Artifacts of a Life Once Lived

Since investing in money markets is bad now, why not think about investing in lives of people, Peacemakers asks. “ This is an ideal time to invest aggressively in the lives of the people around you .” I really think Peacemakers is on to something here. We are at a slow in the economy. Business is dwindling at your office. Your 401k investment portfolio is shrinking every day. So, why not? Why not take a bit of your “money-making” time to “invest” in a person? I know, I know - you’re thinking that it’s not really and “investment.” You’re thinking, “I can’t actually legally own someone in this day and age”, but don’t let that get in your way. A little time spent with a child or parent or friend might actually pay off when the money market comes around! You may be able to sell them something in the future if you “invest” in their lives now! They are potential buyers and we all know Inv...

Becca: I thought you were going to bed? Ryan: I was… but sleeping is boring. Becca: No way man, it's a journey in another world that gives us things to think about and laugh over, and it's a world of no homework.    

1. Texas will vote Republican. 2. Neither candidate is really that impressive. 3. Every vote does not count. 3. Apparently you have to be registered. 4. An uninformed voter is worse than a non-voter. 5. Driving cost time and money and hurts the environment. 6. My citizenship is elsewhere. 7. Foregoing your “right” is freedom too. 8. A-mur-ca will be OK without me. 9. What will be, will be. 10. Obama is not the Anti-Christ. 11. McCain is not conservative. 12. Jesus probably wouldn’t vote.  

All reasons like icicles melting. Precarious in all manner or feeling. Running like the world is ending. Instead of giving, taking. Laying here thinking,   I was wrong.

I wonder about you often. I think of you everyday. I ask my soul to hold on because I know you are near. But you aren't. You are so far away. I pray - oh my soul - do I pray. I long for the moment when you find your way to me, when we meet and embrace and the fires of our hearts ignite and the passions of our soul rejoice in the depths of loves deep fountain. I sing for you a love song, will all my heart I sing and call out your name. I sing to the mountians, yet they are deaf. I sing for the hills, but my song echos off into the distant empty space. I sing for you and I call your name, but deafness falls upon the field of our love. Cold frost deadens the meeting of our hands. I wander into a cold night praying loves fullest flame will give life to my ever-longing soul. Give life to my heart, warm this coldness I feel. Will you meet me? Will you find me? Will this fire fade into blackness of the darkest coal? * art

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: On Work : “Work plunges men into the world of things. The Christian steps out of the world of the brother encounter into the world of impersonal things, the ‘it’; and this new encounter frees him from objectivity; for the ‘it’ – world is only an instrument in the hand of God for the purification of Christians from all self-centeredness and self-seeking. The work of the world can be done only where a person forgets himself, where he loses himself in a cause, in reality, the task, the ‘it.’ In work the Christian learns to allow himself to be limited by the task, and thus for him the work becomes a remedy against the indolence and sloth of the flesh. The passions of the flesh die in the world of things. But this can happen only where the Christian breaks through the “it” to the “Thou,” which is God, who bids him work and makes that work a means of liberation from himself. The work does not ce...

Why is it that when a cooperation rethinks how they make their product people generally get excited. I mean, case and point, the iPod. Its been rethought, redesigned, and repacked numerous times and those little devices get eaten up like candy. But, just because something gets rethought doesn't necessarily mean the rethinking is better rethinking. For Apple, it generally is... minus the iPod Mini. That's the risk you have to take when you rethink something. Nonetheless most people get excited when something gets rethought, especially when they participate in the rethinking itself. However I have a premonition that there are people who don't like the title of Scot McKnight's newest publication: The Blue Parakeet - Rethinking How You Read the Bible . I often sense that people get nervous or defensive or downright feisty when they see "rethinking" and "Bible" in the same phrase. Why is that? I guess, from experience, it generally has something to do wit...

There are two turning lanes to go right on Mockingbird off of the Northbound 75 access road. The light turned green, and I was rockin' out. Nothing like a good dose of STP. In the left turning lane I started to go with energy. I had my right turn signal on and so did the the Jeep to my right in the other turning lane. It happened pretty fast, but I saw it coming, but couldn't do anything about it, the median to my left was full of concrete and poles and flowers. I was parallel with the Cherokee. A car in front of the Cherokee stepped on the brakes to stop or turn or avoid something; I didn't really watch since my eyes were drawn to the fender of the Cherokee rapidly moving my way. Next thing I knew the Cherokee decided that I would be no match for its sporty brawn. The Cherokee clawed its way all the way down the entire left side of my car. My first accident, and not my fault. It happened but I was calm, though I was a bit aggravated after I saw my mirror dangling by the el...

We treat Jesus' words like they are from a fortune cookie. We talk about him like he is Santa Claus. We ask him to take away our pain like he is a drug. We ask him to play match maker. We ask him to help us find our keys. We ask him to magically spell words in our soup bowl. We talk about him like he is a trendy hippie-vegan wanderer who drive a VW. We look for his wink in the clouds, his fingers in the sky. We talk of him like he is a superhero. What have I made of Jesus? What have we made of Jesus? Is he really that cheap? Is he really that commercialized? Is he really that cool?

I have not, unfortunately, read widely in literature, let alone the classics. It is something I wish I did more. I read Goethe's Faust a year ago and thought that was very good, but my literary scope has been pretty much limited to the Harry Potter series over the past couple years, though I am only on Book 5. I did try to get through Love in the Time of Cholera , but I only got half way. I went on the word of a friend and picked up one of Hemingway's. I don't know if Farewell to Arms is even considered a "classic." My American Literature class in college may have touched on him a bit, but most likely not. The book is probably too provocative for the school. If it did, I was probably not paying attention because my American Lit. professor was especially boring. Any way, I have never felt so involved in the world of fictional characters. I love Harry Potter and I feel like I get pretty involved, but I have yet to experience the powerful emotion I felt after readi...

How? How am I supposed to love my enemy? I don't want to, nor do they deserve it! Well, thankfully I really don't have any enemies, though I think a few people have it out for me, so I guess technically that makes them my enemy. I have never really had a hard time getting along with anyone except my older brother, but that was when I was a heartless teenager. Wait, I might not be a teenager, but sometimes I am still heartless. I'm from NY, so I have an excuse. Christ set out an ethic through his word and life that I am to imitate. But sometimes I want to be a man and stand up for myself, and chew out another person, defend myself, and in the process bring them down. Today was one of those days. I just about lost it at work. It was so bad that I decided I needed to leave. So I left for the day. What happened was not that dramatic, but it was the proverbial "straw." It broke, I left. I am to love my enemies because God loved me even when I was his enemy. I am to lov...

Yesterday my Amazon order arrived. Darla, the Accountant-person here at the office delivered it to me. Well, actually UPS did. I wonder how many hands actually touched it from warehouse to desk? Interesting. Any way, I love packages. Especially packages I’m really anticipating. I think I like buying things online rather than at the store just to build the suspense, just to create an atmosphere of surprise. Everyone loves a surprise. Within this package were two books recommended by Jesus Creed. The first: Left Behind or Left Befuddled by Gordon Isaac, a seminary professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. The second: Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight (author at Jesus Creed), a seminary professor at Northpark Seminary. I am excited about the first because it deals with a “hot” topic that I think, quite frankly, is untrue. The rapture. Isaac treats the “End Times” stuff. You know, the mysterious disappearance of thousands, if not millions… Interestingly enough, after attending Dallas Seminary, ...

I can’t really talk intelligently about poverty because I have never experienced it. I have heard of it, I have seen it, I have touched it, I have smelled it, but I have never tasted it. Not that you have to experience poverty to be intelligent about it, but furthermore I cannot talk intelligently about poverty because I am uniformed, much to my shame. I am simply another expressionless face in the crowd staring uncomfortably at pictures of boned-flesh, while I thoughtlessly listen to sound bites crowding the air. I know prosperity, that’s all. I have never gone a day without anything essential to life, except if I misbehaved as a boy, then there was no pizza on Sunday night. I know, poor me. But I got a-thinkin’. When we think of poor, we often think of disadvantaged. Scripture consistently references the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, etc., but it talks about this to the point where it seems that poverty is actually more advantageous than ...

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A while back I posted a sort of introduction to something I wanted to flesh out a bit in my own thinking. Why do I not abandon my seemingly hopeless indi-vigualante, non-traditionalist, mostly-silly, often-splintered, intellectually-skeptical, American-oriented, consumer-driven, experientially-validating shallow religious heritage and return myself to a lasting and deep tradition that has survived hundreds and hundreds of years even claiming to be directly associated to Christ through its succession of Apostles, Fathers, Bishops and Popes. Thanks to Scot McKnight's post at Jesus Creed and a friendship I have with a RC professor at a Protestant college in NY and several helpful books (G. Marsden, M. Noll, D.G. Hart, etc.) I have thought much on my own peculiar American expression of Christianity commonly known as Evangelicalism and/or Fundamentalism with my intent to this: simply a deeper understanding of who or, for that matter, what I am in this gigantic terrestrial play about ...

I am neither a writer (I try though), a monk (sometimes I wish I was), nor a married man (sometimes I wish I was more than I wish I was a monk), but Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me has been a much needed aid in a time of certain need. I finished it yesterday. Her work is a memoir of sorts. There is no real consistent flow of argument. It is not academic, though it deals seriously with the issues and takes advice from academics. It is not a self-help, though it certainly offers good wisdom. It is simply a reflection of life interpreted through her coming to understand the reality of what is now traditionally known as sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. She is just a person talking herself through the drudgery that is acedia. A brilliant conversation, one which you will do well to join if you see yourself over-shadowed by a negligence toward love of self, others, life, and God. This memoir of life as a writer who battled long and hard bouts of acedia (def: carelessness, boredom, l...

Ann Kroeker has a good thing going and I am in. Its called Mega Memory Month. I will be memorizing three hymns. I know you're thinking, "That's not hard." But, actually, yes... it is hard... for me. This Is My Fathers World Be Thou My Vision Be Still My Soul iTunes will be my guide. Progress today is remembering the names of the hymns.

Scot McKnight has been posting some interesting thoughts on the liturgical turning in the Protestant traditions, especially non-denominational evangelicals. In this post he asks, "What is going on? There is a rise, a burgeoning rise, of young college students converting from low church evangelicalism, with its anemic, unhistorical ecclesiology, to the great liturgical traditions: Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism." This is me, though I have not converted per se, because I do not believe it a wise decision, nor the right decision, at this point in my life. This ethos or guist Scot speaks of resonates deeply with my ecclesiastical journey toward a more "Christian" expression of faith rather than an American, or Western, or Modern expression of faith, or whatever label you want to tie to it. I do not believe my turn away from the "traditional" faith in which I was raised toward a more traditional faith is reactionary or extreme in nature. I believe i...

A picture is worth a thousand words. If you are generally fainthearted please DO NOT follow the link.

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TO JEFFERSON : I got a fortune cookie last week and it said, “A passionate new romance will appear in your life when you least expect it…” I have claimed the fortune and have made it mine! Hallelujah ! Oh, what’s this? I feel an overwhelming sense of the gift of glossolalia come over me - hoba hoba giva me a taco, taco, taco, backo la alala bubana hasputta. Amenha!!   FROM JEFFERSON : I've heard of speaking of tongues, but typing in tongues is a new one! Make sure you exercise this gift in accordance with the principles that Paul sets out in 1 Corinthians 14 .   (To all of my Charismatic friends, I apologize.)