Mike's musings

In transit

Woke up at 0500 or so, which is kind of standard, but had a good 7 or so hours sleep, so I can't complain very much. What kind of hotel offers Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast? It's frankly evil. Anyway, I had a small blueberry muffin and some Orange Juice as well as the doughnuts, so that made it Healthy[tm]. Phew.

A useful day at the Reston office, mainly talking to Dave J., who had lots to teach me, so I'm pleased about that. For lunch, I had meatloaf followed by chocolate brownie, so, given my breakfast and the crab cakes and t-bone steak I had for supper, I feel that I've "done" US cuisine. Maybe if I'd been in the South I could have had some grits. Whatever they are.

I arrived at the airport quite early, and given the delay to my flight, it gave me lots of time to sit in "Vino Volo" (what language is that supposed to be?) and have a fascinating theological discussion. For some of the time we were joined by a presbyterian (jazz flautist) minister, but the rest of the time it was me, a Roman Catholic woman and an atheist man, both waiting to catch a flight to California. I'm terrible at names, so I'm not even going to try, but I hope that they'll read this (I gave them the URL) and will say hi. "Hi, folks," from me.

What did we discuss? Bases for faith, justification by faith alone ("that sounds rather reasonable," said my Catholic friend), revelation, the relevance of Christianity to non-Western societies (and mission impact), evolution, sin, soteriology, literal hell (obviously not!), fundamentalism, Luther, Eusebius (the allegorical nature of Genesis) and lots of stuff in between. It was challenging, fun, forced me to be very honest about my faith, and embodied an important part of my ministry. They'd started a conversation, based on a survey (results published in yesterday's "USA today"), and I'd asked if I could join. They graciously agreed, and we did theology. I don't know how to convert people - I'm not even sure I want to - but God seems to give me the strength to be honest about my experience of Him/Her, and to talk about my faith, my doubt, and to acknowledge the reality of others' experience of the world with and without Him/Her. This, I believe, is an important part of what I'm called to be as a priest. God keeps putting these opportunities in my way, and as long as I can not frighten people, but allow them to see an honest, loving faith, then I believe that I'm being honest to the vocation that God has called me to.

Thank you.

Flight

Yup, you guessed it: I missed it. I went to the gate we'd been told it would be at, in time (I believed) for the revised departure time, only to discover that it had already gone. Luckily, there was another one at 2135, although that was delayed till 2315. Time to go and sit at that gate and just wait...