This can't be legal

There is a residential apartment building in Western Pennsylvania that has the following sign mounted on each door from the stairways into the hallways that lead to the apartments.



I just have to believe that the person who paid for these signs might not have been alert to the difference between "locked" and "closed." (In fact, none of the fire doors is locked, notwithstanding the stern written order. Some of the doors are often found open, perhaps left that way by people who are totally baffled about what the sign might actually mean.)

The desire to securely close doors has its place. Certainly, a fire door keeps residents safe when it is closed and slows the spread of a fire to other zones in the building. But locked? Should residents caught in a zone that is on fire have to remember to bring along a key to the fire door in order to escape? As long as they also remember lock the fire door behind them?

This sign has prompted my thinking about the church's responsibility for evangelism, which seems to be in radical contrast to the regulatory desire to bar the doors against whoever seems to be an unfamiliar threat. I pray that the church will rise to its high calling of being a "fire exit" for those who need its message of hope.

File under : evangelism, literacy

Some cool upcoming events

During the past week I learned about a couple of cool upcoming events. So I thought I would fiddle with Zoundry Raven (my blogging software) to see how it could handle the XHTML code for describing the events in the hCalendar microformat.

This Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 3:00 PM EST, Bruce Reyes-Chow (Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the PCUSA) will have an online conversation with Beau Weston about his paper "Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment." The event is Moderator Musings, Episode 2: Conversation with Beau Weston, and anyone can watch it live online at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/moderator-musings.

Early next year on February 19, 2009, from 2:00 PM to 5:30 PM, Pittsburgh Presbytery will sponsor a convocation on "Our Freedom of Religion at Risk: A Presbyterian Crisis" to be held at the Beulah United Presbyterian Church, 2500 McCrady Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15235. The speakers will include Joseph Small, Beau Weston, Euan Cameron, Mark Tammen, and Jeff Tindall. More information is available at www.presbyterianconvocation.org.

These two events are now on my calendar.

And, as a side note, I've discovered that it is a real benefit that Zoundry Raven allows me to edit the XHTML code.

Powered by Zoundry Raven

File under : First Amendment, PCUSA, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), blogs, religious freedom

Pittsburgh Presbytery meeting at Parkwood

Yesterday Pittsburgh Presbytery met at the Parkwood United Presbyterian Church. There were 116 ministers and 98 elders representing 60 churches present.

We began the meeting with a worship service in which we sang from five different Advent hymns (with a single verse from three of the hymns). I had in the back of my mind that R. Bryan Lassinger would be playing the organ, and it was a special joy to me to hear him playing throughout the service. It was also a pleasant surprise to notice that there is a church in Pittsburgh Presbytery that uses the Revised Standard Version as its pew Bible. Hallelujah!

During the service, Robert Anderson, our interim pastor to the presbytery, invited a number of people to come forward and tell about where they had seen God working. This was an important kind of sharing at any meeting, but especially appropriate during Advent when we are encouraged to be watchful.

Jay Lewis, the Stated Clerk, introduced a committee that is reviewing the booklet of proposed amendments to the Book of Order and of proposed ecumenical statements. The committee is developing a process for the Presbytery to discuss and vote on these matters.

During the meeting the presbytery adopted a 2009 budget that is shy of $3 million, and we approved the proper changes in the terms of call for the ministers on the presbytery staff.

We also took a variety of actions to elect or appoint individuals to positions within the presbytery, and to approve calls to pastors. We commissioned David Van Diercksen to serve as the U.S. Coordinator of Puentes de Cristo, a border ministry in Reynosa, Mexico. We granted honorable retirement to Johnnie Monroe, and celebrated his ministry. We approved the oral parts of trial for Thomas Hall.

During the meeting the Presbytery declined (by a vote of 54-120) to approve a resolution on examination process proposed by the session of the Bellefield church.

All in all, I thought it was a good meeting.

File under : Advent, Parkwood United Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh Presbytery, music, vocation, worship

Give thanks

The children's story that was read in church on Sunday has given me some extra reasons to give thanks on the coming national holiday. The story was a reading of a children's book entitled The Story of Thanksgiving, and it included a description of Squanto showing the pilgrims how to plant corn.

It is easy to hear that story without noticing its significance. Corn seems so familiar to me. From my childhood, the family garden always included a section for a few short rows of corn. When I was in high school, picking fresh sweet corn from our field and selling it in front of our house was a regular summer activity. It is hard for me to imagine my life without corn.

And yet that short story on Sunday reminded me of a very important fact: that there was a time when my maternal ancestors who came over on the Mayflower did not know how to grow corn. There certainly is much more that could and should be told about the first colonial Thanksgivings, but the story I heard on Sunday reminded me about the whole history of corn, without which a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant such as myself would not have experienced corn.

I am thankful to God for many things this Thanksgiving: for my daily bread, and for people of other cultures who over thousands of years developed the foods that enrich my life.

File under : Thanksgiving, food, history

Remove or block

One of the hazards of having a Facebook page is the accumulation of excessive applications. If a friend invites you to play a particular game or participate in an online activity with them, you need to install the application for that game or activity, most of the time giving the application access to your information. In many cases, the only way one can find out what the application is about is to install it and try it.

Lately I have been inundated by notifications from applications I tried once without finding them interesting. And so the adventure of uninstalling Facebook applications begins ...

I find my way to Facebook's Applications page where there is a list of the applications I have installed. Next to each of the applications there is a row of icons indicating whether I have bookmarked the application, whether I have added it to my profile, whether I have authorized it to access my data, whether I have given it permission to post stories on my wall, and whether I have given it other kinds of permission.

Then there are the buttons to edit the application's status, to read an "about" page for the application, or to remove the application. "Remove" looks really good.

But when I click it I get a window with a message like the following:



The user must make a choice, and none of the choices is "Remove AND Block."

I don't know how many times I have scratched my head over this conundrum. I have ended up going with "Remove" because it feels more protective of my privacy, and my general practice has been not to have applications I am trying out show up on my profile page anyhow. I think that all the applications I have "removed" have also disappeared from my bookmarks and application page, but nowhere on this explanatory window is there a promise that "removing" access will actually include "blocking" as well.

If anybody on Facebook has any better solutions, please let me know.

File under : internet

It's just a jump to the left and then a step to the right

At the beginning of this month I really enjoyed being able to see the Stage Right production of The Rocky Horror Show. (Just to be clear, this was not a screening of the 1975 film, but a live stage production of the musical.)

I had never been to any live show of this musical, but had seen a video of the movie once. I knew it had a number of great songs but I was not prepared for how much fun the live show would be. There are simply some things that won't happen when watching a video, like being invited to get on my feet with a crowd to dance "The Time Warp", or having to cover my head with newspaper as shelter from the rain, or almost being hit in the face by a roll of toilet paper, being pelted by rice, or hearing live singers make their songs work in spite of technical problems with the sound system.

It was a great production and I am glad I went. (And for those who are curious, I did not try to go as Brad. I simply went as myself.)

File under : drama, music

Tarentum streetscape

I hope I always remember the things I see when I look up as I walk on streets in Tarentum. There are such contrasts: interesting architectural features, bare brick and painted brick, and autumn leaves as brilliant as the yellow traffic hazard signs.

File under : Tarentum, picture