the fifth formica friday

It's that time again, another Formica Friday, a treasure trove of hodgepodge, random tidbits, and a bit of this and that. What exactly is Formica Friday? Check out the tongue-in-cheek, I got away with this?, definition from the first post. A quote:

Poets and saints. What an odd coupling. And yet Freud, too, put them together, saying that they are the two classes of human beings who defy all his psychological categorizing, are full of surprises. Are we willing and able to be surprised?

-- Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

A list:

Writing a sixteen page theological analysis in under eight hours
Holding a 2nd century piece of Hebrews 11
Hugging Anne Lamott
Two hours with my best friend
Two and a half hours talking about how it feels to walk on water

A video:

If you have yet to see what is arguably the worst best video ever, then you absolutely must watch Rebecca Black's Friday. Please note the awkward moment when Rebecca Black asks where she should sit and she happens to already be sitting.

The Week in Must-Read Posts

My friend, Michael Nichols, is abroad studying at St. Andrew's this term and has written a worthwhile reflection on St. Paul's letter to the Galatians. We come at the idea of justification slightly differently, but we speak the same language of unity. Find the post here.
Longtime blog-friend Elizabeth Esther shared a wonderful musing on the importance of being able to be honest in church over at Deeper Story. As always, she's a delight to read. Find the post here.

There really should be more, but I fell behind this week in reading people's posts even when they were so gracious to read mine. I'll be catching up this weekend and will likely be making this list longer next week. I also realized I don't have a system of marking posts I want to feature here, I just kind of think of what immediately comes to mind, which means I often leave out a post that I loved but didn't quite remember. I'm going to fix that.

And, as always, a post from me:

the third chair

Do you have a favorite post from the week you'd like to share? Link it in the comments below!

Meet Preston

Preston is a twenty-something once-upon-a-time conservative Southern Baptist from Texas who learned to read saints, cross himself, and move across the world to China, England, and Scotland. Since, he's been theologically conservative, oft politically liberal, but radically pro-life, a believer in sacraments and sacramentality, a sort-of Christian feminist, an idealist pacifist who also understands the need for civil defense ... and a handful of everything else in-between. He thinks of himself now as a haphazard and patchwork Bapto-Anglican, though he is becoming confirmed in the Anglican tradition. This blog is his repository of working this whole faith thing out day by day, bird by bird. His first book, Tables in the Wilderness, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again, is due out autumn 2014 with Zondervan.