Day: March 22, 2005

Posted on

i have email

i feel the need to point out two things:

  • first, i have an email address that people can actually communicate with me through. the reason i feel the need to point this out is because recently some unnamed individuals have decided that the best way to communicate with me is by leaving comments on the blog that have nothing to do with the actual original post. now don’t get me wrong i love people posting comments on the blog entries i place up. while i have moved past the “comment mongering” stage of the blogging experience i still enjoy seeing what other people are thinking concerning the things i post about. i especially like it when an entry turns into a conversation and people comment and then reply to other comments. it’s just that recently i’ve gone to look at the comments on the blog only only to find out that someone (cough *hannah* cough *shelley*) has decided to use the comment section as a way to get in touch with me. this always seems to throw me off. it confuses me and throws off my whole day.
  • secondly, the blog has apparently become the world search haven for pictures of the elephant man. i made a post awhile back that contained a picture of the elephant man. apparently every other person that exists on this planet is looking for pictures of the elephant man. therefore, the blog now receives 10 hits or so a day from people looking for that picture. it would appear that if you want to increase traffic to your blog you really need to write regularly about the elephant man. who knew?

on a side note today i discovered google alerts and the photography of diane arbus. alerts as amazing and i really like them. alerts give you the ability to set up a filter on google to forward news articles and websites on a particular subject as they are created. for example i lovetony campolo so i created an alert to send me any news articles that are posted concerning campolo. it’s a cool thing.

arbus’s photography is like wise amazing though some of it is disturbing (amazing nonetheless). diane arbus took startling pictures of carnival sideshow “freaks,” and people who were at the time consider “odd” or culturally different. that’s why the photos of hers that i’ve seen are sometimes disturbing. the photos i have seen have made me want to see more because they remind me that to some extent we are all pretty much “freaks.”

Posted on

baptists withdraw invitation

baptists withdraw invitation

i haven’t read everything that mclaren has written so i can’t speak authoritatively on this incident in particular but i do have a good bit of history with southern baptist and therefore can attest that often we have “knee jerk” reactions and respond accordingly. according to the article mclaren was uninvited to the convention because of the statement that “there could be buddhist … (or) jewish or hindu followers of JESUS.” to the kentucky baptists this apparently smacked of “universalism” and therefore mclaren had to be excluded. if i understood mclaren’s point correctly when he made that statement in his book he was saying that it didn’t matter what you called yourself rather it was the belief you had and the practice of that belief that matters. in other words if you come out of a hindu background and still practice much of the culture associated with hinduism but you followed the way of CHRIST (faith in HIM as LORD and walked with HIM) then you were a followers of CHRIST and all good. it personally sounded very much like don richardson’s comments in “eternity in their hearts.”

of course, my kentuckian brethren didn’t take the time to actually discuss the statement with mclaren and find out what was meant. nope they had a “knee jerk” reaction and pulled him from the program. i love “true” baptist belief (meaning not automatically conservative evangelical right wing belief) but i hate the way we often practice it.