I left for Leawood on a Tuesday. My roommate woke me up that morning.
"Hey. You awake," he asked. "You've gotta see this sunrise."
What I didn't know at the time was that the questions raised on that bench held for Haylie a particular level of significance. Near the beginning of the school year, Haylie had experienced herself a version of this loss of future. Hers was not of the same order of a husband losing a wife or a parent losing a child, but was nonetheless devastating. And it did have something to do with marriage.
I was sitting beneath the Aurora Bridge, on a bench on the Fremont side of the canal. There was nothing particularly cozy about this bench, but somehow it had become a regular meeting place for me and Haylie. The bench had become a piece of furniture in our relationship; something that we both had come to appreciate.
I already mentioned that Emily and I had been together for six years. And that's not untrue. But that's not the whole story.
I say that it's not the whole story because there are at least two versions of every story. There's the story that's easy to share. That's the story that is convenient and effortless to believe. And then, of course, there is the story of what actually happened.
There are a lot of reasons somebody might move to the middle of nowhere. For me, it was simply a matter of changing up the game. I had gone to high school with some kids who were brilliant but never did anything meaningful with their lives because they never had an opportunity to get out of town. Maybe Leawood is my proactive attempt at getting out.
Last week, I asked Deb how I might try to pray for a situation whose desired outcome is unclear. On one hand, I might pray for something to happen. On the other hand, of course, I might also have cause to pray for the same thing to not happen. And sometimes, it's just not clear which way to pray.
What follows is an excerpt from a course integration paper I wrote for my History & Theology of Christian Worship class this past quarter. It is valuable if only because it recounts in a very cursory way the larger themes of the course. We began the quarter considering Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilege—the Idea of [...]
A FOUR-YEAR PROJECT SENIOR CAPSTONE REFLECTION WHY NOT A MINISTER? There is a small square of blue paper that sits above my desk. It’s a piece of paper that I have looked at every day for the last three years. Measuring three inches square, it has the scrawl of a seventh-grade boy. “why not [...]
SPU SCHOOL of THEOLOGY COMMISSIONING SERVICE NATE BERENDS 8 JUNE 2009 I am interested in recalling a Chapel service that took place in February in which our own Dean, Dr. Doug Strong and Pastor Mark Abbott from First Free spoke together [...]