This morning in church, I was sitting there waiting for the communion, which we do every Sunday at Grace Chicago. It occurred to me that communion has long been a ritual fraught with anxiety for me. I dunno how many of you have been taught to approach the communion ritual with a certain kind of introspective care, but that's one lesson that I've never forgotten.

You'll recall, Gentle Reader, the passages in the NT about folks turning communion into Drunken Loutfest '73, and about how folks even got physically sick and died as a result of celebrating communion like Oktoberfest.

I spent a lot of moments earlier in my life highly nervous about whether or not I could in good conscience take the bread and wine. I know that has something to do with my OCD issues, but what it's left me with is a habit of reflecting on my attitude toward God in those moments before communion. And these days, I'm testing out different attitudes.

It will likely come as no surprise to you that I spend a lot of my time angry with God. As I sat there today, though, I asked the question: can I approach the table, eat the bread and drink the wine, all the while feeling anger?

The answer for me was that there is no emotion that the God who made me is not big enough to get his arms around, and even in that anger I can step up and identify myself with God, if he can identify me with himself.

So the moral of the story is that regardless of my state of mind, the communion table is a return to roots, deeper than a stray thought, beyond circumstances, and able to withstand even an angry heart. Unlike the terror of my youth in xianity, I don't see too many situations now where I would abstain from the table.

Did you know that "hatred is a precious commodity and not to be wasted on trivial things"?

Neither did I, until I graded the latest round of literary gems from my online class. Kill me nooooowwww!

I don't know why, but I really don't feel up to posting much these days. I think of the blog and I feel a weight settle on my shoulders. Shel thinks it's in part because my grand build-yer-own-template project went kablooie during implementation (wouldn't work on Firefox, my browser of choice these days).

That could be part of it, I guess.

Hard in the last coupla weeks to not be completely turned inward. Don't wanna chat with anyone, don't wanna tell anyone anything, don't want to do anything but go home and sleep. And drink coffee and play videogames for several hours.

Well, posting has been a bit irregular of late. There's all kinds of news to report!

My friend CH just returned from a job interview at UT-Martin, a couple of hours away from Nashville. He said it was a positive thang, and it looks to be the kind of place that he, WH, and JH could settle in for a stretch. Shel and I are overjoyed for them -- here's hoping for more good news on that front soon.

Shel resigned as Books Editor for Paste. She'll be finishing out her last issue with a special feature on comics, which I'm writing the odd bit here and there for. Should be a good one, and a nice note on which to end her work for the folks at the magazine. I've wanted Shel to end this job for a while, and she finally did it. I'll likely write more about this anon.

On a lighter note, I've been getting my butt handed to me on Xbox Live for a week or so now, and it looks like a number of my old compadres in Chapel Hill are Live-enabled, too; hopefully PM and I can square up to meet online in a day or two and administer/receive some beatdowns from the rest of the Halo 2 community.

Shel and I think we found a church, after a long time without one we liked in CH. It's called Grace Chicago, and it meets in a rented theatre downtown in Wicker Park. We've made a few acquaintances there, and hope to find some friends in the group. It's a small church -- between 75 and 120 folks -- and the pastor is the emergent church's version of an organic intellectual. He doesn't really know what the emergent church movement is -- he's just been informed that "he's doing it." That's pretty cool.

I'm teaching online again, after a break of a year or more. Yes, it's back to work for Nashville State CC. And you know what? It's nice to get back to it, frankly. I'm a little disarmed at how at ease I am with the whole thing, but this time around, I know my worth, and I know just how much I should put into the course for what they pay. That, and I can teach it in my sleep and still do a better job than most people out there who are trying...nyuk nyuk nyuk! Seriously, I want to see if I can locate the optimal point on the effort curve between quality and opportunity cost. Ultimately I'd like to take on multiple sections at once and deal with our consumer debt. Eyuuuh!