Weekend Rewind

"What? A weekend rewind?" you say. "But today's only Saturday--and barely Saturday afternoon at that" (all you sleep-in folk are still in your jammies and sipping coffee as I type this). "How could it be time for a rewind already?"

Well, all you faithful readers will have noticed that last weekend brought no rewind... so here's the very shortened but very important rewind from last weekend. So sit back in your recliner with your warm-up, run your hands through your bed hair, and enjoy!

Friday dawned bright, optimistic, and chaotic. Bright and optimistic because J is SUPERMAN and painted the entire basement on Thursday night. The best part? No, not that it marked the final lap of the (really, truly) end of our major remodels; not that the drywall dust was finally subsiding; not that we were just high from the paint fumes. (Although...) No, the best part was opening the basement door and seeing a warm tan on the walls and not 1980s powder-puff blue. The disappearance of the powder-puff blue was a turning point in my life. We had said goodbye to the shag carpet and the wall paneling; the blue was our home's last relic of a bygone age of big hair and leg warmers... oh, wait. Those are coming back (well, they never left many of the folk we know). Anyway, the blue had disappeared for good and I was in bliss.

But my bliss quickly took a backseat to chaos, as I ran around packing stuff for J and me and the boys to prep for our weekend getaway. Finally the chaos confined itself to the truck of the car, and we took off for Hardwick, where the boys happily joined the M young folk (Us: "We're going to go bye-bye!" P:"I don't want to go." Us:"You're not. You get to stay here. WE'RE leaving." P:"I'm going to play with toys.") and the M couple and J and I headed to Mankato to an excellent evening of conversation, dinner, and soaking in our hotel hot tub (with a bunch of high school wrestlers whose coach would yell at them to get out so they wouldn't mess up their weights in the morning). Other than the wrestlers, bliss again!

Saturday brought us the "Women in the Church" Minnesota South District Conference at Hosanna Lutheran Church. We've got a lot more to say about this, but here's the short version of that presentation in the form of rhetorical questions:

1. What's the obsession with "random" groupings that occur based on numbers written on name tags? Thanks, M and B, for picking name tags with the same number... on purpose. Now that's revolutionary! 

2. How does the CTCR (Commission on Theology and Church Relations) explain itself to outsiders? "We're a LCMS group that puts together documents on controversial and/or timely topics that people aren't required to read and that aren't used as official church theological statements. They're just... here"?

3. Why do conferences attended primarily by pastors often cater lunches with portions the size of my toddler's appetite? (Have you ever seen pastors eat?)

4. Why are feminist theologians scholars so obsessed with newness? Don't they realize they sound like ads totally immersed in our materialist culture and that religion packaged similarly to "new and improved" laundry soap isn't all that appealing--or in fact that "new and improved"?

5. Since when does "respectful" dialogue include comparing educated, thoughtful, pastoral male Lutheran leaders to the Taliban and to Nazis?

Sunday found J at church and me and the boys at home battling colds. After noon, the boys dropped me off with two other pastor's wives in our circuit to head to Nebraska for a Pastor's Wives Retreat. Aside from a flat tire (!!!) and fleeting moments wondering if we'd get there, we hit smooth sailing--the conference topic on prayer was insightful, the pastor speaker was terrific, and all of the ladies were awesome! I'll write more about this later, but I really enjoyed it! I made several new friends and can't wait to head back next year! That's incredibly corny and generic, but it's true! (Have I hit my quota of exclamation points yet? :)) I got home Monday night to a clean house (yes--you read that right! I TOLD you he's Superman!) and my lovely boys. The weekend definitely ended on a high note!