Staying in Jesusville for $12 a night

I've been in school so long I can't bear to imagine how many miles I've put on my car commuting to and from class. I'm often asked why seminaries don't offer correspondence courses. Some do. But the two I've attended don't for the most part. Despite the dents in my debit card from all those fill-ups at $3.73 a gallon, I believe that's a good thing.

Education doesn't take place in a vacuum. There's a good deal to be learned by class discussion. Hearing something in person deepens what you absorb in reading. And because Christianity is relational, learning in a classroom environment requires you to grapple with your own thoughts in light of how other people are experiencing and interpreting the material. (Not surprisingly, often quite differently than you are!)

Still, much of my education has been as a commuter student (except for some wonderful extended stays in Evanston). Now, as a UTS student in the Twin Cities, I motor in for class and then return to my abode. Said abode, however, is unavailable for these last two weeks of the semester, so I'm staying overnight in an on-campus commuter apartment. As one fellow squatter said last week, "welcome to Jesusville." And it costs only $12 a night.

I doubt I can live in our own home for $12 a night. Beyond the benefits of frugality, however, living where you learn gives you an entirely new perspective. It wrests you out of the fragmentation of "this is school, this is work, this is home, etc." It makes you feel like a participant in the whole learning thing, not just an observer or a note-taker.

I think that's why it's so important that churches need to create a space beyond a one-hour worship service for the give-and-take, the learning, the grappling, the questioning, the meal-sharing, etc. Without entering into that space, we can never really integrate what we learn with how we live.

I'm too old to go back to dorm life. But I'm heading back to Jesusville for a couple more nights as the semester ends this week. It's a good model for living with one another: be a good roomate, pick up after yourself, and bring your own linens.

Do you know the way to Santa Fe?

We went car shopping today. Well, not really shopping, because buying a car when only one of you is working and the other is in grad school isn't exactly tops on a financial planner's to-do list. But with the cost of gas outpacing the cost of tuition, it's pretty compelling to look for new wheels. Besides which, our two cars are a combined 15 years old with a cumulative 341,000 miles. That's 13 1/2 times around the Earth. These were the two test drives we're still talking about. Guess which one is whose favorite?

Above left: The 2008 Hyundai Santa Fe. Above right: The 2004 MINI Cooper (in British Racing Green).

Is the Bible an excuse to hate?

We watched the film For the Bible Tells Me So in our pastoral care class today. It is certain to provoke a response if you watch it.

The trailer is available here.

There used to be a ballpark

This is the 95th season of baseball at Clark and Addison streets on Chicago's north side. Off-the-field talk centers on the pending sale of the Cubs and Wrigley Field, and a proposal to sell naming rights to the park. That's ludicrous: no one will ever call it anything but Wrigley, no matter how much a company pays to call it otherwise.

The larger issue is the ballpark's future. I never thought I'd come to this, but I'm now accepting Wrigley is in its twilight years. Modern baseball economics would require too many changes to keep the park viable (more signage, corporate sponsorships, restructured seating), plus millions of $$$ in maintenance and repairs necessitated by its age.

Let the park age gracefully, rather than giving it so much cosmetic surgery that it obliterates the pristine qualities we loved about Wrigley in the first place. Plan now to build a new park (not a Wrigley clone), using all the design acumen that has made the rest of Chicago an architectural treasure. Allow six years for site procurement, design and construction. Open the new park in April 2014.

Meantime, enjoy Wrigley Field for its final seasons. Let's not be all maudlin about it. Just play baseball there, as it was meant to be. It its final season, its 100th, in 2013, don't sell season tickets. Instead, make single-game tickets available for every home game, and distribute them to schools, boys and girls clubs, church groups, families, and the legions of Cubs fans who haven't been able to get into the sold-out park for years because of the obscene prices and the overrun of ticket demand in this second-smallest park in the major leagues.

No one would miss Wrigley Field and grieve its passing more than I. I've attended more than 100 games there in 35 years, despite never living closer than a six-hour drive. I've saved every ticket stub, and most every scorecard. The memories are priceless. But I'd rather see Wrigley reach 100-years-old intact rather than watching it mutate into something unrecognizable for years to come. That would be far sadder.

Once the new park is open, allow Wrigley to remain the landmark it already is. Allow special games to be played there. Turn its concourses into a museum. It has every bit the charm of Cooperstown, and just as much history.

The wonder of small books

Maybe because it's the dog days of the semester, I've been turning lately to books I've not been assigned to read. Non-textbooks, that is. Little books, easy to digest. Not even books of stories but travel guides and short histories.

Two of my favorite series are from Phaidon Press and Arcadia Publishing. I discovered the former in the Amsterdam airport, the latter in a used bookstore in Eau Claire, Wis.

Phaidon (whose Wallpaper City Guides are pictured above) publishes visually striking books on a realm of topics from art, architecture and design to travel, food and children's books.

Arcadia, as provincial as Phaidon is cosmopolitan, prints thousands of titles about local history. Your hometown might be published. You can search their extensive catalog by location, topic (baseball, campus histories, motoring, etc.) or theme (African-American, national parks, railroads, et al.).

Time stops at random intersections

Ten days that reveal the apparent randomness of life:

Sun Apr 13 -- Jason, aka Prague traveling companion, visits E.C. to see his ailing dad, then comes over to our house where we share a wonderful meal. We bid farewell hoping to catch up with one another in a couple of months.
Thu Apr 17 -- I host a panel discussion at a Bethel University journalism conference that included the very talented Christina Capecchi, a recent Medill journalism grad, MinnPost colleague and former writer for The Catholic Spirit.
Fri Apr 18 -- Jason calls. His father died, after a long illness. Ann agrees to preside at the funeral.
Sun Apr 20 -- I see the rest of Jason's family for the first time in 23 years.
Mon Apr 21 -- At the funeral, as happens at funerals, eras collide: Lisa, Rob, others with whom we have had interconnected lives, gather to bring condolences. Everyone holds in tension the mix of memories, some superlative, some regretful. We commemorate it all.
Tue Apr 22 -- I play hooky from school (for the first time in my grad career) and travel with Jason up to the north woods. The past has its place; the present is 68 degrees and sunny on a grand April day. Many pictures are taken.
Today -- Christina e-mails a group of friends and aquaintances. Emilie, another former Catholic Spirit reporter, has received devastating news. (Her blog, LemmonDrops, is linked at left.) Time stops again at a random intersection where the lives of friends, family, co-workers, spouses, ex-spouses and acquaintances all meet.

Is there a constant through it all? God's promise to us: "Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me. And I will give you rest." (Listen to Be Not Afraid, by John Michael Talbot).





Ken Tetzloff, 12.29.25-4.17.08

Playing center field: Pope Benedict

The Dalai Lama is traveling across the U.S. at the same time Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the East Coast. Perhaps the two most recognizable religious figures in the world nearly crossed paths in this foreign land.

We forget that it is a foreign land to the rest of the world. True, American culture is ubiquitous. But these two spiritual leaders come from different worlds. The Dalai Lama descends from the reincarnated line of spiritual and temporal leaders of the Tibetan people. Although the pope heads the Western church (as opposed to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, for example), the U.S. church is a different animal altogether. The global Roman Catholic Church is considerably more ethnically diverse -- and theologically and politically conservative -- than what is often associated with U.S. Catholicism. And with all due respect to the poor within our borders, even the lower and middle economic classes in this country are rich by much of the world's standards.

Our media coverage of the visits of His Holiness and the Holy Father help interpret these leaders' views to us Americans. I wonder what interpretations they take back to the larger world of their visits here.

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Link to Steve's appearance on KSTP-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul discussing the pope's visit.

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(Above: Doug Mills/New York Times photo of Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Mass at the Washington Nationals' new ballpark.)

Remembering Praha

photos by jason tetzloff mar 08

Knitting a web

I clicked on Gosford Park under the favorite movie listing in my own profile, and the first blogger to come up was Sway Knits from New York, N.Y. Now that wouldn't ordinarily catch my attention, except that knitting is to Ann as the ballpark is to me. Turns out it has beautiful photography and a dash of wit and style, not to mention knitting patterns. Of course, I've passed along the link.

All because I liked Gosford Park.

Storm clouds west of Menopause

On my way to St. Paul the other day I left home in bright sunshine but encountered darkening skies halfway there. Innocuously, I sent a text message back home to say: "Storm clouds west of Menomonie." As text technology is inclined to do, it finished the word for me before I completed typing it. So the message read: "Storm clouds west of Menopause."

I'm guessing this is how authors get ideas for their book titles, or how bands come up with names for their songs. It made me realize what it must be like when I finish others' sentences during conversation. Or jump to conclusions in the middle of a story.

Perhaps it’s a worthwhile metaphor for taking the time to speak and listen. Or, as the automatic-word-finisher on my cell phone would say: "Person it’s a world Methodist form take they time to special Anderson list."