.

4. Watch a Python movie. We rented Holy Grail the other night and it is still funny, although the VHS from Blockbuster quit about 3/4ths of the way through.

5. Make chili. Here's a recipe.

6. Read a good blog. My blogroll is over on the right, and it has some good choices. No farther down. Yeah, there.

7. Go to Nejaime’s, the best wine store in the Berkshires, or your local equivalent, and buy a mixed case without any cabernet or chardonnay in it. Try the Spanish reds. That's the sweet spot these days.

8. Work on a political campaign. They always need help and this is the time of year.

9. Support efforts to get a Berkshire Bike Path from Connecticut to Vermont. We can do it. And should do it.

10. Catch up on your magazines. Never made it through the summer’s New Yorkers? Now is the time. Perhaps a poor choice in this context. How about Field and Stream?

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Marilynne Robinson writes: “I miss civilization and I want it back.”

Marilynne Robinson may be as close as we get these days to an old fashion person of letters. She has produced three astonishingly good novels, Housekeeping, Gilead (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize), and Home.

I have been re-reading, with great pleasure, her book of essays entitled The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought. This is one of the most insightful examinations of the intellectual underpinnings of American life one can find. For people who read, and especially for people who read theology, like many who come to this blog, Robinson is a gift: a public intellectual who thinks theology is important. At the same time her amateur status frees her from the binding templates of the theological guild, and she views theology as an art.

Here is a sample from Death of Adam. Note how prophetic she was in naming the monism of free market economics as the reigning model for “how things are.” In the last year many have lost confidence in that false god:

“It seems to me that there is now the assumption of an intrinsic fraudulence in the old arts of civilization. Religion, politics, philosophy, music are all seen by us as means of consolidating the power of the ruling elite, or something of the kind. I suspect this is a way of granting these things significance, since we are still in the habit of attending them, though they are no longer to be conceded meaning in their own terms. If they have, by their nature, other motives than the ones they claim, if their impulse is not to explore or confide or question but only to manipulate, they cannot speak to us about meaning, or expand or refine our sense of human experience. Economics, the great model among us now, indulges and deprives, builds and abandons, threatens and promises. Its imperium is manifest, irrefragable—as in fact it has been since antiquity. Yet suddenly we act as if the reality of economics was reality itself, the one Truth to which everything must refer. I can only suggest that terror at complexity has driven us back on this very crude monism. We have reached a point where cosmology permits us to say that everything might in fact be made of nothing, so we cling desperately to the idea that something is real and necessary, and we have chosen, oddly enough, competition and market forces, taking refuge from the wild epic of cosmic ontogeny by hiding
our head in the ledger.

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe that there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. I miss civilization and I want it back.”
(The Death of Adam: Essays of Modern Thought, Picador, 1998, p. 3, 4)

Monday, October 12, 2009

Where I Ruminate on the “The Shortness and Misery of Life”

Today would have been my father’s 95th birthday. Lawrence Clifford Floyd was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, on October 12, 1914, and died in Ocean Park, New Jersey, on July 14, 1983 at the age of 69. He is buried in the Quaker Cemetary in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, along with my mother Frances Irene, who died in 1967 at the age of 53.

It occurred to me that both my parents fell shy of the biblical three score and ten lifespan.

There was a time not long ago, before Bruce Springsteen and Susan Sarandon were on the cover of AARP magazine, before orthotics, artificial knees and hips, Botox and Viagra, Prozak and Ativan, when life was understood, not merely as the pursuit of quality and longevity, but as a short and challenging span full of temptation and sadness that was preparation for another life. Here, for example, is the incomparable Puritan poet, Isaac Watts:

The Shortness and Misery of Life

Our days, alas! Our mortal days

Are short and wretched too;

Evil and few, the patriarch says,

And well the patriarch knew.

‘Tis but at best a narrow bound

That heaven allows to men,

And pains and sins run through the round

Of threescore years and ten.

Well, if we must be sad and few,

Run on, my days, in haste.

Moments of sin, and months of woe,

Ye cannot fly too fast.

Let Heavenly Love prepare my soul

And call her to the skies,

Where years of long salvation roll,

And glory never dies.

Life for most people on earth is both less short and miserable than it was in Dr. Watts' time, and for that we can be grateful. Still, that is one of Dr. Watts’ hymn texts that won’t be appearing in any of the newer hymnals. But to my lights it is closer to the truth of things than the glossy version of life spun out by Madison Avenue, and it is so starkly framed in an eternal context “where years of long salvation roll, and glory never dies.” How much more blessed to look forward to that than to declining days in a nursing home as our final stop.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Where I Ruminate on the Name of My Blog

It is probably too easy to start a blog. My friend and fellow blogger Martin Langeveld suggested that I start one, and sent me the link to Blogger, and within a few minutes Retired Pastor Ruminates was born back on March 23. I didn't have a mission statement. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a clue.

I picked the name out of thin air, and thought it was ever so clever with the two R's. Ironically, to ruminate means to think deeply about a subject, but I didn't think deeply at all about the name of the blog.

Yesterday my sister-in-law Annette from Madison, Wisconsin, wrote on my Facebook page: “I like your blog. I dislike the word "ruminates." Here in Wisconsin we associate this word with cows, or ruminant animals. And, locally there is some concern environmentally about the digestion of ruminants and byproducts in terms of gas emissions and nitrogen. Add the issues of industrial farming/dairy operations vs. organic growers, etc. and this is a common topic around here--with farmers and environmentalists at odds. When you post to Facebook the first thing I read is the definition of ruminate, and I giggle every time imagining a cow "thinking." And, really, who wants to know what you think? Give us a headline that has some action. Keep going, but stop ruminating.” I answered her, “How about Bloviates?” “That is my blog,” she replied (she can be very funny).

Maybe she's right. Perhaps Retired Pastor Ruminates is just a bad name for a blog. Or worse, somehow environmentally incorrect, taking up too big a carbon footprint in the blogosphere. And who wants to think about cows and methane gas when you are reading a recipe?

I wonder if I should change it? But what would I call it? I thought of “Everybody is Entitled to My Opinion,” but I Googled it and it's taken. Since I've been putting up recipes as well as theology posts I thought of Rick's Cafe Americaine as a Casablanca reference, or Everybody Comes to Rick's, but they, too, are taken.

So, for now, I'll stay with Retired Pastor Ruminates. It's the only one there is. It's easy to remember, and is a fairly accurate description of what goes on here. Besides, I've had over 5000 visits since March 23, and I need to maintain my brand! (5768 to be precise, but who's counting?)

Let me know what you think, and if you get an idea for a better name, let me know.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

A Course In BASIC CHRISTIANITY

A Course In

BASIC CHRISTIANITY

by Richard L. Floyd

Are you looking for a program that will help adults gain a better understanding of the basics of the Christian faith and a deeper appreciation for the power of God in their lives?

A Course in Basic Christianity is an eight-week (one day per week) course developed and used successfully in local churches.

It is a refresher course for adults for whom it has been a long time since Confirmation or membership class. It is equally helpful for a new member or a long-standing one.

Here is what some pastors say about it:

“An excellent course for a group study, easy to follow and to lead. With well-selected readings from the great thinkers of Christian history, you will leave wanting to learn more about theology and the story of the church. Intellectually rigorous without being off-putting, this course is perfect for the thinking Christian who has forgotten, or perhaps never had, confirmation class.” Lillian Daniel, Senior Minister, First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and co-author (with Martin Copenhaver) of the newly published This Odd and Wondrous Calling.

“I have held the Course in Basic Christianity 6 times and always with tremendous response from a fully enrolled class of adults.” Steven A. Small, Senior Pastor, West Boylston Congregational Church, Massachusetts.

“I like Pastor Rick Floyd's A Course in Basic Christianity.” Anthony Robinson in his What's Theology Got to Do with it?

LEARN THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS:

✤ How do we know God?

✤ How do we interpret the Bible?

✤ What do we know about the creeds and doctrines of the church today?

✤ How do we pray?

✤ What is worship?

✤ What do Baptism and the Lord’s Supper mean?

✤ What do the Ten Commandments have to tell us about our lives?

✤ What is the church?

Order Form

Name_______________________________________

Address_____________________________________

Zip Code___________

Phone #__________________

email_______________________________________

No. Ordered____________Instructor’s Manual______

Cost: $14.95 plus shipping and handling (10% of the total). Mass. residents please add $.75 sales tax for each book ordered or send form ST-2, Certificate of Exemption and Form ST-5, Sales Tax Exempt Purchaser Certificate for non-profit organizations. Instructor’s Manual: $4.95 per copy or free with purchase of 10 or more books.

Make checks payable and send to:

The Reverend Dr. Richard L. Floyd

33 Nottingham Drive

Pittsfield, MA 01201

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Rick’s Five-Bean Super Bowl Chili con Carne for a Crowd

This an old Super Bowl favorite of ours. I made it last night. I know, it wasn’t the Super Bowl, but both the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers played like it was, and the Minnesota fans cheered and carried on like it was. All it was was Bret Favre playing against his old team on Monday Night Football. My son had invited some of his teacher friends over, so I figured I needed to pile on (notice the football metaphor) the food.

This is a good dish for a crowd. You can make it ahead and let it get happy on a back burner, so if your guests are arriving at indeterminate intervals, it’s perfect.

You will need a very large heavy cast iron casserole or Dutch oven for this one. It makes a lot of chili.

3 tbs vegetable oil

4 yellow onions, peeled and sliced

1 bell papper, sliced (I used red but green is OK and cheaper)

2 or 3 small hot peppers, deseeded and chopped (I used long red hots, but jalapenos are fine. Just don’t use habeneros or the heat will overwhelm the subtlety of the other nice flavors)

3 lbs ground beef (I used Black Angus 80-20, but you can go leaner if fat freaks you out, but you will lose some flavor. If you use turkey, just don't tell me.)

6 tbs chili powder

2 tbs ground cumin (comino)

2 tbs paprika (use smoked if you have it, but only use 1 tbs)

1 tbs fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp ground white pepper (if you have it)

2 tps salt (I used Kosher, but it doesn’t matter)

1 beer (not dark, whatever you have in the fridge. I used Corona)

1 35 oz. can of good tomatoes, whole or pureed

2 tbs chopped canned chipotle peppers in adobo

1 14.5 oz. can beef broth or your own beef stock

1 15.5 oz. can red kidney beans

1 15.5 oz. can dark red kidney beans

1 15.5 oz can pinto beans

1 15.5 oz. can small red beans

1 15.5 oz can black beans.

The kernels from an ear of cooked fresh corn, or its frozen equivilent.

Chopped fresh cilantro, chopped white onion, sour cream and grated Mexican or Cheddar cheese for garnishes. Serve with tortilla chips.

Heat the oil in your big pot or in heavy-bottomed big skillet over medium heat. Cook the onion and peppers for about ten minutes stirring occasionally. Turn up the heat to medium high and add the ground beef, stirring until it is brown and there is no pink at all. This is a lot of meat so it will take a while.

Turn the heat back to medium, add the chili powder, cumin, paprika, black and white pepper and salt and stir to mix. Pour the beer over it (it will foam impressively) and stir to mix. Let that simmer for ten minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, chipotles, and beef broth, breaking the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon if you use whole ones.

Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a gentle simmer. Let this cook for one hour, stirring occasionally. Then stir in all five kinds of beans (undrained with their juices), and bring to a boil, then reduce to a very gentle simmer for one hour, stirring occasionally to keep the bottom from sticking. Stir in the corn and cook for ten more minutes.

I put out bowls and let people ladle themselves what they want, and I put the garnishes in small bowls and let people doctor their own. Serve with tortilla chips.

The natural accompaniment is cold beer, but red wine works fine, too. I drank an inexpensive tempranillo from Spain with it last night and it was a nice match. Enjoy.

(Photo: R.L. FLoyd)