Digital Cleaning (161.16 GB!!!)

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Oct 31 0

It’s almost Halloween and I just finished something I should have done three months ago: I cleaned out my hard drives. After upgrading to Apple’s new Leopard operating system, I realized I needed more free hard drive space to take advantage of its Time Machine feature. It’s ironic that I need more free hard drive space — I have two 500GB hard drives in my desktop. But for the past two months I’ve had only 20GB free on my primary drive.

How did I clean up space on that drive, you ask?:

  • I deleted all the photos I’d marked as “Reject” in Adobe’s Lightroom.
  • I backed up and then deleted all my episodes of The Daily Show, Photoshop TV, and Top Chef, which were probably over 80GB combined.
  • I took advantage of Leopard’s new location for common searches in the lower-left corner of the Finder window. I looked at all Movies on my computer, found the raw video footage from mis-placed Final Cut Pro projects and deleted them. Luckily I didn’t worry about losing content since I keep separate backups of all Disk Images I use to burn DVDs.

“For those three easy steps, you too can lose those unnecessary [gigabytes] that weigh you down. ” Seriously, tonight alone I worked off 161 GB!!

Breath of Fresh Air

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Oct 28 0

What do you do when you find yourself in a rural town without access to the internet and without an open library or coffee shop?  You call the only person who likes small rural towns more than yourself!

Adam: “Beau, I’m standing in Dixon, IL between the Disciples Church, the Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Baptist Church, and the Library.”
Beau’s response: “Wait, I know exactly where you are.  What the hell are you doing in Dixon, IL?”

It was a great question – and what I’m doing is really enjoying it.  Heidi was on the search committee for the Bishop of Chicago that created a slate of candidates.  At the Diocesan convention in two weeks, the assembly will vote on which of the candidates is the new Bishop.  To prepare for the process, the candidates travel around the diocese and meet with Episcopalians in various churches.  Heidi is a “shepherd,” which means she travels with the candidates and helps them at the locations.  So we drove over to Dixon, IL after our church services.

This town reminds me so much of my time in Keokuk, IA.  The Library is always closed on Sundays; people you’ve never seen before ask you how your day is going – and they ask it right next to the stores that have handwritten “No Loitering” signs in their windows; storefronts list their numbers knowing that no one needs the missing area code in front of the seven digit phone number; spiders lazily let their tethers dangle across the sidewalk in hopes of latching onto the grand prize (a truck’s antennae).  I have a crush on this town’s charming simplicity.

My life has been very good recently.  I enjoy working in my teaching parish.  My relationship with my girlfriend is amazing.  I have three of my closest friends constantly giving and receiving feedback.  My family’s healthy and I’m anxious to make it home for Thanksgiving.  School is a steady throb of major assignments/sermons due … so it’s manageable.  Life is very good.

Eucharistic Euphoria

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Oct 22 0

For those who I haven’t told: I’m taking a course at the Catholic Theological Union (www.ctu.edu NOT www.tcu.edu) called “Sacraments II: Eucharist and Sacramental Theology.” Why on earth would a Disciples seminarian be taking a Catholic Eucharist course? That’s been my challenge from the beginning. Part of the reasoning is that I need a fuller picture of the understanding spectrum around communion; another answer is that, as Cynthia Lindner claims, “[I] have an inner Catholic side of me.” It’s probably the Disciples’ ecumenical spirit that drives me to explore more … that, and I’m always curious on why other people practice their faith differently. Here’s where the euphoria comes in …

My course doesn’t require any papers, just an annotated bibliography (handed in twice during the semester) and an oral examination at the end of the term. As it turns out, there’s more work and more reading required with the annotated bibliography. So it’s due tomorrow, and I’m filling in some blanks additional reading. One of the “recommended” readings (the professor expects a couple of these per week) is a seemingly obscure text about the ancient Assyrian ritual: the Anaphora of Addai and Mari. This article addresses the question of whether there can be a valid Mass (from a Catholic perspective) and Eucharist ritual that doesn’t contain the Institution words (namely: “This is my Body. This is my Blood.”) The Catholic church decided in 2001 that IT IS a valid understanding of the Eucharist … even without an official consecration.

For me, this is fascinating! A hidden reason for taking this course, that I’ve only recently been able to admit to myself, is that I want to justify a Disciples’ understanding of communion in Catholic terms. I’m working at an Episcopal parish this year; I’m dating an Episcopalian; I’m friends with tons of Catholics and others from traditions who are fully into transubstantiation; and I want, with terms not solely my own, to explain how Disciples celebrate communion in a way in which Christ is fully present. That’s my sub-text.

So this article on the Anaphora of Addai and Mari will probably be key to unlocking the next stage of my preparation for ministry. My M.Div. (Master of Divinity) program at the University of Chicago Divinity School requires a third-year “Ministry Project.” The project is the particular student’s own interest of study linked to ministry and its strange spectrum of practicality and abstractness. Up until now, I thought for sure I’d want to do a biblical studies (probably New Testament) project. Now, however, after all this foreign Catholic liturgy, I want to study how Disciples congregations structure their worship. It will require me to visit several congregations – a good cross-section with ministers trained at a variety of places; it will require me to read through the history of Disciples’ thought on worship; it’s going to be fun and great! Now … to get a grant that lets me do several trips in 2008-2009 to visit these congregations and synthesize like crazy!

Oh yeah … and work more on my Eucharist bibliography!

-A

PS – World Bank and China on poverty – hmmm, in response to the German minister’s statement to the G-8: I wonder where the Chinese learned the wolfish practice?!?; at least there’s hope!

Throwing out the Computer

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Oct 15 1

I’m at the point I want to throw my 40-lb computer out my third-story window. Yesterday afternoon I set it to back up my terabyte of internal hard drives (1000 gigabytes) to my external terabyte drive. Sure enough, it took 20 hours … and was within 2 minutes of finishing when I went to the bathroom. When I came back, it had quit the program and the computer sat dormant. When I checked the log, it had the audacity to tell me “User cancelled backup.” There’s nothing worse than flippant software that blames the user for its own internal flaw; it’s infuriating.

This development may also explain why I’m so out-of-touch with non-Chicago people at the moment. I’m still unorganized from all my summer travels and work, and now I’m in the middle of my academic quarter. I have one of the best collections of classes I can remember:

  • Arts of Ministry: Preaching   with Cynthia Lindner
  • Practicum (Field Education)   with Kevin Boyd
  • Paul’s Letter to the Romans   with Hans-Josef Klauk
  • Sacraments II: Eucharist (at Catholic Theological Union)   with Ed Foley

I’m also overloading my experience at my teaching parish by working more hours than I should. Luckily it’s a choice I willingly make – and enjoy!

I also know several people expect more of my mass e-mails. They’ll come … eventually. I’m taking tons of pictures, and have plenty of stories, I’m just not investing the time to record all of them. Plus, I think I’m going to put some different sections in my e-mails (like technology tips, food ideas, etc.)