Currently Cool

Some things I think are cool right now!

Three podcasts that are on my iPod:

1. The Accidental Creative
2. Killer Innovations
3. Inside PR

A neat book I read:

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky









And the hands-down coolest ever! You must check it out! Download it! Watch it! It will change your life!

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

My Chase

Do you think it's possible God is intentionally evasive with us so we will keep seeking?

I've always felt like he was evasive with me. I've never had from him directly what I felt like I needed, or at least what I wanted. I didn't like it. It made me grumpy, but compelled me forward somehow. I got tired and frustrated, but I guess I kept going. I didn't think it (what, I'm not sure) would take so long, but I must have kept going. Just recently I looked up to realized I had been running for a while now - chasing - for a long while. But I'm stronger, more fit and gaining endurance. The chase isn't painful now. Somewhere along the line I've gained capacity for the journey and the ability to run. It feels good and the journey seems to be of greater value than I had previously thought.

And perhaps we'll never really know him this side of heaven anyway. The Bible seems to reflect that possibility. But it's not like I haven't caught glimpses - I think. So fleeting its hard to know for sure. But then, even that is provocative.

Stuffies growing spikes

So we had just put the girls to bed and Rob & I were settling down with our computers (yes I know it's anti-social, don't bug us!) and Emily came out of their room. She stood in the hall and said, "I have to tell you something."

"Go to bed," Rob said.

"But I really have to tell you!" she insisted. Rob and I looked at each other and sighed.

"Okay, come here," I said.

"Um, Kaylee licked my guy (stuffie de jour) and she says it'll grow spikes where she licked it!" Emily complained.

"She says it'll grow spikes where she licked it?" I find myself seeking clarification a lot these days.

"Yah!" Emily said emphatically. Kaylee had by now trailed out of the room to listen to the interaction as well.

"Okay, give it to my and I'll clean it, so it won't grow spikes," I said as I took the stuffie and quickly rubbed it all over.

"Okay, thanks," Emily responded taking her toy back satisfied that I'd solved the crisis.

I wish all crises were that easy to solve.

I also wish I could make things grow spikes - that's cool!

Grown Up

As I child I always assumed when I grew up I'd understand stuff. You know, life, how it worked, who I was - all that stuff. I assumed I'd be competent and confident. That's how all adults seemed to me - like they knew what was going on. I never really did.

As I moved through my late teens into young adulthood, I kept waiting for this grown-up anointing, this grown-up thing, whatever it was, to become real. In my twenties I mollified myself that I wasn't really grown up yet.

But I took a look around recently, though. I'm 36 years old. I have twin four-year-old girls, a husband, a job, a house and a mortgage. I'm getting this unnerving feeling that I'm going to have to accept the fact that I'm grown-up. But what about this dispensation of understanding stuff? What about being competent and confident?! I'm worried it might not really happen after all. Not ever. Maybe all grown-ups don't feel like they have it all together. Maybe all grown ups don't know everything! What if this is as "all-together" as I'm ever going to have it?

Why didn't anybody tell me this?!

Currently On the Dresser

Currently on Emily and Kaylee's dresser there are a few strange items. I guess it's normal stuff for four-year-olds.

1. Two baby food jars growing grass that they did as a pre-school project.
2. One sunflower plant-pot growing two plants they got as party gifts from Olivia's 5th Birthday.
3. One small blue shell from a bird's egg we found. It's in with the plant's, but it's pretty hard to see. We'd found one on the way to the park with Grandmommy, but it got squished. This particular one I found on my way to soccer. I was by myself so I put between the eyes on Talking Tree for the girls to find on their way home.
4. Two wooden elephant piggy-banks made for them by their Rob's Uncle Don.
5. A magnetic photo holder with pictures of Olivia and their two pre-school friends Emily and Trinity.

That's all for now.

Deconstrutionist Christianity

I don’t know how I got this way. Maybe being raised a-religious, in a largely modern society, caused me to be more suspicious and critical of spiritual things than some.

I came to faith later in life at age 20. The tenants of the Christian faith were, and remain, compelling to me. But so much of Christianity seems like an ill-fitting structure superimposed on my life. At first I figured I was just learning. And so I was. But I couldn’t seem to grow into it all as I thought I should. I was confused, frustrated and sometimes heartbroken. Why wasn’t my relationship with God like other peoples?

Early on there were those around me who seemed to buck the system. People who professed to be followers of Christ, but that was where the following tendencies would end. They didn’t conform well to the expected behaviors of Christian culture. (The first that comes to mind was a New Zealander I met in Africa. People questioned his salvation!) But there have been others since. They each caught my attention with their stubborn refusal to stop thinking.

I’m a bit slow so it’s taken few bonks on the head, but slowly I started to realize that perhaps some of the aspects of Christianity that seemed ill-fitting weren’t necessary at all, despite admonitions to the contrary from the pulpit and other faithful followers.

Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry…” Luke 11: 46)

As I looked around I found others who had a similar sense that something wasn’t right in their hearts as they tried to follow Christ in the prescribed methods. It’s hard to find them because they find they are rebuked quickly for asking the wrong questions, so they learn to stop asking.

It seems trendy now – to shed the Western cultural elements of this faith system in search of something truer and more authentic. I think it was a missionary friend of mine, who was questioning some of those things good Christians aren’t supposed to question, and I who started to refer to this process as “deconstruction”. We’re deconstructing our faith. Pulling off elements, examining them against scripture and personal experience and then tossing an over-abundance of them into the trash.

It’s unbelievably freeing.

Is it possible I can be a Christian – an orthodox Christian who believes the claims of the ancient creeds – and not hold with some of these lame, mindless, cookie-cutter western evangelical expressions of faith?

Yes, yes it is.

The problem, of course, the scary thing about shedding these extraneous trappings of something truer and deeper is that it exposes you. Those of us who have wildly flung the superficial cultural elements of practicing faith aside, pause at some point and find ourselves faced with the uncomfortable question, Do I really believe? When you get to the point of asking that question, really asking it, it’s a scary place because you don’t really ask any question for which the answer is self-evident. Not really. So after we’ve jettisoned the superficial, we are left with whatever is left.

Ah ha. Was it all just a rouse after all – this Christianity – this playing at church at following the rules? If it was, isn’t that worth discovering.

But what if it wasn’t all pretend, all role-playing, and meeting expectations, and fitting into a group, if it’s actually something else, isn’t that worth knowing too? And finding out what it is. What it really is? Not what they tell me it’s supposed to be?

I guess in some ways I’m just an adolescent in the faith. And so I am, 16-years a Christian now, doing all those things normal teenagers do – trying to find out who I am, and moreover, who God is.

What does it mean?!

I was at work today - at my NEW job - and I wandered into the mail room - at my NEW job - and saw this! Do you see it? There! On top of the cupboard? The little red box? Do you recognize it? It's an Operation Christmas Child shoe box! What it's doing there?! Did it follow me? How did this happen? What does it mean?!