Today was the first day of my last semester at Claremont School of Theology.

As I drove home I passed a taco truck parked in the parking lot of a gas station. People milled all around it ordering food, and eating tacos with their heads tilted to the side, their shoulders raised, and the collars of their jackets turned up keeping their necks warm from the cool night air. I looked at them eating for as long as I could, and then I jerked my head back to the road in front of me, back to where I was headed. Into the darkness of the night I drove, into an unknown future I go.

Why would someone like me want to be a pastor? Why would someone want to be religious at all, in a traditional sense of going to church, etc?

Like a taco truck exists to serve up hot and delicious Mexican food to hungry people giving them joy and real sustenance on a cold night, so I want to be part of a community which serves up a real heart warming and sustaining message of hope. Keeping this in mind I can journey through the dark night.

Do you think that the church has a real sustaining message to share with the world? If so, what is it? If not, why?

I can’t write about tannins without thinking about the movie, “Sideways.” Sheri and I honeymooned in wine country both in the Los Olivos area and later in Sonoma valley. Although we don’t qualify as “cork dorks” we do like wine tasting and of course the subject of tannins is very present. Below you see a pic of day three of leaching out tannins from the already harvested and ground up acorns picked off the sidewalk on our residential street. I was pretty amazed to see how dark the water got, which was refreshed yesterday. That’s a lot of tannins. I did a little reading on Wikipedia and not surprisingly tannins are found not just in acorns, oak trees (which wine barrels are often made from), but in many other foods as well. In acorns it is so strong that this leeching process must be done or they are inedible. I have to say the whole harvesting acorns from nature is a lot of work!

Which brings me to something else that I’ve been wanting to write about. Seminary. That too, is a lot of work. Next week, I will begin my final semester at Claremont School of Theology (CST). It’s a little sad to think about, but also exciting to prepare for the next leg of my journey of becoming a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. All told I will have spent three years studying at CST. Next, we will move to Berkeley, California and there I will attend Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary for one year of residency called, “the Lutheran Year.”

It’s been a good two and a half years so far at CST. I’ve learned a lot and been stretched both intellectually and spiritually. It’s a wonder to think that I’ve come this far, and that my family has been so supportive and patient thus far. I am deeply thankful for this. Some processes take a while to endure in order to come out the other side useful and helpful, especially if you’re a wild nut with more than your share of bitterness. That’s a bit of an exaggeration!

Near and around our house many squirrels have been visiting us. Some say that this is due to a nearby artificial lake that has been drained. We don’t mind them too much as of yet, because they haven’t done any damage and they are cute. But as we daily walked our nephew and niece to school we noticed the plethora, the abundance of acorns. It made me think of a book a read about a year ago called, “Parable of the Sower,” by Octavia Butler. It’s a great read, and I think about it quite often during the economic hardship so many are facing. The book is set in the future, perhaps a not too distant future, when there is more or less a total economic collapse in the United States ruled by chaos and unfettered predatory capitalism. The protagonist of the book, Lauren, re-imagines both life and faith. An ongoing theme of the book is the acorn. As a girl, her community in southern California, a gated community hanging onto some semblance of middle class life by the skin of their teeth, are incredible dependent on gardening and living off the land in their own back yard. One way they do this is by harvesting and eating acorns. Lauren enjoys acorn bread. So I decided to give it a try. The squirrels can share, believe me, there is more than enough.

Our daughter Rebecca, nephew Steve, and niece Ashlee, each got an empty milk jug and we spent about an hour picking acorns off the sidewalk along our residential street. Even our baby, little Chaz helped out (shhh don’t tell Sheri). We took them home and spent some time splitting open the shells and digging out the raw acorn nut. This is a painstaking process.

Next we blended the acorn nuts in water and put them in mason jars and since I only I have one, we put the rest in plastic containers. Now, according to what I read on the internet we need to spend a few days leaching out the tannins.

So there you have it, day one of making Acorn bread. We had a lot of fun doing this on day one. It was a great way to keep the kids occupied for a morning, it was educational, and it was green. I hope the world never comes to what is described in “Parable of the Sower” but if you’re in need of stretching your dollars like we are, you might enjoy scavenging/harvesting wild acorns too!

Thanks to www.californiaoaks.org/html/reference.html for the free information in: “Acorns and Eat ‘Em.”

Stay tuned for more Acorn action to follow!

The longer I live in southern California the more I like going to Los Angeles. My daughter and I took the train into the city this morning to do some shopping and have some fun. We noticed lots of other tourist types like us, including families with kids out of school. As we walked past Pershing Square we saw that there was a Farmer’s Market that was open, so we checked it out. We were happy to sample lots of local produce and then enjoy a snack of fresh fruits around the fountain. A few steps away was an ice rink set up in the 70+ degree heat with a live band tearing it up, the “Alternachicks.” People were friendly on the train and the subway stopping to talk to us. Thank you Los Angeles.

Christmas was awesome.

I went to Los Angeles last week with my wife Sheri to celebrate our anniversary. We had a great time. We went to LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art which is participating in Pacific Standard Time, an art show across Los Angeles that celebrates works and culture from the 70′s and 80′s. The museum is awesome. You have to go. Urban Light is like one of the coolest things ever. It reminds me of Narnia. Later we went up to Melrose Avenue for dinner at Carlitos Gardel. Los Angeles makes me nostalgic. I went there a couple of time as a kid, and I have lived in southern California now for almost 10 years. But there is something about the City of Los Angeles itself.

I remember as a kid visiting Melrose Avenue. We had lunch in some cafe, not sure which one it was. It was the 80′s. My mom let my sister and I walk down the street and check out shops on our own. I was from a small town in Arizona, mind you. We went into a shop with punk rocker gear. Remember that this was well before the days of “Hot Topics” in every suburban mall. This was before “Goth” was one o

f many trends a kid could adopt. This was Los Angeles in the 80′s and I was maybe seven or eight years old. I looked at young men and women dressed in leather with real mow-hawks and studded leather with spikes. It felt like I was in a movie, or a different world. These kinds of places only existed on TV, so I had thought. It felt authentic. That memory has stuck with me for years until this past week when I visited Melrose Avenue again. When I was a kid it didn’t even feel like it was a store. It was a porthole to a different world, with different people, and a different lifestyle and values. Typical of nostalgia it was disappointing to see these places from the eyes of a 30 year old. I realized that this mythic place in my mind was just a shop, just materialism. Or was it?

Fashion, music, and consumerism can be criticized for being shallow vestiges of a deeper reality. It seems like being a punk rocker in the 80′s should have involved being awarded your gear after passing a test or achieving hard core status. It’s disappointing that the mythical creatures I saw were perhaps just suburban kids who drove into LA and bought the gear and took on the look. Were they any more punk-rock than me, a seven year old small town boy?

We all make choices in life. People go in different directions. Some small town kids do move to the city and live a hard core punk rock lifestyle. Others never move. Others walk across continents searching for their identity. Even though I don’t live in the City of Los Angeles, there is something about that place that I love. There is an ineffability to it that draws one in. A mystical truth that is hard to pin down. It’s said that the post modern turn involves an assent that there isn’t an essentialist truth in reality. That the truth can’t be nailed down precisely but is subjective to persons and observers. Los Angeles is so large and sprawling, and maybe one of the places where literally buying your identity at boutique shops was first widespread that it speaks truth to our situation, a broad situation in life. The reality of Los Angeles in the 80′s isn’t less true than I remembered it. It was a harbinger to the reality of today.

Were you there? I know I have friends who were adults in Los Angeles in the 80′s. What do you remember? Did anyone else go there as a kid? What do you remember?

I woke up this morning to the sun peeping over the horizon. Illuminated by it’s presence was a cross, solitary on the horizon. So simple, and perhaps unintentional, I was called to remember my faith. I though about “white noise” the phrase which describes background sounds which fades away. So there are background images too that fade. How many years have I looked out my bedroom window and not seen the cross that was lit up this Thursday morning in radiant orange light? But there it was, and there it is, snuggled into my imagination now. A source of comfort and wonderment. Such a strange thing to give comfort. An object of scorn. Yet, for me, it does.

Two weeks ago I completed one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. I didn’t do much blogging during that time, mostly because it was  a busy time, but also because it was intense! There was so much to process that I wanted some distance before writing about it in a public forum. But enough apologies.

Here’s my super refined answer to, “How was CPE?”

• Good. I walk away being deeply thankful for the experience, for the people I worked with, and the hospital.
• Practical. After two years of heady academic work CPE was an opportunity to get practical and get real. I liked that.
• Enlightening. I’ve got new respect for chaplains and chaplaincy. It is a powerful ministry, a justice ministry bringing grace and love to people who greatly need it.
• Hopeful. Even in the middle of the night when deeply sad things happen I found hope in God’s promises.
• Intense. One person said part of CPE is “peeling away the layers of the onion” of yourself. There is a truth to this. Self-awareness is a large part of CPE.  It’s not easy to do this, but the process is well worth it. I found that I can care better for others in a more intentional way when I am aware of my own issues.

So there you have it. CPE. If you get the chance, I recommend it.

Now I am starting my third and final year of study at Claremont School of Theology at Claremont Lincoln University. This year I’ll be taking more practical classes to prepare for ordained ministry, and I’ll also be writing a master’s thesis on youth theology. Stay tuned for more updates to come.

I read this article in the LA Times this morning about a Lip Dub video created by the 2011 graduating seniors of Clovis High School in Fresno, CA. The video is awesome! You really must watch it for yourself, after just one viewing a few salient points are worth noting about young people:

• Creativity – It’s no secret that funding for the arts has been cut again and again in our school systems. What a shame, and yet it is so clear here how important art and expression is for young people. Their creativity cannot be stifled!
• Cooperation – It isn’t uncommon to hear it said that each generation in USA becomes more egotistic and self-centered. However, over 600 people worked together to make this video, and so many groups, clubs, and teams were showcased that this video is a triumph of the collective effort of young people.
• Voice – If you read the article in the Times you’ll find out that the majority of the video was filmed in silence and in one take. We don’t hear the voices of the seniors until the last minute. This is partly due to the fact that it is a lip-dub style video, but the other reason is that standardized testing was taking place for all the other students. Nevertheless, through images, lip-syncing, and using popular music they found a way to share their voice.
• Hope – I don’t care if it’s cliche to say that I find hope in youth. I do. With so much negative media spin, and a heated political landscape, this video cuts through it all and offers an alternative message of hope and pride in one’s community – in this case Clovis High School!

The Lanyard is Showing Signs of Decay (that's good)!

It’s been one month to the day since the OC Word Camp “compostable lanyard” went into the worm bin. And I have to say that the results look pretty good. You can see first of that at one place the worms and have eaten completely through the lanyard in one place breaking the loop. Other places show good wear and tear. On observation: the ink on the lanyard seems to be hanging tough, it’s a spongy material that doesn’t seem to be breaking down, or eaten. I’d be interested to know if the company who makes this has anything to say about the ink/printing material.

You can also see that there is what looks to be a recyclable cup in the bin. I also picked this up from OC Wordcamp 2011, but I’m not sure if the organizers arranged for this or if it is just standard fare for Chapman University’s catering service. Either way it is very cool, but is taken longer to decompose – no signs of it yet. We’ll wait and see.

Aside from this composting project the Wordcamp was very helpful for me in setting up and running this blog. I’ve already noticed that the San Diego Word Camp is sold out (what a shame). The next one in SoCal will be in LA in September. I’d like to go!

So let it be said of the OC Wordcamp that it seems they took a demonstrable step toward “greening it up” as Jeff would say. Let’s hope other Wordcamp organizers do the same!

Real Life Functioning Worm Bin