The Final Anniversary Dinner (This Year)

Last night we enjoyed the final anniversary dinner last night at Favazza's on the Hill. Favazza's has been one of our favorite Italian restaurants in St. Louis for 25 years. We always get Cavatelli Shrimp Mario (Chris) and Linguini Pescatori (me). We also had a wonderful bottle of Jordan (2003) Cab.

Thirty Years Ago!

Chris and I celebrate 30 years of marriage today. Here's what we looked like back in the day!

At the Wedding Reception

The Evening after the Reception at West Port

The Bride!

Honeymoon Shot

New York City

Time to post some NYC images from our 30th anniversary trip a few weeks ago.

Lower Manhattan from the Top of the Rock(efeller Center)

Sightseeing

Copper-topped

Spiderman

Birthday & Dogs

Last night we had a nice (cool) cookout at my parents house. We got Spencer and Bear together for the first time. Bear is my parent's yellow lab. They got along just fine. Here's some pictures from the evening.

Spencer & Bear

Standoff

Not so Loud!

Gotcha!

Bite!

Spencer

Mom & Spencer

German Chocolate Cake

Machine Gun Fun

Had some fun yesterday shooting. Here's a friend shooting a small AR-15 with a flash enhancer.
No photoshopping this next image:

My Home Study

Just playing around on Friday afternoon. Check this out.
I fixed it. The first one had some bad color cast and the white balance was off. I also figured out how to fix the size.

Use your mouse to move around. Press shift to zoom in and control to zoom out. Cool, huh?

Life on the Beach

It's Spring Break time again. Thanks to the generosity of the Forsters we are staying at Starboard Village on Pensacola Beach, Florida!

Streetside Panorama

Beachside Pano

Becky is a Rising Star in San Antonio

Pretty cool. You can read the entire article here along with an interview with Becky.
Becky's Facebook profile.

New Year Theology

I think it's time for me to start posting biblical theological comments again on this blog. I'm not going to stop posting images. I enjoy photography too much. But I think I'm ready for more.

I stopped posting mostly because I was sick of the pettiness of so many theologically-oriented blogs. Way too much posturing and pontificating from men who, apart from the internet, would otherwise have no public, national voice. It is obnoxious to me that contentious, divisive men (Titus 3:9-10; Philem. ) have such free reign in the blogisphere. It also frosts me that these blogs attack men and churches with which they have never had any personal contact. This fans the flames of controversy and eventually dishonest, underhanded ecclesiastical campaigns are then initiated against otherwise good men who have been maliciously tagged as heretics and enemies of the Gospel.

I don't know if I can avoid the controversies or not. We'll see. But I would like to continue to post interesting biblical and theological insights that I discover while preaching and teaching and writing.

Moore-Montgomery-Meyers Christmas Feast 2008

I just uploaded about 75 images from last night's Christmas feast at the Montomery's. Great time. Thanks to Maggie and Joel for hosting it, as always. If you want to see all the pictures, you can find them all in this gallery. Here's a sample of the craziness.

Coco Chocolate Lounge & Bistro

Okay. Last night Becky and I ate at Coco Chocolate Lounge & Bistro in San Antonio. Yeah, she's the pastry chef there. Which means she creates and makes all the desserts.

Time to brag. Here's the cover of the San Antonio Magazine that came out this weekend.

And here's the page that says that Becky's desserts are the best in San Antonio.
Well, tied for first anyway. The thing to remember about this is that San Antonio is a HUGE city, bigger than Dallas.

And here's Becky's signature dessert - the chocolate Kiss.
Too bad you can't taste it!

All these picts were taken with my Lumix Lx3 with available light. If you want to see more picts, go here.

San Antonio

I'm posting this from Becky's truck because it's the only place were we can access non-secured wifi in her apartment complex. It's raining here, so I'm not sure what all we will do today. Last night I wanted to see where she used to work at the La Mansion del Rio on the River Walk. I'd never been there, so that was interesting. I didn't realize how extensive the River Walk was. It's quite a long string of restaurants and shops on the river.

Sunday morning I preached at Redeemer Pres in Austin. What a great church. Faithful, rich liturgy. Friendly, engaged people. The congregation is about 500 strong, so they need to have two worship services. There were a couple of firsts for me. I'd never preached the same sermon twice in two back-to-back services. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. But the second sermon was not exactly the same as the first; I'm sure it was much better. This was also the first time I've ever preached a 20 minute sermon in a regular morning service. I think. I believe my first sermon turned out to be 17 minutes and the second just a bit longer than 20. I'll have to think about that experience a bit more. My regular sermons used to be a lot longer than they are now, but 20 minutes would be a challenge. But it might be worth it. We'll see.

Time for a few more shots of Spencer.

Random Stuff

My favorite breakfast: 1) three eggs fried in butter, crisp but over medium so the yolk is runny; 2) fresh biscuits and sausage gravy on the same plate with the eggs; 3) crispy cooked pancakes with real maple syrup; and 4) a big glass of very cold milk. Oh, and I like the new sausage and gravy biscuits at Hardies. Add an egg to the biscuit and it's wonderful. Just don't try to eat it while driving.

I heard on the radio news this morning that the US auto dealers are in trouble and "President-elect Obama wants to help." Really? That's great, I thought. Maybe he can volunteer some of his time at a factory. Maybe he has some extra money in his bank account or in investments that he can loan to them. Perhaps he can sit down with the executives at Ford and GM and share some of his ideas for streamlining the business and turning things around for them. That would really be cool if he volunteered some of his time and money to help them. But no. He doesn't really want help. What he wants to do is force the rest of the country to "help" them. Why can't the news accurately report what is going on? "President elect Obama has a plan that would take more money from productive citizens and give it to these failing industries. If anyone disagrees with this, that's tough. You don't fork over your money, you go to jail."

The hubris of academic religious studies is astonishing. For the past month or so I've been preparing for some lectures on the Gospels I'm doing in December. I've been reading the latest on the "synoptic problem," trying to get up to speed on current research. Sheez. Talk about the blind leading the blind. For example, there's more time and effort spent on understanding the make-believe document "Q" (supposedly behind what is common in Matthew and Luke) than on the actual extant Gospels! Essays, dissertations, and books have been written on the date of Q, the sources used by the author of Q, the background and presuppositions of the author of Q, the Q community behind the document, etc. Unbelievable nonsense. Q is make believe. It only exists in the minds of academics. If I want to know about Q, I'll read James Bond novels. They are just as imaginative, but infinitely more interesting.

Lion King in the Morning

I captured this at the St. Louis Zoo a few weeks ago. The light was just about perfect.

Well, I don't feel like a Lion King this morning. My kingdom is a mess. My kingdom being my downstairs office. This is the first few days of my sabbatical, but I'm going to have to spend a least one of them cleaning up. I looks like the last time I cleaned was 7 years ago! Sigh.

Pastry Chef Becky in the News

From the current Texas Monthly:

Coco Chocolate Lounge & Bistro
San Antonio
by Patricia Sharpe

The nerve. Another reviewer grabbed the Sex and the City image I had intended to use in writing about Coco, the tall, dark, and sensuous bistro that recently opened on San Antonio’s far north side. Now I have to trot out my second-best movie comparison: Moulin Rouge. Actually, they both work: I can see the four Sex pistols on one of Coco’s red velvet banquettes, appraising their latest boy toy while dipping ripe fruit in chocolate fondue. But I can also imagine Nicole Kidman in a scarlet gown at the bar devouring a Kiss, Coco’s diet-be-damned dessert of crème brûlée swathed in chocolate mousse

Read the entire review

.

Anniversary

29 years ago, on August 4, 1979, Jeff Meyers and Chris Moore were married at First Baptist Church in Kirkwood, MO. She's still one hot chick!

Random

Another Biblical Horizons conference is history. It was a great week. A nice balance of topics for lectures. Good singing and worship. A large crowd of attendees, too. I gave four lectures on Colossians, mostly concentrating on the epochal change that took place in world history and the ordering of human life as a result of "the circumcision of Christ" (=his death on the cross). As usual, the interaction between lecturers helped me gather some loose ends together. I'll try to post something on this a little later this or next week.

The week before I left for the BH conference I began to read William P. Young's The Shack. The first thing to say about this novel is that it's not great literature. It's not even good literature. Actually, it's not very well written at all. I found it tedious to read. The story itself starts out okay. There's enough there to keep you reading. But then the protagonist gets to the shack. At that point the whole thing becomes worse than ridiculous. I have to be honest. I couldn't read any more after the revelation of the Trinity as a big black woman (the Father), a Jewish man (the Son), and a petite young Asian woman (the Spirit). At one point the main character asks, "Which on one of you is God?" They all answer at once, "I am." Give me a break. The whole thing is just plain goofy after that. Not to sound too elitist, but if this is the kind of "theological novel" that millions of American Christians love, then Christian culture in this country is in serious trouble. Well, of course, we already knew that, didn't we? If you want more information on this latest American Christian smoltzy novel, check out the World Magazine review. Read The Shack if you want. But you may end up screaming and throwing the book at the wall about a third of the way through.

I tried cuil.com, the latest challenge to Google. Not bad. A bit slow for me. But whoever wants to dethrone Google is gonna have to do a whole lot better than this.

I finally got around to listening to this podcast on Radical Orthodoxy. I've read a lot of the RO books and articles, and I appreciate a lot of what they are saying, especially their critique of modernity (after AD 1300!). This CBC Radio podcast is helpful. David Cayley interviews Catherine Pickstock and John Milbank, so we get summaries of RO in their own words. There are, of course, serious problems with the positive theology of Milbank and the RO theologians. This podcast doesn't really deal with those problems. This is just a nice, succinct summary of the RO project.

A Brief Hiatus

I'll probably be pretty spotty with my blogging for the next week. I'm in Niceville, Florida, at the annual Biblical Horizons conference. My son and I just got into our motel room an hour or so ago.

Saturday evening my wallet was stolen from my car outside of my house. I had heard that kids (?) rifled through cars on the weekend in the neighborhood. The police have warned everyone many times. I try to make sure my car is locked. And I usually park it in the driveway where it is covered by the floodlight. But I must have forgotten to lock it Saturday evening. And I left my wallet inside. Not good. When I opened the car on Sunday morning, all the compartments were open and I knew exactly what had happened. No wallet. Nothing else was missing. Nothing else was touched as far as I can tell. Just the wallet. When I came back from church in the morning Jeffrey and I headed out with a flashlight and a crowbar to check the sewers. Sure enough, we found it in the 4th one we opened. They drove about a block and tossed it. My cash, driver's license, and most of my credit cards were gone, of course. But I did recover two credit cards and all the receipts that I stored in it. What a mess. The officer that took my report told me that they had processed dozens of similar reports from Crestwood and Sunset Hills that morning.

Today's wise advice from Jeff: Lock your car at night and take your wallet inside!

Stuff

Got a lot going on this week. Yesterday our presbytery met for our quarterly stated meeting. We had 4 men to examine for ordination. My committee did the bulk of the work leading up to the meeting. But it takes a couple of hours or more to conduct a floor exam for so many men. They all passed. One of them was our new Assistant Pastor, Joshua Anderson. He did very well. There was some fireworks about his paedocommunion exception to the Westminster Standards. But it turned out to be just a few people. The vote to sustain his exam was loud and strong with only two people voting against it.

This week I'm busing working on my lectures for the Biblical Horizon's conference. The conference begins next Monday, July 21st. I've been attending and speaking at the BH conferences for over 15 years. It's a great time. Not your typical conference. Mostly a time of sharing new insights and learning the Bible from colleagues and friends.

This year I will be lecturing on Paul's letter to the Colossians. Right now I need to get back to work. . .

I said I need to get back to work! There ain't nothing more to read.

Sick Puppy

Yesterday Spencer was sick. But he is such a perfect puppy that he let us know that he needed to go outside to do his runny business. Not one drop inside. Nosiree. What a dog. Then in the evening he was on the bed with Chris when he jumped in her lap and started retching. She got up and took him into the bathroom where he obediently barfed into the toilet. Did I say he's a perfect puppy? Well, he splashed a little on the seat, but besides that he's better behaved sick than most of my kids (which isn't saying much). In honor of his exemplary behavior he got to go outside at dusk and get his portrait taken.

Behold the model dog!