bierkergaard

Saturday, donning our Russian Hats with the obligatory ear flaps that made us look like Disney's Goofy, my brewing comrade and I cooked up a Russian Imperial Ale. Originally brewed by an English brewmaster for Catherine the Great, it is essentially a British Stout with a super-sized amount of dark malt and hops. For those not in the know, malt is the starch-to-sugar component that yeast consumes and the output is alcohol. The more sugar, the higher the ABV. Hops, on the other hand, are the bittering or acidic element of beer. Like a see-saw, beers are some balance between the sweet malt and the biting hops. Beers go one way or another on the spectrum typically. What is unusual about the Russian Imperial Ale it is large in both the malt and the hops. Not sure what this conveys about the national character of Russia and the Czars. My Russky hat came with a Hammer and Sickle and Russian Star emblems to adorn the front fur of the...

This morning, at our first official prayer meeting at Church, it was me and the Pastor. It was 10:00. Kind of early for the faithful. I just wake up early on Sundays. During the week, I awake at 5:20. On the weekends, I can sometime stretch the sleep to 6:30 if I am lucky. Slacker. I don't think I am entirely an early riser by nature. But, my job at the high school requires it. And I don't get paid unless I show up. Pretty simple. I am aiming for perfect attendance this year. Last year, around this time, my Appendix burst. I think I missed 2.5 days of school. The Dr. said that patients normally take 2 weeks off. Maybe I should have been a Marine. We have had some, OK a lot, snow days. We were even cancelled last week because it was too cold... Regardless, today at the prayer meeting--where two were gathered in His name--we both prayed that our church--Veritas--would grow in depth. Many congregations evaluate effectiveness by butts in the seats. By ...

When I was down in Florida, I had the opportunity to see and hear the band Switchfoot who have one foot in the Christian market and one foot out there in Pop Culture. Surfing Evangelical U.S.A. I first became aware that  Switchfoot was going to be playing in Tampa the same time I was in the vicinity visiting my Madre in Sarasota down the road. The fates smiled upon me. The iPhone app Bandsintown made me aware of the overlap. There was a snag. The tix were free but one had to go to a ticket drop at local establishments in order to score a pair. I was heading in the opposite direction to Key West on the day of the drops so I sent an email to the promotions manager at the sponsoring radio station a week before inquiring how I could score the tickets. No reply. I know it was the holidays but seven days to reply should be enough time. I had started to waffle about going to the show until the day of where I was about 50...

Just returned from the land of sunshine and little lizards. Sarasota, Florida. Little scurrying lizards are everywhere. Being a Pennsylvania boy, something is quite unnatural to me to be sporting shorts and a tee-shirt in late December, At night, no less--as well as seeing lizards skirt about. It feels like a different planet. Florida is as flat as a sizzling on the skillet pancake and the roads are linear and square. One feature of Florida that I do quite enjoy is the ability to run without layers of clothing and gloves in "winter." Here in the Northeast, it takes a double-commitment to run in the winter months. Hard enough to get motivated and that much harder when it is freezing cold.  I almost felt like a nudist streaking about scantily-clad on my 8 mile trek to the beach and back, made two miles longer by my inability to find a public access path to the ocean. Those condos interlock like Lego's and keep the non-1% pieces people out. After one of my exercise ...

"Being a writer is a bit like being in a war sometimes. Careers are strange, with unexpected gains and losses. People are on your side until they're not. The blank page can feel like a battlefield. It's good to have an ally to talk it through with, and Ned Vizzini was the best kind of ally to have in that particular war. You wanted him in your literary trench."  Writer Cecil Castellucci  in a tribute in the Los Angeles Review of Books of Ned Vizzini Ned Vizzini has committed suicide. He had written poignantly about his Depression. I think we do a disservice in some ways to call Depression a mental illness. For Depression is a reasonable response to an unreasonable world. Watch out who we call mad. We all are madder than we think. Perhaps the mentally disturbed only are affected more profoundly by a broken world. The banality of evil. The normalcy of the abnormal. We have to legitimize Depression in order to face it squarely. Usually, people have ...

John 10:22 Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. I came across this verse as part of my morning devotional. I have made it a practice to go back to the Bible and read the verse mentioned in my morning readings and try to get the context of the verse as one would a star in the sky or a jewel in a crown. I don't know why I found the mention of it being winter to be so poignant. Seeing Jesus in my mind's eye in the winter weather and seeking shelter in Solomon's Porch/Temple has both prosaic and profound layers. We had four snows in the last week so I had been primed for wintery reflections. On the practical level, Jesus in His humanity, is cold. Jerusalem, due to its elevation, experiences colder temperatures than most of Israel. It is truly a "City on a Hill." And it snows. With the profound layer, the Temple was the epicenter of Jewish culture and the ground zero of Jerusalem. About a century and a half before, the Maccabee...

Is. 53:2 He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. I am a Levi's blue jeans man. With the rivets. Always have been, the epitome of coolness. I have gradations in blue jeans for different uses--like a caste of clothes. I have work blue jeans for internal and house use when I am chilling and working, outside blue jeans for public viewing and interaction with fellow humans, and the elite "Skinny" blue jeans when I am attempting to be a Hipster, minus the explosive and expansive facial hair. What beards! I think Jesus would wear blue jeans if He was in the flesh walking around in the world today. He was a blue-collar carpenter, doing His final and best work on the wooden Cross. Nails, wood, work unto redemption, sweat of the brow, and anguish of the soul. Wearing blue jeans to Church on Sunday is an act of Sabbath. For some, wearing blue jeans on Sunday wou...