Well Said, Gov. Jindal!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/jeb-bush-donald-trump-carly-fiorina/index.html

Stephen Colbert and Pope Francis

More from my favorite Catholic theologian :

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/55f0748ce4b093be51bd21e2

Museum Staff?

"The future is our native time zone. Granted, humans are the only species that thinks about the future. It's the time zone that, when we occupy it, we are being most human. But we are being most Christian as well. Jesus comes to us from beyond and pulls us from the future more than pushes us from the past. The Holy Spirit encourages time travel, most often to the future. Close your eyes and travel in time: where do you go? The default timezone of the Christian is what is ahead, not what is behind." Len Sweet, So Beautiful, p. 48.

I don't think most Christians actually think this way. I think we are usually looking backward--more like volunteers at the historical center than lookouts in a ship's crow's nest.

In Dufftown, the lovely town in Scotland where we spent five days, there is a small museum, right across from the clock tower in the middle of the village. on the day we visited the museum, it was staffed by a sweet "older" lady who didn't seem to know much history of the town.  As we looked at the displays and the photos on the walls, she seemed as inquisitive as we were, but no more knowledgeable.  While she welcomed us warmly, she really couldn't tell us much about anything in the town.

Are church folk like that? Volunteers in a museum they don't know much about?

Sweet points out that it is uniquely human to consider the future, and that when we are oriented to the future we are most oriented toward Christ.  What if Christians behaved the way Sweet describes us?  What would the Church look like if Jesus followers were really focused on God's future more than its own past?  Or if we used our understanding of the past to help us look forward with hope and passion?

Gotthard Pass 12 June

Gotthard Pass in Switzerland was one of the most amazing passes we crossed throughout the trip.  The mountains were in the clouds most of the day, but the pass road was really cool. One side was all cobblestones.  It's amazing to think of the manual labor it took to make this road!

You can get a little sense of the steepness here.

The snow had only been off the road for less than a week so there had been very few vehicles to wear down the grasses growing in the cobblestones.

That's us :-).

Time For a Wee Dram

Castles, Sheep, and the Highland "Coo"

Balvenie Castle, near Dufftown

Aye, the Yank with the camera's still there. Dunna look a' him.

Braemar Castle

This castle ruin was right next to the estate above

The Highland "Coo"--they all need haircuts

Ah, pastoral bliss

Ballindalloch Castle

Balmoral Castle, the Royals' cabin in Scotland

Because the Queen, et al, actually live here, they only show one room, with pictures of the royal family.

Sunday Worship At Mortlach Church, Dufftown, Scotland

We worshipped Sunday at one of the oldest churches in Britain,  right around the corner from our B and B, dating back to the sixth century. There was a famous battle fought there in 1010, as the Danes tried to conquer the Scots.  As the story goes, the Scottish King for victory and told God if they won he would expand the church by three spear lengths. They won the battle and he did as he had promised. Three lancet windows commemorate the Scottish victory and the three spear lengths.

In the center of the cemetery is a stone memorializing the battle.

Inside the vestry are stones from the sixth century marking the Pictish ancestry of the area.
Worship was interesting--no notes in the hymnbooks, we stood for all the hymns but not until the verrry last second, then popped up all together.

They have communion twice a year and this was one of them. Distribution was in the pews, in silence, and a bit like a "tea service."  The pews were lined with white clothes in honor of this important day.

I took a few notes from the sermon, so if I break into a Scottish brogue you'll know I'm quoting him.

He gave me some good advice after worship : "There is no bad whisky; some is just better."  Aye, I'll raise a wee dram to that!

The people warmed up slowly to us...but Karen soon had them charmed and they became very talkative. The interim pastor told us quite a bit of the church's history.

We even had coffee and tea! It was a lovely morning.