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Snow and Superheroes for Valentine's Day
Feb. 14th, 2007 11:09 pmIt's Valentine's Day, so:
According to the Super Hero Dating Quiz, my ideal match is Beast, from X-Men (aka Hank McCoy, he's the big furry blue doctor), with Spider-Man and Madman (who I'd never heard of, but is apparently a member of the Superhero group the Atomics (whom I had never heard of), published by a comic publisher named Image, (whom I had also never heard of). And apparently if I were a guy, my ideal match would be Ms. Marvel (I think I've heard of her), with Moira MacTaggert (definitely never heard of) and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) of the X-Men (the little girl who can walk through walls).
Today was also a day of horrible weather here in Gettysburg; we had a lot of snow last night, but temperatures that fluctuated today. So there was a little bit of snow melting, then freezing, with more snow coming down today. And, guess what? The road through campus belongs to the Feds as part of the battlefield, so the local government can't plow it and the park service never gets around to it. Which means it's up to our very own maintenance guys to clear, in addition to the sidewalks and things. One of the guys has worked here for 42 years, and he said that while they've had more snow at once many times, today's combination of snow, slush, and ice was the hardest to clear that he can recall. Lovely. Watching big tractors with incredibly heavy chains sliding across the road they're trying to clear is an interesting experience. Particularly when one is walking next to the road, and is in fact abreast of said tractor when it starts to slide.
I sure hope things get better before Sunday; I have to drive to church early in the morning (unless they cancel church). Still, about 90% of the drive is on Route 30, which is one of the main highways through this part of PA and as such is one of the first to be cleared, or so I am assured by the last student to be assigned to my parish.
A few years ago the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (of which I am a member) entered into a very close fellowship such that Episcopalian priests can serve in Lutheran congregations and Lutheran pastors can serve in Episcopalian parishes. (I can't speak to how it was received in the ECUSA, but in the ELCA it was accompanied by much angst, much of which was due to the way in which it was handled on our end.) Anyway, as part of this agreement the ECUSA became the first non-Lutheran church body in the world to accept the Augsburg Confession as part of its theological belief system, and the ELCA agreed to teach the Book of Common Prayer (the Anglican equivalent to the Augsburg Confession) in its seminaries. So today's Worship class was an introduction to it. One of the main functions of the BCP, apparently, is to serve as a "glue" to hold different theological factions within the church together. So that no matter what you believe, you can pray the prayers and participate in the worship service with a clear heart (this requires a certain ... blandness to the language and a bit of what Luther would have described as "pussy-footing").
This is, needless to say, very different from the way that Lutherans have historically approached, well, anything. Our professor quoted an Anglican friend of his: "Anglicans will court heresy in order to prevent schism. Lutherans will court schism in order to prevent heresy." And, having had a course in Luther and Lutheranism in college which included a unit on 19th Century American Lutheranism, and at one point having been so foolish as to try to diagram out on paper the intertwinings of various Lutheran church bodies as they went through successive schisms and mergers, my response was: "Lutherans are willing to do more than court schism, we'll marry it!"
According to the Super Hero Dating Quiz, my ideal match is Beast, from X-Men (aka Hank McCoy, he's the big furry blue doctor), with Spider-Man and Madman (who I'd never heard of, but is apparently a member of the Superhero group the Atomics (whom I had never heard of), published by a comic publisher named Image, (whom I had also never heard of). And apparently if I were a guy, my ideal match would be Ms. Marvel (I think I've heard of her), with Moira MacTaggert (definitely never heard of) and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) of the X-Men (the little girl who can walk through walls).
Today was also a day of horrible weather here in Gettysburg; we had a lot of snow last night, but temperatures that fluctuated today. So there was a little bit of snow melting, then freezing, with more snow coming down today. And, guess what? The road through campus belongs to the Feds as part of the battlefield, so the local government can't plow it and the park service never gets around to it. Which means it's up to our very own maintenance guys to clear, in addition to the sidewalks and things. One of the guys has worked here for 42 years, and he said that while they've had more snow at once many times, today's combination of snow, slush, and ice was the hardest to clear that he can recall. Lovely. Watching big tractors with incredibly heavy chains sliding across the road they're trying to clear is an interesting experience. Particularly when one is walking next to the road, and is in fact abreast of said tractor when it starts to slide.
I sure hope things get better before Sunday; I have to drive to church early in the morning (unless they cancel church). Still, about 90% of the drive is on Route 30, which is one of the main highways through this part of PA and as such is one of the first to be cleared, or so I am assured by the last student to be assigned to my parish.
A few years ago the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (of which I am a member) entered into a very close fellowship such that Episcopalian priests can serve in Lutheran congregations and Lutheran pastors can serve in Episcopalian parishes. (I can't speak to how it was received in the ECUSA, but in the ELCA it was accompanied by much angst, much of which was due to the way in which it was handled on our end.) Anyway, as part of this agreement the ECUSA became the first non-Lutheran church body in the world to accept the Augsburg Confession as part of its theological belief system, and the ELCA agreed to teach the Book of Common Prayer (the Anglican equivalent to the Augsburg Confession) in its seminaries. So today's Worship class was an introduction to it. One of the main functions of the BCP, apparently, is to serve as a "glue" to hold different theological factions within the church together. So that no matter what you believe, you can pray the prayers and participate in the worship service with a clear heart (this requires a certain ... blandness to the language and a bit of what Luther would have described as "pussy-footing").
This is, needless to say, very different from the way that Lutherans have historically approached, well, anything. Our professor quoted an Anglican friend of his: "Anglicans will court heresy in order to prevent schism. Lutherans will court schism in order to prevent heresy." And, having had a course in Luther and Lutheranism in college which included a unit on 19th Century American Lutheranism, and at one point having been so foolish as to try to diagram out on paper the intertwinings of various Lutheran church bodies as they went through successive schisms and mergers, my response was: "Lutherans are willing to do more than court schism, we'll marry it!"
