Author: Robert

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procrastinating

i’m presently at cc’s coffeehouse working on the sermon i’m supposed to preach at the 9:30 a.m. worship service tomorrow and i’ve reached the point of needing a mental break so i’m decided to right in the blog for a second or two. as many of you know we have a new member of our family, montana. she’s a great dog and was already very well trained by the time we adopted her. even though she’s housebroken she’s had a few “accidents” getting familiar with our home and we’ve had to clean up a little bit of urine. one of those accidents happened this morning. it was really no big deal and was very easy to clean up because it was on a shirt that i was going to iron for church tomorrow. up until a few minutes ago i did not realize that the urine had seeped through the shirt on to what was below it.

i’ve been at cc’s since about 1:00 p.m. (it’s 4:00 now no matter what the blog clock says – it’s wrong and i can’t figure out how to change it). every so often someone would come and sit by me for a little while and then get up and move to another spot. this has happened four times. i had not really thought much of it. i personally don’t like sitting by strangers when there’s no chance to actually interact with them so i have just figured that they felt the same way and had moved because a better spot had opened up. at least that’s what i thought.

i have a lousy sense of smell. i’ve been told by a doctor that this is because i have a deviated septum. the allergist who told me this said it had probably happened during my years of football or rough housing as a kid. however it happened, i definitely messed up the inner workings of my nose sometime during my life. this has left me with a sense of smell that is sub-par. i can usually smell something for a second at most and then it’s gone. even during that second the wind has to blow in just right direction and the smell has to be pretty strong. i guess that’s why it took me so long to smell the dog pee that i had been carrying around with me.

my laptop messenger bag had been under the shirt that was peed on. when i saw the shirt i looked under it to make sure that it had only gotten on the shirt. nothing below the shirt seemed to be wet. the carpet was fine. i thought my bag had been fine because i couldn’t feel any wetness and i was unable to smell anything. well apparently dog urine takes awhile to reach it’s full potency because i began to smell the urine a few minutes ago (after my fourth coffeehouse neighbor had moved). so i lifted the laptop case up and verified that it was the recipient of montana’s marking.

on the good side montana’s urine has kept people from bothering me. since even i can now smell the urine now i think i’ll probably go home and wash the bag.

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rodney mullen video

i’m not the biggest skateboarding fan in the world (though i have one child who is really into it and another who thinks he is). yet, when i saw this video of rodney mullen street boarding i was amazed. this amount of skill in anything is impressive to me. when you can do things that should be against the laws of physics and make it look very easy then you must have an extreme amount of skill. anyways, you need to see this video whether you like skateboarding or not.

here it is. – windows media version
here it is – mpeg version

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reading list

you may have noticed changes happening to the blog (i.e new top design, blogroll on the right hannd side, flickr zietgeist, etc.). i’m finally beginning to understand a little bit of the coding of this css stuff. i still don’t get most of it but i do at least understand a little. i’m presently trying to figure out how to add an automated “reading list” to the blog. i’ve seen this on several other sites. unfortunately i can’t find which ones had the reading list and therefore i can’t ask them how to do it. so if you know how to put an automated reading list and feel like passing a little help my way i would appreciate it.

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reading list help?

you may have noticed changes happening to the blog (i.e new top design, blogroll on the right hannd side, flickr zietgeist, etc.). i’m finally beginning to understand a little bit of the coding of this css stuff. i still don’t get most of it but i do at least understand a little. i’m presently trying to figure out how to add an automated “reading list” to the blog. i’ve seen this on several other sites. unfortunately i can’t find which ones had the reading list and therefore i can’t ask them how to do it. so if you know how to put an automated reading list and feel like passing a little help my way i would appreciate it.

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not as good as advertised

for CHRISTmas this year pam and i were given a gift certificate to ruth’s chris steak house. we were very appreciative of the gift. tonight we finally went to the restaurant to enjoy the meal that the gift certificate would buy. i had never been to ruth’s chris before and therefore all i really new to expect was high prices and ala carte meals. after eating there i can’t really understand what the big deal is. my steak was merely “okay.” it was by no means the best steak i’ve ever had – not even close to it.

pam and i actually think the whole thing is actually an emperor’s new clothes kind of a thing. i’m convinced that people must think “wow, this food is really expensive so it must be good.” people are too busy thinking this that they don’t realize that they are merely eating a slightly better than average steak. there are several places in baton rouge that serve a much better steak.

i still greatly appreciated the gift certificate.

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the kingdom of GOD

i’m not a democrat. i’m also not really a republican though i have voted for republican candidates more often than i have other candidates. with that said i am fed up with evangelical CHRISTians agreeing no holds bar with anything that politically conservative politicians say or do. i believe part of the reason for this is that conservative CHRISTians have reduced the gospel to personal spirituality and morality, the mindset is that your faith should lead to you becoming a moral person and therefore the politically active CHRISTian should fight for what seem to be obvious moral concerns. this is why evangelical CHRISTians are so focused on homosexuality and abortion. these stand out as moral issues.

yet i believe taking care of the poor and afflicted are spiritual issues. i believe this why JESUS came preaching the “gospel of the kingdom” rather than just the good news of personal salvation. again and again JESUS preached of the kingdom – a place where life was determined by the rules of GOD. the kingdom of heaven is a place where the followers of CHRIST fight for justice. i’m not sure that we CHRISTians have been fighting for justice. maybe instead of just providing food for the hungry we should fight against the system that would leave them hungry when there is more than enough food for all.

so here’s what has brought up this brief rant. sojouners is a CHRISTian organization that focuses on political involvement. there are definitely of a more liberal CHRISTian mindset. while i would probably be described as a conservative i love sojourners because they remind me to fight for social justice. hey regularly set up actions to email against various social injustices. right now they have set up an open letter to alberto gonzalez, the proposed attorney general, asking him to denounce torture in any fashion. apparently he has a mixed history on this and may have supported torture of foreign p.o.w’s before.

so what i’m wondering is why we never hear conservative CHRISTians standing up and saying “NO” against injustices such as this.

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feminar

i am firmly convinced that youth ministry as a whole is far to masculine in it’s nature. so much of what youth ministries do (my own included) is naturally more appealing to males than to females. we play active games. we use gross and odd events. so many of the leaders within youth ministries are male. student ministry is definitely a male oriented ministry.

so a while back i decided to do something about it by doing and event where there was absolutely zero male involvement. we call this our “feminar.” we did this for the first time last year and our girls loved it. it is the absolute opposite of any event that i would ever put on if i were in charge. last year’s feminar included a craft time and a fashion show in addition to the bible studies that set the tone for the night. i would never think of doing a fashion show. i still think the concept is stupid. yet it worked incredibly well. our girls loved it and it helped make sure real connections for our girls who had been visiting until then.

we’re doing it again this year february 4th & 5th. once again i won’t have anything to do with it. i can’t wait.

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set up for the view – january 5, 2005

last night at the view we did another “chair worship service”. the “chair worship service” is based on the often quoted description of worship from soren kierkegaard, his description of worship is that it is like a theater and that the danes of his age misunderstood the places of everyone within the theater of worship. soren kierkegaard said the places within the theater of worship at that time were:

  • the congregation was in the seats watching the performance
  • the ministers were on the side of the stage directing the performance
  • GOD was on the stage giving the performance

kierkegaard said that worship was actually like a theater but that the above positions were wrong. the correct positions were:

  • the congregation is on the stage doing the performance
  • the ministers were on the side of the stage directing the performance
  • GOD is the AUDIENCE WHO the performance is for

so when we do our “chair worship” we clear the stage and make it the area of the AUDIENCE. we move our praise band to the side or the back and reverse everything else. we change the pa speakers and monitors. we then place a single chair on the stage as a physical reminder that we are signing to GOD.

i explain the whole process through a powerpoint presentation that describes what is going to happen. the service begins with this and then goes into worship through singing. we’ve done this three times over the past two years. it’s been a great way to remind the teens and adults why we do what we do.

here are pictures from our set up.

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an incredible story from the bbc

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you’ve got to read this:

    Tsunami man survives week at sea

    An Indonesian man has been found floating on tree branches in the Indian Ocean, eight days after a devastating tsunami struck the region. Rizal Shahputra, 23, said he was initially swept out to sea with other survivors and family members, but that one by one they drowned.

    He was rescued on Monday by a passing container vessel. He was taken to Malaysia where officials said he was in good condition – he survived eating floating coconuts.

    Rizal said he was cleaning a mosque in Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra on 26 December when the tsunami struck. Children ran in to warn him, but he was swept out to sea, along with several other people.

    “At first, there were some friends with me,” Rizal told reporters. “After a few days, they were gone… I saw bodies left and right.”

    He drank rainwater, and ate coconuts, which he reportedly cracked open with a doorknob.

    Rizal said at least one ship sailed by without noticing him before the MV Durban Bridge spotted him, 160km (100 miles) from Banda Aceh.

    Huang Wen Feng, a crew member of the ship, said he was “very, very surprised” to see Rizal standing on his wood debris on Monday. “He was shouting at us. I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

    The Japanese-owned ship, which was returning to Malaysia from South Africa, took Rizal to the Malaysian port of Port Klang, where he arrived on Wednesday.

    He was taken to hospital, weak and in shock, and having sustained some cuts to his legs.

    His survival follows that of a woman, also from Aceh, who was found in the sea on Friday. She had fish bites to her legs, and had survived on fruit from the palm tree she was clinging to.

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trackback experiment

i’m trying to add “trackback” capability to the blog now. we’ll see how this works. i’m using Haloscan for commenting and trackback. the real question here is wether i can implement or even understand “trackback”. just because i have it doesn’t mean i actually know how to use it.