Wednesday Festival

Oh, yeah, it certainly is January around here, an odd time of year, what with all that holiday excitement over and no more big events to worry about for a while. (Whew!) It can’t seem to decide if it’s winter or spring in my part of the country. We were all walking around in T-shirts a week or two ago, but winter seems to be settling in now—it’s not quite 20 degrees out there this morning. (Brrr!)

It’s a good time to hunker down inside for a while and see what old friends are up to. This week’s Wednesday Festival is a bit like our weather, with a little of this, and a little of that.

It’s definitely winter in Tallinn, though. Lorna at see-through faith offers us a glimpse of winter in Tallinn and also shares an example of “ministry before theology,” about what happened when some of the students wanted to pray for two others who were sick. “Sometimes,” Lorna says, “it’s the right thing to do.”

1-4 Grace at Frog Blog is already looking ahead to some future big events. She’s posted some ideas for Lent but is looking for suggestions for more. She also wonders if anyone has any leads on a good VBS curriculum.

Carmen at In the Open Space is hooked on the current "24", which is already six hours underway, and is finding that it raises some familiar issues (“How far should a country go to protect its citizens? How far to protect its freedoms?”) as well as some deeper personal questions (“What do we believe? What are we willing to stay alive for?”)

PamBG’s Blog includes an interesting book meme concerning the most influential works on contemporary theology. (PamBG suggests The New Testament and the People of God by N.T. Wright, Naming the Powers by Walter Wink, and A Community of Character by Stanley Hauerwas.) She also shares some thoughts on Mark: “It's simply a fact from God's perspective that we are all sinners, and we are all broken people. But God calls us into his service as broken people. He doesn't say "I have no use for you until you are whole and sinless"; we will not be whole and sinless until we are citizens of God's Kingdom. God uses us as sinful broken people—despite the fact that we are sinful and broken, if you want to put it that way.”

Sally Coleman says her posts at Eternal Echoes “have been a bit gloomy” lately as she works her way through a recurrence of depression, but she offers her musings here and here hoping they might help someone else.

Jan at A Church for Starving Artists shares a few dreams of her own as we in the U.S. pause to remember Martin Luther King, Jr., starting with the dream "that the church would be real, relevant, life-changing, & world-changing.”

Jorge (The Winged Man) has written the first of a series of posts discussing how he got to where he is now, faith-wise. It’s about growing up Catholic in a Cuban-American home and takes him through senior year, when he began exploring the Baha’i faith.

Last but certainly not least, Preacher Mom has joined the ranks of those aiming to post a picture a day. You can check her Project 365 effort out at Preacher Mom’s 365. Also, in life and times of a preacher mom, she ponders a few of the things that are hard to teach a son if you’re a single mom. (Among others, the need to stop and explain that her boy won’t grow up to be a Mama.)