Wedding Date, Photo Play, and more

Wedding Date
Six weeks ago Heidi and I announced our engagement. So many of you responded with congrats, and I know I didn’t do nearly enough personal replies, so here’s a collective THANK YOU!!!

Heidi and I set our wedding date for August 30th, 2008. It’ll be on the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend. We’re having it at St. Paul and the Redeemer Episcopal Church in Hyde Park. (This was Heidi’s local church in Chicago after she became Episcopalian and during her time in seminary.) Heidi and I will finalize many more of the details in the upcoming months, but here’s what we’re currently excited about:

• Because it’s going to be a Saturday morning wedding, many of our clergy friends, including out-of-Chicago ones can hopefully make it back to their churches for Sunday worship services.
• I originally planned to do CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) in a hospital this summer, but those plans switched and I’ll be doing it this coming fall. That lets me be more available for planning details and preparing for our marriage.
• SP-R is a beautiful church that has GREAT natural lighting through the windows on the sides. Our wedding pictures will be amazing! (And no, several of you have told me this, but I’m not crazy enough to think I can photograph my own wedding).
• We’re wanting to have a simple and inexpensive wedding. So the reception will probably be at the church and my extended family will hopefully help with the food. It’ll be a nice, end-of-summer barbecue theme.
• Because both of our denominations insist on regular Communion, our service will definitely have a Eucharist part. We haven’t decided yet whether the Episcopal priest or the Disciples minister will do that portion. (We’ll make that decision once I finally decide which Disciples minister to ask!)

Photo Play
My Divinity School curriculum has never been my sole area of study while at Chicago. The Div. School’s Ministry Program has had the ingenuity (and funds) to start recording students’ sermons to DVDs so they can watch and critique themselves visually instead of just audibly. I’ve created most of those DVDs and each time I make one, I learn something new in the software. Having a constant source of good content lets me learn the programs without the boring and pointless tutorials the software manufacturers always include. This work is important – and it seems to make learning more enjoyable as well.

Besides the video learning, I’ve also grown addicted to a blog called Strobist. The addiction started when I moved to Chicago a year and a half ago. The author is a photographer on-leave from his Baltimore paper and he’s written a full series teaching how to do off-camera lighting for photography. In addition to the accompanying flickr community (with >86000 pictures with lighting set-up descriptions and diagrams), I absolutely love the DIY (do-it-yourself) projects for good lighting.

Many of my church members do woodworking as their creative, hands-on activity. Some of them are managers at companies and work in offices all day — but they still feel the need to create something physical. Living in a communal house in the city, I don’t have the space/equipment/money to have such a hobby. This is why Strobist is so perfect. I can create small light modifiers and scratch that metaphorical itch. For instance, this past month I created a Macro Studio (for taking detailed, zoomed-in pictures of objects) and a grid-snoot (that focuses a flash beam into a tight circle):

Other Blog Entries
Heidi was giving me a hard time about my snack habits, and then introduced me to a delicious healthy snack: baked snap peas. In addition to finding healthier habits for my hunger, I’m working with my church on helping fight global extreme poverty and hunger (1, 2). All the fun of my field parish works in tandem with the fun I have at the Divinity School; last Tuesday we had our annual Ministry Banquet with catered food and great parodies of life at the Div. School (read through to the end of the post for the accounts and pictures — the beginning is more of my rambling). It’s even better when the hilarity of the school isn’t strictly confined to our skits. Take, for example, our Lilly program’s Music conference in January: speakers, music presentations, and … a fire alarm! — it was hilarious watching the intellectual hierarchy instantly flattened by seeing many of the smartest people I know debating whether they should go directly outside or go up to their offices to get their coats. I love the funny ways we can remember the great gift of life and all the funny illusions we read into it.  Oh, and in addition too all those activities, I also photographed the Installation and Ordination of Chicago’s new Episcopal Bishop.  (I wrote about it, and posted a gallery!)

Thanks for reading – and remember, the wedding is on August 30th!