Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I went down to King Park on Sheboygan’s South side.  I was all by myself.  The gulls huddled on the shoreline against the deep blue color of Lake Michigan.  But I didn’t go there to watch sea gulls.  I wanted a close up look at the new shelter/pavilion designed a member of our church, Joe Clarke.

It really is striking from so many angles.  Graceful and inviting, it makes you want to walk around it in the backdrop of Lake Michigan.

There will be a waiting list for renting this place for weddings, family reunions and parties.  Way to go, Joe!

Its been a quiet week along the lake in Sheboygan.

The leaves have fallen mostly off the trees now. The sound of high pitched humming from leaf blowers echoed through the neighborhoods.  But Mrs. Krantz still holds on to her old fashioned bamboo rake her late husband bought from the True Value store in 1964.  She claims it cleans the little front lawn she has better than the leaf blower her neighbor bought last year from Home Depot.  Plus she says, “My rake is more accurate and energy efficient.”

At Jume’s restaurant a debate was overheard between Pastor Smoot from the True Baptist Church and Father McMann from Our Lady of Sincerity Catholic Church. They sat back in the corner near the picture of Elvis.  Their discussion was over dogs and if they have souls or not. Pastor Smoot bemoaned a prayer request from a parishioner whose poodle had passed away this week. “She asked me if she’d see him in heaven or not.”

“How did you answer that one?” asked the priest.

“I couldn’t make her more depressed and tell her ‘Yes, of course, dear’ so I just said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait and see,” said Pastor Smoot shaking his head.

“Really, that is all you could say in her time of loss, grief and misery? Because all dogs do go to heaven,” stated the priest authoritatively.

“You’re kidding, right.  You know dogs have no souls, ” he quickly spouted as if it was gospel.

“I’m a Franciscan. We believe Jesus loves all God’s creatures great and small.  They all belong in his kingdom. In fact I believe I’ll see, Dominic,  my deceased Yellow Lab when I get to heaven!”

“Well, your theology,” stated pastor Smoot,” has no basis in biblical truth.  Just wishful thinking.”

“Have you never heard of Noah?” inquired the priest.

“What’s Noah have to do with dogs?”

“Well, if animals were brought on the Ark to continue into the the New Earth after the Flood, then it just goes to show that animals – especially man’s best friend, will be included in the new heaven and earth!”

“But dogs do not have souls!” emphasized the pastor.

“How do you know they don’t? Have you ever looked into their eyes and watched their tail wag when you came home after a long day away?  Have you not felt them draw near to you on the couch when they sensed you had a bad day?  Have you ever seen their eyes light up and run gleefully to the door when you asked, “Want to go for a walk?”

Pastor Smoot took a sip from his cup of coffee and sighed, “My Mother was allergic to dogs so growing up we never had one.  And my wife is also allergic.  So, to be honest I never had a dog.”

Father McMann reached across the table and put a hand on his shoulder. “Brother, when you get to heaven you can go for a walk with my dog, Dominic.”   The waitress slapped the check on the table. “I’ll pay for this one,” said Father McMann.

Well, that’s the news from Sheboygan along the Lake where all the women are smart, all the men are opinionated, and all the children want a puppy…

I am the very model of a modern parish minister;

My words are blogged and tweeted without being sinister;

I know the Bible message and its truth I do administer,

I seek to avoid sliding down the loose liberal banister.

My words fly away on something duly digital

From Funny news to Wise sayings in order categorical.

Blogging, Tweeting, Texting is the new voice behavioral;

Why should it not be used at home, work and cathedral?

I am your tweeting/blogging modern parish minister.

Poem by Steven J. Pedersen

A high school senior saw an inspirational advertisement on television about becoming a teacher.  She called the number shown: 1.800.45TEACH.

After a woman answered, the student immediately began talking about how she thought she had found her life’s calling and asked if she could be sent some information.

The lady who answered the phone asked the student what number she was calling.  The student told her and there was a long pause. Then the woman said, “You misspelled teach.”

I have writers block about this biblical character.  Pulling my hair out trying to write something.

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside.
Self-righteous service is impressed with the “big deal.” True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service.
Self-righteous service requires external rewards. True service rests contented in hiddenness.
Self-righteous service is highly concerned about results. True service is free of the need to calculate results.
Self-righteous service picks and chooses whom to serve. True service is indiscriminate in its ministry.
Self-righteous service is affected by moods and whims. True service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need.
Self-righteous service is temporary. True service is a life-style.
Self-righteous service is without sensitivity. It insists on meeting the need even when to do so would be destructive. True service can withhold the service as freely as perform it.
Self-righteous service fractures community. True service, on the other hand, builds community.

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, “The Discipline of Service.”

The Packers can not win big games.  It was a nightmare watching the first half of the game against the Vikings.

Favre still has it and Rodgers still doesn’t know when to get rid of the ball.  Even all the “Booing” that kept up during the game against Favre did not seem to phase him one bit.

He just brought it to Ted Thompson, who looked like a little lost boy watching the Vikings stick it to the Packers.

I just don’t feel good about watching Packer games this year. Too many dumb penalties – Jolly’s head but really was dumber than dumb.  I don’t enjoy riding the Pain Train.

The Greek philosophers were the ones who talked most about the immortality of the soul, and they used a beautiful analogy to explain it. They saw the soul like a homing pigeon taking to a far land and when it is release, it always instinctively and unerringly returns to its true home. The soul they say is like that bird. In this life, we’re living in a foreign land or in a cage, death, therefore, in this view is a release – freeing the soul to return instinctively and unerringly to its true home. Now that’s beautiful, but it’s not Christian. It’s in much of our poetry and in much of our hymnody, you get some hints of it in the Bible, but that’s not primarily the teaching of the Bible. The primary teaching of scripture is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body and eternal life. The Bible does not affirm that immortality is part and parcel of what it means to be human, but the Bible rather talks about eternal life as gifts – the gift of God in Jesus Christ to those who respond in faith to him.

If you’re going to live beyond death, the Bible says, there must be a resurrection of the body. A resurrection of who we are as we are as persons, yet made new by Christ himself, who even now sitting upon the throne, keeps saying, behold I am making all things new. When Paul was confronted with what people felt to be the preposterousness of this idea of the resurrection of the body, when you consider what happens to the body in death – he said, we will have a resurrected new body. And just as the Greeks had an analogy to talk about the immortality of the soul, so Paul had an analogy to talk about the resurrection of the body. He said it’s like a farmer, planting a seed in the ground, and the shell of the husk falls away and new life appears. So we die, to be born again into new life.

Maxie Dunnam, All This and Heaven, Too

Who are the Saints? By Dr. Richard P. Bucher

One way to get at this question is to investigate which people the New Testament authors address as saints. When we do this, we discover that, overwhelmingly, living Christians on earth are called saints in the New Testament.

• An extremely valuable verse in this regard is 1 Corinthians 1:2. Here Paul calls his readers “the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” What makes this passage valuable is that Paul defines the church of God at Corinth (the Christians at Corinth, his readers) as “those who have been sanctified (Greek – hagiazo) in Jesus Christ, saints (Greek – hagioi) by calling.” There are not two groups here that he writes the letter to, the church and the saints, but one group, the church of God in Corinth, who are saints!

This passage sets the tone for the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters. Living Christians at various churches or locations are called “saints”:

• Ananias tells Jesus, “I have heard from many about this man [Saul of Tarsus], how much harm he did to Thy saints at Jerusalem (Acts 9:13);
• Peter, “came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda” (Acts 9:32);
• Paul tells King Agrippa that in while in Jerusalem, he locked up “many of the saints in prisons” (Acts 26:10);
• Paul writes to the Christians at Rome, “to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints” (Rom. 1:7);
• He addresses his second letter to the Corinthians, “to the church of God which is at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achaia” (2 Cor. 1:1);
• He addresses several other letters, “to the saints who are at Ephesus, and who are faithful in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 1:1), “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi” (Phil. 1:1), “to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae” (Col. 1:2);
• He tells the Corinthians, “All the saints greet you” (2 Co. 13:13) and the Philippians, “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus” and “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household” (Phil. 4:21-22);
• · He asks the Roman Christians to “Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them” (Rom. 16:15);
• He tells the Romans that Christians should be “contributing to the needs of the saints” (Rom. 12:13);
• He himself is busy readying a gift to bring to the poor Christians in Jerusalem: “I am going to Jerusalem serving the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Rom. 15:25-26; see also Rom. 15:31; 1 Cor. 16:1-6; 2 Cor. 8:4, 9:1, 9:12);
• He takes the Corinthians to task for taking one another before secular courts, “Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints” (1 Cor. 6:1)?
• He gives instruction to Timothy that a true widow is one who “has washed the saints’ feet” (1 Tim. 6:10);
• the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells his readers to “Greet all of your leaders and all the saints” (Heb. 13:24).