I have blogged only a little about my current home church, New Spirit Community Church, in Berkeley. I talked about it some when I blogged about joining it in November. I figured that it was probably time to talk some more about it. It is going through some enormous changes right now - all three worship leaders (the senior pastor Karen Foster, associate pastor Nathan Meckley, and music director Darren Hochstedler) are leaving this month.

OK girls and boys, what is a scientist? A scientist is someone who makes hypotheses, makes observations and experiments, evaluates that hypothesis based on evidence, revises the hypothesis, invites peer review, and does the cycle all over again. A scientist is not someone who counts 77 geneologies in the Bible and tells Baptists that means the earth is about 6,000 years old.

A post about tagging (the tool/concept that allows one to identify information based on keywords, and create "Folksonomy") on a friend's (and old nptech colleague) blog made me decide to blog about something that has been sort of in the corner of my consciousness for the past while.

I finished book one on my long list of summer reading.  It was A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren.

Apparently, there is a fair bit of furor in conservative Christian (i.e. Religious Right) circles about what's happening in the government. They are not happy that their agenda has not been more forcefully put forward by the administration. And they are threatening to withold their support for the Republicans, if they don't do more.

Well, I don't have much time these days, between trying to finish an exegesis paper on Psalm 90 (if you've got any ideas, let me know!), and polish my final project for Christian Worship, which will be a contemplative service. I also have an exam to study for... Sigh. But in 10 days, I'll have a break.

In the meantime, I thought I'd entertain you with two lesbian tidbits, since I don't do this sort of thing very often. And, by happenstance, they fall into the two categories I know something about: science and religion.

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, was the beginning of Holy Week. This is, basically, the first time I've observed Holy Week in any sense of the word. When I was a kid, growing up, and when I was a fundamentalist I remember Palm Sunday, and Easter, but nothing else registered. And from what I could tell, it was Christmas that was the most important holiday of the year. Then, of course, I ignored the whole thing except for noticing the chocolate eggs and chicks arrive at the store.

With impeccable timing, National Geographic has published the text, and a lot of information on a recovered codex, which contains something called "The Gospel of Judas." It's considered the biggest find in ancient Christian related text since the Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1948, and popularized by Elaine Pagels and others, containing the Gospel of Thomas.

I've been recuperating from being sick. I'm slowly on the up and up, but this is why you haven't heard from me lately. Anyway I have quite a few little things that are worth attention.