July 21, 2006
United gets the finger
| Airline | Flight | Departure | Arrival | ||||||||
 United |
Flight
359
ARRIVED Details |
Detroit, MI (DTW)
Fri, Jul 21
south terminal concourse a Gate: A2 |
Chicago, IL (ORD)
Fri, Jul 21
Terminal 1 Concourse C Gate: C29 Baggage claim: 4 |
||||||||
|
Flight
359
NOT DEPARTED Details |
Chicago, IL (ORD)
Fri, Jul 21
Terminal 1 Concourse C Gate: C29 |
Dallas/Ft Worth, TX (DFW)
Fri, Jul 21
Gate: B29 Baggage claim: -- |
|||||||||
|
Flight
359
NOT DEPARTED Details |
Dallas/Ft Worth, TX (DFW)
Fri, Jul 21
Gate: B29 |
Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Fri, Jul 21
Terminal 7 Gate: 73 Baggage claim: 3 |
I hate you, United. I HATE YOU SO MUCH.
July 1, 2006
church and state
Vanessa and I have been leading worship for about nine months now. We've presided over the high-density holiday months - thankfully the holiday-free summer months are upon us - and have encountered an interesting situation. Some of the people at our church want songs commemorating secular holidays, like Memorial Day or Independence Day.
Something inside of me cringes at the idea of "America the Beautiful" being sung within the church service. I'm not a big "separation of church and state" type - quite the opposite, I think the phrase is often abused or misunderstood to lend credit to those crusaders that hate all things Christian. But singing songs to America (or displaying the American flag up on the stage - ugh!) in a worship service, especially one that takes place in a largely-Hispanic neighborhood, seems inappropriate. Not like "sinful", just "unnecessary" or "silly".
We ran into a somewhat-similar situation during Christmas - neither of us is particularly fond of most carols. We settled on singing one carol per week (and almost ended up singing our favorite a few times!), but it was tough finding really good Christmas music that didn't sound trite after a good butchering by umpteen off-key carolers.
They are ultimately two slightly different issues: what do you think about the presence of secular ceremonies in the church service, and what do you do with those common, oft-repeated holidays (when you KNOW what's coming)?
UPDATE: following the link above, then the link to the original page you can see the exact bulletin our church used in all of its "glory". Second row, third column. Yay flag worship!