Entries from October 2005 ↓

(Crossposted from my LiveJournal)

And now for something that would likely horrify most people at my old church in Birmingham (bless their hearts) . . .

1) I went to a costume party this past Friday night (yes, there’s a significant number who’d be horrified by this fact alone).
2) It was at my pastor’s house. (gasp!!)
3) There was beer available. (“Your PASTOR had BEER?!” *faint*)
4) I partook in #3 . . . Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Sea Dog Pumpkin Ale from Trader Joe’s, as well. (“You’re goin’ to hell, boy.”)

One thing I appreciate about the Presbyterian tradition is the emphasis on “Christian Liberty”, that is, the fact that Christ has set his people free from the law . . . not only the law of sin and death, but from man-made religious “laws” with no basis in Scripture (for instance, the widespread belief that all followers of Christ MUST abstain from all alcohol). Certainly there are those who SHOULD abstain from alcohol, either because they’re recovering from an addiction, or simply because of their own conscience, but those are individual cases and individual convictions, not general truisms. It’s unfortunate that the church-at-large often forbids that which, in moderation, is a gift from God to make our hearts glad.

I thoroughly enjoyed my two bottles of Christian Liberty Friday night, along with the fellowship that it accompanied.

So my first real plunge into involvement with the ministry of Grace Central has been to start singing with the vocal team every other Sunday evening. I’d missed helping to lead corporate worship . . . I’m certainly not the best singer around, but it seems to be something of a passion that God has given me. (I hesitate to call it a “gift”.)

The alt-country vibe of GC’s music is a lot of fun, too, and we may soon be incorporating some old school “black gospel” stuff as well. I just wish we had a bassist.

In related news, Walnut Creek PCA has asked us to come sing on Sunday morning. Hopefully that’ll go well.

I’m turning into Bill Cosby (Cawwwwwsby).

1) I have a growing love affair with jazz (old and new).
2) As the weather gets colder, my penchant for sweater-wearing is re-emerging with a new element . . . corduroy blazers.
3) When I saw a couple of teenagers wearing bubble jackets and extremely baggy jeans, the thought that went through my head was “Y’know . . . those youngsters could use a mentor.”

Hello. My name is Cliff Huxtable, MD. Kids say the darndest things.

I’m starting to think that Starbucks doesn’t care quite as much for the poor farmers that grow their beans as they try to portay.

Some background: In the late 90s, Starbucks started selling a Fair Trade Certified blend called, creatively enough, “Fair Trade Blend”. Fair Trade certification is essentially an assurance that products with that label meet certain criteria regarding the price marketers pay the producers, ecological friendliness, and care for the producing communities. Great goals, yes?

Anyway, despite heavy promotion and marketing, Starbucks’ Fair Trade Blend never quite took off the way they’d hoped. The reason (in my estimation)? It tasted bad. Really bad. I recall the first time I tried FTB, as a matter of fact. It was some time during my first week as a Starbucks employee. I, along with a couple of my fellow Shift Supervisors had been “cupping” (coffee-snob speak for “tasting”) different coffees during downtimes in order to learn more about the subtleties of the blends. When FTB’s turn came up, I remember feeling a certain excitement to taste it . . . as if the social conscience attached to it somehow meant that it would taste incredible.

Wrong.

Even with my then-limited coffee knowledge, I could quickly tell that this was the worst “real” coffee* I’d ever had in my life. Absolutely no body, and tasted something like sawdust. I distinctly remember the facial reaction of one of my co-workers (who happens to now be a store manager for Starbucks in southern Alabama) . . . he looked up from his cup, puckered his lips, and smacked slowly, as if he was trying to get the taste of some horrible medicine to leave his mouth.

All of this to say . . . Café Estima Blend, Starbucks’ newest Fair Trade Certified brew (complete with Social Responsibility hype and marketing) tastes worse, if that’s possible, than Fair Trade Blend. Why do they insist on giving these poor farmers such a bad name? I’ve had GREAT Fair Trade Certified coffees from other companies, and somehow the world’s largest coffee chain can’t manage to get one right.

(*”Real” coffee excludes such sludge as Folgers, Taster’s Choice, and Maxwell House.)

The lovely wife and her dorky husband . . .

(Shot taken by Wife of Funky Presbyterian.)

2005 Mercury Mariner 4WD
Duratec 3.0L V6
Satellite Silver

I’d been eyeing the Mariner (and its twins, the Ford Escape and the Mazda Tribute) for a while. I knew that I wanted a compact SUV for their car-like handling, cargo space, and fuel economy, but the other options in that category . . . the Jeep Liberty, the Toyota RAV4, the Honda CR-V, the Subaru Forester . . . just didn’t appeal to me, for one reason or another. During a shopping trip to Meijer a couple of weeks ago, I picked up an Auto Trader-type magazine, saw an almost-new, almost-loaded silver Mariner for sale at a local independent dealership listed for $8000 less than MSRP and said “that’s my car”.

And now it is. Great ride.

2005 has been a tumultuous year for my family.

Since February, we’ve seen extended unemployment, the inability to so much as pay rent on our little two-bedroom apartment in Tennessee, moving to Ohio, and living with Amy’s mom. We’ve also seen new employment, a small inheritance, and subsequently, buying our own home and a new car . . . with cash. We were blindsided by tough times and saw unexpected (and undeserved) blessing, all in a matter of months. We saw generosity from people we hardly knew when we were in dire straits and saw (equally undeserved) criticism and slander from some of those same folks when things turned around. It’s been crazy.

Opinions of deluded people aside, my thoughts recently turned to how the use of our money reflects on us as people who are straining against our flesh to follow Christ. Should we have foregone the house and simply moved into another little apartment or a modest condo? Should we have left the car at the dealership and continued driving my somehow-still-kicking-at-one-hundred-ninety-thousand-miles 1993 Altima? Did we cheat the poor around us by not using the bulk of our little windfall to feed and clothe them? Jesus calls his people to give of themselves and their resources . . . how does that work itself out in the real world? These questions nagged at me throughout the past few weeks.

Some of Jesus and the Apostles’ strongest words of rebuke and warning are toward those who place their hope in money and possessions. 1 Timothy 6 says this . . .

[They are] people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Can this mean that Christ’s followers should forego all earthly comforts if their need for food and clothing is met? There are those who feel that they are called by God to live in complete simplicity, but I’m not quite convinced that such a lifestyle is the normative mandate for a Christian. The thing being spoken against here is the selfish desire to gain wealth, not money itself. The same sentiment was summarized by Jesus, as recorded in Matthew 6 . . .

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The real question of the matter is this: “What do you treasure?” Is it Christ, or is it something else . . . money, possessions, prestige, etc? The man that treasures Christ takes his poverty and leans upon God to supply all of his need. That same man takes his riches, recognizes that those riches are from Christ alone, and uses them for Christ’s glory . . . one day, that can take the form of feeding the poor, and another, it could take the form of gratefully enjoying a vacation at his beach house with his family. It’s important to remember that the God who calls us to self-sacrifice has also “richly provided us with everything to enjoy“. He really wants us to enjoy the gifts . . . even the material gifts . . . that he’s given us. It’s just that there’s a difference between enjoyment and worship, and often it’s easy to worship the gifts instead of the one who gave them. That will send us to Hell.

May the Lord be glorified in the way we use that which he’s given us.

Adrian over at, well . . . Adrian’s Blog highlights a blog he bumped into today whose author is nicknamed “The Black Calvinist”. He goes on to point out that there seems to be a dearth of Black Christian bloggers out there . . . something that I never really considered, but agree with now that I think about it. There can’t really only be three of us out there!

I really need to write (quality stuff) here more often, if for no other reason than to bolster the presence of my brothers and sisters in the blogosphere. Yes, the double-meaning is intentional.