I have been struggling with who to vote for but I have finally figure out who I will be casting my vote for. I will be voting for Chuck Baldiwn of the Contitution Party. I have little to no confidence in either Obama or McCain. McCain is far removed from the guy who was so critical of W when he went up against him in 2000 and I disagree with him on the war. And Obama lacks substance and I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who thinks it is above his pay-grade to say whether or not life begins at conception. It's not that I could never vote for a pro-choice candidate. Rudy Giuliani is pro-choice but the abortuion rate went down significantly in NYC when he was mayor. I suspect that is more than can be said for many "pro-life" candidates. I will concede that Baldwin does have some nutty ideas relating to getting rid of certain government agencies, but on the issues themselves I am in agreement with him.

   You may recall that I am currently trying to figure out how to raise some money for a mission trip for my confirmation class. Well last week I told one of the parishioners that if they could raise $250 I would shave my head. Well today the parishioner told me that he was only $50 short so it appears I am going to have to shave my head. What upsets me about this is not that I will have to shave my head, but that I set the bar so low. What was I thinking?? Why didn't I go $500 or maybe even $1000?

   I will be sure to post before and after pictures.

I know it's been over a week since my last post but it's been a busy Holy Week. In fact this is going to be just a quick post, but something happened that really amused me that I juat had to blog about. I did my Good Friday service last night. It was held at the smaller of the two congregations that I serve. I was ver coscious of trying to keep the atmosphere somber and solemn. I showed up and came in from the back. If spoke only to the organist about some of the hymns and the usher to ask him if he would carry the rough-hewn cross. I wore no alb or stoll just my long-sleeve black clerical and black slacks and black shoes. I made no announcements and just went right into the opening prayer. And when we started doing the dialog reading of the passion from John I messed up and had them rise too early. Normally when I make a mistake like that I would make a joke or a little remark, but on Good Friday I simply said "Actually you are not supposed to rise until later in the reading. Please be seated." And so we went through the reading. I read all the narration and everything that an individual person (Jesus and Pilate mainly) said, and the congregation would do all the crowd responses. And so it got to the part where Pilate asked the crowd whether they would prefer that he released Jesus or Barabbas. They were doing so great, speaking in unison, they seemed to really be feeling the mood of the text. Then they had to read a biblical name. It was simply one word and had they said it boldly in unison it would have been pretty powerful. But instead when, as Pilate I asked them who they would rather I release, what I heard was about 25 different ways that people can look at the same name and yet pronounce it differently. For some it came out Brbas, I think for some it came out Brberus, I think some got it right, I think I even heard a Henry in there (OK not really). It was fine, we moved on and overall it was a good service and the reading went very well. I just got a pretty big chuckle out of the collective different pronunciations of Barabbas.  Have a good Easter!!!