The Peregrinating Parson

When I was in high school, I competed on the Academic Decathlon team in its first two years of existence. One of the competition categories was speech, in which we had to give a prepared speech and then an extemporaneous speech in front of a panel of three judges. The first year’s subject was World War II; you’d think that being both a history buff and someone with an interest in a military career at the time that the speech would have been a cinch. It was an unmitigated disaster. My nerves got the best of me and I forgot the entire middle section of it and was so flustered by the time I got to the extemporaneous speech I could barely get my lips to move. I had the lowest score of the competition across all the brackets. It was humiliating. So when it came time to prepare the speech for my second year of competition, I knew I needed something I was so passionate about that I could just rattle it off as a conversation, albeit a one-sided conversation, if my mind went b

In the Image of God Devotional for the United Church of Christ Science and Technology Network February 12, 2018 Rev. Dr. Ruth E. Shaver God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."   So God created humankind in [God's] image, in the image of God [God] created them; male and female [God] created them.   God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." … God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good. —Genesis 1:26-28, 31 (NRSV) “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could n