check out what my friend jeff and some of his cohorts did in his east atlanta neighborhood.? so cool.?? three minutes. that’s all.
be love.
Blog
-
where i will not be tomorrow…
after a pretty heavy post on the sabbath yesterday, i thought i’d share something happening in my own church.
this pig is for real.? the men at cross point church will be eating this very pig tomorrow at a tailgating party thing.? no girls allowed.? which is fine, because i would probably throw up if i saw this thing in person.
knowing this, ryan, who is heading this event up, and whose office is right next to me, has been talking about the process of getting the pig…from buying it, scalding it, and even dehairing it.? he just sent me the picture of the final product.
HE IS STILL SMILING. And whose truck is that?
wrong, just wrong.
does this make you want to throw up, or eat some bacon?
-
some thoughts on time and sabbath
i am reading this amazing book right now.? here are some things i’ve highlighted so far…it’s truly enlightening. i realize it’s a bit long, and it takes a little time to read, but it is so rich, i really recommend you invest a few minutes in absorbing this.
- technical civilization is man’s conquest of space.? it is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time.? in technical civilization, we expend time to gain space? to enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective.? yet to have more does not mean to be more.? the power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time.? but time is the heart of existence.
- there is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.
- we have often suffered from the degradation by poverty, now we are threatened with the degradation through power.? there is a happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.
- many hearts and pitchers are broken at the fountain of profit.
- to retain the holy, to perpetuate the presence of god, his image is fashioned.? yet a god who can be fashioned, a god who can be confined, is but a shadow of a man.
- time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives.? shrinking, therefore, from facing time, we escape for shelter to things of space.
- the bible is more concerned with time than with space.? it sees the world in the dimension of time. it pays more attention to generations, to events, than to countries, to things; it is more concerned with history than geography.
- the sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the sabbath.? it is not an interlude but the climax of living.
- it must always be remembered that the sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than to dissipate time.
- labor without dignity is the cause of misery; rest without spirit is the source of depravity.
and i am only 18 pages in…
this is what gets me though
- two things the people of rome anxiously desired — bread and circus games.? but man does not live by bread and circus games alone.? who will teach him how to desire anxiously the spirit of a sacred day?
the answer? it’s supposed to be us.
this jacks with me big time.
because we can’t teach how to desire something we don’t ourselves yet desire.
-
a very interesting fact about technology
17 billion text messages were sent worldwide in 2000.
250 billion were sent in 2001.
500 billion were sent in 2004.
1.9 TRILLION in 2007.
(ht: brody, fab chart by yours truly. remember. i love spreadsheets.)
-===-
do you text often?
-
enema for my brain
sometimes circumstances in my life work very similar to an enema for my brain.
granted, i have never had an enema of any kind before, so perhaps this is just speculation.
life has been hectic lately. despite my hesitation of public speaking, i’ve taken on a few more opportunities. chris has been working a lot. my family has a little drama going down. his family is going through the loss of his grandpa. there are airports and plane tickets and bills and cars making funny noises and deadlines and emails and laundry and exciting book things and friends coming into town and friends moving and friends grieving.
maybe it’s the cumulative result of all of these things over the last two weeks that have caused this flush of any kind of creative output from my head, but that’s where i am at. anything noteworthy or newsworthy or thought provoking or interesting at all has been removed completely from my brain.
so i won’t be talking much until it has been refilled. and the temptation during times like these is to fill it up with things that are easy to process, or fun to absorb, but meaningless. during this time i will be shutting up and listening. praying and listening.
and i’ll see you soon.
-
PLEASE PRAY…URGENT
FlowerDusters,
We lost a blog reader today.
Chris’ grandpa, who was an active reader of this blog (which always made me smile) passed away this Sunday afternoon.
Please pray for his family, who has already gone through some tough times recently, and that he can find a way to financially make the trip to KC for the funeral.
Chris is selling his amp on Craigslist (Fender Hot Rod Deville 2×12 – USA version) as one way to help.? So if you need an amp in amazing condition or know someone who does, there you go.? It appears the amp has been sold.? Supposedly the guy will pick it up tomorrow. Let’s hope so.Thanks for your prayers and support.
-
what time do you wake up?
i am not naturally a morning person, but when i wake up, i’m up and alert (typically).? sometimes i use sleep aids like lunesta or in really bad seasons, clonazepam, to help me sleep.
with the lunesta, i know i will wake up exactly 7 hours after i took the pill.
last night i took a lunesta at 9:10 pm, knowing i needed to be awake by 4:30 am in order to be out at our dickson campus by 8 am.? since it had been a while since i’d had a lunesta, i set two alarms.? however, 4:10 rolled around and i’ve been wide awake for the last twenty minutes.
since a lot of you are church staff members or volunteers, i was wondering…what time do you wake up on sunday to do your church thang?
-
is this rude?
as you know, i have lived in the south. in texas. the red river kind of south. not the south-south.
in the red river south, we have our own breed of rednecks. but alas, i am learning the south-south has yet another breed of rednecks altogether.
(by the way, i love rednecks. this is by no means an anti-redneck post. the ceiling of my car is coming unglued, i have a gravel driveway, and i shot my first rifle at the tender age of nine, so obviously i am somewhat born of this breed as well).
now, my friend shaun has talked about his redneck neighbor before. and his redneck neighbor even has a blog. one day, i hope to meet redneck neighbor. but until then, i have my own redneck neighbor to deal with, and i have a question to propose to y’all.
here’s the skinny.
my redneck neighbor’s driveway is next to my driveway. i see it when i leave. when i come home. when i go on my deck. when i take out the trash.
my redneck neighbor has a little planter wall. on this planter wall are several cans of budweiser…some askew, some crushed, some full of cigarette butts, and all piled up into a replica of pike’s peak.
[at one point, he had creatively made a budweiser-duct tape-sticks-cigarette butts effigy using a button with obama’s face on it for the head. it was like a little budweiser obama stick figure. which was held up by a rusted folger’s coffee can. this has now disappeared, leaving me a little disappointed.]
i am all about respecting other people’s property, but when his strewn bud cans and cigarette butts are in my line of sight, oh, forty-seven times a day, the OCD in me comes out and desperately wants to clean up this budweiser-duct tape-sticks-cigarette butts mountain the next time i take out the trash.
[using heavy duty yellow rubber gloves and a gallon of purell, of course.]
so my question to you is this…would cleaning up this nasty redneck trash pile be rude of me? or helpful to him? because you see, i of course am only doing this to love my neighbor. right?
ahem. right?
