So it goes...

My Tuesday night evolved in the strangest way into an odd, albeit rewarding evening. Last week after my weekly coffee with the the boys at Cafe De Arts , I got a text message from my friend Claude who asked if I wanted to get together next Tuesday. I mentioned it to Donna, and she said it was probably because she was hosting 10 women at our house to assemble sandwiches for the Guest House of Milwaukee . Claude knew I would probably want to get out of the house, so felt it would be a good chance to get together for a beer. So we set a time and a place ( Bernies Taproom a local bar) and I mentioned he should invite the other guys from coffee and some others from CollectiveMKE , our church. Then he said, "Maybe we could even make sandwiches while we're there. Now, to be honest, I thought this was a little crazy at first. I am one of those people that worries entirely too much what people think. (Though as I get older, I seem to be caring less.) So, to propose a bunch of gu...

Last Sunday, our church, Collective MKE , hosted a group (or troupe) called A Jew, an Arab and a White Guy at St. Matthias Church in Downtown Waukesha. We rent the church for our own gatherings once a month or so, so this fit the bill rather well. My only wish is that we could have packed the place, because the message was so enlightening and helpful. The idea behind these meetings/gatherings is to foster dialogue, discussion and cross cultural awareness between ALL people. Not between black and white or Muslims and Christians, but all people. All humans. Because that's all we are when you strip away all the labels we tend to stick on each other. These guys started out with a quick introduction of their background stories. The Jewish guy was from New York City originally and grew up in a traditional Jewish home. The Arab guy was from Jordan originally and grew up in a traditional Muslim environment. The white guy was a Christian from Illinois who grew up in a fundamentalist ...

As I mentioned in the last post we are in the dog days of winter. It's not March yet, but it's sure not January either. Thank goodness for that. Maybe it's just me, but these long winter nights are causing me to shift things around a bit. I'm a man of routine, but sometimes I get sick of the sameness and shake things up with some change. I think I got all of the winter hate out of me last post, so here are a few things I've found that have helped me through this winter season. I've gone back to writing in longhand and it's bringing forth good things. Thinking back to many of my first days of writing Dirty Shirt , I wrote most of my stories in a notebook and then transcribed them to the computer later. That fell away to where I was doing it all on my laptop. Well, in a fit of staring at a blank screen with nary a thought in my head for too long one night, I thought I needed a change. I picked up my pen and started scrawling words and before I knew it the ...

My friend Claude needed some help cutting some wood for an upcoming event at his house as well as his winter stash. So, he put a call out for a few of us from church to help out. He asked us to show up at 8:30 AM today and he'd have coffee, donuts and chainsaws. Now, I have to preface this post with the fact that I was raised a city boy. My house was deep in the middle of a pair of large cities, so I was not exposed to much in the way of country or farm living at all. That is why when I visit a farm or spend time at people's country homes I am like a little kid. Because I don't have much experience with a chainsaw, I stuck with the grunt work of hauling logs and stacking it. Claude has a couple of chainsaws and took the first shift cutting away. We all stood back and watched with our ear and eye protection while he cut through the big logs like butter with the Stihl saw. It was all two-stroke smoke and wood chips from there. We'd follow behind him and grab what h...

As I mentioned in a previous post   in February, my family is actively involved on the launch team of a new church called Collective MKE. The journey has been an interesting one in many ways. We're still in the throes of launch and while things are starting to take shape, there's still much work to be done. We have been gathering as a launch team three out of four Sundays a month in the house of a friend on the team. The fourth Sunday we gather as a larger body in a building in Waukesha that we rent for that worship service. At the home gatherings we talk a little about where things are going as a church, but lately we've been having a full service-like session. It features a couple of readings, lots of stimulating theological discussion and a simple communion. It is very much a house church that we are trying to grow into a bigger entity, eventually. How that manifests itself remains to be seen. Collective MKE At the moment, we are working on finding a meeting plac...