Category: personal

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1st, I changed the brakes on the Sentra a few minutes ago. By far the easiest brake job I have ever done. 20 minutes total. So easy in fact that I now worry that something must be wrong. Only thing I can determined right now that is different from norm is that I used the previous brakes as an example and I placed the pad with the wear indicator on it on the outside, whereas the factory diagram shows it as the inside pad. To my knowledge this shouldn’t matter since the pads are identical other than the wear indicator and it was this way on the previous brake job.

2nd, due to an unforeseen double buying of salsa tomatoes the snack for Tapestry Church tomorrow night will be my homemade salsa. We have double what we should have. It is made for the Terrell’s so it is a little spicier than last time you “threads” had it when I made it during a sermon. It isn’t going to walk up to you and punch you in the face as it says “hi” but it might give you a nice friendly/playful slap across the face while it says “hi.” 🙂

PREFACE – every now and then I use the “set post date” feature in wordpress to complain about something or write about something that has happened to me that I don’t want to post on the actual day it happened because I don’t want anyone involved to know I am writing about our conversation or an event they were involved in. I’ll set the post to appear anywhere from a few years to a couple of days after the actual event. I won’t tell you when this conversation took place but I will say that it definitely DID NOT happen today. It probably didn’t happen in the past year. Now for the rant.

I was in a conversation today with someone who left one church to go to another. I know both churches and I am friends with the pastors of both churches. They are both wonderful human beings that I like a lot. This person said that he/she was left one church to go to another because he/she wasn’t getting deeper into God’s word at the church he/she left and wanted the depth that was at the other church.

Now let me go ahead and say that I generally have a knee jerk reaction to people saying they want to go deeper. Why? Well I love going deep in God’s word and I think people should but generally when someone says they want to go deeper into God’s word what they usually mean is they want to learn more interesting facts about scripture not that they actually want to go deeper into God’s word. Going deeper into God’s word leads to love, action, and sacrifice. It is knowledge that moves you to live more like Christ and that always involves greater risk. Look at the early disciples. The more they hung out with Christ the riskier their lives became. If your “deep” study of God’s word isn’t pushing you to serve and risk more outside of the church then I seriously doubt its depth. Going deeper involves the risk of being engulfed and consumed. After all the risk of drowning is greater in the deep part of the water. The risk of being engulfed by the waters is minimal in the shallows.

That was the problem here. I know and love this person and I know and love the pastors at both churches. I know what those churches do and preach. They are both great churches that want to help people go deep into God’s word and thereby live risky lives with God. This person wasn’t swapping churches because of a need to go deeper into God’s word. He/she was swapping for other reasons. It is just that saying you want to go deeper sounds better than those other reasons. I imagine that the person’s real reasons probably sounded a little selfish and therefore it sounded better to them to say it was actually about going deeper in God’s word.

Though I am sure He doesn’t like it, God often makes a great excuse our actions that are motivated by our own wants and desires.

By now there is a pretty good chance that you have seen Jamie Moore’s wonderful photos of his daughter as female heroes worthy of emulation. They are really awesome. I didn’t get into photography until late 2004ish. Thankfully at that point the boys were still interested in me taking photos. I wish I had seen or had this idea then. Yes it is important for little girls to have good roles models, that aren’t just helpless Disney princes, but it is also important for little boys to have heroes worth following that aren’t just stupid stereotypes. Really when you think about it the male Disney heroes aren’t that great either.

So if I could still take photos of Adam and Noah as role models that I hope they would learn from, who would I choose? Here are a few that I would consider.

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  The Four Chaplains – Unless you are or were in the military or you’ve been a chaplain then you probably haven’t heard of the Four Chaplains. You should go read about them. Why would I want my kids to learn from them? Because they took what they knew and used it in a sacrificial manner in a time of need. Let’s face it, when your ship is hit by a torpedo no one is shouting “quick, somebody get the chaplain.” I imagine that these chaplains knew very little about welding or patching the ship. They did, however, know how to bring peace into chaotic situations and they used that skill to save lives. That’s why they are remembered. Whatever my boys end up specializing in, I hope they use it in sacrificial manners.

• C.S. Lewis –  Why? He was brilliant and not real concerned with fitting into someone’s political agenda or stereotype of what a Christian intellectual should act like. He was a medieval literary critic who didn’t like children very much but was able to write children’s literature that really connected with kids and adults and responded personally to tons of kids’ letters to him. He was a single man who enjoyed his single life until he realized that he loved Joy Davidman and then wouldn’t let a little thing like the fact that she was in the hospital dying keep him from marrying her (again). 

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  Dietrich Bonhoeffer – An amazing example of living out your faith no matter what. Bonhoeffer’s faith was so true that the Nazi’s finally thought he was such a threat that they needed to imprison him and then kill him in what they thought was a humiliating manner. I believe that the examples found in the Bible tend to show that when your faith ticks off people in power that is usually a good thing. Bonhpeffer lived out such a faith.

• Mark Twain – Why? Well because it would be a cool picture 😉 Actually Twain used his art to critique the society in which he lived. Yes Twain is hilarious but his humor is biting humor that pointed (and still does) to things in society that we needed to (and still do) reconsider. You can critique society and still succeed. Good art usually does.
• Terrey Fox – Only have one leg? That’s no reason not to try running across Canada. What an amazing example of perseverance and grit.

They are others but these are the ones that came to mind as I was wasting time waiting to go to the hospital and do my rounds as a chaplain. I’ll have to see if the boys are up for a few photos.

I used to love randomly scaring friends when I saw them in public. Actually I still love randomly scaring friends, I just haven’t had as many opportunities recently for some reason. I would see a friend when he/she didn’t see me and I would try to surprise/scare him/her. It was a lot of fun, especially ever now and then when it turned out not to be my friend, but someone who merely looked like him/her.

My personal favorite time was once when I was at Best Buy and I was sure I saw Lauren, an intern who worked with me. She didn’t see me so I snuck up behind a DVD kiosk and jumped out when she rounded the it. She screamed and threw the DVDs that she was holding. It was at that moment that I realized it wasn’t her but instead somebody that I didn’t know who merely looked like Lauren. Not cool, especially when the Best Buy employees started running toward the screaming woman, while I was trying to convince her that I was sorry and I thought she was a friend of mine who I was trying to pull a practical joke on. Thankfully they all believed me and I wasn’t tackled to the ground. Ah, good times.

Man, I miss randomly freaking people out. I hope an opportunity presents itself soon.

to encourage digestion

Noah and I have decided to take on a project to discover the best burger in Point. We’ve decided that this search will be focused on local restaurants, so no national chains.

Every now and then we both miss our favorite burger from Baton Rouge. Riverside Patty is only one of the places that make incredible burgers in Baton Rouge. Sadly I haven’t found a place in the Point area that makes a truly incredible burger. I’ve tried, without luck, to find one over the 5 years we’ve lived here. So Noah and I are just going to have to try harder.

We are going to start eating and rating burgers at various local restaurants of all levels. If they serve a burger we will eat it and rate it. Any suggestions? If you know a place that makes a really good burger please pass it on.

I just saw this list from Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Hartgrove and I liked a lot of it, so therefore, I am sharing it with you guys. Here are 50 specific ways to love your neighbor.

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes–and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can by happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation-care by going fuel free for a week–ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don´t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don´t have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help your church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember that Jesus said he would meet you there (Matt. 25).

Obviously some of these are a little extreme but the way Jesus describes loving your neighbor is extreme.