As I begin my first ministry internship, I have been asked to share my story with the congregation. While I can't tell everything in the time I have, here is a bit of my story.
Read MoreAs our short break between summer classes and the start of the fall term began this past weekend, my wife and I decided to enjoy some of our free time with a trip to New York City. When I was growing up in rural Missouri, if someone said "We're going to the city" you knew they were making a trip to Kansas City. Here in Princeton "the city" almost always refers to NYC, and the trip is always of a whole different magnitude than the car rides of my childhood.
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For many years now, I have participated in the ancient Christian tradition of undertaking a partial fast during the season of Lent. What this has usually meant for me is giving up some food item; 40 days without chocolate or 40 days without soda, things like that.
Read MoreFor as long as I can remember, I have been intrigued train travel. As a kid, I spent hours playing with my BRIO wooden train set, which was followed by an HO gauge model railroad. One of my favorite PBS shows growing up was even Shining Time Station (of course, how can you not love a children's show where one of the main characters was played by, first, Ringo Star and then George Carlin; seriously).
However, growing up in Missouri there just weren't lots of options for taking the train anywhere. We would occasionally take the Missouri River Runner over to St. Louis, but constant delays and several bad experiences (aka getting stuck on a Trailways bus for 5 hours) led to almost always driving. I eventually came to terms with the fact that long train trips just weren't in my future and did my best to enjoy road trips.
Fast-forward to 2012, fall. I'm settling into my life as a seminarian on the East Coast. One of my realizations is that, unlike back home, trains are everywhere. There is a train station not a five minute walk from my dorm. You want to go to New York? Philadelphia? Newark? (Ok, you probably don't WANT to go to Newark, but the other two?) Hop on a train and you are there for less time and aggravation than you would spend driving. It started me thinking about the possibility of taking the train between Princeton and Kansas City.
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