So for those who are interested, I think the interview went well but you never do know. I should find out this week if I'll be called back for a second one. This is a job I'd be pretty excited to have and it has some great benefits including some serious help paying for grad school so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, I'm continuing to look elsewhere too.

On the religion front, I again attended mass at the same Episcopal church today. The service was a nice tradtional service once again but I overall found everyone there, particularly the greeters and leadership to be too friendly. They were very in your face with insisting on knowing your name and engaging you in conversation. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out where I stand with things. I really sort of want to just sit by myself, do my own thing, and leave. When it comes to religion, I believe in meeting people where they are. I think you should let people move at their own speed. I'm sure these people had nothing but the best intentions, but it rubbed me the wrong way. Aside from that, I did once again enjoy the mass. What I really want to know, and am deciding whether to ask, is what their position is regarding blessing gay unions in the church. I know there is another Episcopal church nearby that does it, but I'm fairly confident this one does not. In light of that, I'm not sure I want to get too close to a church that wouldn't do it. It is one of the things that drove me away from the Roman Catholic church after all.

As one final note, I wrote the other day that I was listening to Jupiter from Holst's The Planets. Ironically, a day or two after that, I saw a new Reese's commerical that uses Jupiter. I have to say, that's a combination almost as good as peanut butter and chocolate.

Bullet Points

Ok, so I'm not really less tired than my last post, but I'm going to try to do some bullet points from Velvet Elvis of things I really liked. This will probably only be a partial list. Again, if you want to read it, it's...

Bell, Rob. (2005). Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Michigan: Zondervan.

• Atheism is a belief, not a lack of belief. Just as Christianity is a belief in a higher power, atheism is a belief that things got this way by chance. In either case, you still believe something.
• The Bible was written in a time when each town or village had one copy of the Jewish scripture (the Torah) and it was read in group settings. People came together to hear it read and to discuss it. Radical and "innappropriate" interpretations were quickly shot down by having this kind of group discussion. The Bible was written with this in mind (and a long time before the printing press) and so we should read it with this in mind. It really ought to be discussed.
• Faith should be like a trampoline, not a brick wall. The springs of the trampoline are the doctrines that hold up the whole but they are not the whole. They simply are jumping off points. In many Christian churches, there is a brick wall approach where the Bible is used to create bricks of doctrine. When you remove one brick, the whole wall crumbles. In this case, the individual doctrines become the whole and you miss the point. There's no room for discussion or questions. The brick wall shuts people out. The trampoline invites people over to play. And really, who cares who has the better trampoline. They're just fun to jump on.
• Anytime you say anything about the Bible, it's an interpretation. In fact, even the fact that we're reading it in English involves interpretation from the original. Unless you happen to be God, you're interpreting and you really better not claim to have all the answers.
• "Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective (84)." You are a Christian. Do what you do and do it with passion.
• Ask questions. Ask more questions. Keep asking questions.
• Genesis starts with God separating light and dark. The rest of the Bible is God showing people how to distinguish the two (86).