RoboPreacher

The story I am working on now is centered on woman's ordination. Today I spoke with Rev. Susan Peterson of Gloria Dei , in St. Paul. I interviewed her for two reason. First, at the end of this summer she will retire. Second, she was the first woman to be the head pastor in a large ELCA congregation . We spoke about looking back, looking ahead, joys and hopes. We also spoke about challenges. She shared about the real struggles of being a woman in a leadership role. It was tempting for me to direct a narrative that suggested those struggles are historic and over, but they aren't. I was very humbled when I asked her to share what it was like for her to experience the struggles (facing hostility/skepticism in various forms) "It wounded me," she said. "It wounded me because people were hostile to me for being the person God created me to be." Wow. It would be easy for a person who had experienced that to become bitter. Susan, though, allowed God to work in those ...

Last week was such a blur. I jumped into the middle of a ton of different stories. I jumped into the middle of a ministry. I jumped into the middle of redeveloping a web presence. Speaking of web presence, I will uploading stories to the website tomorrow (6/17), so I should be able to link articles then. This week I am reflecting on the immigration issue in Arizona. Which has made me think of Vonnegut's Bokononism 's concept of a "false karass ." (Note, I dislike using wikipedia. However, the info on the linked posts is helpful, also there were no other links with helpful information.) Anyway, Time recently wrote a good article (although they use the term illegal immigrant, rather than undocumented immigrant) about the escalating scene in Arizona . It is incredible that children are considered anchors. There is an ecumenical fast and vigil for the immigrants in Arizona, Isaiah 58 . States are encouraged to participate in various weeks throughout the summer. Does relig...

Update: Sorry I haven't been updating lately. I've been on the move, and will be for a few more weeks. This summer I will be working as an intern for the Metro Lutheran . Now that my Trinity project is over it's time to move onto something else. So for the summer I will weekly blog about a topic inspired from my reporting. So for this week I am reporting about a retired pastor celebrating his 100th birthday. The heart of his celebration was a worship service. This example struck me. What a wonderful example of worship being the center of someone's life. This leads me to a question; How does one's faith affect how someone thinks of life? This retired pastor had some thoughts about the topic. "I am not old. I am getting older, but I am not old. And I consider growing old a great adventure. I am growing in my wealth of grace and growing closer to my creator who has daily called me to service."