the unlikely orange

we've just finished with a genesis-level amount of rain here in new jersey the last few days, but this morning as i write this, i see that the sun has rediscovered us.  and none too early.  you see, this is a big weekend.  it's easter weekend, after all, and the first weekend of april.  there will be people traveling and visiting, and trips to playgrounds.  there will be easter egg hunts and sunrise services.  there will be new pink dresses and  ill-fitting suits.  there will be chocolate and a cornocopia of everything pastel.  and so many more reasons to get down on your knees and beg for sunshine.  and the greatest of these is baseball. that's right: that great american pasttime where grown men attempt to hit a little white ball with a stick - baseball.  the only sure sign of spring, complete with the sounds and smells to prove it.  i've been waiting for it for 5 months, and this sunday - Easter sunday - it return...

"lent 2010: keep your eyes open" 6/7 mixed media collage 3/2010 gregory a. milinovich this past sunday was palm sunday, and while we celebrated jesus' entry into Jerusalem with palm branches, we also drew our gaze towards the garden of gethsemane.  you'll remember that we have been focusing on peter this lent, and so we focused on matthew 26:36-46, in which Jesus takes his disciples to the garden of olive trees, and then pulls peter, james and john aside and takes them with him a little further off.  he asks them to keep watch while he prays.  and as Jesus prays an intense and distressing prayer, peter and the boys fall asleep.  when Jesus comes back to them he essentially tells them to keep their eyes open.  i think it is good advice for us, too: keep your eyes open.  for many of us who are christians, closing our eyes has become a simple and convenient alternative for really seeing what is going on around us.  we'd rather not know so that we don'...

yesterday in worship at my church it was announced that as of July i would become the pastor at the Catawissa Avenue United Methodist Church in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.  this is an appointment in a new conference, a change that has been part of our plan for a long time.  since both shannon's family and my family live in pennsylvania, we have been thinking about getting back to pennsylvania,  this year, the opportunity finally presented itself in a new way, and we were fortunate enough to be offered an appointment there.  while we are very excited about the homecoming, as well as the new opportunities for ministry in a new setting where i will be the solo pastor, we are also in a time of grieving for the leaving will be doing here in clinton.  we have come to love it here, and will deeply miss the friends we have made here.  it is a strange juxtaposition of mixed emotions.  so we would appreciate your prayers as we pack.  as we prepare to move....

My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.                  -ephesians 3:14-21 (the message) It was also called Mizpah, because he said, "May the LORD keep watch bet...

i know i'm generally not very good at picking favorites, but, for some reason, this song, since the first time i ever heard it, became the song of my soul.  it resonated somewhere deep inside me and stirred something that has never been the same.  it is the most played song on my ipod by far.  this version is a live version which gives a nice look at the band playing the song, but if you're more interested in seeing the lyrics, check this one out.  you may not love this song the way i do.  heck, you may not even like it.  but, for better or for worse, it has become my song.  "lights will guide you home...and ignite your bones...and i will try to fix you." 

dang genetics.  i've been told, and it's true, that i have a tendency (at least in some parts of my life) towards extremes.  i mean, why else would i currently have 10,655 songs on my ipod?  (by the way, that isn't a typo or an exaggeration.  just truth, people).  in college, one of my obsessions was writing as small as humanly possible.  it wasn't enough for me that i could write so small that none of my friends could really read my notes.  no, that wasn't near enough.  i had to go to extremes.  like the one course i took in which i was committed to putting the whole semester's-worth of notes on one regular-sized sheet of paper.  i got it from my dad, who, as the story goes, once impressed my mom sometime during adolescence with his ability to write the lord's prayer inside a circle the size of a dime.  dang genetics. and now i'm passing it along, it would seem.  above you see one of the worksheets that our son Jack ...

i wish i could defy gravity like the squirrel in my front yard.  i wish people would return items they've borrowed that they now think they own, simply because they've had them for 10 years.  just perusing the news this morning, i came across this story that i thought was funny and reminded me that if any of you have any of my cds that you borrowed in college, and you want to return them now, that would be brilliant.  i will not hold it against you.  (it may or may not surprise you to know that in college i had something called "greg's cd library" through which i lent out cds.  when someone would borrow a cd, they got a "library card" with it that not only included the cd info, but also gave them a chance to rate and review the cd.  i have always been a music nerd).  i wish i had the memory of my 5year old, as he can remember basically everything that has ever happened to him in his short life so far, even trivial things, like the last time he ate...