Three Beautiful Things 06/20/13: St. Mary's and 20th Century Theologians, Bean Salad (I Guess), Stuck in the Middle with Pop and LeBron

1.  Members of the Adult Ed. Committee at St. Mary's had a spirited and very productive meeting over lunch today and discussed creating a short class that will study a handful of short readings written by four very influential theologians of the 20th century.  Discussing Bultmann and, earlier in the morning, reading Richard Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, and Tillich took me back to my days at Whitworth in 1974-78 when young professors, with their studies at Princeton Theological Seminary still fresh in their minds, lectured on these theologians or weaved them into campus worship sermons.  It was thrilling to work with their ideas and insights again today and I hope there will be parishioners in our church who might also enjoy wrestling with these writers and discussing their indisputable relevance in 2013.  We'll see......

2.  I still had leftover cold kidney beans in the fridge and mixed them up with corn, avocado, cilantro, red pepper, tomato, white basmati rice and lime juice, lots of lime juice, to make a salad (I guess it's a salad) that I just couldn't stop eating, I enjoyed it so much. 

3.  One last NBA game for the season.  One last early evening on espn radio.  One last evening listening to Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown.  As a play-by-play guy, Mike Tirico is solid, but he doesn't thrill me like other radio play-by-play announcers have.  BUT, the on air chemistry between him and Hubie Brown, who is my all-time favorite, is so good that listening to them together is, for me, among my chief pleasures.  I enjoyed the game for a lot of reasons and I was disappointed for others.  I was very happy that LeBron James performed so well, hopefully silencing his detractors for a while.  At the same time, I have loved the San Antonio Spurs ever since Pop and Tim Duncan joined their organization and I hate that they lost.  I was rooting for both teams and so I was stuck:  I couldn't feel unbridled joy or total despair at the outcome.  I guess, for me these days, the game is the thing and I enjoy how these two teams go about it.