Short, but Sweet...

I need to be brief tonight, due to some extenuating circumstances. To whit, we're leaving shortly to pick up our friend Tanya at the airport. Yes, it is a little bit late to pick someone up at the airport. But hey, whatever--it's an excuse to get out of town and be night owls. If you consider leaving the house at 8:00 being a night owl. Ah, how my new life as a parent has changed my perspective.

The good thing about having to be brief is that this was really an unexciting day in every sense of the word. Got up way too early to feed the boy, but that's okay. Besides, it gives me a reason to watch Lunar Jim in the mornings. Since it's reading break, I decided to, well, engage in that activity some today as well. I'm reading Thomas Oden's The Rebirth of Orthodoxy. It's a really challenging book about the new realities of the postmodern era and its effect on what church is.

As a quick primer, here's what I'm going to say about postmodernism as it relates to what I'm studying. As we leave the modern era behind (most say it ended when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989), we're moving into a new age of disillusionment. We've realized that we weren't as smart as we thought we were; that hovercars and space flight didn't materialize as we thought they would, nor do we have robot servants. We thought our quest for knowledge would end things like war, poverty, famine, and disease, and yet we live in a world where these things are more rampant than ever. Our hopes of a bright new tomorrow fizzled.

All that disillusionment has led to a desire to change. In my opinion, there are two different facets of postmodernism in church culture. The first is what we'd term the "Emergent" church movement--the idea of, to be crude, sitting around on couches and talking about our feelings. The second branch is this idea of rebirthing orthodoxy; or, more accurately, rediscovering the ancient writings and interpretations of Scripture and their value to us today. In modernity, we thought that anything old was bad. In postmoernity, we're beginning to realize that maybe there was something to it.

Anyway, that's being very crude and skipping several important facets (like the rejection of metanarrative and the turn to relativism--don't get me started on that pish-posh), but it'll do for what I'm trying to say, which is that I'm really digging this book by Oden. If you're at all interested in how church is going to look in 10-20 years (and you're sick of reading Brian McLaren's view on it, as I am), then you owe it to yourself to check this book out. Well, maybe that's too strong, but I think it's a good idea to keep up with developments, you know?

The point of all of this digression was not simply to fill space, although it did that pretty well. The point is that I read today. On reading break. Oh, the irony of it all.

Tried to head to the gym after lunch, but it was closed. Reading break. I shook my fist at it and walked away. How am I supposed to work off all those empty calories from candy? The candy, by the way, that is pretty much gone. And that's good, although I am starting to have Reese Cup withdrawl. It's not pretty.

With the gym a failure, I came home and instead had a nap, which is just as good a use of my time. Managed to get two hours out of it--nice. And it means that I'm fully alert for the upcoming drive to the Calgary airport to pick up Tanya. Which is good, because, well, staying awake while driving is usually the best practice.

So that's about it--the story of my day. I'm going to give you a little tease and say that I am planning on doing a post tomorrow--a special weekend-edition blog, if you will (and I know you will). Check it out, if you dare.

Until then, well, you'll just have to do something productive. Sorry about that. Thanks for stopping in, and I'll see you again tomorrow.