spent a few hours on the line today.
waved back at some thumbs uppers. talked to some people. the usual stuff.
business as usual at the williston federated church.
*snrk*
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
terrifying arsenal
i just checked my bag.
turns out today i'm carrying these items.
and these.
and in my car i have a leatherman tool, duct tape, assorted zip ties and bungee cords, some para cord, three gallons of water, a box of snacks, a set of bike tools, an emergency tarp and two spring clamps.
so essentially at any moment i might be able to find my way out of the woods, make simple repairs, perform basic first aid, and camp overnight if i get stranded somewhere.
yep, you should lock your doors when i go by because i might whip out a map protractor or a bandage or something.
flee in terror!
i'm not afraid to use a clinometer if i have to.
oh, no!!! not the tweezers!
run! hide your children! there's a NOTEBOOK in there!!!
QUAKE IN FEAR!
turns out today i'm carrying these items.
and these.
and in my car i have a leatherman tool, duct tape, assorted zip ties and bungee cords, some para cord, three gallons of water, a box of snacks, a set of bike tools, an emergency tarp and two spring clamps.
so essentially at any moment i might be able to find my way out of the woods, make simple repairs, perform basic first aid, and camp overnight if i get stranded somewhere.
yep, you should lock your doors when i go by because i might whip out a map protractor or a bandage or something.
flee in terror!
i'm not afraid to use a clinometer if i have to.
oh, no!!! not the tweezers!
run! hide your children! there's a NOTEBOOK in there!!!
QUAKE IN FEAR!
Monday, August 26, 2013
not my problem
there's a lot here i simply can't tell you besides that i had no time to protest today because i had to spend a long time on the phone with the mediator.
tomorrow i have to have some little surgical procedures; i'll try to squeeze the protesting in beforehand, but you know how hectic a day can get if you have engagements on both sides of medical appointments.
it doesn't really matter.
the tone of the protest does not over its twenty or thirty year span suffer if i take a day off to tend to business or go on a vacation. the streetcorner will still be there.
in other news, this blog got its 3000th hit yesterday while i was out on the corner, and in some search engines (not google) you get this protest ABOVE the church homepage in the search results if you use "williston federated church" as your search term.
in the long term rebranding of the church, i call that a gain.
someone looking for directions to the church ten years from now? they can read about this protest.
you don't have to like what i'm doing or approve of it for the negative emotional association with the corner and the church to form in your neural pathways. anyone who's ever read an article about negative political advertising knows this.
the protest is not a means to drum up support nor to compel some kind of action or force a consequence. it IS the chosen consequence.
it IS the present, and it IS the future.
the rest is not my problem.
tomorrow i have to have some little surgical procedures; i'll try to squeeze the protesting in beforehand, but you know how hectic a day can get if you have engagements on both sides of medical appointments.
it doesn't really matter.
the tone of the protest does not over its twenty or thirty year span suffer if i take a day off to tend to business or go on a vacation. the streetcorner will still be there.
in other news, this blog got its 3000th hit yesterday while i was out on the corner, and in some search engines (not google) you get this protest ABOVE the church homepage in the search results if you use "williston federated church" as your search term.
in the long term rebranding of the church, i call that a gain.
someone looking for directions to the church ten years from now? they can read about this protest.
you don't have to like what i'm doing or approve of it for the negative emotional association with the corner and the church to form in your neural pathways. anyone who's ever read an article about negative political advertising knows this.
the protest is not a means to drum up support nor to compel some kind of action or force a consequence. it IS the chosen consequence.
it IS the present, and it IS the future.
the rest is not my problem.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
still collecting data
i would like to table any discussions of stopping the protest until june of 2018.
by then i will probably have collected enough data to have an idea of how well it's working for me.
so far it's going really well but i want to give it a good run before i make any hasty decisions.
by then i will probably have collected enough data to have an idea of how well it's working for me.
so far it's going really well but i want to give it a good run before i make any hasty decisions.
twenty-first sunday in ordinary time
it was most of the usuals today: the wavers, the honk-and wavers, the thumbs ups.
at about nine o'clock two young men in a silver compact car sped by, shouting something as loud and crude as it was unintelligible. i guess i'm sort of assuming the crude part, but there's a certain unmistakable tone to the crude things yahoos yell from speeding cars.
at nine twenty on the dot i started my singing, the objective of which was to cause the front door of the church to be closed. if that door is not open to everyone, it is simply not open, period.
at ten o'clock things got a little weird. a man in a dark grey suv pulled up to the utility pad parking place on the south side of the intersection and he lurked, hiding behind the power poles, taking pictures with a camera with a telephoto lens.
i don't know why he felt he needed to do that; most people who want to take pictures of me with my sign either just take the picture or they come up and ask.
can i get you to stand so i can get the church name in the picture? sure.
it was a very busy ten minutes, the five minutes on either side of ten o'clock. a couple in a brown sedan pulled up and the gentleman handed me a page of typed scripture quotations with a scripture bookmark stapled to it. "this is for you", he said.
i read it. i do not know what those people were getting at. i've read the whole bible, several translations, cover-to-cover. a page of scriptural quotations rarely makes a coherent point all by themselves. i'm sure those people had a clear idea what they meant to communicate by those verses, but i was left a little unclear as to their meaning. even if i assume they didn't mean it ironically, i am really uncertain what they were trying to communicate to me, or more likely, what they thought the Lord would communicate to me by it.
because scripture's like that.
scripture, speaking entirely for itself does not even agree with itself on thousands of points, so you kind of have to interpret it if you're going to communicate anything.
here's a random contradiction: in genesis 16:16, abram is 86 years old when ishmael is born. if both acts 7:2-4 and genesis 11:26-32 are correct, he's over 135. it's maybe not an important point, but scriptural quotes by themselves don't necessarily communicate what you think they communicate.
it would have been better for the people to write me a note telling me what they thought and referring to scripture, because then at least i'd have an idea what they were on about, and i'd be able to connect their thoughts with scriptural reference, which i think is a valid form of discussion.
so as it was, i was sort of all, like, "huh?" which i think is not what they intended.
also in those ten minutes a man pulled up in the south side of the intersection and just sat there for a long time looking at me. he did not appear either hostile or supportive, but as if he was thinking carefully. after a while he drove off.
and also in those ten minutes there were two cars going by who did not just smile and wave, but stopped in the intersection, roll down the windows and wave their whole arms until i waved back.
then after the service two young men came up and politely asked me a lot of questions about the whole story. then they appeared to go into the church to ask people there a lot of questions. i have no idea who they were or what they hoped to learn or to do with the information.
they were kind of sweet, though.
a woman waved and shouted "jesus loves you!"
i noticed that this week the elderly lady did not run over the crosswalk sign on her way out of the church parking lot.
an old guy from the church in a red car waved his hand at me in the dismissive way that old guys do when they wish to dismiss you with contempt. i resisted the temptation to wave cheerfully.
and then some stuff happened.
well.
that's pretty much it for today. it's business as usual at the williston federated church.
see you tomorrow on the streetcorner.
at about nine o'clock two young men in a silver compact car sped by, shouting something as loud and crude as it was unintelligible. i guess i'm sort of assuming the crude part, but there's a certain unmistakable tone to the crude things yahoos yell from speeding cars.
at nine twenty on the dot i started my singing, the objective of which was to cause the front door of the church to be closed. if that door is not open to everyone, it is simply not open, period.
at ten o'clock things got a little weird. a man in a dark grey suv pulled up to the utility pad parking place on the south side of the intersection and he lurked, hiding behind the power poles, taking pictures with a camera with a telephoto lens.
i don't know why he felt he needed to do that; most people who want to take pictures of me with my sign either just take the picture or they come up and ask.
can i get you to stand so i can get the church name in the picture? sure.
it was a very busy ten minutes, the five minutes on either side of ten o'clock. a couple in a brown sedan pulled up and the gentleman handed me a page of typed scripture quotations with a scripture bookmark stapled to it. "this is for you", he said.
i read it. i do not know what those people were getting at. i've read the whole bible, several translations, cover-to-cover. a page of scriptural quotations rarely makes a coherent point all by themselves. i'm sure those people had a clear idea what they meant to communicate by those verses, but i was left a little unclear as to their meaning. even if i assume they didn't mean it ironically, i am really uncertain what they were trying to communicate to me, or more likely, what they thought the Lord would communicate to me by it.
because scripture's like that.
scripture, speaking entirely for itself does not even agree with itself on thousands of points, so you kind of have to interpret it if you're going to communicate anything.
here's a random contradiction: in genesis 16:16, abram is 86 years old when ishmael is born. if both acts 7:2-4 and genesis 11:26-32 are correct, he's over 135. it's maybe not an important point, but scriptural quotes by themselves don't necessarily communicate what you think they communicate.
it would have been better for the people to write me a note telling me what they thought and referring to scripture, because then at least i'd have an idea what they were on about, and i'd be able to connect their thoughts with scriptural reference, which i think is a valid form of discussion.
so as it was, i was sort of all, like, "huh?" which i think is not what they intended.
also in those ten minutes a man pulled up in the south side of the intersection and just sat there for a long time looking at me. he did not appear either hostile or supportive, but as if he was thinking carefully. after a while he drove off.
and also in those ten minutes there were two cars going by who did not just smile and wave, but stopped in the intersection, roll down the windows and wave their whole arms until i waved back.
then after the service two young men came up and politely asked me a lot of questions about the whole story. then they appeared to go into the church to ask people there a lot of questions. i have no idea who they were or what they hoped to learn or to do with the information.
they were kind of sweet, though.
a woman waved and shouted "jesus loves you!"
i noticed that this week the elderly lady did not run over the crosswalk sign on her way out of the church parking lot.
an old guy from the church in a red car waved his hand at me in the dismissive way that old guys do when they wish to dismiss you with contempt. i resisted the temptation to wave cheerfully.
and then some stuff happened.
well.
that's pretty much it for today. it's business as usual at the williston federated church.
see you tomorrow on the streetcorner.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
fun fact
go ahead and google "williston federated church". go ahead, i'll wait.
d'ya notice that this protest comes up on the first page?
make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'
d'ya notice that this protest comes up on the first page?
make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'
Friday, August 23, 2013
fun party games
here's a fun party game you guys can play down at bishop booth while you're waiting for me to arrive:
it's called guess which of the smiling party goers scuttled the mediation and then hung the pastor out to dry!
you could play it twenty questions style or hot-and-cold style or even pin-the-tail-on-the-weasel.
because SOME of you had advance warning of what was coming and chose not to do anything about it.
hmmmmmm. which happy smiling handshaking "oh, we missed you" people might it be?
oooh, it's a brain teaser! i LOVE brain teasers!
it's called guess which of the smiling party goers scuttled the mediation and then hung the pastor out to dry!
you could play it twenty questions style or hot-and-cold style or even pin-the-tail-on-the-weasel.
because SOME of you had advance warning of what was coming and chose not to do anything about it.
hmmmmmm. which happy smiling handshaking "oh, we missed you" people might it be?
oooh, it's a brain teaser! i LOVE brain teasers!
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