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Ben with Reed Day 1

Pat took this photo of Ben with Reed mid-afternoon on Reed's first day post-partum. What a joy!

Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

Looking at all the photos of Reed prompted Pat and me to dig out the old slides and prints from Ben's infancy. Here's one from his first week! Does he resemble Reed, or is it just that all fair-skinned, bald babies look alike!

Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

In a September 8 interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, Colin Powell said

Shame on you, Dick Cheney! In talking with Jim Lehrer about the US role in advancing a settlement in the Darfur region of the Sudan, Cheney said:

It's a huge area. It's difficult to get at, but we have been actively involved. I am satisfied we are doing everything we can do.

Senators Barak Obama and Sam Brownback, just back from Sudan, think the US can do more. And Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek has decided that he personally can and will do more.

Here are a couple of examples of Bill Staines lyrics that strike me as especially poetic.

From "Secret Garden":

Grasping at love is like holding a fistful of sand
The harder you squeeze, the less that you have in your hand

And the refrain from "Crossing the Water"

We are crossing the water our whole lives through
Making a passage that is straight and true
Every heart is a vessel, every dream is a light
Shining in the darkness of the blackest night

Jody called our attention to the Bill Staines concert last night, sponsored by the Green Apple Folk Music Society. We've listened enthusiastically to Bill's songs on "Simply Folk" for years ("Roseville Fair" has been a particular favorite), and then we heard him in concert last August at the Shawano Folk Music festival. Since then, we've put a bunch of his songs on our iPod and can't stop listening to them and singing along. So we knew we had to go!

Our theology discussion group met on Thursday. We've been reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God, and our assignment this time was chapter 6, "The God of the Philosophers."

Leave it to Google ... again! Wondering about the date of Ash Wednesday in 2006 (the first day of Lent), I googled "lent 2006". What popped up was a link to this calendar, which I am so glad to know about. The fact that it's an interfaith calendar with a worldwide perspective heightens my interest and underscores its usefulness.

As the Internet is arguably one of the most powerful forces of social change conceived by humankind, this topic will be the new focus of my blog. I'm going to focus on how the Internet is changing the congregation; thus, transforming the church through its wisdom from the bottom up.

Tim Bednar's blog at e-church has its ups and downs. This new focus looks to be quite helpful, especially if it fulfllls its promise of describing changes the Internet is effecting in the way congregations live, work, communicate, and worship.