Sunday, November 05, 2006

Messy Room


Messy Room

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!

--Shel Silverstein

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Lostpedia

Some of my Lost predictions from last week were off. But that isn't deterring me. I correctly predicted Mr. Echo's death!

So - the guy with the eyepatch who appeared on the video. Think it has anything to do with this? And now I've gone and filled you afternoon with the wonder of the Lostpedia.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

The Blur of Our Culture


In the book Gaily The Troubadour, published in 1936, Arthur Guiterman wrote the following poem. Reading his observations, you wouldn't guess it was written 60+ years ago.

First dentistry was painless;
Then bicycles were chainless
And carriages were horseless
And many laws, enforceless.
Next, cookery was fireless,
Telegraphy was wireless,
Cigars were nicotineless
And coffee, caffeinless.
Soon oranges were seedless,
The putting green was weedless,
The college boy hatless,
The proper diet, fatless,
Now motor roads are dustless,
The latest steel is rustless,
Our tennis courts are sodless,
Our new religions, godless.



Arthur Guiterman, Gaily The Troubadour.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Wednesday Morning Prayer


O Lord, may we serve you this day, which You have mercifully given us.

As You have guarded us during our sleep, guide us during our time of work so that all our tasks may be gladly and faithfully performed.

Let our burdens not be too heavy for us because Your aid and comfort are with us.

Grant that we do not displease You or injure one another in anything we do. If we do fail or come short through ignorance or weakness, O God –

let Your Fatherly wisdom correct us,

may Your infinite mercy forgive us,

and Your divine love correct our weaknesses through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tuesday Morning Prayer


O You, who is the true Sun of the world, always rising and never going down. Your most wholesome appearing and light nourishes and makes joyful every thing in heaven and on earth:

We ask You to mercifully shine into our hearts so that the night of sin and the darkness of error will be driven away. Make your countenance beam on us so that we will not stumble in Your way or offend You. Let us walk as in the daytime.

Let us be pure and clean from the works of darkness.
Let us abound in all the good works that You have prepared for us to walk in through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Free Hugs

Monday Morning Prayer


O God, our Father, of whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named:

At the beginning of this day, give our household the grace that will keep us in true Christian fellowship.

Grant each of us Your guidance and influence in all of our labors, pleasures, and trials so that our hearts will be at peace with one another and with You.

Graciously help and prosper us in the doing of our daily duties with a willing and cheerful mind.

Defend us all by Your almighty power from inward evil and from outward harm.

Father may all of this be granted so that at the end of the day we will not be left in sorrow, trouble, or shame. Instead let us have true unity and thankful rest through Your merciful favor and Your forgiving love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Sunday Morning Prayer


O Lord, our Heavenly Father, at the beginning of another week we come to You for help and light.

Grant, we ask You, that we make this a sacred day of rest to Your service. May we consecrate this day to find all peace and strength in You.

Make our hearts beat with devotion so that we may serve You in spirit and in truth. May we live this day laying a good foundation for our coming work.

Be with us in the worship services of Your day so that your saints may join in heart and soul. Be with us so that we may receive the blessing promised to all who sincerely pray to You and faithfully hear Your Word.

This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Saturday Morning Prayer


Almighty God, our Father and Preserver:

We give You thanks that by Your goodness You have watched over us during the night and brought us to a new day.

We ask You to strengthen and guard us by Your Spirit so that we may spend this day in Your service and glorify You. May we cause all Your blessings to prove fruitful, and may we only seek the things that are pleasing in Your sight.

Enable us, O Lord, while we labor in this life to always look forward to that heavenly life, which You have promised Your children.

Defend us in soul and body from all harm.

Show Your steadfast love to all men and women and little children according to their need and especially to those whom we love and are in any kind of trouble or distress. We now remember them before You...

Protect our country.
Protect Your Church.
Bless all who do good in the world.
Restrain and convert all who do evil.

And finally – be pleased to cast out of Your remembrance all our past offenses, forgiving them in Your boundless mercy. Purify our hearts so that we may lead a better life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Potential Theories

I do not remember most of my Lost theories, but I still don't think we've gotten far enough to know which theories are right or wrong (including the writers).

However, here are a few more ideas (none of which are my own) that are worth discussing:

  1. The guy with the tumor on his backbone - could it be Locke? And would removing the tumor put him back in a wheelchair?
  2. Are The Others sterile? Is that why they steal children and need a fertility doctor? And if so, is the reason they separated Jack from Sawyer and Kate that they, not he, is their real interest? Did they put Kate in the cute dress opposite Sawyer so that the two of them would REALLY fall in love and get "at it"?
  3. Does the fertility doctor on the island have any connection to Sun becoming pregnant when she was previously unable too?

Friday, October 27, 2006

Friday Morning Prayer


We praise You, O God, with the morning light, and in the brightness of a new day we bless Your holy name.

For all You have given us –

the gift of life,
making us in Your own image,
allowing us to share as children in Your knowledge and love and in Your work and joy,
we thank you, Heavenly Father.

For all good things in the world,
for food and clothing,
for home and friendship,
for useful tasks and good pleasures,
we thank You, Heavenly Father.

For all spiritual blessings,
for the good example and blessed memory of Your saints,
for the secret influence of Your Spirit,
we thank You, Heavenly Father.

And above all we bless You for the redeeming life and death of Your dear Son, our Savior – Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jumprope

-- By Shel Silverstein

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Worth a thousand words...


Yep, I'm that one. I've always been that one.

Crazy Lost Theory


Could there be two groups of "others?" One on the small island and the one on the main island.

When Desmond is talking to Kelvin in the Season 2 Finale, someone mentions the Northern shore of the island. The other replies with "Going to see the hostiles, then?" If the Hostiles are on the Nothern shore, but the actual others are off to the East on their little island – this would imply that there are two competing factions of others.

Also, both Benry and Goodwin instisted that their group was "the good guys." This implies that there are bad guys too...

Could Nathan be part of a different group? How many times have we heard "the others" state that they don't kill. They might not have used the word kill, but you get the point. Goodwin kills Nathan with no remorse or anything.

Nathan could be the "hostile" that Kelvin referred to. There are two groups of others on the Island – Ben's group of "goodies" and the "Hostile's"... Nathan was a Hostile and Goodwin knew it, that is why he had to die! The Hostile's are bad!

Just thinking...

Lost Junkies!


Here is a picture and cryptic message from Alvar Hanso!

Alvin's Real Voice

Do you remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Then you probably know that a recording can be speeded up to make it sound squeaky like Alvin, Simon, Theodore.

But, do you know that if you slow down a Chipmunk recording, you can hear what the actual actors sound like?

Yep, that’s right. Listen (MP3) for yourself!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Hug O' War

--By Shel Silverstein

Alive and Well?

Alive and well?
An Article by Marty from The Briefing

I recently attended a large pastor’s conference where I was joined by 3,200 evangelical pastors, ministry leaders, seminary students, youth leaders and children’s teachers. It is always encouraging to be with so many people who trust in God’s word to turn people from idols to serve the true and living God. And this is just one out of dozens of similar conferences that gather Bible-believing Christians. Surely this is a wonderful sign of Christianity here in the States.

However, I am not sure what to make of it all. For, statistically speaking, even though Evangelicalism is on the rise here, our culture is pulling away from God faster than ever. Further, Christians—especially evangelicals—have an alarmingly low understanding of Scripture. Is what I see at conferences like these a fair reflection of the state of American Evangelicalism?

My experience of evangelical churches is this: I know a woman who teaches at an evangelical Christian school who rarely reads the Scriptures; I know an evangelical pastor who preaches more from Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life than the Bible; I know an evangelical church that gathers people in small groups to give them tips on healthy eating and coping with job-related stress while paying very little attention to Matthew or Ecclesiastes. And I could go on with similar examples for pages.


How do the two trends I’ve identified above square with one another? I’ve been reading Tom Schreiner’s excellent article on preaching and Biblical theology (PDF). Schreiner reminded me how it is that such a dichotomy can exist. He said, “[C]onservative churches may embrace the inerrancy of Scripture while denying in practice the sufficiency of God’s Word. We may say that Scripture is God’s inerrant Word, while failing to proclaim it seriously from our pulpits”. I would add that churches also fail to practise God’s word seriously in their ministry programs.


This is why there are so many evangelical pastors and churches who have no positive effect on Christianity and Evangelicalism as a whole in America: we assume our beliefs rather than practice them. It is easy to claim to hold to evangelical beliefs; you can post them in the church bulletin, use keywords like “inerrancy” and “justification” in your sermons, browbeat liberals for their opposing views. But it is difficult to actually put into practice the doctrines we hold to so fervently. And so it’s hard to find a church that centres its ministry on God’s word rather than on the culture.


My hunch (based on the fruit of our labours) is that most of our growing evangelical population knows little of what it means to participate in or run a ministry on the idea that God’s word is inerrant. As Schreiner points out, this comes back to our fundamental distrust in the fact that God’s word is actually sufficient. Simply put, our evangelical churches just don’t believe that God’s word alone is capable of producing God-glorifying Christians—assuming that they have reached the point where they think that that is the goal of being Christian.


Many cultural pundits say that Evangelicalism is alive and well in America today. I would agree it is alive, but I remained unconvinced as to how “well” it is.

Monday, October 23, 2006

W.W.L.S. (What Would Luther Say?)

What would Luther say about shepherds of Christ's church?

He must be of a high and great spirit that undertakes to serve the people in body and soul, for he must suffer the utmost danger and unthankfulness. Therefore Christ said to Peter, Simon, etc., “Lovest thou me?” repeating it three times together. Then he said: “Feed my sheep:” as if he would say, “Wilt thou be an upright minister, and a shepherd? then love must only do it, thy love to me; for how else could ye endure unthankfulness, and spend wealth and health, meeting only with persecution and ingratitude?”

Table Talk CXLVII.

Pastors are real fakes!

I don't know of any other profession in which it is quite as easy to fake it as in ours. By adopting a reverential demeanor, cultivating a stained-glass voice, slipping occasional words like "eschatology" into conversation....not often enough actually to confuse people but enough to keep them aware that our habitual train of thought is a cut above the pew level--we are trusted, without any questions asked, as stewards of the mysteries. Most people...know that we are in fact surrounded by enormous mysteries: birth and death, good and evil, suffering and joy, grace, mercy, forgiveness. It takes only a hint here and a gesture there, an empathetic sigh, or a compassionate touch to convey that we are at home and expert in these deep matters.

Even when in occasional fits of humility and honesty we disclaim sanctity, we are not believed. People have a need to be reassured that someone is in touch with the ultimate things. Their own interior lives are a muddle of shopping lists and good intentions, guilty adulteries (whether fantasized or actual) and episodes of heroic virtue, desires for holiness mixed with greed for self-satisfaction. They hope to do better someday beginning maybe tomorrow or at the latest next week. Meanwhile, they need someone around who can stand in for them, on whom they can project their wishes for a life pleasing to God. If we provide a bare bones outline of pretence, they take it as the real thing and run with it, imputing to us clean hands and pure hearts.

From the introduction of Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson.

Churches - 150 members strong


It just doesn't add up by Peter Hughes of Banksia, Sydney, Australia:

I want you to remember two numbers: 150 and 15. I was reading a book about a guy who was a church planter. His church had grown to about 150 and he decided it was time to plant another church. The problem was that he still had to work a part-time job because there was not enough income coming through the church. This got me thinking.

Most people, it seems, like a church where they know the pastor or minister. Sociologists tell me that this is about 150 people per minister; after that, it becomes too hard. In Sydney Anglican churches, the average giving per adult per week is $15 (actually it’s a bit less but let’s be nice). It costs a church $80,000 per year for a minister after things like superannuation and insurance etc., and let’s say another $20,000 for expenses like building costs (rent or upkeep), printing, insurance and other things.

So, let’s say then that it costs $100,000 a year for a minister to run a church. If people are giving $15 a week, this means you need at least 128 adults to break even. That is not far away from having to think about planting a new church if you want to grow. This means the church can’t afford another staff member until the new church is big enough (and now the first minister is trying look after 256 people across the new and the old churches—people who are frustrated they can’t talk to him).

The solution is either:
  1. choose not to grow our churches, and once we get between 128 and 150, we stop reaching out with the gospel;
  2. increase the average giving per adult to $30 per adult per week; or
  3. be more generous to our ministers and let them spread themselves more thinly. We need to be happy with being in churches with congregations of up to 250.

None of these options are easy. I do not think that #1 is a Christian response. For some people, #2 is simply not an option. Others will find it hard to adjust to #3. But as it stands, it doesn’t seem to add up to me.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Incredible Power!

This is incredible power. He is ~180 lbs and throwing incredible weight! If you are not absolutely amazed, you don't understand what you are watching.

It make me wonder what Samson was capable of!

Sleeping Beauty

No doubt in this dog's waking hours he is a fine-looking canine, but while sleeping the ugly switch gets flipped. At that point all that is needed is quick action with a camera.

Clergyman

CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.

--Ambrose Bierce

Eugene Peterson is angry with pastors

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn't the remotest connection with what the church's pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted.... It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper's concerns--how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.


Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.


From the introduction of Working the Angles written by Eugene Peterson.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The Little Boy and the Old Man

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

The Wondrous Masterpieces of the Fourth Day



An actually picture of Saturn that is so beautiful - it doesn't look real.

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

THE LINK


PS - Check this out!

Monday, October 16, 2006

The Inner Life of Cells or The Matrix? You decide!



Here is a very cool computerized "music video" for you to take a look at. I don't have a lot of info about it except that it was made at Harvard and that it contains a lot of computerized video of the inner workings of cells and macromolecules. If nothing else it is an amazing example of the intersection of art and science. Sit back and enjoy.

BioVisions

(You should probably have a high speed connection for this one - and you'll need the Flash player to view it)

Here is an unofficial explanation of the video by someone named Andrew Sobala.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Ahh...That's fresh!

Real Beauty

An ad from the Dove Real Beauty campaign, highlighting the difficulty of looking like a model. Other Dove videos on the subject of young girls’ self-esteem and our warped expectations of beauty can be found here and here.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

What does your writing say about you?


Dr. Gerard Ackerman does handwriting analysis. I want to know your results if you take the test.

The TUL Pens Graphological Initiative - CHECK IT OUT HERE

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Face Recognition Software


MyHeritage’s face recognition engine can automatically detect faces, "learn" about it, and even match it to a database of faces it has previously seen.

In the demo, you can upload your own photo and see which celebrity you most resemble.

THE LINK

PS - Tell me who your celebrity look-a-like is!

Isn't free speech for everyone


...even Minutemen speaking at Columbia University?

PS - If you watch this, make sure you watch the whole thing. The commentary at the end is interesting.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Where the Sidewalk Ends


Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Monday, October 09, 2006

W.W.A.B.S. (What Would Ambrose Bierce Say?)

What would Ambrose Bierce say about logic?

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion — thus:


Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore—

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

5000 Years in 90 Seconds

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Europeans...the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.

Click here to see 5000 years of history in 90 seconds.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Give me a break!

Just because something isn't a sin doesn't mean it isn't tacky and stupid! The following is a "teaching aid" for congregations -


Fire Bible

When was the last time your class saw how "HOT" God's Word is? Open this authentic looking "bible" and begin to share the scripture for the day as real flames are seen coming from your "bible". This full size book comes with a battery operated ignition system. All you supply are the batteries, lighter fluid and composure as your class gets excited. (special note: Fed-Ex shipping is available if you absolutely have to have the Fire Bible for this Sunday!)

Only $44.95!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Seminary Dropouts

Hell hath no fury like a former seminarian. From Hollywood superstars to adulterous dilettantes, several seminary dropouts have managed to find success in the secular world. But they’ve also strayed from the Christian path - whether it was for the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard or simply to reign terror over a Communist nation. Here’s a sampling of the finest in almost-clergy.

1. Tom Cruise (1962 - )

In 1976, a deeply religious child named Thomas Cruise Mapother IV enrolled in a Franciscan seminary in New Jersey. Within five years, he’d ditched the church, dropped the Mapother, and landed a part in Endless Love. And in spite of his diminutive height (5 feet 7 inches) the man who might have been a priest became one of Hollywood’s top leading men. Around 1986, though, he abandoned Catholicism altogether, embracing the Church of Scientology, which he once credited with helping him overcome dyslexia. Wildly popular with celebrities, Scientology is the path of choice to "clarity" for everyone from John Travolta to the guy who played Parker Lewis in Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. Incidentally, Scientology does have ministers - but while Cruise remains an active member and apologist for the group, he has yet to seek ordination.

2. Casanova (1725 - 1798)

Everyone’s favorite 18th-century libertine began his scandalous escapades at the seminary of St. Cyprion, from which he was expelled under cloudy circumstances (we’re guessing he slept with someone). And as you well know, his post seminary life was as ungodly as it gets. By the age of 30 he was sentenced to prison for engaging in "magic," but he escaped after only a year to Paris. There, he made a fortune by introducing the lottery to France. But before settling down to write his ribald, self-aggrandizing autobiography, Casanova was expelled from more European countries than most of us ever visit. Along the way, he slept with tons of women, dueled with many of their husbands, and generally sinned his was to the top of European culture, befriending such figures as Madame du Pompadour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau along the way.



3. Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953)

Lasting longer than the vast majority of divinity school dropouts, noted mass murderer Joseph Stalin studied at the Georgian Orthodox seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) for five years, between 1894 and 1899. He left the seminary either because of poor health (his mom’s story) or revolutionary activity (Stalin’s story). Either way, Stalin clearly didn’t take much of what he learned to heart (assuming he had one). After he became the Soviet leader in 1922, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of religious leaders, and Stalin did more than any other premier to eliminate the role of Christianity in Soviet life. But his seminary wasn’t exactly a study in Christian love, either. Prior to Stalin’s arrival, a rector was murdered there - possibly by unruly seminarians.

4. Michael Moore (1954 - )

Controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore began studying at a seminary in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, as an eight grader in 1967. Brought up a devout Catholic, Moore aspired to a career as a priest, but he left the seminary the next year for thoroughly secular reasons. When the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series in 1968, the seminary refused to let him watch the games - so he quit. Before his successful filmmaking career, in fact, Moore was something of a serial dropout. He dropped out of the University of Michigan because he arrived at the school one morning and couldn’t find a parking place, and he once got a job at an automobile factory in Flint - but called in sick on his first day and never returned.


5. Al Gore (1948 - )

Believe it or not, the winner of the popular vote in the U.S. presidential election of 2000 was actually a devoutly religious divinity school dropout. It’s true! Al Gore graduated from Harvard cum laude in 1969 (although he earned several Cs and a D during his time in Cambridge), but he’d always been interested in theology, so he decided to continue his studies. It’s no wonder, then that he enrolled in Vanderbilt’s prestigious divinity school, where, over the course of three semesters, he failed five of his eight classes! Gore’s allies claimed that the birth of his first child and his duties as a reporter at the Tennessean newspaper kept him from his studies. For the record, though, Gore also later dropped out of Vanderbilt’s law school (in 1976), but this time for a truly higher purpose - to run for Congress.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Hematoma anyone?


Let's see...How many ways can you think of bruising your buddy's butt? This guy can think of 1...2...3...

LOL...This cracks me up.

Friday, September 15, 2006

How To Reach Post-Everythings


Couldn't Help Noticing, 1 September 2006 AD

Tim Keller asked the following question to his denomination:

How do we, as a denomination, do renewal and outreach in the emerging post-everything United States culture? ‘Post-everything’ people are those who are now in their teens and twenties—and they are our future.

In this brief article, Keller lays out six issues at stake in engaging this group and how Reformed theology offers the resources to address these issues:

  1. Issue: Post-everythings like narrative and story
    • Resource: Geerhardus Vos:
    • If you know how to do Christ-centered preaching, then you turn every single sermon into a kind of story. The plot of the human dilemma thickens, and the hero that comes to the rescue is Jesus. Christ-centered preaching converts doctrinal lectures or little how-to talks into true sermons. Post-everythings who are interested in narrative are reached by such preaching that is deeply Reformed.
  2. Issue: Post-everythings are experientially oriented
    • Resource: Jonathon Edwards:
    • Edwards taught that a sermon should not only make truth clear, but also should make truth real. In Edwards we find ways to preach that are Reformed, committed to objective truth and, at the same time, deeply experiential.
  3. Issue: Post-everythings are set against moralism and self-righteousness
    • Resource: Martin Luther:
    • Traditional gospel presentations assume that the people want to be ‘good.’ But our kids’ generation wants to be ‘free.’ Luther said, ‘Look, you want to be free? Good. It’s good to be free. But you’re not. You are living for something and, whatever that something is, it enslaves you.’ If a person lives for reputation, then he is a slave to what people think. If a person lives for achievement, then he will be a workaholic. As did Luther, we should tell such people, ‘You want to be free? Fine. But you’re not going to be free unless Jesus is your salvation.’ When post-everythings rejected Christianity they thought moralism and Christianity were the same thing. But we can show post-everythings that the two are not the same, and that freedom really is in Jesus.
  4. Issue: Post-everythings have a concern for social justice
    • Resource: Hermann Ridderbos:
    • [Go to] Ridderbos and other Reformed theologians who stress the coming of and the presence of the Kingdom. The Reformed understanding of salvation is not simply that God is rescuing individual souls out of the material world, but rather he is also redeeming all of creation. God is going to bring complete healing and shalom to the material world eventually.
  5. Issue: Post-everythings love art because they love the material world
    • Resource: Abraham Kuyper
    • Abraham Kuyper’s understanding of Reformed theology enables us to say to post-everythings, ‘Christianity is not just a way for you as an individual to get peace, love and groovy vibes in Heaven. Christianity is a comprehensive worldview. You can be a Christian artist, dancer, manager, or minister and these are all ways of living out the gospel.’ When post-everythings hear that, they get extremely excited. They have never considered that Christianity embraces the whole of life.”
  6. Issue: Post-everythings are not swayed by evidential apologetics
    • Resource: Cornelius Van Til:
    • If you start to present evidence for the deity of Christ or the proofs of God, post-everything eyes will glaze over. But the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til can work with post-everythings. I think Reformed theology provides us with tools for our culture that Josh McDowell’s kind of evidential apologetics does not.

Noticed by Marty at 09:00 AM

Monday, September 11, 2006

Ozymandias


A poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Friday, September 08, 2006

Pencils Ranked #4


Forbes ranked the “20 Most Important Tools” recently, and the pencil scored #4!

“Writing may be one of the most important discoveries in human history. But it was easy-to-use writing implements–including the pencil, pen and brush–that made mass education and literacy possible. Cheap, reliable and convenient, the pencil represents these tools at their best. And because the sword came in at No. 8 on our list (more about the sword), we can now say for sure that the pen is mightier than the sword…
….In 1662, the first mass-produced pencils were made in Nuremberg, Germany, and in 1795, a French Chemist named Nicolas Conté invented a technique to make pencil leads out of powdered graphite and clay. In 1770, Edward Naime, an English engineer, created and began selling the first rubber erasers. The practice of painting pencils yellow began in the 1890s. Pencil manufacturers wanted to advertise that they were using high-quality Chinese graphite, so they painted them a color associated with Chinese royalty. Today, 75% of the pencils sold in the U.S. are still painted yellow. "

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Small is the new big


Check out item seven of this title essay of Seth Godin's new book.

Tell me what you think!

"Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.


Small means that you can answer email from your customers.


Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.


A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.


A small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.


A small venture fund doesn’t have to fund big bad ideas in order to get capital doing work. They can make small investments in tiny companies with good (big) ideas.


A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you’re sick.


Is it better to be the head of Craigslist or the head of UPS?

Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.


Don’t wait. Get small. Think big."


Seth Godin
Author of Small is the New Big

You can visit Seth's blog here.

Small Update


1. Recieved a call to be the teaching elder of a small PCA church.
2. Just finished the written exams for ordination (Six tests took 22 1/2 hours to complete)

Saturday, September 02, 2006

What is Labor Day about?



Overhand the Hammers Swing: Poems of Work

by Philip Levine


What follows are images of work from contemporary American poets, that is poets contemporary to me. When I say work I mean the sort of brute physical work that most of us try to avoid, but that those without particular gifts or training were often forced to adopt to make a living in a society as tough and competitive as ours. This may in fact be a species of work that is disappearing from America as more and more automation replaces the need for human hands, that is manual labor. Perhaps the most beautiful evocation of this activity I find is in Whitman's great "Song of Myself":

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is great heat in the fire.
From the conder-strew'd threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

For Whitman this sort of work, which he liked to pretend he engaged in, is communal and harmonious; it is done with precision and craft, and the reader is left to assume that it brings to each man a sense of fulfillment as well as community. Over a century later another brilliant American poet finds two men engaged in similar labor--and though they should be even closer than Whitman's blacksmiths, being father and son--the blows they strike are in truth meant partly for each other:

We stood on a wooden platform
Facing each other with sledgehammers,
A copper-tipped sieve sunken into the ground
Like a spear, as we threaded on five foot
Of galvanized pipe for the pump.
As if tuned to some internal drum,
We hammered the block of oak
Placed on top for the pipe.
It began inching downward
As we traded blows--one for you,
One for me. After a half hour
We threaded on another five feet. The sweat
Gleamed on our shirtless bodies, father
& son tied to each other until we hit water.

(from "Song for My Father" by Yusef Komunyakaa)

Komunyakaa writes as a participant, one too busy or spent to notice the "sheer of their waists": perhaps if Whitman's blacksmiths had themselves written poems the overall pictures might not be so different, for they too may have felt driven by such labor deep into the self and marching "to some internal drum" or like the proud fathers of James Wright's poem, not marching at all but "ashamed to go home" where their "women cluck like starved pullets."

As we shall see in the poems that follow such work often leads to despair or worse, the human body torn to shreds like the bodies of Kenneth Patchen's orange bears, "Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs/ seared by hot slag, their soft trusting/ bellies kicked in. . . " Patchen's vision of the nature of labor leads him to question his master, Whitman: "What did he know about/ Orange bears with their coats all stunk up with soft coal. . . "

For Whitman such work may have led to a people and a continent fulfilled, but as we see in Snyder's marvelous "Hay for the Horses," it can lead to more work and not much else or in the words of his sixty-eight-year- old bucker of hay, "I sure would hate to do this all my life/ And damnit, that's just what/ I've gone and done."

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Oh, Death! Where is your sting?


Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Does it mean what it says?

A thought provoking Wold Magazine article by Gene Edward Veith

Is a translation of a text supposed to provide what it says or what it means? Or what the translator thinks it means, or wants it to mean?

One translation approach—whether of the Bible or anything else—is the "formal equivalent" method. This approach seeks words in the English language that replicate as closely as possible the words in the original language.

The other approach is the "dynamic equivalent" method. This approach seeks to replicate not words but meanings.

A good translation, of course, will do both, but "the dynamic equivalent" approach, favored by most contemporary Bible translators, carries with it a certain philosophy about the text that can easily be abused—as secular linguists with no theological ax to grind are pointing out.

The pioneer of dynamic equivalence in Bible translation was Eugene A. Nida, former head of the American Bible Society, who, to his credit, did much to translate the Bible into multitudes of native languages on the mission field. The goal, as he explains it, is to render the biblical text in terms of the culture of the readers. "The equivalent forms," he said, "should not be 'foreign' either in form ... or meaning." The translated version should not only read like a modern text; it should resonate in terms of modern meanings. A passage, he says, should be expressed "in terms of relevance to the present-day world, not to the biblical culture."

This approach to translation, arguably, makes the ancient world of the Israelites more accessible to tribes in the mission field. Mr. Nida and his approach gave us the "Good News" Bible in modern American English. The approach can be used modestly and judiciously, as it was in the New International Version (NIV). But Today's New International Version (TNIV) takes the approach to an extreme that reveals the limitations of the dynamic equivalent method.

First, how can a scholar writing thousands of years later, from an entirely different culture and speaking an entirely different language, be so confident of what the original text "really means," other than what it says?

Second, the ancient biblical world really is quite a bit different from modern American culture. To make it not seem "foreign" is to miss the point, since it actually is foreign. And making the Bible fit our culture—instead of making our culture fit the Bible—has a way of watering down its authority.

Secular linguists—such as Stephen Prickett, in Words and the Word and Origins of Narrative—describe the dynamic equivalent approach as "naïve" and "simplistic" in its understanding of language and in its assumption that cultural meanings are easily transferable. Dynamic equivalent practitioners pride themselves on achieving clarity, but a text like the Bible, according to Mr. Prickett, is filled with mystery, multileveled meanings, and unique "untranslatable" revelations—all of which get leveled out and lost in many contemporary translations.

Mr. Nida admits that his approach involves "exegesis" as well as translation. A dynamic equivalent translator must substitute what he thinks something means for the literal expression, instead of leaving the exegesis and interpretation for readers and pastors.

Another problem with dynamic equivalence is that it tends to explain away metaphors, figures of speech, and specialized language—when those are the very elements that make a text powerful and profound. For example, the New Testament often refers to Christians as "saints." We don't use that word much anymore, so the TNIV gets rid of "saints," using instead words like "believers" or "people of God."

But this obscures an important theological point, that Christians are considered by God to be holy. If the translators wanted a new term for the word used in Greek, they might have used something like "holy ones." But to change "saint" to "believers" focuses on belief rather than holiness; to "people of God" focuses on their membership in a community. Those do apply to Christians and are described elsewhere, but "saint" contains a profound theological insight that is blithely swept away.

A person has to know "what it says" before trying to figure out "what it means." And it may never be possible to exhaust the depths upon depths of meaning contained in a single verse of Scripture. The TNIV translators, in trying to make the Bible more suitable to modern sensibilities, just get in the way.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

See anything?


Anything look like faces? It is just our anthromorphosizing brain. It is working to grasp patterns whereever they may be.

Monday, August 21, 2006

CAN!



Please take a moment to read this post and watch the video. It will make you have greater sense of your humanity and will help you understand the nature of our heavenly Father's grace toward His children.

Strongest Dad in the World
[From Sports Illustrated by Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to Pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day (doing the Ironman Triathlon). Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. "He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old, "Put him in an institution." But the Hoyts weren't buying it.

They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "there's nothing going on in his brain." "Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!"

And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that." Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "then it was me who was handicapped,"

Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks." that day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!" And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year. Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?" How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzz kill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. "No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century." And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago." So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. "The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

Why wood and graphite?

Kevin Kelly explains why he uses a pencil.

A pencil can generate megabytes of text, needs no batteries, and has no user manual. It is comfortable to hold, it smells good, and it is relaxing to turn around in your hand as you try to think of the right words. Pencils don’t need ink; all they need is a sharpener. They are warm and friendly; they have souls.

Sunday, August 20, 2006