reading week
so, reading week is a wonderful invention, although i'm a little upset i'm missing ets this year. i'm still a member, so i got the conference schedule and i've been parousing it the past few days...i don't know why i do that to myself. the theme is "christianity in the early centuries," good thing i'm not interested in that topic.
myspace
i just set up a myspace blog. it's got four of my songs on it. i'll try to rotate the songs periodically. the recordings are pretty rough, at least that's my excuse.
here's the url:
may i recommend...
i was so excited to read this book i picked it up before i was done with the one assinged before it. i wasn't disappointed. i'm only half done with it, but unless it takes a nose dive, i recommend this book to any Christian who is an artist. notice i didn't say "Christian artist." the book is expressly for those Christians who want to contribute to culture, not the Christian subculture. the guy is a journalist and a poet, but he writes music reviews and interviews musicians, so the two most prominent arts highlighted in the book are literature and music, but all the arts are in mind in the writing of the book. he's also associated with squint entertainment who gave waterdeep their first contract, so at least he hangs with people who know true art.
music
i just realized i don't have a link to havalina. this ought not be so. they are a great band. i really only have one album, and that's because it's free on their website, but i saw them at cornerstone a few years back and have been a fan ever since.
in their words: "havalina, not unlike most of our influences, is about change and various forms of wrecking pop music." gotta love that.
update on the album
today i wrote the fourth song for my class project, so all the writing's done and the album's ready to compile, i have 14 songs total already rough-recorded, and a couple more that could work on the album, but that i didn't like as much.
how to work the system
between school and youth ministry i find little time to sit down with my guitar and write these days. thus i find myself jumping at every chance to write songs for "creative projects" in classes. so far i've written three songs for credit and added two verses to existing songs for class. but this semester i've outdone myself. i'm taking a class from dr. kreider (theological studies prof.) called issues in theological method. its a class on cultural exegesis (obtaining general revelation about God through His image born in the culture--that is in those members of the culture who bear His image). one of the assignments is an album review. you listen to an album and write a paper on how it demonstrates the metanarrative--creation, fall, re-creation. well, instead of reviewing an album, i'll be writing one. i have to write at least 4 new songs for it, but i can compile from songs written in the past. the compilation must be done in community, which i'm actually looking forward to. that way all the songs i wrote with a pre-opined position on the album may perhaps be given a better--really, a more spiritual--placement.
pseudo-parenthood
as dog owners my wife and i make every effort to abstain from the cheesy language of calling our dog "our baby," referring to each other as "mommy" and "daddy," etc. so far we've been successful, but it's hard to avoid such connections when you go to puppy training class. last night my wife and i were at one such event. there we sat on the floor indian-style (is that term still pc?) with our dog running around playing with other dogs talking to the young couples who own those dogs about all the travails of raising a puppy. there was the look of disdain on the owners whose dogs were out of control, and the envy of those owners whose dogs would probably have pulled every last one of us out of the building in case of a fire...and then dressed our wounds. yeah, there's no doubt that owning a puppy is nothing like parenting, but it's hard to ignore the similarities.
genre nazi's
it seems like the younger part of my generation (gen y as the generation nazi's would call them) have a fascination with assigning musical genres. i noticed this in talking about music with some of them, but it never bothered me until i was playing my brit pop/rock playlist from my ipod and was criticized that it was really more of a stadium rock playlist. (please note that the title of my playlist does not exclude stadium rock) he then began to assign each artist in the playlist their own genre. this phenomenon is no surprise to me. despite what people say-everyone wants a label. they want to be seen as preppy or alternative or country. however, all the alternative kids don't want to be lumped together, so there's emo, screamo, hardcore, punk, alt-punk, pre-punk, post-punk, mid-punk and pre-wrath-punk. i particularly like the prefix "alt" see that way i can listen to artists like kasey chambers and buddy miller and yet avoid the whole cowboy boots/big belt buckle image, cause i'm not country--no, no--i'm "alt-country." i wondered why the visual arts have escaped this trend. why is there not alt-cubism? or post-dali-brit-surrealism?
youth ministry
this sunday i have a meeting for parents of high schoolers to explain our ministries to them. this whole thing makes me very nervous. in fact i've rarely been in the presence of youth's parents when i didn't feel like my every breath was being scrutinized. sometimes i feel like i'm going to be talking to the parents and one of them is just going to stand up and start hurling insults at me about my inability to make their kids good. there's probably some serious psychological deficiency or trauma that causes this. maybe some part of my brain's development was stunted, maybe i was weaned too early, maybe my mom should have used a different fabric softener on my blankets when i was a baby.
saturday
i love saturdays. this saturday was the first normal one my wife and i have had since we moved. we slept in until 9:30, my wife watched her gillmore girls season one dvds, i sat on our patio, played my music, and worked on sunday school (rom. 7:14-25)(and for those who care i'm taking the position that paul is speaking of his present christian experience). tonight we're going to watch a movie with some friends. i love saturdays.
tiny red death
the other day i noticed a stinging sensation on my foot. i looked down to see a fire ant digging its stinger out of my foot. i said something like "ouch, dang it!" and went on my way. later that night we were unloading some furniture and i noticed the palms of my hands itching. i also felt a tightness in my chest. my inner ear itched, but when i went to itch it the canal was all swollen. i went to the mirror to see a white face with bright red lining my eyes, nose, and mouth. we went to the er, got a benadryl iv, went home, and i slept like a baby. turns out i'm allergic to fire ants.
anniversary
the 11th was sarah and my 4th anniversary. we're going out of town labor day weekend to celebrate.
i'm a big fan of my wife. i mean, i'm not going to talk about how i stare at her when she sleeps or anything, but i don't know what i would do without her. i think the thing i love most about marriage is when you can't remember what it was like to not be married. even my memories of life before i met sarah seem to have her pasted in somehow. i love you, babe.
John
this is john. he's on staff with ywam (youth with a mission) in new orleans. he's an open theist. we had some interesting conversations. he's a typical evangelical, and a good picture of where evangelicalism is heading if it doesn't learn to respect what the church has historically believed. spurgeon once said (something like), "how can one think so highly of what the Holy Spirit teaches them, but think so little of what He has taught others before them?" he has a website: forever grasping the first picture you see is very telling. the subtitle on his writing on the trinity is indicative of his theological methodology. luckily, he just ends up sounding like gregory of nyssa, so he's in good company.
moving sucks
we're finally moved in to our new place. we took five trips with a two-door explorer pulling a little enclosed trailer--but we didn't spend any money. let me tell everyone out there, never do that. even if you're moving into the house next door rent the big uhaul, load it all at once and unload it all at once. i was so sick of moving by the end of it all i was taking family heirlooms and chucking them carelessly into the trailer.
our new puppy
this is piper. she's quite possibly the cutest thing on this earth. but then there's the incessant urination.
back in town
sheesh. i've been running like a french soldier this whole summer. i just had back to back trips to new orleans and louisville. now i'm back in town, but so is my brother with his youth group from iowa. they're staying in our youth building, so needless to say i won't get much done this week. the problem with this is we're moving this week. so you'll say something like "wow, that's a busy week." and to that i'll say something like, "oh, yeah and we just got a puppy." more to come...
mac
i'm making a slide show on imovie on the church's mac mini, and i've come to the conclusion that every youth minister must own a macintosh computer. unless of course you don't care about the salvation of teenage souls. in which case a pc will suffice.
