Open Communion

Thomas over at Without Authority provides an interesting discussion of open communion and church discipline. You can read my comments on his post at his site.

Jonathan Rundman's new best of...

Rundman has now issued a "best of" album that includes lots of tracks from his early albums. If you're into his music, it's definitely something to order. The mini-essay Daniel Levitim (author of Your Brain on Music) helped me, a audio-neophyte, to understand a bit better what is going on with some of the unusual recording styles I've heard Jonathan use over the years.

psalters

You never can tell what you might discover reading The Christian Century on the evening of Shrove Tuesday after a congregational visioning meeting and chili supper. psalters apparently. Somehow profoundly appropriate as the band to discover on the eve of Ash Wednesday.

30 Minutes of E-mail Per Day

My "Lenten discipline advisor" has now, through laborious spiritual discernment, assigned me my Lenten discipline. I'm only allowed to do 30 minutes of e-mail correspondence per day, preferably in one block of time in the morning.

I confess- I became addicted to e-mail WAY back in the day, when a computer science student and friend from Iowa State and I figured out how to get e-mails back and forth to each other over a modem dial-up connection in our dorm rooms (this was in 1991!). At that time, you had to know the e-mail address as well as router information to get e-mails through various domains and servers. It was painful. Nevertheless, I was addicted. I admit to checking e-mail many times a day.

So, this discipline will be, hopefully, and by the grace of God, what true Christian disciplines actually are- exercises in freedom.