So my Spring break was in Mordor this year...which was pretty cool...I guess...This is actually at Dunes National Park on Lake Michigan. Chicago is in the background.
Hey people,
It's pastor Josh here. If you couldn't tell from the picture above. I just got back from a little vacation time in Indiana. It was cool. A little too cool for a spring break destination maybe but it was an adventure nevertheless.
It all started when...
I parked my car in a place where I hoped it wouldn't get towed, tried to finish up a bunch of work that would allow me this Lenten escape and took the 3AM Amtrack train down to Chicago last Thursday. As I walked down Jackson during rush hour, looking up at the Sears Tower, sucking down a Jamba Juice, with my oversized duffle helping me to stand out in the stylish big city crowd, I thought about how cool I was and how jealous all the people back in Moorhead and Fargo would be about my big city living...and then I promptly, and like a confused country kid, got on the wrong transit train. Thankfully, somebody helped me out of the train and someone else helped me on one that would actually get me to Indiana, instead of whereever I was heading!
My brother met me at the stop in Indiana and whisked me off to the last evening of academia at Valparaiso before Spring break. Sam is a first year professor in Christ's College, Valpo's honors program. He is a part of a program for professors transitioning into their first professorships the same way I am a part of the TiM program at Trinity, transitioning into ministry. Both are two year programs and both are funded by the Lilly Foundation. (Somebody ought to write a story about us, don't you think? Or make a Disney movie...naw I guess that probably's asking for a little too much) Anyway, my brother took me to a lecture about Wendell Berry, led by a prof. from Hope College (where Christian musician Sufjan Stevens went). It was pretty good. But I was glad I wasn't in college or seminary anymore and could listen on my own time and not be thinking about what would be on the quiz.
Anyway, I had a great week down in Indiana. My parents and their dogs/my dogs were at my
brother's too for the first few days I was there, and it was really good for us as a family to share some time together. We went to the Edvard Munch exhibit at the Chicago Institute of Art (one of my favorite places). I logged about three miles walking in the museum that day (I know because I have a pedometer as part of our church's "walking fast" this lent). Munch's amazing. He painted realities of relationships, city life, even death in some really surreal but powerful ways. And he was Norwegian so there's some cultural pride involved in my admiration for him. I'd like to blog more about his paintings and that exhibit if I get a chance. 
And I'd like to blog about going to the chapel of the Resurrection and meeting my friend Darlene and how I found out she had been called to be the first female ELCA campus pastor at Valpo (a Missouri Synod school)... ahh the controversy. Sounds like she's doing great!
And then I'd like to blog more about my trip in my brother's new car (first new car ever for anyone in our family) and how we went to visit my friends who are pastors in Ohio and who now have a kid named Karl (Carl?) who is quite the one year old evangelist...
...And how we got in a big rig and hit the road as a traveling evangelical team.
But that didn't happen even though the pictures might make it seem possible...
And then I'd like to blog some more about going to ELCA headquarters on Thursday and seeing all the bishops there for their big conference and presenting some of my crazy innovative ideas for the ELCA to the Director of the Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission, and getting a tour of the facility.
That's me representing on Higgins Road. The Conference of Bishops was meeting in the room behind me.
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