I was email-pen-palling with a JW from Y!A some weeks ago, and then he called my theology "demonic" so I thought to myself "ok fuck this fundamentalist asshat" and didn't respond. Friday or yesterday he followed up, so I was up until 2AM composing a polite response explaining how he fucked up and how not to make the same mistake again.
Despite being awake so late, I woke before the alarm with time to spend down my health in Castle Age and have a little karate practice before church. Parking was tight again even though I was a good 10 minutes early. The post office should be a safe parking option on a Sunday morning though. Service was great, musically and sermon-wise. Last week's "Brothers Breakfast" was also the first time I stuck around for "fellowship" after service. This week I thought I had 20 minutes to kill between the end of service and the beginning of the second session of newcomers class, and who doesn't love a free coffee. Turns out post-service fellowship is also juice, pastry and whatnot. So I will probably avail myself of fellowship (and free coffee) more often. Not sure how Brothers Breakfast is going to work with post-church workout schedules.
So... service 10-11:20ish, Betsy got me talking about what I do, what she does... oh, she called me "svelte". She's my favorite today. I haven't felt "svelte" in a good some years. I guess when I wear my black-and-gray hawaiian shirt it's hard to eyeball my waist size accurately, or perhaps Betsy is just a shameless flatterer. Anyway, at first I thought I'd just have coffee but then I ended up having a bite of raspberry coffee cake as well, and a few bites of some other chocolate confection.
At 11:50 I suddenly realized the newcomer class was not scheduled for 12 noon, but 11:45, so I rushed to give my hands a quick rinse and got to the second floor conference room. Other people were later than me. Other people brought their coffee cups too.
This session covered the origin of the Book of Common Prayer in the 1500s, and what "we" believe by way of the Apostles Creed (as opposed to the Nicene creed we affirm during service) and the baptismal covenant. Surprise! We believe in God, creator of all. Bet you didn't see that coming. And we believe in Jesus, per the creed. We stopped short of discussion of the personhood of the Holy Spirit though. We also renounce three things: 1) spiritual evil ("Satan", although Fr. Andrew gave the issue of Satan's personhood a wide enough berth for those of us who consider Satan an allegorical character); 2) earthly powers who further temptation and evil; and 3) evil and temptation that stems from our corrupt human nature.
It's not all renunciation though; we also 1) Accept Jesus as Savior, 2) put our WHOLE trust in His grace and love, and 3) obey Him as Lord. This was an opportune moment for Fr. Andrew to observe the difficulty many people have with the "obey" part, and footnote the Latin etymology ob- "in the direction of" + audire "hear". Thus the meaning of modern "obey" is intimately bound up with the sense of "listening to".
One thing especially jumped out at me in the rite of baptism:
"Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?"
Is this redundant? Are there any sinful desires that don't draw us from the love of God? Are there, conversely, sinless desires that nevertheless do draw us from the love of God? I think the answer in both cases is "no". Sin is then, by very definition, contrariness to the love of God. Yet another affirmation of my understanding of "no harm, no sin".
Back on the treadmill after a 2-week break: 2.5mi / 31:48, 344 kcal and the trainers' office was closed so I got my weight at the Pubilx closest to home: 181.5#.
Class was just about 1 hour, so figure I reached the gym 1 or shortly after, ducked in Pubilx for V8, bread, catfish, Sutter Home merlot on sale, and limited-edition pumpkin pie ice cream. Home ~2:30, gave festival battle a miss in favor of a quick shower to cool off and clean up, gave Dad a belated-birthday call since my day plan went sideways with the bust tire yesterday. Now I've actually finished blahgging it's 5:50. Want a nap. Need to finish up at least the first EFC formula and start preliminary testing.