It seems early, to me, to be hearing Christmas music everywhere I go, but I may just not remember how long the Christmas season lasted in my younger years. It plays most of the time at work now, but will get more intense as the days go by. This morning we had Christmas music in church and I really enjoyed it. One of the choir members soloed with a song by Faith Hill titled "A Baby Changes Everything." The choir member, Rosemary Hook, did a terrific job on the song. I didn't think I was going to like it, but I did. A lot.
This afternoon Georgiann and I along with our friends Pat and Chris went to hear the Staunton Choral Society winter concert at the 2nd Presbyterian Church in Staunton. It was all Christmas music, with about an even mix of sacred and secular music. The SCS is made up of of men and women of the community and is composed mostly of older folks. There were 50 some in this year's choir. When I was singing I thought we were running over 100. But it was very nice to see some of the members who were there in the years I was singing.
After the concert we went to Red Lobster and had dinner. Good food. For me, a little pricey. Not terrible, but a little high. But I did have a little higher priced dinner than I needed to have, and I had dessert as well. The food was excellent, the service good. So, no complaints, but something I couldn't afford to do frequently.
The snow has made a reasonable retreat with the roads all clear and dry. I managed to get the CRV completely cleaned off. The truck is as well except in the bed. No one cares about that. It is supposed to be 48F and rainy by Wednesday, so the rest of the snow will disappear at least my then. I am off again on Friday and the weather is supposed to be 41F and sunny. Yeah.
Sorry I have not had anything to report on my reading, but the fact is I have been a bit too busy to read the last few days. I am well into "GOD, According to God" by Gerald Schroeder and have found many things that resonate with my own theistic evolutionist mindset. I may migrate to Francis Collins' word for theistic evolutionist, biologos, in time. It might be less threatening to my Christian colleagues, but theistic evolutionist encapsulates my ideas of creation so perfectly.
To those who may have just found me, my current recommendations for reading along these lines are the following: "The Language of God" by Francis Collins, "How To Read the Bible" by James Kugel, "The Fourth Day" by Howard J. Van Till, and "GOD According to God" by Gerald Schroeder.
There are a host of others, many found on biologos.org. If you struggle with some of the basic concepts of evolution you might try reading "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner. Weiner spent considerable time on the Galapagos Islands documenting the ever changing shape and size of beaks of a breed of Finches as a result of food supply. He actually documented in short time periods, some as short as a single generation, the evolution of finch beaks as external factors effected their eating habits which of course effected their survival rate. A real poke at the misguided concepts that evolution only happens over epic time periods. I read the book on the recommendation of a friend who was privileged to visit the Galapagos.
If you believe that the Bible is to be taken literally just as interpreted with the KJV translation this blog may be a problem to you. But I hope your faith in the author of the holy scriptures is stronger than your faith in the holy scriptures. Written words are just words. But Jesus, the one part of God, is the WORD. On that I am clear.
