Sunday Update: Satisfying Sermons and Disappointing Pizza

Yesterday's worship service went well.  Come to find out, the seminarian who asked to give the sermon is at a Lutheran seminary, and her sermon was just fine.  She did not talk about some of the more polarizing parts of our society, like justice for Palestine or Trumpian politics.  She didn't talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Her sermon was much more universal, about the need to avoid writing people off, the way that God threatened to do with the Israelites when they worshiped a golden calf.  She tied in all the readings in a way that I rarely do; I usually focus on the Gospel alone.  Hurrah!

On our way home, we talked about the fact that the visiting seminarians will probably be eligible for ordination before I am, and we wondered if they would be interested in the job that Faith Lutheran could offer them.  My guess is that they probably have something different in mind, but I could be wrong.  If it would work out, I would be fine with that.  My goal has always been to be a good caretaker while they found something more permanent.

Our afternoon was more disappointing.  We got a pizza from the Ingles deli, and it was blah, blah, blah.  The one advantage:  it was quick to heat up.  We won't be doing that again.  My problem is that I want pizza made by one of our local places, in all its greasy glory.  My spouse objects to that kind of pizza on every level, primarily cost, but also, it's often structurally compromised (not cooked through, not enough toppings, too greasy).  So we get disappointing options, trying to work around those objections, and often, we're neither one of us happy with the meal.

I was surprised at how hard I had to work so that my disappointment didn't derail the whole rest of the day.  I could have ordered the pizza that I really wanted, but I had already eaten so many bad pizza calories that I didn't like.  My spouse took a nap, and I drifted around the house trying to decide what to do next.  I knew that I was still hungry, so I started a batch of focaccia.  I also made the lentil-barley combo that anchors my weekday lunch.  I'm always looking for ways to make it more interesting, so this time, I tried this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, the lime-cilantro dressing part of the recipe.  It wasn't as heavenly and sublime as the recipe makes it sound, but I decided to use it anyway.

And now it is time for another week to begin.  We are at that time in the semester where I feel a bit panicked about running out of teaching ideas, particularly in English 100, the class before the college level English Composition class.  But I know that I have plenty of ideas, and there's still plenty of time.