I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
I’ve been looking for a just news podcast feeds as of late. It’s been hard to find. I can find lots of opinion type podcasts about the news, but no mp3 files of the news. I know that for late breaking news, that a podcast doesn’t work, but I’m just looking for a news summary. I found one here at the Denver Post. They give you the choice of all the news or the just segment you want. Becuase I’m just looking for the National/World news that’s typically what I download. Currently, they don’t have a RSS feed, so I have to download it manually. I wish that the national NPR site would do that with their news; they only do audio streaming. I noticed that Northwest Public Radio does podcast, but its usually regional news. WCMU doesn’t do that here, except for a few features. I’m may look some more later.
I recently purchased an AM/FM radio Headset. This has been particularly fun to use as I can walk in and out of the house with my little FM transmitter plugged into my Dell X50 PDA and play music or my latest facination podcasts. So this has given me some freedom around the house on my days off as I work inside or outside the house.
As far as podcasts that I listen to:
ARRL Audio News
The Catholic Insider
CoasterRadio.com
Coverville
Daily Source Code
digitalgrandrapids.com
ICM Raw Podcast
Illinoise!
Methocast
On the Media from NPR/WNYC
CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks
Rip and Read Blogger Podcast
Science @ NASA
sciencefriday.com
Skinny on Sports
The Godcast Network
The Living Word
The Whole Truth
Rev. Tim Podcast
Reflections
And so many more!
WGBH Morning Stories
Denver Post National/World News summary
Mars Hill Bible Church(sermon)
Gaylord Community Church (sermon)
I’m hoping to get the churches sermons online as well. We are beginning to the website going. I’ll let you know when that’s up and running.
I saw this article in Slate. The thing that spoke to me most from this article was that the big superheroes were celibate, realizing that there are things more important than self-gratification, like serving those who cannot serve themselves. I guess the last few months of me listening to not only my pastor, but a few others, has awakened in me the fact that to follow God is to serve all people and that my own pleasure isn’t what is important. Mary and I struggle with this as we try to draw each other closer to God, while we try not to allow the physical pleasures of life to interfere with that quest. The reason is that if you aren’t focused on God, then who do you do His will. His will being from what I have gathered from the Bible is summed up in the verse, “Love God with all your mind, all your soul and all your might, and your neighbor as yourself.”
If you read one of my earlier posts about the NWS – Upcoming threats to how people receive their weather, and my response to someone else’s response to my post you realize that I am becoming more active in social issues. I got the feeling a couple of years ago that I may not be in the NWS after about 5 to 10 years. While I don’t want to hasten my departure, my freedom, in Christ, is beginning to allow me to become more bold about things that I get angry about and keeping my focus on God, allows me, through my anger, bring about healing to those that need it. However, it’s that focus on God that you need to be able to keep and not the focus on your own pleasure.
Now before someone gets on me and tries to say that I’m not for pleasure or sex or what have you, I am for all of those things. However, if they become your overriding pursuit then your focus is wrong. I believe that in focusing on God, He will bring to you the pleasures of this life when the time is right. That is where Mary and I are at. We believe that God has brought us together and as we focus on Him, He will bring to us the desires of our hearts. (Psalm 37:4 my paraphrase).
So focus on God, and become a superhero.
Just got news on my sister and brother’s-in-law sites that the will be going to Korea next week to pick up Asher! Hurray! This will probably put Mom and Dad’s trip up north on hold as Mom was last known to go west to watch Truman while they are gone. I guess I need to make a call or two.
As the previous week has drawn to a close and the new week is just beginning, Mary and I just passed the 6 months mark. It is hard to believe in some ways, in others, it barely seems that it has been that long. This is one of the longer relationships that I have had, and one of quality to boot! In previous relationships, there was always something missing from the relationship that I could never put my finger on. I know now that it was God in the middle of the relationship and He has made all of the difference. So here we are 6 months later, and still saying cheesey things to each other and enjoying each others company. So what will the next 6 months hold? I don’t know but if it has been like my spiritual journey, I look back every 6 months and just say, “Wow!”
Okay, so we get things about how we shouldn’t lobby as a weather service employee. I can’t go out during an outreach event, like say a spotter talk, and then go tell people to go tell their congressman or senator that we need a certain piece of equipment at this place to help us do our job. However, as a private citizen I can go out on my own and tell people about certain peices of legislation and how they are bad for them.
One such threat is coming from outside the weather service, in the form of legislation to get the NWS out of releasing its forecasts to the public. The Commercial Weather Services would like you to pay them to see all of the forecasts that flow out of the government that are designed to help you make decisions on protecting your life and property. A few years ago I heard the statistic that it took $2 a person per year( in the US) to run the NWS. From that you get forecasts and warning services, that have steadily improved in quality, as well as, vehicles to get the information out. So they are asking you to pay for it a second time or at the least look at it with ads popping up in your face.
I try not to be paranoid, and use terms like “slippery slope,” but if the commericial weather services get their way, I could see a day, when the warnings don’t go out unless you have subscribed. But that’s just me being extreme.
It seems that everywhere I turn, I see or hear about something that I want to blog about. From sermons that I have heard preached to things going on the in NOAA’s National Weather Service, to articles that I have read. I could spend a huge amount of time just commenting, but then I wouldn’t get a chance to spend time with friends and family. So, I try to balance the things that I do with the things that are, I feel, most important.
A couple of weeks ago, Mary and I went downstate to see my mom and dad. We had a great weekend, hanging out and seeing the sights of Fennville and Holland. On the way back we decided to go to the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville. The pastor there is Rob Bell, whom I’ve had the opportunity to see at the National Youth Workers convention. He was doing a series on Jesus is Difficult and this week’s topic was Beautifully Angry. He started from the passage in Mark 3 about the healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath. The question was from the Pharisee’s point of view, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath. It was a sticking point from the law that says you should help everyone, and yet you were to do no work on the Sabbath. There were rabbi’s at that time that debated the question. The one’s in power at the time said that you should do no work. However, Jesus turned it around. He asked the question, is it better to to do good or evil on the Sabbath? When the Pharisees wouldn’t answer Jesus got mad, and then turned to the man and healed him.
That’s the model that we need to take. If you get mad at little things, what do they matter? It’s the bigger questions like poverty, hunger, etc. that we need to get mad about about and then use the gifts we have been given to bring healing. So there should be two questions to ask when you are looking for that right job or career or such. One is, and is usually the one that most ask, what do you like to do or are passionate about? But the other is just like it, What makes you angry? In which case, how can you channel your anger into something that will heal others?
There is so much to blog and so little time. I’ll try to work on something on Thursday when I have my day off (and my alone time/Sabbath).
I began a practice of doing almost nothing but relaxing on my first day off after a long string of shifts about 3 years ago about the time I went to the National Youth Worker Convention in Pittsburgh. This has been a great way for me to reconnect with God on a regular basis. Especially, when my schedule is all over the place, due to the rigors of shift work. I’ve been able to do this pretty regularly. Although the next couple of weeks could be rough.
My main problem is having to break one of my main personal rules of not bringing work home with me. I don’t mind talking to people about the weather and how things work, but after being so absorbed with it, when I was younger, that I began to find it not as fun as when I first started to do the hobby stuff when I was a kid. As I began to let God guide my life and I concentrated on other things that I found just as fulfilling, my career as a meteorologist began to become more rewarding as well.
The reason for the break in the rules has been a couple of things, that have all come on me at once. The fire weather program, that I administer, has been a pretty big challenge this spring as the program had some large changes administratively, and this has lead me to have to, “put out a lot of little fires,” this spring. The other thing is that the NWS has put through a refresher course for severe weather warnings, Weather Service wide. A good thing, but it has put a time crunch on trying to get things done. I also have to go on the semi-annual SAWRS visits, where I go out and inspect the weather equipment of the back up weather observers at some of the airports. So now to get AWOC (the severe weather course) done by May 15th, I will have to break my rule.
With a couple of other things going on this weekend, I will probably have to take Monday, the day I would probably would have done little, but relax, and sit front of my computer and do my weather lessons. I’m starting to think this is sounding like whining, but you have to realize that my alone time with God is probably the most important thing to me. When I let it go or get myself into a scheduling pickle, then I find that I am distracted and my flesh takes my spirit for a ride, instead of the other way around, like it should be. That may sound esoteric, but for me, it works. I am more content and feel more plugged in when I keep my spiritual side alive and well fed and I am content and feel that all things are possible. Of course, I could just not schedule so much as well.
Which brings me to what I do during my meditation times on my Sabbath, which is where I think I really wanted to go with this post. I have come across couple that work for me.
1) lectio devina or sacred reading – this is a cool way to read the Bible. Although, it doesn’t work for all of the verses. Since it has been said that lectio is praying the scriptures, its hard to pray the begats.
2) Breath prayer/centering prayer/Jesus Prayer – this one is good for those times you don’t know what to pray, but want to pray. They are all similar as that you repeat a particular phrase over and over.
There are others as well, but these are my favorite.
Things otherwise are going well.
I’ve been contemplating another name change to the blog (The first was from Jeff’s Blog to the current title). This time I would just take the word Youth out of the title. The reason that I am contemplating this would be that the more I study youth ministry, the more I realize that it is just ministry, and that adults have the same hurts and desires as the junior and senior high students. Sometimes the adults, don’t act much different than the kids (Read my dad’s human resources blog to see my point).
An analogy to this is in meteorology(I have to work weather in there somewhere). When I would study smaller scales of meteorology, like say thunderstorms. In the met profession thunderstorms are in the mesoscale size. You could see, if you mapped out the temperatures and the surface pressure surrounding a thunderstorm, that it looked just like the weather maps on TV with the cold fronts and low pressure systems. I’m beginning to see similar things in ministry.
You see, for the most part, that each generation suffers from the same sort of things, like inflated egos and competition to the point that everyone becomes very self-centered. That’s just the way sin is. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you are doing something that you think will get you ahead, usually at the expense of the next guy. In youth ministry, you deal with kids that are trying to find their way in the world, usually using whoever they can in school to find some way to fill that hole that is all of us. In adult ministry, you are dealing with adults that put themselves first thinking that they can use whoever, to fill that hole that is in all of us. The only difference is the size of the problems and how we try to accomplish finding “happiness.”
So while I am still rooted in youth ministry, I have begun to try and help young adults and adults closer to my age with their problems. So ministry of all ages. Which leads to me contemplate my original calling. I’m not sure that it is just youth ministry that I will be in, but just general ministry. I think that, maybe, just helping youth pastors and directors sort out where God is moving in the background while they minister to the youth. We will see, but the same feeling that I have had for about the last 3-5 years is that sometime in the future, I will be out of the meteorology business and in some sort of full time ministry. God will show the way.
