Taking A Break

In recent years I have become more interested in the concept of Sabbath.  There was something holy about stepping away from work for a day, not letting yourself be consumed by creating something else but enjoying what you already had.  I haven't always done this very well in my life, as it often seems like I am working seven days a week.

But I do find different ways of Sabbath-keeping to be helpful as well.  Taking a vacation in which I don't cook and we sleep at a hotel and we just enjoy being together as a family.  Having periods where I repeat old sermon series or classes, so that I am not consumed with having to continually write more and more, instead reading and studying for no discernable end but just the joy and imagination it leads to in regards to faith. 

And so with this in mind, on this last day of May, it's time to take a little break from this blog.  It's been good for my creative juices to seek to write every day, and I will pick this back up again in a few weeks.  But lately I feel as if I have been writing for the sake of writing.  True writers say that this is important, that it's something you have to do.  But I'm not a true writer.  I don't write for a living, it's not what defines me, and seeking to do this at times has kept me from doing other things that are likely more important for me. 

I know that nobody actually reads this, which is a good thing...it gives me the room to speak about things that I have to purge from my mind.  Nobody is here to judge me unless I let them in.  But I think I've just about accomplished what I set out to do when I started, and so why keep on going just to do it?   

So, I'll see you in a few weeks.  Adios. 

Vote For Summer

"See, with me, it will be summer all year long.  Vote for Summer!"  

Summer is now here. The kids have been out of school for a week, we've already had a nice mini-vacation, and any day that it doesn't get into the 80s now seems like a day that is wasted.  We're quite excited to be here, you know...having 21 inches of rain this month (the same length as my daughter when she was born) is now making us appreciate these blue skies and heat.

Of course, summer also will soon mean HOT.  And we've already determined that our air conditioner probably isn't going to make it through another summer, so we are already getting ready to have a new air conditioner here in the midwest.  There's another $5000 bucks down the drain.  Not long and we'll be tired of the sun, praying for more rain, sick of the mosquitos and the sunburn and the joys of going from the icebox to the over.

But let's be thankful, everybody.  Summer isn't my favorite, season, that would be fall.  But I'm excited to not drive my bus regularly for a few months, I'm glad that the kids can relax, and I am fired up for some other little short trips (no big ones this year after buying a new bed, windows, and a/c).  Yep, I'm glad that summer is here.  Vote for summer!   

Everything She Wants, annotated

For some reason I have not been able to get this song out of my mind in recent weeks.  It's not a great song, and as we will soon see the video is hilarious.  But kind of like Last Christmas, it's so poppy and fun that I love it.  

0:07:  Never a good sign when people are trying to actively leave the video 7 seconds into it...

0:17:  Oh no.  It's the 'We're gonna make this a concert video, but use the studio recording, and just overdub some crowd noise' method of video production.  I think we shoulda known that this group wasn't going last much longer.  

0:22:  WHEEEE!!!  It's one of those money cyclone things!  I love those things, though I've never seen them.  They bring out both greed AND human dexterity issues, all in one hateful machine.  

0:31:  Just once when it came to Wham! I would have loved to have seen Andrew Ridgely be the center of attention.  But he's the Tubbs to George Michael's Crockett, I guess.

0:35:  Oh.  I guess that's why the above is true...

0:58:  "She".  That witch over there.  Yep, that's the money grubbing golddigger I'm talking about.  

1:27:  Gotta give mad props to his hair in this video.  That is some serious body that I never had.  

1:33:  Andrew Ridgely, everyone!  

1:48:  "Don't look at the eclipse!  Don't look at the...DOH!"

1:53:  I mean, what is he looking at here?  Is he also the lighting tech for this tour?  Is this why Wham! didn't last, because they were needing better management?  All for the want of a good production crew...

2:03:  Round and round and round and round and round and round and

2:06:  I can do it too!!!!

2:14:  Air punch!  Hi-keeba!  

2:22:  OK, we gotta talk here about something real...this is a serious diss track, and in the middle of this sidekick Andrew starts laughing and pointing and I DON'T THINK YOU GET THE SERIOUS NATURE OF THE SITUATION, ANDREW.  

2:31:  Well, at least they were married in their screwed up situation.  Gotta give them credit for that.

2:55:  Wait, did Andrew just forget the words to 'oh, oh'?  No wonder George ditched him.

3:16:  Money shot for the ladies...

3:31:  FIGHT THE POWER!  FIGHT THE POWER!

3:40:  Um, George, can you speed up the dance?  Let's try that again...

4:20:  DANG.  Them Brits know how to high jump!  Maybe they didn't break up because Andrew was holding him back...maybe Andrew quit because he wanted to join the 1984 Olympic team!

4:47:  Knees up!  Knees up!  You're not gonna make the Olympic team if you can't run, Andrew!

4:56:  Can I admit that I haven't ever gotten this far in the song, that I've changed it by this strange part at the end?  

6:02:  I got nothing else.  I think I've seen these same shots of Andrew forgetting words and a random concert crowd shot and a camera flashing and a woman's hand reaching for money and people jumping around about 300 times now...I'm outta here.  

Aladdin, the Movie

My family and in-laws and niece bought tickets to go see the new Aladdin movie today.  I had no desire to see this movie, but because here in the city on holidays you have to buy tickets to movies early, we bought one for my sister-in-law, who at the last moment decided she couldn't go because she had nobody to watch her two youngest kids.  I volunteered to watch the kids and let her go but that was not acceptable, so we had an extra ticket.  So I decided to go.  It was at one of those newer theater that have reclining heated seats but we were near the front, and about the only way to watch it was on your back. 

Solid 6, I think. Costumes were great, and at least I didn't fall asleep.  But Will Smith as the geanie?  Ugh . I would have preferred the corpse of Robin Williams being revived for this movie.  And, as in most mega-budget Hollywood movies, the story just spun out of control in the second act.  Why is it that they no longer can create a viable ending without fourteen twists, eleven improbable escapes, and at least two musical numbers and a magical creature?  I really wish I had chased my nieces around Wal-Mart for an hour with a few thousand dollars in damages to account for. 

I suppose that there's a reason I don't really like movies anymore.  They're just not that interesting.  Movies think they have to resolve a whole world-creating plot within two hours.  TV can take years to finish the story, and even then sometimes it's not enough.  Maybe next time they can sell my ticket and I can wander around Home Depot instead. 

Visitors

Growing up Church of Christ I was taught that the 'five acts of worship' were the Lord's Supper, the Offering, Prayers, Scripture reading, and Singing.  I capitalize them because it was thought that these were five almost sacred acts, much like the 7 sacraments or the 5 steps of salvation.  In reality, however, it was more likely that Churches of Christ were known for a symbolic interpretation of the Lord's Supper, baptism in a baptistry, preaching, topical sermons with lots and lots of Scriptures, singing without instruments and with song books and a song leader, and overt masculinity in the public worship and leadership of the church.

I mention all this because years later most Churches of Christ are still like this.  But not all.  Being on vacation today we went to the late service of a larger suburban Church of Christ.  I knew that they advertised this service as being 'instrumental' and I wanted my kids to experience a slightly different experience than what they were used to.  As such, then, it was a bit hard for me as I am firmly in middle age.  I'm also one of those analytical/deconstructive people who look to pick out differences from what I know, much like those kids' puzzles where they ask 'what are the 10 differences between the two pictures of the bear on the log flue?'  I really want to worship and praise God and learn from the lesson, but part of me was thinking too much about what was happening. 

I am not speaking about these things in terms of judgment.  I've come to believe that there are different varieties of worship that are valid, even if not everything is good.  Many of our debates in the church have been more about style than they are about Scriptural truths.  But I do have preferences, especially when so many of the things we have done are Good, and often when we try to change things we get out of our lane.  It's like taking somebody who is excellent in making cinnamon rolls and asking them to become a barbeque master.  Generally speaking, my experience is that we are terrific usually when we are singing together out of a songbook as a congregation.  But we aren't as good with guitars, with powerpoints that have words on the screen, with singing the same praise 'new' praise chorus a dozen times that the worship leader just learned the week before and the congregation has no idea about the melody.  It's not that we have to be bad at these things...but it's that we struggle to be good. 

So this congregation today had a few guitarists warming up as we came in, and they soon began singing a more familiar worship song.  It wasn't anything unexpected, except that the leader of the band and singers was a woman.  I would guess that it is easy for many of us traditionalists to accept a band than it is a woman leading that band.  Throughout the service she would occasionally read Scripture or encourage people to sing or once (strangely) chide the congregation for drawing on the green envelopes. 

Communion wasn't all that different than normal, though there were women who came front to pass trays down the aisles.  Not sure that's a problem Biblically, because isn't passing trays an act of service, and hasn't our hypermasculinity told us that women are there to serve?  But then for some that would be a problem still, because women (according to many men and women) are meant to be not seen nor heard.  A woman also led the prayer for the offering tray.  But a man preached the sermon, a topical sermon about the Holy Spirit that was solid and filled with a lot of Scriptures, and a man made the announcements and a man (presumably one of the elders) spoke of prayer concerns and led the final prayer. 

My son enjoyed the service; in particular he liked the songs and the fact that the communion wafer was already pre-cut.  My niece, who, rarely goes to church, noted that the songs were OK but whoever was running the powerpoint projector wasn't keeping up and many of the words on the screen never matched whatever it was were supposed to be singing.  That's often a problem I have noticed in churches that have gone away from songbooks...if you don't know the songs (about half were unknown to me), you'd better at least know the words, and if the words on the screen are wrong, you're kinda left in limbo.  Of course, it's a holiday weekend so perhaps the normal people in charge were not there...but it's still not the most singer-friendly way for those of us there who want to praise God.  My wife, who's likely far more conservative about these things than I am not based so much on Scripture but based on how she is used to things, wasn't the biggest fan.  In particular, as music played during the communion, she leaned over to me and said that it felt like she was at a wedding and we were there to be entertained. 

In the end, the reality of whether this was a Good service was whether it a)honored and glorified God and b)edified thoes who were there.  The first, I think, was done...God was at the center of the sermon, the songs that we sang, and the attitude of those who led.  I don't know that there was anything that unBiblical, though some would find things they don't like based on their understandings.  The second was likely true as well for most, but weak people like myself were likely thinking too much through the service for our own good.  Are we edified if we are thinking about whether everything is proper according to our traditional perspective of how things ought to be? 

More and more in the future we will likely see churches adopting new styles like this.  It gets us away from the traditions that we fought for as vitally important all those years.  But that's not always a bad thing...sometimes we need the Spirit moving us forward from where we have always been.  Yet for late adapters like many of us in Churches of Christ, that comes with a lot of growing pains.  It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. 

A Royal Day

Today is the first day of our mini-vacation for Memorial Day weekend. We came to Kansas City, decided that the risk of the weather was worth it, and got tickets for the family to see the Royals today.  We spent more money here for food than the tickets had cost on the secondary market, but one rule of bringing kids to a baseball game is feed them whatever they want.  Baseball for kids is boring...I walked around much of the upper deck with my son because God bless him, he tried, but just didn't really care that much and said that his bony rear end was hurting from the uncomfortable seats.  My daughter pays more attention to the people around her, and does more to try and enjoy the game, but tomorrow night's soccer game will be much more enjoyable for them than seeing a baseball game. 

The Royals lost, of course, 7-3.  They really are not very good at all.  Their starting pitching is getting lit up, they have several guys who are regularly in the lineup who probably could not hit me if I was pitching, and their good young talent is still really young in a game in which experience counts as much as any sport.   So it's gonna be a long year. 

But I still enjoy going.  I will always have a special place in my heart for baseball, though I have been influenced by our culture that wants everything to happen a lot more quickly.  And the Royals will always continue to be my favorite team, even though it's like that they have another 26 years before they win the Series again (or even make the playoffs).  You gotta stay loyal to your team, not be like these little turds who throw on their Yankees gear because they liked that the Yankees won back in the 90s. 

The Royals are losing again tonight.  They will be lucky to avoid 100 wins again, but maybe they will get some new leadership and these young players will get experience. 

The annoyance of the day and the fun days to come

Today, for the second time in the last three weeks, my basement started to leak again.  The torrential rainfall, coming down hard upon the already-saturated ground, meant that there was nowhere else in the backyard for the rain to go, so it ended up in my basement.  It's not much really...after I mopped it up and wrung it out it was only a few inches in the bucket.  And it's mostly stopped now, and I don't think it's supposed to rain anymore tonight.  But it's still annoying, and it makes me nervous about bad things that won't happen, like the entire basement wall caving in. 

Of course, things like this are a reminder of how blessed (and lucky) I really am.  We've had, what, 15 inches of rain in the past three weeks?  Out on my bus route (school's over now BTW) there's people I would pick up that are mostly stranded in their houses because water is over the roads.  There are other people in my town who are lower in elevation or who have bad grading or for whatever reason have inches of water pouring into their basement, not just a few drops.  Our house sits relatively high and out of trouble, and for that I am thankful.

And then tomorrow we are planning to go to Kansas City for a fun few days.  See a soccer game, go to Worlds of Fun (maybe), see the Royals play (maybe), and swim and hang out at grammy and papa's house.  Might a little bit more water get into the basement?  Perhaps...but in the end, there's not much I can really do about it at this point to stop it.  So why not go and have fun with the wife and the kids?  Why worry about the unstoppable force of nature?  A hundred years from now this house will be long gone, replaced by a futuristic Wal-Mart or buried under a glacier or a barren wasteland of toxie waste.  Nobody will remember that once there was a slight annoyance of some rain in my house. 

Think Local

It doesn't matter which brand of news one turns to, each of them obsesses about news that is far away from here.  Whiny democrats, a president who obfuscates the truth, troubles with other countries, natural disasters around the world.  Things far away from us, and we get in a big tizzy everywhere we go.

Around here the flood waters continue to rise, wiping out crops and even a few homes.  Our city streets continue to crumble because of lack of maintenance, and families continue to split apart due to divorce and abuse.  Few of these things make any kind of Big News coverage of course, until people start dying or homes get swept away live on a helicopter shot. 

But these things are far more important to our daily lives than whatever Dimwit Donnie and the clowns around him continue to do.  Why don't we think more about these things?  Why don't we see the broken nearby and heal where we can?  Why don't we ensure that our families are loved?  Why don't we sandbag here and now to keep the flood waters out? 

Years ago I started having to wear contacts to see things far away, but in recent years I have had trouble seeing things up close due to an astygmatism (I think that's how it's spelled).  Take the contacts out, and I see just fine up close, but I'd rather keep wearing my contacts and then struggle with seeing things nearby.  Isn't this how our vision for the world around us is?  We'd rather take the trouble to see far off than see things nearby. 

The Grossest With The Mostest

Today was the last day of school, and this means that after our routes today and again tomorrow we get to clean the interior of our buses.  Yea.  9 months of stinky, dirty, sloppy kids on the buses, and with the exception of sweeping out buses a few times a week, we don't do much to really clean the inside of the buses.  Honestly, they are kinda gross.  I do more than most drivers, windexing the inside of the windows 2-3 times a year, but the moment they get fogged up, combined with all the dusty we raise up, and then dirty fingers drawing pictures of penises and screaming 'HELP ME', they are just as nasty as they had been before. 

This is the third year in which I have done this job, and so my first job each year is to clean the space between the seat and the wall.  This doesn't sound so bad until you realize that many of these children are used to stuffing their trash down into the cracks of their couches, and this is little different.  So for almost an hour, you scrub out the candy, the wrappers, the pens, the occasional coins (18c today!), and almost anything else.  And your hands are just covered with a black goop by the time you are done, it's so nasty. 

After taking a well-deserved hygiene break, you then get down on your hands and knees and with a small broom sweep out the cracks and nooks of the floor to get all the dust off; eventually, you sweep everyhing towards the front of the bus, pick up the large pieces of debris, and then eventually sweet the dust and hair and other unknown into the wind.  This ought to be an EPA violation, but somehow it's fallen through the cracks. 

Then there's the wiping down every interior surface for germs...ceiling, seats, ledges, wheel wells, etc.  There's cleaning each window. There's the fun exercise of hanging on for dear life while trying to get all the bug goop off the front of the bus.  There's taking the shop vac to the area around the drivers' seat.  There's getting wet wipes out to clean the various cables, knobs, dashboards, and anything else up front.  There's opening up all the undercarriages and spraying 9 months worth of south-central Kansas county road dust.  And then, after yet another sweeping, there's a mopping of the floor. 

It's all really kinda sickening, but bus driving has never been the most glamorous of jobs.  I don't know that I've ever heard of any prestige bus drivers, who have a whole cleaning crew up to take care of any spills and messes.  If there were, maybe I'd be a bit more proud, though, and so my God givesi me the job of cleaning up the stink of our town's best and brightest. 

Thinking about a nap

Sunday afternoon, wife and kids have cleared out to go to a movie, I'm home alone for a few hours by myself.  It's been another long week doing church work and driving a school bus and yesterday I took an hours nap and today might do the same.  I never did much in the way of naps until a few years ago, and now they are some of my favorite things on earth. 

I am starting to appreciate the idea of getting older physically.  There will come a day in which people will look at me in my decrepitness and say, oh, he's old, he can't do as much.  And part of me will be offended, and part of me will be glad that they decide to lift up that box instead of thinking that I will do it.  I've always said that I want to keep working as long as I can, because I would be bored otherwise...but sitting around and falling asleep as I watch crap cable news holds a certain kind of appeal.

As does being arrogantly set in my ways!  Yep, I'm also looking forward to that time when I think I've seen it all and done it all and will grumble about 'these kids' and 'liberals' and 'dadgum gadgets' that I can't easily use.  I'll still think Angry Birds was the best app ever created and Arbys makes the best sandwiches and America is the Greatest Place On Earth, and nothing will be able to tell me otherwise. 

Yep, I think it's about time for a nap today.  Many more to come.

Johnny Cash and 'What Is Truth?'

Tonight I came across a fascinating little hour on Netflix about when Johnny Cash went and played at the Nixon White House in 1970.  Johnny Cash was a man of his time and was likely very conservative in temperament, but he'd been through enough experiences to help him see that there were many people out there who were suffering, and that the 'silent majority' was not nearly as noble as they wanted to think themselves to be.  So while he was there he sang a little song that I am ashamed that I had never heard before called 'What Is Truth?' 

It's not a loud and angry anthem that protesters rallied around like 'Blowin' in the Wind' and so this is why it's mostly forgotten.  But it very carefully challenges those who think themselves righteous to consider why there are genuine protests, and that unless one truly lives the truth, then we shouldn't be surprised when everything goes off the rails. 

I'd still like to consider myself conservative.  I don't think that many of the 'liberal' or progressive answers will fix the problem.  But I do believe that conservatism needs to be challenged.  If, as our current president claims, we need to be 'making America great again', what does that mean?  Does it mean that we simply toss around our power and authority?  Or does it mean that we seek to be good and righteous?  If America is truly to be great, it ought to be able to stand up to pointed criticisms of what it has become...it ought to live up to the promises of its divine origins (if indeed that is what it is) by seeking to be a blessing to all people, not just the few. 

Johnny Cash wasn't the first to ask the question 'what is truth?' of course.  Pontius Pilate asked this question of Jesus when our Lord came to be a witness to the truth.  And as one who lived truth, he lived as a blessing to others, to preach good news to the poor, to live up the downcast.  Can we say that our country's conservative element has any concern to do this?  I don't think so. 

Listening to music at 48

I don't listen to music when I am trying to do some serious thinking, like when I am studying for or writing sermons or even writing on this piddly little blog.  I suppose I'm a bit too old to fully multi-task like my kids: my son plays Fortnite while watching YouTube videos, my daughter does homework (not all that well) while watching music videos or 24 hours in the lives of annoyingly charming families in Utah.  Perhaps I had this kind of gift or ability at one time, but most of my music listening at this point usually happens when I am doing routine tasks at the office or at home, like cooking, cleaning, administrative work, or such. 

For that reason I don't buy a whole lot of music these days; when do I really listen to it?  There's not very often I will buy anything new...occasionally a Steven Curtis Chapman or TobyMac album, or I will see a digital sale on Google Music of some album that I loved back in my high school and college days.  Even then, I rarely pay for it...I use my Google Reward points and buy when I have enough saved up or I decide to not rent a movie that my wife wants to watch. 

But I do listen occasionally, and as I get older my music tastes are not much different than when I was younger.  I'm one of these old farts now who listens to what young people like (being around my daughter and her friends, or the kids who ride my bus) and I immediately think that is crap...back in my day we had real music.  90% of us become our parents when it comes to listening to music some day.  My mom used to talk about listening to Doris Day, who died this week in her 90s.  I talk to my kids about listening to music and half of the people I followed (the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Tom Petty) are dead.  We don't replace the dead people we liked...we just double down on how good they were before and pretend that music doesn't and shouldn't change. 

Growing up Church of Christ, I see also how we fall into the same patterns.  Many of us who grew up in the church for generations sang the same kinds of songs...whether or not theose songs were really good was not the point.  Many of them were, filtered as they were through the quality guage of time (how many of Fanny Crosby's songs do we sing now?  I'm guessing most of them were not so good), but we sang them because at one point we identified with them as our music (even if in fact it was really our grandparents' music or our great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents' music). 

And so at one point in our church history the trailblazers of music came along and decided that hey, why can't we sing these other things?  Why can't we sing the same chorus 30 times in a row]?  Even some of the milder changes like praise teams seemed just as threatening to us traditionalists as those who were more radical and brought in the drum kits and guitars.  All along, we mumbled to ourselves (or screamed at others), this is crap...back in my day we had real music. 

Personally I am a big fan of singing without instruments in music and don't care much for praise teams...I think it engages more people instead of turning the service into a performance (which most of the other acts does, like praying or preaching).  And I believe time has enabled most bad songs (musically or lyrically) to be filtered out and discarded, while much of the modern music in worship has not had time yet to be though of as timeless.  But when I'm at my best, I'm long past thinking that everything else is crap, and only my music is 'worthy'.  Maybe I could be more tolerant towards my kids' music as well (though a lot of it is crap, to be honest).  But having patience with other kinds of music is perhaps one of those goals I need to set for myself in coming years.

Salvation, not Affirmation

There's been a thought running through my head recently that I think speaks to the current mission of the church in 2019: we need to stop preaching a gospel of affirmation and start preaching again the gospel of salvation. 

Somewhere along the way we started thinking that as people our need was to be affirmed in everything we do...and so whether it was about sex, drugs, careers, the pursuit of wealth, or 'following your heart' we decided that we are basically OK people, that we needed to be supported in doing what we wanted to do and that anybody who didn't affirm our desire was not really loving.  Of course this speaks to the world we live in today.  People can't bear to have somebody say that they are doing wrong, using against others the tired old expression 'don't judge me!' 

The problem with affirmation is that it often affirms sin.  I think that at one time this was mostly a 'liberal' issue, but I think conservatives have been affected as well.  We have a president who continually thinks of himself as a persecuted victim, because the mainstream media won't simply accept him at his word.  Taxes, collusion, obstruction...'nobody's ever had more problems than me!' he proclaims.  More than anything else, this said little man wants to be affirmed, and to not receive it akes him feel like a victim. 

The gospel of salvation, however, is far different.  It does not begin from the perspective that 'everybody's OK, they just need to feel good about themselves and don't feel guilty'.  Rather, it begins with the truth that everybody is NOT OK, that sin is the great problem, and that we can't fix this ourselves, no matter how much we think ourselves to be in the right.  Only Jesus Christ can affirm us, and he chooses to save us from oursleves.  Only in him can we really be righteous. 

I am starting to wonder whether the absolute need that many have to be feel affirmed is not one of the great problems of the modern age.  Scrdipture speaks of the need at times of rebuke and correction (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16-17), but how do you do this if you have to continually affirm them? 

As a child of my age I certainly don't want to be rebuked, and I do think that going back to the old manner of condemnation for just about everything 'different' was harsh and not in keeping with the gospel.  But the pendulum has swung too far, and I don't know that it's coming back anytime soon. 

Shadow Dancing, annotated

I know it's not cool to like disco...especially some of its most cheezy forms.  But I have always had a strong appreciation for the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, et al.  And then there is lost Bee Gee, Andy Gibb.  What would it have been like to be coming of age as your older siblings are destroying the musical world with Saturday Night Fever?  What would it have been like to have Victoria Principal throwing herself at you?  What would it have been like having everything in your life set up for success, but then not being able to resist cocaine?  That was the Andy Gibb experience.

He died far too young, and he could have been something amazing.  But at least we have Shadow Dancing.

0:08:  What was the stage designer thinking with these pillars?
0:12:  Leg twitch alert!  Elvis had only been dead weeks, and yet here comes somebody shakin' it all about.
0:18:  I would have have especially appreciated in one of his hand mic tosses if he had missed.  'Cuz I know it's all lip synced and everything, but I would have loved watching him try to recover.
0:28:  Evidence A that this is lip syncing...the mic is about 28 inches from his mouth, flying around, and the 1970s audio is perfect.  Sure.
0:49:  Poll: Which is bleached more white, his teeth or his sweater?  I go with the sweater, but it's gotta be close.
0:53:  Barry!  Robin!  Maurice!  When you have the Bee Gees as your backing group, that's gold.
1:12:  Uh huh!  Andy Gibb may have been a terrific performer, but singing all four parts on this show was probably not the best thing he could have done to convince us that this was his song, not Barry's.
1:28:  Take me to the bridge!
1:37:  The studio audience goes wild!!!
2:01:  Um, Mike, you might want to track Andy's head?  Keep it in the inset picture rather than cut off most of his face?  Mike?  You there?
2:14:  Odds are 600:1 at this point that the rest of the Bee Gees are in this studio.
2:36:  1970s feathered hair for both men and women.  Gotta say, I kinda dig that look, even though I'm bald.  Maybe my kids will do this someday for their Donnie & Marie tribute band?
2:43:  Soul alert!
3:13:  This performance gets less sexy as it goes on.  Incredible since it started on the sexy meter at .04.
3:25:  Finishing it out at this point even as the cocaine is calling from the green room is the sign of total professionalism, if you ask me.

When you're in the zone, the dangers await...

Tonight when I was preaching on the idea of 'praying that you don't fall into temptation' from Luke 22, I drifted into a state of consciousness that athletes know as 'the zone'.  It's really kind of hard to explain and I don't want to sound like that I'm extra holy or bragging or anything like that.  But it's like this...often when we preach, we preach what we have been studying on, we seek to connect with audiences, and we tell the truth the best that we can.  But sometimes, guided and prompted by the Spirit, we go somewhat further to this state of almost epiphany, where we just simply KNOW that this is true, there's nothing we can do to deny this; it's as real to us as our own existence and nothing can convince us otherwise.

Tonight I felt like this, though this can be dangerous.  When I preaching about temptation and the regrets that we feel when we fall into temptation, I felt almost a little bit too honest about all my failures, and after a moment I had to remind myself that preaching was not all about my own experience, but God working within all of us.  We might well confess far too much in a time like this, and people may look at us as the wicked people we really are (perhaps this would be better than putting us on a pedestal, however?), and it comes back to bite us in the end.  But when truth is flowing, where do you hold it back?

Curtains

Did you ever wonder how the old expression, "It's curtains for you!" came to be?  Usually it's an expression found in old gangster type movies that signify that somebody is about to be killed or done away with. 

It's really a silly expression when you think about it.  Figures of speech don't always make sense, but unless the bad guy is planning to wrap up his victim in curtains, or bash him over the head with a curtain rod, or take the drawstring and choke him out, what really is the threat here? 

I mean, who doesn't like nice curtains?  They block out the light, keep people from seeing in, make the rooms look a lot nicer?  Where's the danger?  Did the first person who said something like this have some traumatic childhood experience that made him think that bad stuff = curtains?  Did he have a long period of history where he worked in a curtain factory and he suffered its brutalities?  Where on earth did this come from?

I suppose there is a good reason that this expression has mostly disappeared from the vernacular.  "I'll kick your ___" is much more threatening, and "You're dead!" naturally has a sense of dread attached to it.  Language doesn't always change for the better, but this might be one good change.  I don't suppose that I'll be bringing this expression back with my kids anytime soon when they get in trouble or don't do well in school.  They'd only laugh at me if I did.

On a completely unrelated note, I have been putting up new curtains and curtain rods all day today after spending most of last night shopping for them. 

New Windows

We have lived in our little house for 13 and a half years, and in this 60-year old house we have lived with the original windows which would never open.  My wife hated it. 

And so, with our very sizable (for us) tax refund this year (it's about Obamacare subsidies, not Trump's tiny tax cut), she finally put her foot down and said that she wanted new windows.  I was fine with the idea...but she had to do the legwork of getting it done.  So she got four bids, settled on the one she liked, and a month after the windows were ordered today they came to install them.  While they still have to do some of the finishing work on the outside of the house, the new windows are now in. 

Once it gets warmer (today it only got up to 45 degrees...nice job, spring!) we can finally open our windows.  But tonight we are recognizing that we forgot one thing...we have no curtains!  We decided to ditch the old mini-blinds that we had over each of them, but we didn't get far enough in figuring out what we wanted to do before today. So tonight we sit here with wide-open views to the same world that can look at us.  No sex tonight, I guess...

But I'm really proud of my wife for getting this done.  I am usually the one who has to get these kinds of things done, but she has done a great job (with the exception of the curtains!) on this.  She, too, owns this house, and now she has put her stamp on it in a strong way. 

If Obamacare survives another year, I want a kitchen remodel.  Hopefully that will be our 2020 project.  By the time all is said and done our old house will be almost as good as new. 

The Rain

Over the past few weeks it has rained a lot.  And over the past two days it has rained to the point that flooding is becoming a problem.  I just looked at an image of the radar and it looks like a giant line of storms will be hitting us sometime during the middle of the night.  I suppose we are all thankful for the rain, but there is at least one part of my bus route that is underwater and there may be a few more tomorrow that I cannot reach. 

Years ago there was an old I Dream of Jeannie episode in which people started to believe that Major Nelson was able to control the weather.  A work colleague asked that he do something about his family farm somewhere in the south, and so Jeannie made it rain.  Unfortunately, at some point she forgot to turn off the rain and everything flooded.

It seems like this is how we sometimes think about rain and how we ask for it from God.  Here in the plains we can go weeks, even months, with nary a drop of rain, but we continue to pray for how it will quench the fields, the ponds, the streams.  And then amazingly God makes it rain...and rain...and rain.  We get caught up in a cycle of non-stop storms (especially in the spring) and we often end up with floods or hail or tornadoes that do more damage than the drought. 

I used to live on the Oregon coast, and there were two season: wet and dry.  Around the middle of October it would start raining, and in the middle of April it would stop.  I know it was more complicated than that, but I remember it raining parts of 21 days straight in the middle of winter one time, and how I thought I was going to lose my mind. 

As I sit here tonight the thunder keeps rolling around the skies, and the light rain that is falling makes it noises on the window.  I enjoy it, but I'm ready for it to be over...there's only so much we really can take, so hopefully they are right and it ends for awhile tomorrow.  But hopefully tomorrow won't be the last of it through the summer. 

The Unbearable Advancement of Tech

Tonight at our dinner table my 11-year-old son and I got into an interesting discussion about the growth and change of consumer technology.  Actually, we were talking about gaming consoles I had as a kid, from a simple 'pong' setup to the Atari 2600 and eventually into my adulthood with the original XBox and then the XBox One.  For most of my life gaming has meant computer gaming, whether on my friend Chris' Apple IIc or whatever desktops or laptops I have used over the years. 

I guess it got started somehow with a discussion about how YouTube is this version's generation of the VCR.  I remember our first Betamax, how my mother would approach it with all the caution of a police bomb squad coming upon an unmarked suitcase.  Generally I would have to program it for her when she wanted to watch a show (which was almost never); I told my son that there will come a day in which there is technology in my life that I look at in much the same way.  At this point in my life most technology for me is something that I have to learn, while he is still at the age where it simply comes naturally.  As kids we seem to be able to pick up almost anything and within five minutes figure something out; as we get older we have to think through the processes a little bit more. 

This conversation moved on to talking about computers, where I told him the horrors of having to boot up DOS with a floppy disc, and how I would then have to turn discs over and then change them based on whatever program I decided to run.  He seemed more horrified by the idea of having to flip the discs than anything, and so I told him that his most precious piece of current technology, his Switch, would within 10 years seem like something that was so lame and cheap.  Someday kids will grow up playing games within their fingers and eyes with little to no exteranl equipment, I believe...and so to have to handle an actual joy-con on his switch or have to wait a whole minute to boot up a game on the XBox will seem so primitive to his kids.  The world of Ready Player One will be as real as reality for future generations. 

I don't know that there's anything inherently good or bad about the power of this technology...it just is.  The moral question, of course, is how we use it.  Do we continue to let these things take over our lives?  Do we recognize that having them simply become a part of who we are as a person will be considered what humanity is all about?  I don't know where it will stop, and I laugh at futurists who try to tell us exactly what these things will look like...we have no idea.  Who would have thought a few years ago that we could carry around cheap, almost disposable tablets with access to almost any kind of entertainment? 

I'm curious about what the future holds.  I don't think that it's necessarily dystopian nor a new age of enlightenment.  It just will be what it is. 

Old Age Awaiteth

This weekend my sister-in-law came to visit with her two younger daughters, age 3 and 1.  I love my sister-in-law and my nieces; but wow, the big takeaway from this weekend is that I AM OLD.  Upon arriving last night the two rugrats were all over the place, and we were chasing and chasing and chasing and by the time it was bedtime last night, I was exhausted. 

Today I did not spend that much time with them, as I made excuses to do the relatively easy work of cleaning out gutters and mowing the yard.  But the time I did have with them, they continued to run me and the rest of the adults and my own children ragged.  I made sure to point out to my teenage daughter (who loves children and is very good with them, BTW), that kids are hard work.  I probably should have pressed a little bit further with this and gone into the and that's why you must not have any at this time.  

I am going to be hitting my half-century in just over a year.  And while I have been struggling with back problems and that may be one reason why I'm not at full speed when it comes to keeping up with the rugrats, I'm starting to realize that there's a reason why I can't keep up with these kids anymore.  They are too much for me because quite simply they are too much.  We are not designed to be raising kids (or grandkids) into our 50s.  I don't want to be going to my child's preschool program having to be led in with a walker; kids need parents who are mature enough to be adults, but not so mature as to be old. 

They are gone now; my sister-in-law was going to stay another night before realizing that it was too crazy to stay here.  Our house is not child-proofed by any means and she was ready to get home and stay in her own bed with her own defenses against the kids.  I don't envy her at all.  I love kids, but I know that it's a good thing (knock on wood) to make sure that I don't have any more of them. 

My Baseball Post for 2019.

So...the Royals suck again.  A bit over a month into the season, they are now at 11-20, and that's with Alex Gordon having a late-career resurgence, Alberto Mondesi being the next big thing, and Hunter Dozier having one of the best OPSs in baseball.  Even the starting pitching has not been terrible, as they've put together a number of quality starts, and Ian Kennedy looking like his transition to the bullpen was a great idea. 

Yet they still suck, and this has been against mostly bad teams.  And people aren't coming out to watch...yesterday they had a doubleheader against the the Rays in which something like 500 people showed up (announced attendance, 11K). 

I guess this is the karmic price for the Royals winning the World Series in 2019...once in a generation we do something amazing, but most of the rest of the time we are consigned to misery.  Is this a good thing?  I suppose it's better to be the best once and really bad the rest of the time than it is to be good much of the time but never the best?  Which is best for my sports fandom? 

I still have the MLB app on my phone with the Royals set to my favorite team, and that will never change.  Who really wants to jump on a Dodgers bandwagon at this point?  Ugh.  But I guess we are stuck with the curse of suck until I am well into my retirement years. 

We'll always have 2015, though. 

Things That Annoy Me #57: Resentful People

Let me start by saying that by simply pointing this out I am something that annoys myself:  I resent people who live their lives resentful of others.  I get it.  I'm a hypocrite. 

But one of the things I've tried doing in recent years it letting go.  Frozen taught me that, I guess?  I don't have time to be continually angry about Trump, or about North Korean religious oppression, or the sex trade.  I hate them all, and if I were dictator I'd do away with them all in a week.  But moment-by-moment anger, holding onto stuff that I can't do much about?  I've got too many other productive things I need to be doing, like raising my kids or loving my wife or preaching the gospel or ensuring the kids on my route get home safely. 

Through the years in ministry I have occasionally come across people who live their lives as a series of resentments that they seek to frame as righteous outrage.  Years ago there was a man in our church who continually brought up the poor and the outcast that we needed to be seeking out, and all the failures of the church and its people, and how nobody was nearly as passionate as he was, and why were we not outraged?  'The church doesn't...' or 'The government ought to...' or 'You don't...' was the beginning of every one of his conversations.  In many ways I agreed with what he said, but his sense of Elijah complex ("They've killed all the prophets, and I'm the only one left!") caused me to tune him out after awhile, because a)either he did nothing about those things or b)anything he did do was so poorly thought out or self-righteous in its promotion that if anything it was counter-productive.  Eventually this man disappeared from my radar, and it was of him that I said, "When you burn bridges, don't be surprised when there's nobody left to help you across the river." 

Recently I have had somebody new in my life who has filled this role.  Maybe it's just that they try to find a place in small churches, or maybe I am more tolerant of listening to them than some (but, oh, Lord, forgive me for my thoughts and my occasional acidic responses).  But sometimes people seem drawn to me as if I really want to hear their various resentments.  For this person it's Trump, the Church of Christ of their youth, a preacher that was a creep, racism in general, and a half dozen other things (with something new everytime)...and they go back and forth in such a non-rational manner that after five minutes you've completely lost track of the rant.  All the while, as you hold your tongue and wonder how you can extricate yourself, you recognize that this person isn't really talking with you, as most normal people do, but they talk AT you, as if you are the punching bag they have stumbled across at this moment with which they can take out their aggression. 

My son regularly makes fun of Frozen, especially since they are having a money-grab sequel coming out later this year.  I guess that's what 11-year-old boys do.  But the message of let it go is something that so many people need.  Hold something so tight to you and eventually you will crush it.  It's not just enough to talk out your resentment at whoever is patient (or stupid) enough to let it continue on and on and on.  Eventually, you have to make some progress with it, and choose to no longer hold it so tightly to your chest. 

Want to hold onto a statement that somebody made in passing (and with no ill will) 25 years previously?  I'm sorry, what good does that do you?  We all screw up in the things that we say.  But if we only remember the worst of what somebody said to us, then eventually we will be alone, screaming at the dark and empty void.  That's no way to live life...God gave us one another to enjoy, not so that we could rage upon each other.  Let it go.