souper bowl of caring

Song of The Day:

5:58. Wake up, exactly two minutes before alarm is set to ring. Reset alarm for 6:30.

6:28. Wake up. What the?!

7:01. Researching Super Bowl party games for later in the day. Decide on commercial bingo and that pseudo gambling game, you know, the one where Christian youth are encouraged to wager their allowance for a chance at some Skittles?

7:22. Reading submissions for the PLGRM Magazine digital edition. There’s good stuff here.

7:44. Enjoy breakfast of one banana walnut muffin, made by daughter and I two days before.

9:07. Throwing together a quick script for the high school students to use in making a Souper Bowl of Caring announcement. Forgot to do it earlier in the week. This after telling students explicitly that I would have it for them. Fail.

9:15. No matter. Students have created their own script. I’m not permitted to see it.

9:39. Compassionately ask church member how his wife’s foot is, since I read on our pastoral care bulletin board that she’d broken it. It’s not his wife. It’s his sister. Oops.

9:59. Wrestling with the candle lighters for acolytes. Should have done this an hour ago. “If the wick runs out before you get the chancel candles lit, act confused and run.”

10:07. High school students’ announcement is a smash. Laughter. Rejoicing. They pay me for this?

10:18. Notice the first Scripture reading is listed in the bulletin as “Jeremiah 4.” Scan Jeremiah 4. Something’s not right. Should have checked this before.

10:22. Whisper across the chancel during the Children’s Time to Boss, “Am I doing the first reading?” Nod. “The whole chapter?” Surprised look. Then, effortlessly, she taps the screen of the iPhone laying next to her on the chancel pew. A moment later, she’s walking it over to me, revealing the lectionary listing as “Jeremiah 1:4-19.” Resolve to always have my phone with me in worship from now on.

11:37. Use my Associate Pastor’s report during the annual congregational meeting to inform the congregation that daughter will be entering kindergarten next fall. Say a bunch of other stuff too, including a pitch for PLGRM Magazine.

1:15. Leave wife and daughter at lunch to go buy sodas, pens, and game prizes for Super Bowl party.

2:13. Stop by friend’s house to pick up 30 tacos they’ve made for our Super Bowl party. 15 chicken, 15 carne asada. Resolve not to eat them all before the party.

2:30. Collect daughter from home to take her along to the Super Bowl party. She’s got her baby doll wrapped around her with mom’s scarf.

2:24. Pick up two 3 foot-long sub sandwiches for party. They’re propped up on the front seat like an extra passenger. A tasty extra passenger.

2:41. Return home to pick up the baby doll’s diaper bag. Daughter has discovered she’s missing it and is threatening pre-halftime show pyrotechnics if it’s not retrieved.

3:57. With a house full of junior high students and the television blaring, notice that Daughter has fallen asleep on the couch next to me. Decide to let her sleep. It’s not like the Broncos are playing or something.

5:55. 30 minutes into the now infamous Beyoncee Blackout, go all curmudgeon and declare to the room that I don’t want to hear anymore prognosticating about modern peoples’ inability to listen to a 20 minute sermon in light of the fact that the entire nation has sat raptured now for half an hour on a power outage.

6:38. Break the contemplative silence after this commercial by declaring, “That’s terrible.” Half the room turns and looks at me stunned, like I just belched The Satanic Verses.

7:30. Realizing I’m completely full, eat another section of the 3 foot sub. Burp.

9:03. Put Daughter in the bath, then scan the blog reader for the first time all weekend. Find this. Hastily leave a comment. Regret it almost instantly.

11:00. Trying to fall asleep, plotting out the coming week. Trying to remember who won the Super Bowl game.

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a weekly post reviewing Sunday, the busiest, most stressful, most gratifying day in the week of a pastor/parent/spouse/citizen

Song of The Day:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LNvqc

6:00. Up. Snoozing is for suckers.

6:02. Hobble down the stairs, the pinky toes on both feet aching from having clipped them, alternately, barefoot, on the same chair leg the day before. Had to put the chair down.

6:41. Put the finishing (and beginning) touches on the Junior High Youth Group outline for that afternoon, and email it to volunteers, assigning the easiest parts to myself.

6:42. Breakfast of bran flakes with fiber pellets on top of shredded wheat. Whinney.

7:14. Decide against the turquoise blue tie I picked out the night before. That’s a more confident man’s tie.

8:07. Stop at the grocery store to pick up snacks for the high school Sunday school class, because the teacher who normally gets them texted yesterday that she’s sick.

8:10. Mini bran muffins and rice milk in my cart, confident this is cook kid food these days.

8:59. The other Sunday school teacher arrives, and he’s carting a box of donuts. Yeah, cool. Whatever. Those muffins were for decoration anyway.

9:22. Snap a picture from the back of the adult Sunday school class as the speaker explains, “I’ve often thought that the greatest moment in my career was writing that speech for Martin.” Measuring my life’s accomplishments in light of the awareness that “Martin” is Martin Luther King, Jr., I die a little inside and slink out the back door.

9:41. Stroll past the the church’s newly emerging coffee klatch of parents milling outside the Godly Play room. “Hey guys. I see you’re drinking some coffee. Some java. Heyyy. Drinkin’ coffeeeee.”

10:06. Giggle with the visiting Rabbi during worship announcements about the time, two years ago, when he brought a Megilah scroll to show the children and I assisted him by unrolling it so far as to nearly break it. Realize he’s not giggling.

10:08. Acolyte struggling to light the middle chancel candle. Heroically leap from my seat between the visiting Rabbi and Head Pastor, striding towards the struggling child to bring light into the wo—-oh, wait. It’s lit. I’m just gonna sit down now. I’m sure nobody noticed.

10:16. As it is our annual exchange Sunday with the local synagogue, pronounce, “The peace of GOD be with you” to a congregation conditioned to receive “The peace of Christ.” Mentally rehearse my explanation for this while I shake peoples’ hands.

10:19. Introduce the Rabbi to the children. “Children I want to introduce you to my friend Rabbi Jonathan. Uhhh, this is Rabbi Jonathan.”

10:20. Rabbi Jonathan is fumbling with the handheld microphone and the Megilah scroll he’s once again brought. Hesitate. Hesitate. Finally go to help, grabbing the microphone and holding it in front of his face like Phil Donahue.

10:46. Realize during Rabbi and Head Pastor’s sermon that this annual exchange, though sometimes clumsy, though sometimes uncomfortable and uncertain, is a good, good thing nonetheless. Wonder if anything really good is easy.

11:17. Defending the church’s openness to gays and lesbians to a church member, recalling my first job interview after seminary. The committee asked how I felt about homosexuality in the church, and I, unprepared, stuttered out some answer about The Bible not allowing it. To the committee’s great credit, they never called me back.

12:47. Lunch at a local restaurant with a new couple from church and their young daughter. Our daughters play together under the table, behind the window curtains, on top of the bar . . .

1:29. Drive home over a shrieking melody of protest from 4 year-old, who preferred to drive home with her mother.

1:43. 4 year-old still screaming, gagging on her tears.

1:56. Mommy returns with “Princess dress” from the Goodwill. Tantrum over. 4 year-old stops crying as well.

2:55. Dozing off while family watches The Rescuers Down Under, slipping into dreams of Newhart.

3:30. Head to grocery store to get youth group snacks. Forgot my wallet. Turn around.

4:44. School three consecutive junior high students in Connect Four. Can’t Touch This.

5:32. Talking to junior highers about the dangers of misrepresenting yourself online. Speak through me, St. Rushkoff

7:08. A member of the Indonesian church with which we share space hurriedly invites high school youth to join in a memorial service reception meal in the Fellowship Hall. I go. Shake a few hands, decline numerous offers of food, explaining about the youth group meeting, then leave, confident that I’ve just set relations between our churches back several steps.

8:11. Students planning for next week’s Souper Bowl of Caring. They want to perform a parody soup song in church. They’re considering “99 Bowls of Soup on The Wall,” “Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Soups,” and, my personal favorite, “Aye, Aye, Aye, Aye! Yo Quiero Sopa!” Adult volunteer’s suggestion of “Gizpacho, Gizpacho Man” goes politely unheeded.

9:39. Gleefully reading Matt Schultz’s blog post on the outrage that is Commercial Dad.

10:14. 4 year-old is still awake, crying now for the stuffed animal she left in the car (see video above).

10:21. Return to bed with stuffed animal. “Thank you, Daddy.”