Here and Now

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.  -Laurence Sterne, novelist and clergyman (1713-1768) 

Art is powerful.  Sometimes a song will move me in amazing ways, sometimes an image.  I found a great image painted by the artist  James Tissot  of  Jesus on a mountain alone  for a graphic I used and I started looking for more images by Tissot - they're all in the public domain.  Search "James Tissot" Jesus and you'll find he did something like 350 watercolors of the life of Jesus and I don't know how many other works depicting the life of Jesus. But, for whatever reason, these two  grabbed me, brought tears to my eyes - they're powerful to me - the juxtaposition of what could have been and what was - of what IS - I guess... Tears in my eyes even as I type this... Here's  a great catalog of Tissot's work. I'm downloading the paintings slowly, I'll be savoring them, pouring over them, probably crying more... What has moved you recently?  How has God touched your life recently? * Or, possibly two thousand, as there's ...

...when it's the new  Kindle Fire  ... cnet says  it's the price, stupid . Here's the thing.  Nobody needs a tablet, right?  I mean, really, what do you NEED a tablet for?  Sure, the Fire is literally HALF the machine the iPad is (far less memory, half the apps, no camera, no 3G, etc.), most people are going to say, "So what?"  It's 200 bucks.  Can I watch a movie?  Cool.  Read a book?  Cool.  Do some cool stuff on it?  Cool.  Can't video chat?  Meh, most people don't anyway...  Can't call somebody?  Um, I have a cell phone - works pretty darn well, too... That tablet thingy would be a pretty big phone...  Though... it's smaller than the iPad too, and that's a pretty big strike against it, in my book.  I've been looking at tablets and the two biggest factors that I want (that NOBODY else seems to care about, I get it) is internal memory (I'd like 128 GB, thank you very much) and a full 8...

So this was posted on Failblog some time ago ...I came across it via another blog. But it really got me thinking.  Is it a fail?  Really?  I mean, if that's the ONLY things going on at the church, well, there's room for some other kind of discipleship programming, but... it sure does read like a church trying to minister to the needs of the broken and hurting in the community - and then, on Sunday, bringing the message of the hope of the Gospel. Yeah, I get the irony.  Yeah, it's funny.  Yeah, it's the truth in every community I know.  So, no, it's really not so funny, is it? So, what are you doing for the broken and the hurting? How about proclaiming the joyous future?

You would want  to know that? (Click to see the whole picture...) So...it's not bad enough that Wii Fit will tell me my "Health Age" or whatever (I'm 436, by the way), now I can figure out when I'll die? (What, last month?  Stupid online calculators....) Facebook...keep up with long lost friends...and figure out stuff you were never meant to know in the first place... Sigh....

From  Bonkers World

Liked the Old Cylons...but the new ones really are better. Sorry guys...

Today, Seth Godin writes this on  his blog  today: If you're going to count on the competition to bring out your best work, you've surrendered control over your most important asset. Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path--and holding back when the rush isn't going where you want to go. If you're dependent on competition then you're counting on the quality of those that show up to determine how well you'll do. Worse, you've signed up for a career of faux death matches as the only way to do your best work. Self motivation is and always will be the most important form of motivation. Driving with your eyes on the rear view mirror is exhausting. It's easier than ever to measure your performance against others, but if it's not helping you with your mission, stop. I can't help but hear that as a challenge to churches to JUST STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO THE CHURCH DOWN THE STREET.  Who cares if they have a great choir/...

It's a different time - I've said this before and I'll say it until I die - we can complain and rail against the fact that Christians shouldn't be part of the consumer culture - and that we shouldn't treat church like we do laundry detergent - but the reality is most people ARE living the consumer culture and DO treat their relationship to their church like their relationship to the doctor, their grocery store or any other service they subscribe to: if they can get "better" service somewhere else, they will.  We live in that culture, and we can do what we can to affect change within our own churches, but if we are going to evangelize – if we are going to bring in people who are far from God and try to connect them with the Living Water, we have to think differently now. I was reading  this article  a while ago – “5 Must-Know Facts About First-Time Guests” where this guy is basically observing our culture and the church and saying there’s a disconnect....

...it's Mark Hamill's birthday today... And he's...60...sigh, I'm getting old...

Pet Parents?  Sigh... When did we go from being owners to Pet Parents?  I mean... I like my dog and all, but...I'm not her "daddy" - I just don't get it.  But clearly I'm becoming the minority - even among the people I know who have pets, lots of them treat their dogs and cats like children... That's just weird to me... Am I alone?

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

From Poul Anderson's short story "Esau": A good manager is a very high-powered man, and we need a lot of him. But at bottom, he is a routineer; his aim is to make things go smoothly. No, for the wild places you need an innovator in charge, a man what likes to take risks, a heterodoxy if she is female -- somebody what can meet wholly new problems in unholy new ways -- you see? Poul Anderson is a writer, so he's supposed to use language in really interesting ways - and, of course, to have really interesting ideas.  Andy Stanley has talked about Managers and Leaders like this, "Managers manage to sameness, leaders lead to change"*  From another blog** I found that  Stephen R. Covey says, "Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." Thomas J. Peters says, "Management is about arranging and telling." So - I know a lot of managers of churches.  You know, keeping the program...

Sigh - I discovered another "go to" website - it's all geek techie stuff (well, almost all) but it just resonates with me.  Here's a sample cartoon and commentary following about why it resonates... Bonkers World I mean, it's funny, yeah, but I think there's some truth in it too - at least in how I "feel" about the different tech companies (I don't know Oracle much, but the others I do).  Amazon is very traditional, top down, Google is very NON-traditional top down, Facebook is very relational and both Microsoft and Apple hold you hostage in different ways, so, yeah, that works for me... But here's how it resonates with me a little more deeply.  Which one of these is your church org chart?  I've known pastors who kind of use either the Microsoft (threat) model or the Apple (center of the universe) model. And, hey, maybe it's none of these. But what is your church ORG CHART like?

I'm an old, old man...

Yesterday, Lori took Rachel and Elie to the doctor - Elie to get the flu mist up the nose (waaaay better than getting a shot - which took like three adults and 15 minutes and a chase down the hall I think last year...sigh...), and Rachel to get checked out because she's been sick...again...  Rachel has croup and a sinus infection...again...sigh... But that's not the point. I got a text from Lori that said, "Still waiting for Rachel to be seen.  El was supposed to be back at school half hour ago."  I texted back that I would come get her. When I picked up Elie, she said, "Yea!!  I get to go back to school!" Now, I'm no expert, but 8 year-olds aren't supposed to like school that much, are they?  So I'm like, "Why do you want to go back to school?" And she said for two reasons, one (sort of) negative, one positive: First, she didn't want any homework, so the quicker she got back to school, the less she would miss and the le...

Okay, yeah, there are a million reasons why churches fail, I know.  I can't get to the heart of all of them, but the other day Seth Godin posted another blogpost about artists (his lynchpin term) - this time the difference between  talent and vendors  and it struck me that a good bit of this applies to churches.  Yeah, probably not a one-to-one correlation, but here's the heart of what struck me:  ...if you treat an artist like a vendor, you'll often get mediocre results in return. On the other hand, if you treat a vendor like an artist, you'll waste time and money. Vendors happily sit in the anonymous cubes at Walmart's headquarters, waiting for the buyer to show up and dicker with them. They willingly fill out the paperwork and spend hours discussing terms and conditions. The vendor is agnostic about what's being sold, and is focused on volume, or at least consistency. While the talent is also getting paid (to be in your movie, to do consulting, to coach y...

I think I've been on these roads...

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.  -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945)

Sunday morning was ten years since the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the flight that crashed near Shanksville.  Sunday morning was a worshipful time for us. We invited representatives from the fire departments and the police forces of the area as well as the boy scouts to join us in worship - we wanted to acknowledge them and pray for them as we acknowledged and commemorated the solemn occasion of September 11th as a Nation.  I guess a lot of people did that.  I know there were services and ceremonies all over the country... We had a really powerful time of prayer Sunday morning.  But we only kind of planned it.  We asked Ray to sing a simple, quiet worship song (he chose a Willet song  Come to Jesus  which came about to him in such a God way anyway, but a story for another time) and we asked people to speak out names of those who serve - police, fire, EMT, volunteer, military - in any way put their lives out there for others. ...

So I had this conversation a few months ago with a guy who has since gone off to college - but it went something like this: Me: "Ideas are free.  Ideas have always been free.  Everybody has ideas.  You hear people say them all the time.  Wouldn't it be great if...and then there's the idea."  And then we started talking about music and the internet and stuff and how now that digital music is available, the genie is out of the bottle and so many people can get songs for free - often illegally - but more and more bands are releasing songs into the wild legally, too, especially independent artists. The guy said something like, "Maybe because they can't sell them they put them out there for free." Me: "No, they know that the song is the idea, and the idea is free.  The song is what sells you on THEM  They are the product, the song is just the idea, and ideas are free."* You hear the song or see the video on YouTube or NoiseTrade or a thousa...

Yeah, you've seen the posts here - they can go on forever...and sometimes say nothing.  And I noted in a footnote (yes, a freaking footnote* ) in  this post  that blogger is dying according to  this article .  My friend Andy says he gets all the news he needs from Twitter.  Really? But don't you have to sort through all that ""Hey, I'm at the mall" or whatever junk too?  I know it's all who you follow, right?  Maybe I don't know who to follow...wait, that sounds like the beginning of a sermon...  Sigh, I gotta figure this Twitter thing out.  I think the week I signed on to blogger - or was it myspace...or facebook...can't remember - anyway, I know I HAVE a twitter account - I signed up...  I had no idea what it was then... I have less of an idea now... (except this is like 6 tweets long...holy cow!) Can you do footnotes in Twitter? *EDIT - I just checked the character count in that FOOTNOTE - too long to be a tweet - this ...

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They're a different breed of dog. -Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885)  I would say this: pleasure is a moment, happiness is season, joy is lifetime.  Pleasure quickly passes.  Happiness lingers, but fades.  Joy is a choice, a way to live, a perspective on life that depends little on either pleasure or happiness.  And it's the rarest breed of dog there is.

If you're getting tired of stuff about Seth Godin's idea of Tribes...I don't care.  It's my blog.  It's what I'm writing about...  Go read  Michael's Blog * or  Aaron's Blog * and come back tomorrow.  Well, might be more of the same ** but check back anyway. I had a realization while I mowed the grass about this  tribes  stuff (makerbot post) that while these are  my people - I AM a part of these tribes - these geeky, fringe, nerdy tribes - the Star Wars, model railroad, guitar playing, Lord of the Rings reading, movie making, computer grokking, role-playing gaming, fantasy reading, Doctor Who watching tribes, I'm a FRINGE member of these FRINGE tribes. Here's what happened.  The same conversation where I realized that I'm not one of the cool kids, Lori and I were talking about leisure time and disposable income - neither of which we have.  But we talked about what we would do if we had both - lots of free time and lots o...

After a Dependent Survey** it has been determined that my blog now sucks 40% less than it used to. I mentioned a while ago  that I have gotten rid of some regular features  that even *I* didn't really care about and am again posting semi-regularly so, it seems to me, that the blog sucks a little less than it used to. So, read on, if you will.  It's a blog, I know, which really is something like this: **Yeah, most surveys are IN dependent, I know, but here's how I did MY survey. I asked myself, "How much less do you think your blog sucks?" Answer? "Maybe 40% less." There you have it. A dependent survey...

Seth Godin had a post Thursday on his blog that was, at least in part, about signs.  Go there . Seriously.  It's about truth and transparency.  Good stuff. If you don't read Seth's blog, you should.  His posts are really short, to the point, and very engaging (the one from  earlier Thursday  actually made me laugh out loud in McDonalds while I was waiting between my dentist appointment and my tire appointment). Best of all, they'll make you think - even when you don't agree with him.

...no

I've had a lot of nerd interests for a long time.  If you really know me, you already know that.  I'm into model trains, army men - well, miniature anything, really, role-playing games, Star Wars, computers - hardware and software (networking is still a mystery to me, though), movies (especially how they're made), guitar stuff, and on and on... So I'm tooling around online and I see a link to  MakerBot ** - which is so cool...'cause it combines a bunch of my nerdiness all in one - you can get the MakerBot as a kit to assemble yourself (and save a LOT of money, which appeals to my cheap self), and you use it to make 3D plastic miniatures, which I'm all about, of course, and you use 3D computer modeling to create the 3D plastic models...woohoo!!  The video in the link shows them using a   kinect  as a 3D scanner to create a model of the webshow's host.  Is that cool or what?**** Yeah, the final products are still kind of crude.  But...you g...

Last Thursday, reacting to Steve Jobs' announcement that he was leaving as the head of Apple, DorkTower posted this: I was telling Lori that I remembered the Newton, though I thought it came out earlier than it did (really, like around  1990 ?**) and how the strip said something about the Newton and being one of the "six people who get the reference..." And I said, "I got it.  I remembered the Newton. I'm one of the six.  I'm one of the cool kids." And she said, "It was on DorkTower.  One of the cool kids?  Really?" And I said... "Um...okay...yeah, I'm...one of the six...really nerdy people who remembers the Newton." But in light of tomorrow's post****, this is my tribe.******  These are my people.  And, yes, I was happy  to be one of the "in people" on DorkTower.  Even if I'm not, as Lori was so very quick, yet gentle, to point out, "one of the cool kids." If you don't get, you don...