Now All I Need Is A Title

Eleven years ago …

1 Corinthians 16:10-14 January 28

student leaders @ UIL – Urbana/Champaign 10301.28

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity. 13-14

Tonight we'll hear President Bush give the State of the Union Address. No one wants war, but we know peace doesn't come without a price. I know I won't be able to have peace myself without paying for it. I just have to know what to give up.

Anger – hurt – childish fear.; those I'd like to give up. I'd like to go to work one day without a litany of what I screwed up the day before. I'd like to go to work one day without a litany of what I screwed up the day before. I can't be doing this much wrong, Jesus, and I can only change so much with becoming someone we all hate, I have to work with people on Earth; why am I not seeing them as Your children?

[At the bottom of this page I have a note “Susi Weisz's bday (1963)!” and on the facing page we have a note for “Martha's classes” – she was teaching at Halliday Public School at the time – beneath a picture of Nicole Kidman receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.]

Today …

I KNOW there are people reading this who would give most anything to not hear President Obama give the State of the Union Address tonight! The thing is, he doesn't have to … Article II Section 3 of the Constitution says “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;” there is no stipulation as to whether the President himself gives this information (as Washington and Adams did) or dispatches someone to come do it for him (as all from Jefferson to Wilson did, several decades before it was televised). But it's a tradition I expect most of us reading this have grown up with; so YES, it's a good idea for President Obama to show up tonight.

No matter what the reception is. Two thousand years ago, the reception for another event which I expect most of human civilization is familiar with – Judas' betrayal of Jesus by identifying Him in the Garden of Gethsemane with a kiss – was, by the argument raised in the rediscovered Gospel of Judas (lost in the second century and known prior to that, that we know of, by theologians arguing against it), a staged performance for the sake of uniting what would become the Christian church instead of having it become schools headed by each disciple – “I am of Peter,” “I am of Andrew,” “I am of Thomas,” etc. At least that's how I read Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King's Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and The Shaping of Christianity (ISBN 9780143113164). With all due respect,

even if you do read the translation included, fragmentary and really mystic, almost like a “secret revelation” that the canon New Testament warns us against heeding, it's unlikely to change your mind! But it's good to question and be willing to question what you believe and why you believe it; from my Christian point of view, you don't get into heaven because of what you believe (re: what doctrine, what ideas), you get into heaven because of Who you believe in. And for me, He is Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the Bridge between me and a perfect God. And after a wonderful spaghetti dinner we were all home for last night and a glorious start to my day, even looking out my office window at my plugged-in car, I will let nothing get me down.

My choice, David