I mispell things!
I use Dropbox a great deal for personal and church use. I love it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to try something a little more DIY. I’ve been thinking about doing something with the Raspberry Pi for a while and I think this might be what I try with it. Making my own dropbox clone should be fun. I can do that with the Pi and with Owncloud. Here are the instructions.
A few photos of the Threads who participated in this year’s Postage County United Way Make a Difference Day.
NOTE – This post is about politics but is not an attempt to convince you to vote for one candidate or another. Instead it concerns the intersection of orthodox Christian belief and political expediency. I feel very strongly that since my blog is on Tapestry’s website it is not appropriate for me to use it to convince someone to vote like I will be voting. This post is about the danger of Christian faith mixing with political power. The old saying is that when you mix religion and politics you get politics.
Every election is interesting but from a religious perspective this year’s presidential election is one of the most interesting ones of recent memory. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, for the first time in the history of the GOP the Republican ticket is without a protestant candidate, and second, it seems the majority of evangelicals are supporting a candidate in this election that most of them consider to be a member of a cult. Generally Evangelicals consider Mormonism to be a sect at best and a cult at worse, meaning that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is viewed as having theology that is heretical. I would agree with this belief. Mormon theology deviates from recognized orthodox belief.
Of course, this in no way means that a Christian shouldn’t vote for Governor Romney. I’ve discussed my view on Christians and politics earlier. I believe there are plenty of reasons that Christians can vote for either candidate and there are plenty of other policies over which Christians should hold each candidate’s “feet to the fire.” So I am not disturbed by Evangelical Christians voting for a Mormon. I am however disturbed by the fact that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (an stalwart Evangelical organization) has removed from its website the references concerning Mormonism being a cult.
This removal concerns me a great deal. To me it speaks of a greater concern for political expediency (a phrase I lifted from Tony Jones’ blog post on the subject) than for right belief (i.e. orthodoxy). An evangelistic organization’s main concern is supposed to be evangelism, the spreading of the good news and helping people to enter into that good news. In the past the BGEA thought Mormonism was a very poor imitation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that actually led people astray from the real gospel of Jesus (i.e. a cult). Now apparently because they are worried about an election they have changed their mind and all references to Mormonism being unorthodox have been removed from their website. That worries me. Our actions and desires should be shaped by our beliefs rather than us shaping our beliefs to justify whatever we want.
Thankfully this election is going to be finished soon. I desperately hope that Evangelicalism doesn’t sale its soul as a result of this election.
I thought I would warn all my fellow duck hunters that if Eric G. invites you to duck hunt in a very secluded place there is a slight possibility that he might be trying to secretly kill you. I say this because I am almost convinced that Eric was trying to kill me yesterday. I went hunting with Eric at a spot that involved us walking about 3 miles into the spot hunting for an hour and then hiking back out 3 miles. That wasn’t the part where Eric tried to kill me. Eric threw the decoys out into the drainage ditch we were hunting over but neither of us went into the water so I had no way of knowing what was below the water till I shot a duck. I went out to pick up the duck and went up to my chest in the muck that composed the bottom of the ditch. A few times I was convinced that I was stuck beyond removing myself from the mud. This happened again when we began to prepare to leave and I started to pick up the decoys. I think Eric may have brought me out there to leave me stuck in the muck.
I think Eric is an evil genius that way.
I will add that if he was going to leave me in a place to die Eric did at least take me to a gorgeous place to do so. That was kind of nice of him.
Ansel Adams once said the following:
"The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it."
The above video from wistia (a service I don’t use) is a wonderful example of what is really important – the equipment or the knowledge of the one using the equipment.
I’m need a few test subjects concerning the survey that I will be using for my D.Min project. I’m trying to decide if I am going to use Google Docs to do the survey or if I will go with good ‘ole fashion pen and paper. Want to help me? Go here and complete the questionnaire. I don’t care how you answer it. All I need is to find out if it works.
Thanks.
The jambalaya pot feed around 80 people today.
Tapestry has been providing the meal once a quarter and eating with those who attend Place of Peace for a while now. It is always an enjoyable experience (even this past July when we served in a room without A/C during the hottest day of the year). Today was our turn to serve the meal again. As usual I made jambalaya for the meal which they keep saying they want us to continue bringing. The fun part was that today was also the annual “the Terrells Feed the Graduate Communicative Disorders Graduate Students” night. Each year Pam invites all the new grad students over for a jambalaya meal. So I cooked A LOT of jambalaya and then took half of it to the place of Peace and after eating with the folks there came back to eat with the grad students at our home.
It was a pretty good day.
The above video is a little from Place of Peace.
The mp3 player that I use to listen to my podcasts (a Samsung Galaxy Player) has a video camera on it. After coming home from Emy J’s for lunch I thought I would test it while walking the basset hounds. The above video is the result. Now all I need is to find an Android app to edit clips together.
Well that isn’t completely true. I also need to eat lunch which is the egg rolls Pam made for supper last night. Mhmm. Homemade egg rolls.
Last night was the first of the two Community Bible Experience (CBE) groups that Tapestry is doing this fall. I love my experience with CBE. Last night was no different. An added benefit was that Jacob came a little early and somehow we began debating whether or not humanity would survive a zombie apocalypse. Based on his reading of “World War Z” (which I have not read) Jacob was convinced that humanity would survive. I, on the other hand, argued based on pretty much every zombie move ever made that humanity would ultimately be overrun by the zombies unless we developed a vaccine. In my opinion without a vaccine we would all eventually die or become the enemy. As you can tell it was a great discussion with which to start reading the New Testament. 🙂