When You Can't Achieve Your Goal, Change the Goal

The dreaded moment arrived. That confluence of time--or should I say, lack of enough time--meeting a loss of commitment and a holiday break. And my book didn't get finished. Nor the next one. Never mind last week's book. Sigh.

Some force of nature happened about mid-March and it occurred to me, in a shocking revelation, that Easter was close at hand and I was not, prepared. Not.At. All.

At SVUC, we have five worship services in eight days and I had only one completely finished. (Which is actually disingenuous of me cause there's three clergy putting that one together and one of the others is responsible for the final version.) In attempt to ward off a bit of panic, I buckled down and started to get done what needed doing and gave it to who it is that needed it so that all the material would magically become a worship service (who, by the way, is Essie, our office administrator - have I told you yet that she's awesome? Not yet? Well, she is indeed, awesome.). Anyway, push came to shove and I only had time to shove back. And then take a few days of holiday time to spend Spring Break with the kids. During which time I was CERTAIN that I would read a bit. And I did. But I didn't read 'work' books. Just my recipe magazines and my novel (which currently is, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - good but is taking a long time to get through).

So, here I am. A full three weeks behind in my reading and blogging for my reading project of attempting to read 52 books in 52 weeks for 2017. I knew this time would come. Fifty-two books in 52 weeks was a daunting goal. Not only did I want to read that many, I wanted to blog about each one. So, the moment has now arrived and the question is, what am I going to do about it?

Well, as someone very significant in my ministry training once told me when I asked him what he did when things weren't going the way he had expected - he answered, "oh, that's simple - if I can't make my goal, I change the goal!"

I have read two of the three books I'm behind blogging about. So, instead of writing about each of the two books, I'm bundling both of them up in this blog post. And we'll see what happens tomorrow when I choose last week's book and this next week's book. 😀

So, here we go...

Book 12 was Preaching the Big Questions: Doctrine Isn't Dusty by Catherine MacLean and John Young. This book was FASCINATING. And I will be using it for a series of study sessions in the fall about the United Church of Canada and where we (SVUC) are situated within its big tent. The UCC has a diverse range of theologies wishing the people who lead the Church, who lead in the congregations and within the lay folks who sit in the pews. Catherine and John's book does a very good job of articulating what we (the royal we of all the United Church) believe as a whole on a variety of topics, such as:

• Sovereignty of God
• Christology
• Atonement
• Grace & Salvation
• Authority of Scripture
• Sin
• Baptism
• Communion

So - if any of these topics caught your eye and made you wonder or made your heart feel funny -cause who doesn't feel funny when salvation is mentioned? - consider joining the discussion that we will be starting next fall at SVUC.

Book 13. Ugh. Lived up to its number. To be honest, I had already read half it last year when I was taking an academic writing course. Please notice, I read this under obligation only. I felt the need, for some reason known only to God, to finish it. No offence to its author, Joseph Harris, it just is not my sort of reading. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts was informative but painful. I'm, in some alternate universe, attempting to create my Masters Thesis. Apparently writing in an academic way is necessary to achieve this. So I read the book. Anyone want it? Cause I'm done with it. Done.

And thus ends the book blog for Books 12 & 13. Onto Book 14. And 15. Have a great week!!