It’s snowing here. Yes, 4-5 inches of slushy, wet, heavy, but still very cold snow fell last night and today making a mess of driving, public transportation, and flights. And it’s April 11th. Some friends and I have agreed that the best way to deal with this is to trick ourselves into thinking it’s really late February, not mid April. But I when I stumbled upon this short video of a rather creative promotional by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’s famous art museum, I found another way: humorous diversion. The museum, eager to promote it’s re-opening, staged a recreation of one of native son Rembrandt’s famous paintings, “The Night...

I can’t believe I forgot to post this on April Fools’ Day earlier this week! If I had remembered, I would have described this as our latest and greatest strategy for improving the teaching at Luther Seminary through consistent classroom assessment. But I since I blew it, I’ll just tell you ahead of time that this is the video some colleagues and I put together for our annual Variety Show at Luther. Given what a mess things are here right now, it seemed like a good time to make fun of ourselves. And given my earlier note on gratitude for good friends (#6), this seems like the second best day of the week on which to post it....

It’s not often that I laugh out loud at an internet video. But this was one of those times. You may be familiar with the categorization of how people adapt to and adopt new technology. There are the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, spread across the typical bell curve as displayed in the graphic below. I’m one of those goofy people who thinks of myself as an early adopter but in actual practice fall somewhere between late majority and laggard. I had one of the first touch screen smart phones (way before the iPhone) but never learned to do more than make phone calls. When the iPhone came out I...

I thought this was just too charming…and funny to resist. And just the perfect thing for Friday. Apparently, the parishioners of St. Mary’s and St. Andrew’s in the Chelmsford Diocese of the Church of England are having a hard time filling their pastoral vacancy. So the put together a short video describing the charms of their setting. What’s entirely enchanting about the video is their absolute lack of pretense. They are who they are and they own that with good humor. Keep in mind that, among other things, the lucky man or woman who ends up with these creative folks also gets to go by the name of “Vicar.” It doesn’t...

…and other great misheard song lyrics. After a festive and hectic holiday weekend and on this Cyber Monday – how did we ever come up with names like this for the days of our lives? – it seemed a little humor was in order. The History of Misheard Lyrics, Opus No. 13, comes from Collective Cadenza, a group of recent graduates of Julliard who are more than willing to use their classical training to lighten our mood and invite us to laugh at our culture and ourselves. I haven’t found a video on misheard hymn lines yet, but I’m sure there’s one out there. Or maybe we should all share our favorites and make one....