running songs

Promises, promises…  Due to the overwhelming silence on the issue I can only assume that you are all waiting for me to announce a top 10 list of my favorite songs to run to.  I’ve been tweeting all over the place my distances and running times for the last couple weeks.  I also facebook it.  Is this a new level of narcissism at which I’ve finally arrived or is it just my laziness to post updates and the simple little button post from my LogYourRun.com iPod app?  Maybe a little from column A a little from column B.

With just a little ado.  My Top Ten songs that I run to: (no particular order, although I for sure have ideas about categories like: while your in the rhythm, when you’re trying to get in the rhythm, I’m about to quit and I need a pick me up, second wind just hit and I’m feeling mellow, etc.  If you know the song you may be able to figure out the category.  Song – Artist)  Also, I’m trying to keep only one song per artist here, but I have quite a few on my mix.

1.    Fake Empire – The National
2.    Lost Coastlines – Okkervil River
3.    Someday Baby – R.L. Burnside (thanks to NPR Winter Workout Mix)
4.    The Modern Leper – Frightened Rabbit (Favorite band name on the list & album name too.)
5.    Winter ‘05 – Ra Ra Riot
6.    We Got The Power (Love Letter From America) – The Born Again Floozies
7.    This Year – The Mountain Goats (San Bernadino is also amazing)
8.    Walcott – Vampire Weekend (M79 is a close second)
9.    The Ascent of Stan – Ben Folds
10.  Jena & Jimmy – Derek Webb

There it is.  I still need to fill in a good half hour or more for the half-marathon.  Even if you don’t run, what songs would you think may inspire you to do so?

FAWM is upon us…

Yes, today marks day 1 of FAWM.org for 2010. I’m stoked to be using a new tool for this year. Here it is captured from my 1.3 mega-pixel Motorola phone.

For the photographers out there:
shutter: 1/160
aperture: f/80
max aperture: f/2.8
focal length: 6.2mm
iso speed: 200

Miller? Rooks? Collaborate?

today is my birthday

The soundtrack for this blog post in my newly acquired (20 min ago from World Records in downtown Bakersfield, support local stuff) Iron and Wine Around the Well CD #1…..and play.

I thought I would attempt to write about questions today.  Last night I was taking our student leaders thought the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The story is a response to a questioning expert of the Law of Moses who is testing Jesus.  Wanting to get a better feel for who this new preacher dude is, he asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Which of course Jesus turns around on the guy and the followup question becomes Who is my neighbor? to justify the first answer which is loving God with our whole selves and loving our neighbor as our self.  Whew.  As Jesus tells the story we all know he ends by asking the expert, “Which of these was neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

Questions.  Yeah, lot’s of them.  Jesus craftily gets the guy to answer a different question, a better question.  The expert wants a statistical, quantifiable answer that he use to justify his actions and himself.  Show me where to draw the line between those I have to love and those I don’t.  He asks the wrong question.  The answer that Jesus provides is to an entirely different question, the one the expert should have asked.  Jesus’ answer fits better with a question like: What does it look like to be a neighbor to someone?  Jesus answers a better question.  The right question.

I’ve read some N.T. Wright where he claims that Jesus is much more subversive that he appears.  That the parables, when looked at in the context of the Jewish history and culture, challenge the hearers at a world view level.  Who doesn’t like the idea of Jesus being subversive.  The good Samaritan challenges the Jewish worldview (although that’s not all it does) by casting the Jew’s cultural and ethnic enemy, a Samaritan, as the story’s hero.  In Jesus’ story, which is linked to the original question of how to inherit eternal life, the person who is shown fulfilling the requirements in not a Jew.  It’s somebody on the outside, one who chose out of the pure Israelite family.  To get the magnitude of the subversiveness, imagine that Jesus is telling us the story and when he gets to the end it’s a Buddhist or Muslim instead of a Samaritan.

Anyway, back to questions.  This morning I had a conversation with a guy who was wondering what I thought about baptism.  He was expressing frustration at (his understanding of) the Protestant view of baptism which sees the act as mere symbolism.  He was suggesting that Catholics maybe have a more scriptural understanding, seeing it as a more essential act.  At the core of what he was asking was the question, Is baptism necessary for salvation? And he knows the argument just goes in circles, Well the thief on the cross…yeah, but what does paradise mean…but that was before Jesus died…covenant…but not resurrected…blah blah…   I think this is a great example of the wrong question being asked.  To jump straight to the necessity for salvation question is exactly like the expert’s question.  Give me the quantifiable, black and white answer.  I know, I know not all quantifiable truth is wrong, but not all truth is quantifiable.  Thanks Post-Modernism for re-exposing this reality.  (Another debate for another day.)  Regardless of what anyone may believe about baptism and salvation, the question doesn’t do either justice.  And what’s the point anyway.

The point, or this whole argument about questions, directs us to the greater issue of spirituality in the West.   About the state of Christianity in our current American culture.  About science, modernity, world view.  And I believe that it’s the stories Jesus tells that have the power to expose and subvert what we have come to understand as true.  I don’t think we are wrong, not in entirety.  But I’m pretty sure that the current attitudes and beliefs that we (yep, me too) hold in this country, in the West, in this century, have room to be subversively critiqued by Jesus.  Any pastor that told a story that included a Muslim as the shining example of following God’s word would cause quite a revolt.

Most of this is rambling, I know that.  But it’s my birthday.  Thanks all my friends who understand that I am almost always in process and my conclusions are still a long way off.

Ask good questions.  They are better than right answers to wrong questions.

the divide

I need to write more.  I used to write in a journal all the time.  Not so much about day to day stuff, just ideas and thoughts.  I have a friend who said that he didn’t like writing his thoughts because then they were real.  Well, it was something like that, he did say it over five years ago.  But I think I need to write.  I think my memory of what he said has some truth in it, at least I hope it does, because I need it to.  (Horrible reasoning.)

I’m not sure when, but recently I became aware that the two parts of me, what goes on inside my head and what happens on the outside, are experiencing a growing division.  In my attempts to exist less “in my head” and to discipline myself away from over-analyzing everything, I’ve actually only accomplished neglecting my thoughts.  Instead of being “disciplined” I think I’ve just been inattentive.  I’m not exactly sure if that’s resulted in anything catastrophic, but it does feel a little bit like I’ve put my brain on cruise control at 30 mph out in the dessert.

I’ve read some N.T. Wright and I think my mind has been appreciative.  But now it feels like I’ve been in the gym for a while and the soccer field is begging for some attention.  Give me some application.  Well, this is the beginning at least.  Writing.

I figure this is a good time to get back into processing my thoughts out online.  I’ve got a huge decision to make in the next month.  Tina and I have to decide what to do with our lives, which I suppose is one of those decisions that no matter how many times you make it, continues to ask itself almost daily.  However, this time there is a little more riding on what we decide because it will for sure include a move.  And the impact, although this is always true at some level, will definitely affect others as well as the mission of our current employer.

There’s the start.  Now it’s time to read.  By the way, if you’ve seen my Evil and The Justice of God book, I only have a chapter left and I’m itching to finish it so I can update my goodreads page.

If I had a really expensive camera and plenty of time…

guitar sketches

Here’s a new discipline I’m trying to start.  I really want to record music and write songs but I often don’t know where to start.  This is very similar to the frustrations I had in college trying to start an architecture project.  I think the vastness and complexity of the final product paralyzes me at the beginning.  Well, taking a lesson from my design classes, I decided to start sketching little pieces of music.  Hopefully this will get me primed for FAWM.  Simple rules: sketches must be less than a minute and include no more than 8 tracks.

My first three can be played in the box.net widget to the right.

Addicting Game #319

Here it is. After 5 minutes my top score floats around 1700m. 2436m. 2860 Yep.

Good luck.

Camera Phone Stories

I haven’t posted in a while so I thought it would be fun to put up some of the photo’s I’ve shot over the last six months or so on my camera phone.  I don’t think any need explaining.  I’ll consider it a visual tweet.  My hope is for the comment section to include your creative captions….go.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Brian.  Well a couple hours ago at least.  To show my appreciation for my amazing brother-in-law I’m breaking my unintentional blog fast.  Here’s to a great guy with a great beard and a great family.  You’re pushing 30 my friend.  Just tonight I told some people I was 28, and that was a lie.  I’m actually 27.  It wasn’t intentional, but maybe because it was your birthday I subconsciously willed myself older so that we could be closer, even if it was just in my mind.

Tonight I gave the first Big Friday (that’s what I call it, there isn’t a formal name for it) talk.  At least three times during it I was tempted to take a break and have the whole group of InterVarsity students there sing you happy birthday.  That’s how engaging the talk was…well, hopefully not.  But I chickened out.  Although, considering the time difference, it may not have been that pleasant of a shout out.  My guess is you were in bed.  Hopefully.

On with the tribute:

I think you’re a great friend.  You’re open and honest and have a servant’s attitude.  Tonight my talk was about the attributes of love as listed in 1 Corinthians 13.  You are definitely patient.  You are certainly kind.  You don’t boast.  You don’t seek your own.  I know you sacrifice on a regular basis.  In the good way, not the weird cultish way.

I think you’re a great father.  Henry is going to be an awesome guy.  Whenever I see a Christian book on how to be a man, I shudder inside just a little bit because they are almost always misogynistic either subtly or blatantly.  I pretty much refuse to read them.  I prefer to just look at my friends and often I see something that I can’t quite explain, but I think, that’s what a man should be like.  You are like that.  I think Henry isn’t going to have any trouble growing up into an awesome man because he’ll have a great example.

You’re a generous husband.  You put your family’s needs before your own and I know that’s not always easy.  You’ve been an amazing support and encourager to your wife.  You’ve persevered, and you will continue to.  You’re real about the fact that caring about other people isn’t always that easy, and acknowledging that is both humble and wise.

You’re a yogi.  Not just for reals but in many physical active type things.  I respect your mad racquetball skills and your ability to bust out the twisting triangle pose.  Also your Sports Center aptitude.

You’re an artist.  That may sound a little weird, but you see the world and it’s beauty in a way that only some do.  You also see the crap, but your fascination with the beauty is truly artistic.  I eagerly await your creative expressions.

You enjoy a good beer.

You’re a gypsy of sorts.  Sure you’ve physically moved around, but I also mean that you’re somebody who I think will always be between.  I think you can come to love a place, but because you know other places are also wondrous, you won’t ever be done exploring the next thing.  I think that’s how all people who understand that this place we are isn’t the final version.

There it is, just a few reasons I’m happy to have a brother.  Now I’m going to change the date on this so it looks like I actually got it done on your real birthday.  Eh, forget it.  Everybody, it was yesterday.  I missed it by two hours here, four hours there.  Hope it was great.

Bos Update C:

Pictures as promised to follow…

We’ve been studying Nehemiah as our main text for our team.  Each week we look at a new chapter while trying to keep the continuity of the narrative intact.  God has really blessed us with the story of Nehemiah and so far it’s been a blue-print for our experience here (pardon the extreme summaries).  The first chapter is all about Nehemiah learning of the state of Jerusalem and responding through prayer and a broken heart.  Chapter two is his plan and bold ask to the King to allow him to go rebuild and then close inspection of the walls upon his arrival.  The third chapter brings opposition from the powers around Judah.  The fourth chapter sees conflict and oppression from within the Jewish community.  Nehemiah is an amazing leader and prayer warrior.  Each week as we’ve read on in the story of Nehemiah we see ways that God is using the text to speak to us hear.  For many on the team it was a huge risk to come on this trip.  Many parent’s aren’t too excited to sent their kids to Bosnia. “Isn’t there war there?” (For one student in particular, Charlene, we’ve had to continue to go before the authorities to ask permission to allow her to come with us.  Just today Nicole went with her to the Croatian embassy and pleaded over and over for them to allow her to submit for a visa so she can debrief with us.  Many times they said “no” or that we don’t have exactly what they want, but eventually they come around.  It’s looking good, not there yet, but looking good.) There is plenty of opposition to God’s “rebuilding” in Bosnia.  We face our own conflict within our community.  We are thankful for the model of Nehemiah who is often before God in specific prayer.

As I write this I am in the 9th floor (girl’s) apartment because once again we are locked out of the 15th floor (men’s) apartment.  After the open-mic night the team put on Tina and I arrived to find all the men outside the apartment door saying the lock wouldn’t turn.  After a couple hours of exhausting what little brain power we had, we gave up and slumber partied at the Bauer’s apartment and here.  The next day the locksmith came.  The company name: Hudini (although both guys that came had shirts on that spelled it differently.)  He was able to get in and temporarily fix the door, but said the problem would happen again if a part inside wasn’t replaced.  We decided to wait for the landlord to make the decision (and hopefully pay).  But, here we are on Tuesday now and we’re locked out again.  I think the landlord is in town now, so maybe this will all get worked out.  Fun side note: This time we’re locked out around 10am instead of midnight.  That means our cook has to use the 9th floor apartment.  Turns out we didn’t have all the pans and bowls that she needed, but with the help of some of the EUS staff we’ve got that under control.  Next step: plates….anybody?

I have been proud of the way our students are engaging and initiating with Bosnians.  I continue to wrestle with the tension between leading by example and stepping to the side to allow the students to work.  I think that pastoring and leading may not be the exact same thing, although there is plenty of overlap.

That’s all you get for now, enjoy the pictures.  Hopefully we’ll be able to update from Croatia.  Ciao.

You’ll see the night view from our room, Senad giving a little history lesson about the city, Nicole leading one of the English conversation groups, and our wonderful friend: Espresso.