A Campus Ministry for ALL Students, Supported by the Episcopal and Lutheran Churches

Advent: Keeping Different Time

Let everyone else rush around like the proverbial decapitated chickens.  If this season is about anything, it is about quiet, patient waiting and anticipation for the gift of God to the world.  "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given," one Christmas carol puts it.  Even if everyone else is moving to greet the Prince of Peace with frantic exhaustion, prepare for Christmas this year by just being quiet for a while.  Just rest. For it's not rushing around that gets us ready for Christmas; it's stopping to realize that despite our efforts, God comes to us in the baby Jesus, is with us even now, and will keep us forever.

              Hours are needed to make the bread

                       Months to make the wine.

                             Comfort, comfort, he will come in time.

JESUS ON TAP

Tonight, November 29, 8:00 p.m., our night to talk theology at Tantra Coffeehouse, across from the little HEB.  This month's theme: "Christmas:  What the Bible REALLY Says and What's a Lot of Nonsense We Learned Along the Way." 

God Goes to the Movies: December 1st, 8:00 p.m.               

We were supposed to watch this last month, but it wasn't released in time.  So, you have another chance to join us to watch on our entirely awesome 42" flat-screen with surround-sound and Blue-Ray DVD player "Super 8." In 1979, after the Air Force closes a section of Area 51, all materials are transported to a secure facility in Ohio. A train carrying some of the materials derails during an accident and something escapes from one of the cargo cars. A group of kids making movies with their Super 8 cameras accidentally capture what escapes on film.  Silliness, or does the movie say something important about our culture and our fears?  And where's God in it all?  Popcorn provided.  Bring a friend. 

MR. SPOCK'S CHRISTMAS CAROLS

Can you translate Spock's carols into one you may know?

1. Embellish the interior passageways.

2. Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their beliefs.

3. Nocturnal timespan of unbroken quietness.

4. Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.

5. Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geologic alpine formation.

6. In awe of the nocturnal time span characterized by religiosity.

7. The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state.

8. Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of minute crystals.

9. Diminutive maculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders.

10. In a distant location the existence of an impoverished unit of newborn children's slumber furniture.

REVIEWS

Sights and Sounds of Christmas:   It's the 25th anniversary of this San Marcos tradition, and now bigger than ever.  Lots of local non-profit groups set up booths and sell food and other goodies to visitors, who can stroll through "Bethlehem," listen to music, shop, and this year: ICE SKATE!  Yep, three months after the hottest summer on record, there will be an ice-skating rink set up in the City Park to the delight of all the San Marcos residents for whom ice skating is a passion.  I hope both of them enjoy it.  For the rest of us, though, Sights and Sounds is really a fun tradition.  It costs $6 for a four-day pass, less for a one-day pass, and one day is really enough.  Nov 30 - Dec 3.

College Football: 

That college football is something other than big business is an illusion, as all the recent reshuffling of conferences proves.  Nonetheless, there is something refreshing about teams playing for the pride of a school and not simply because it is their (ridiculously overpaid professional) job.  Except when school pride blinds one to the most heinous of crimes, as happened at Penn State.  And that's when college football becomes idolatry, the kind that God condemns in the very first commandment.   So even as we celebrate the Bobcats moving to the WAC, let's keep things, indeed, everything in perspective.  God first, and then everything else.  

Skyrim:

Andrew Green says: Open ended sanbox games are nothing new in today's gaming industry. From the Grand Theft Auto series to the market-cornering MMO World of Warcraft, the modern gamer has quite a few choices for open-ended goodness. Skyrim, however, takes the sandbox concept and takes it to a new level. Set in a starkly beautiful, vaugely nordic world, the player can choose to follow a series of quests that make up the main game, or they can take off and do whatever they feel like doing. Want to take over the theif's guild? In Skyrim you can. Feel like starting a civil war? Skyrim's your game. Feel like masacring an entire village? Skyrim lets you do that, but you should probably go seek counseling of some sort. In short, Skyrim couples absolutely gorgeous graphics with a mindblowing amount of quests and things to do. This is a game you can lose many, many hours (days or years) to if you're not careful.