Late August Blog

It was late in the day and I posted this on the wrong blog; I'm leaving it on this far by faith, but here it is again:

Very late August—so very late in fact that August has turned over into September; today is September 7, the end of the first week of the next month, but I'm keeping the title from when I started writing on the afternoon of Saturday, August 26.

Over the summer I've defaulted into almost daily sandwiches, most often the $2.99 Sandwich of the Day Special, from the local Subway (sandwich shop, of course; this is the West Coast where I haven't yet run into any subway train systems, with run into aptly suggesting near-frantic running after buses, subway trains and commuter trains back in Boston). Exactly like preaching the lectionary, going with the SOTD at Subway is both freedomed discipline and locked-in pre-determination. tell people "I appreciate the RCL's discipline and especially its ecumenicity!" Ecumenical – the entire earth's household, sometimes described as "the whole, known inhabited world," which also means the dwelling-place where all creation – not just human – lives and needs to have maintained in integrity if all of us hope wholly to thrive together.

Yesterday evening there were 26409 Subway restaurants in 85 countries, up some from 26347 a few days earlier, making me wonder about the bills-of-fare or plain old menu boards in places like Aruba, Belize and Costa Rica; on the site I found an answer:

The SUBWAY® chain opened its first restaurant outside the U.S. & Canada in the small Middle Eastern nation of Bahrain in December of 1984. Since then, the SUBWAY® chain has gone worldwide.

Despite the diversity of cultures wherever SUBWAY® restaurants are located, the core menu stays relatively the same—with the exception of some cultural and religious variations.

Is Subway(®) behaving like American Presbyterians did in Korea? Maybe. So does Subway® believe they have Good News that needs a particular kind of containerization in order to be effective—efficacious, even? In writing grant proposals "Measure of Effectiveness" is one of the parameters we define, usually listing criteria that minimally must be met in order for the goal or objective to be considered to have worked out well or achieved the desired effect. In mission, evangelism and ministry and in the Subway® sandwich restaurant's chain's market share, how is effectiveness determined by what measure and by whom? How do those results play out? Or could they find a way for "Eat Fresh" to work with basically non-Western ingredients whenever they're assembling and serving subs in non-Western contexts? A couple days ago I posted a short blog about contextualizing ministry, mission and evangelism; how well does Subway(®) contextualize its sandwiches? I'm suggesting Subway could be considered ecumenical—just like the RCL! Also notice Subway® gets called a "chain," which means each part is linked to the next part in a way that's difficult to break or undo. But links in a chain definitely don't need to be equal, the same, or even very similar, do they? In my experience they don't! Look as if this is turning into more-or-less pure blog...and my thinking is getting crazy, as is the hour, for someone who has to be in class at 7 Friday morning.

From The Shamu Adventure, "I remember the days of the starry nights" with music, maybe lyrics too, by Brad Kelley. A few days ago I bought a pair of Ocean Dream stoneware bowls—definitely worth posting a pic here as soon as I remember to take a few. This evening I'm recollecting – literally gathering together over again, re-linking into a hard-to-unlink group in my memory – days of starry nights and wishing they'd return and knowing they can't because this is today, almost the start of the second week of September 2006 and we can expect some days and some nights of Santa Ana Winds. In addition to those amazing weather moods, I can expect regularly to be considering many more ecumenical RCL lections and Eating Fresh™ quite a few more ecumenical(?!) sandwiches from the local San Diego branch of the Subway® chain.