Doneness

I did not know that "doneness" was a word until Lynnae pointed it out to me on a box of brownies. It said "Fresh baked brownies apear underbaked but cool to doneness." Apparently it is used often, as you can see in This website.

I'm going to try to use my new word more often. I'll start now: this blog post has reached full doneness.

things Bethany wrote: More Gender Essentialism from Conservative Christians

Bethany IMd me today and told me to look at the website for Wild At Heart conferences and pointed me to some particularly funny/interesting areas. I urged her to blog about it and she did. So go check out things Bethany wrote: More Gender Essentialism from Conservative Christians and visit the Ransomed Hearts website - pay particular attention to the mens' and womens' events. Note the images and the paragraph about child care that Bethany points to. Notice that there is no paragraph about child care on the mens' page.

Under the "advanced" heading it says "The Advanced retreats for men and women were intended – in our minds, at least – to help you go deeper in the message (help ensure irreversible change), and, by way of ripple effect, to help you better rescue the hearts of others and help them to stay with it." Irreversable change. Uh-oh

Playing with Philip Yancey

I haven’t reported yet on the evening my kids and I spent with Philip Yancey.  This was an event for Zondervan sales reps about Yancey’s forthcoming book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference.  My kids and I were asked to supply music for the event.  Yancey talked a bit about the process he went through writing his book and led the people, about 40 or 50 total, in an exercise of writing in a journal, of leading them in prayer and of meditation.  We supplied the music in the background for these things.  We played about 40 minutes of music total, about ten of which was a solo guitar improvisation while Yancey led in prayer.  

Yancey’s book sounds like another winner.  He seems to hit some of the big questions about prayer head-on.  His talk was fascinating and I enjoyed listening to him.  I especially enjoyed playing music for the group.  We did mostly quiet meditative kinds of music which was a lot of fun – you could really feel that the people were with us while we played.  Bryan has gotten a lot better on guitar then he was before he left for college and Lynnae has never sung better than she did that night.  Meredith knocked their socks off when she sang “Who Am I / Grace Falls Down” (even though I played it a step higher than I was supposed to.)  It was a great night.

response to "e~mergent kiwi: 7 things I learnt from Bono about worship leading"

It's been a while since I"ve had a post about U2 so here's one. There is an interesting discussion going on over at e~mergent kiwi: 7 things I learnt from Bono about worship leading.

The blogger, Steve Taylor, is an emergent church leader and author in New Zealand, and makes a somewhat typically emergent list of things that he sees Bono doing in concert (referencing the Vertigo DVD) which might be translated into a church worship environment. (At least I think it's typically emergent - I'll ask my more emergent-savvy friends and relatives to help me out.)

I'm not sure how much of his list really translates well unless one finds oneself in an environment where there is no community already established and where the starting point for the conversation appears to be contemporary worship. The sort of worship style that has thrown the liturgical baby out with the bathwater. I realize that much of the emergent work, in worship at least, is a reaction to what has happened in worship in the big nondenominational churches over the past 30 years but I'm once again struck by how, for example, "engage through familarity" can be touted as a new concept!

Nonetheless, it is always fun to see the connection between Bono and the church made more explicit.

Platinum Weird - new-old George Harrison

There is a new band named platinum weird (or maybe it's an old band) that seems to include Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics. I'm generally not a big Eurythmics fan but on their website they feature a new recording of an old George Harrison song, "This Guitar" with a never-before-released George Harrison vocal. It's a sparse arrangement with a very nice George vocal and you can download an mp3 of the song here. (There is another nice song here.)

The website claims that it's from 1974 but it's pretty clear from some of the sounds that much of the track was recorded recently and George's voice sounds more like his last album than it did in '74 so there might be some tomfoolery afoot here. The video on the website also has a Rutles-like quality to it so it could be that Platinum Wierd will only exist in order to spoof other bands. It could be that this really is a new band and Stewart is trying to generate interest. Either way, it's good to hear some new George!

EDIT: Apparently, this is a new band featuring Kara DioGuiardi, who is best known (if at all) as the songwriter behind hits by people who don't write - like Ashlee Simpson, Kelly Clarkson, GWen Stefani, etc. She and Dave Stewart were put together by their management to write some material for the Pussycat Dolls and they did this instead.

Preparing for Philip Yancey

This week Wednesday my kids and I get to play at an event run by the publisher of Philip Yancey’s next book. Yancey is going to talk to the sales reps about his forthcoming book on prayer and my kids (Meredith, Bryan and Lynnae) and I were asked to supply the music. So last Thursday I get a call on my office phone from Philip Yancey saying “Hi Bob. This is Philip Yancey. I understand we’re going to be doing an event together.” We then proceeded to chat for a while about what was going to happen at this event.

Did you catch that? Philip Yancey called me and it wasn’t a wrong number!

So we’ve been busy here at the beginning of spring break getting music ready and practicing. I wish Bethany could be here to join the fun but we’ll just have to make due without her. We’re pretty excited.

For better or Verse

Thanks to Snopes, here is a fun little story of a Bible verse mix-up:

A young and nervous bride planning her wedding was increasingly terrified about her upcoming marriage. To calm her nerves, she decided to have a Bible verse which had always brought her comfort (1 John 4:18, "There is no fear in love; for perfect love casts out fear") engraved on her wedding cake. So she called the caterer and all arrangements were made. About a week before the wedding, she received a call from the catering company. "Is this really the verse you want on your cake?" they asked. Yes, she confirmed, it was the one she wanted, and after a few more questions they said they would decorate the cake as requested. The wedding day came, and everything was beautiful ... until the reception, when the bride walked in to find the cake emblazoned with John 4:18: "For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband."

The Simpsons Seventh Season DVD

Reviewing a particular season of the Simpsons is tricky since ones enjoyment of the Simpsons is generally in two units – you either like them in general or you particularly like certain episodes. So the question of how a particular season is comes down to a few key episodes. In that regard, my favorite season is still probably Season 4 – any season with “Homer the Heretic” in it is a good one. So, are there any great episodes in Season 7? Oh yes.

• First of all, Paul and Linda McCartney show up in the “Lisa the Vegetarian” and, while it’s a bit preachy, I did like that they say that they visit Apu’s garden whenever they’re in Springfield.
• “Two Bad Neighbors,” an episode in which Former President George H. W. Bush moves in across the street to the Simpsons is lots and lots of fun. Homer and George get into a real feud.
• My favorite of the season, however, is “Homerpalooza” – not because it’s such a fabulous episode, but because the kids think their dad is so incredibly square when he explains all about old rock bands, who they were and who played with whom when old rock music comes on the car radio. It’s so much like me it’s scary. Of course, I never joined a rock tour and caught cannon balls in my stomach so it’s not entirely based on my life – but its close.

There are few clunkers in this season. Most of the episodes fit into the “another good Simpsons episode" category. Basically, if you like the show, there’s not reason not to like Season 7 – especially when you can buy it in a hollowed out head.

Curriculum Consultation Day

Yesterday Laura and I had a wonderful day with about 30 Christian school teachers from across North America. The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship brought them to Grand Rapids to learn about the curriculum about worship for 5th grade that the two of us wrote this past summer and fall. These teachers have all agreed to pilot the curriculum and give us feedback by the end of the school year so that we can revise and continue work on this project.

The consultation actually started on Thursday evening with a reception and a brief worship time. We got rolling right away on Friday morning when John Witvliet led us in an hour intro to thinking about worship – what he calls "Worship 101", plus a bit of his "Worship 301". Then, after going to Calvin’s chapel service all of us returned to the Prince Center and Laura and I introduced the curriculum, Together We Worship, by talking about what we were thinking as we wrote this, why we made the choices we made and by quickly walking through one of the lessons.

After lunch, we talked a bit about resources and Ed Seely made a pitch for the Minstry Resource Center in the Hekman library. Then Laura did a short presentation on one way of doing drama and I did an hour on Spiritual Development. After which we wrapped up the day with a few questions, some nuts and bolts about how this pilot project would work and ended with a song.

The teachers were great. They came with a wonderful spirit of cooperation and a willingness to look at what we had prepared, work with the materials that we gave them and to give us the feedback that we need. The support from the Institute staff was wonderful also. Kristen VerHulst and Betty Grit were with us all day and made sure things ran smoothly and that we all had what we needed to have a good day. We were even allowed to invite some Calvin Education students to sit in and learn from this fine collection of teachers. We had a great time.

'Girl Meets God' by Lauren Winner

I finally got to finish reading Lauren Winner’s wonderful book Girl Meets God. Quite simply, this is one of the most well-written books that I have read in a very long time. This memoir is a series of short meditations on various aspects of life and faith which seem like what one gets if a very literary person does stream of consciousness writing. It’s clear though, almost immediately, that this book is not just a jumble of random thoughts. Winner’s writing is crisp, elegant and insightful. The arrangement of the various episodes in the book help us get to know her, understand her faith journey and learn things about God’s word and about ourselves along the way.

Winner converted to Orthodox Judaism as a teenager and, while studying in England, converted to Christianity. Her understanding of Christianity is formed by her rich background in Judaism, her love of literature and books and her ability to see things as bigger than they appear. It’s really intimidating to write about such a wonderful book – I feel like I should just say very little because I don’t want my writing to be held up to her standards. So I’ll just suggest that this is a book that is really worth reading. One of my all-time favorites.

Indelible Grace 4: Beams of Heaven

Kevin Twit, campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship at Belmont University in Nashville noticed that many of the young people in his care were longing to connect with something deeper than the praise choruses that were often used in worship services featuring contemporary music. You can read a bit about that here in an article that Twit wrote for Reformed Worship. He did something about this by presenting a book of hymn texts to many of the singer-songwriters he worked with and challenged them to turn these lyrics into songs that would relate to people with contemporary musical tastes. The result of this has been a wonderful series of albums in the Indelible Grace series. I’ve had a chance to spend some time with Kevin on a few occasions and, when I saw him last January at the Calvin Symposium on Worship he gave me a copy of the fourth album in this series, Beams of Heaven. This album is another fine collection of songs sung by a variety of artists including Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken and Jars of Clay’s Dan Haseltine. The writers use modern folk styles to beautifully compliment these hymn texts.

My favorites on this album are the infectious “His Love Can Never Fail” which Derek Webb sings, Laura Taylor’s beautiful version of “To Christ the Lord” and Sandra McCracken’s sparse and compelling arrangement of “Jesus the Lord My Savior Is.” Overall, this album really covers no ground that hasn’t been covered by the first three albums but I’m not sure that’s a weakness. Aside from listening in the car and the office I use these albums as a source of music for use in worship and they have been wonderful for that. I like being able to bring songs to worship (or to sing at baptisms or other special occasions) that have some textual heft to them. These albums raise the bar on what we should expect from worship music. Do we really need a fourth Indelible Grace album? I think we need even a few more. This album can be purchased online at igracemusic.

'Walk the Line'

I don’t usually buy DVDs on a whim. Usually I think about it for a while or at least have some on a mental list (and yes, in this case list is only in my mind, not on my palm pilot) so that if I see it on sale I will buy it. Last Tuesday, though, I was in Best Buy picking up the new Corrs album and Pride and Prejudice (mostly because Laura and Lynnae wanted it – although I’m sure I’ll enjoy it too) when I saw Walk the Line, the film about the early career years of Johnny Cash, and, on a whim, I bought it. I made a fine choice. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon both do a remarkable job as Johnny Cash and June Carter. The academy award nominations are certainly justified. Phoenix and Witherspoon have the singing down so well that, when the film plays an actual duet from Cash and Carter over the credits, I wasn't sure if it was really them or not.

I generally like movies about musicians because I like seeing the ins and outs of the business and also the creative process. This film actually doesn’t show a whole lot of either of those, although I really enjoyed the early Sun Studios scenes and seeing Cash's relationships with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and his band. It also shows that Cash was a Dylan fan - he sings one of his songs and has Dylna's musis playing in the background often. The film mainly focuses, though, on the relationship that Cash had with June Carter. I have mixed feelings about their relationship though. Clearly, Cash was smitten with June early on and it was she who rescued him from an addiction to pills and a self-destructive lifestyle. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for Cash’s obsession with June Carter, his marriage might not have fallen apart. I found it hard to cheer for their getting together when I saw that, according to this film at least, Cash was really responsible for the end of his marriage.

I know the end of the story; how Carter helped Cash come back to recognizing Jesus as his Lord and really helped him become much more than just a rock and country star – things that happened after the end of the film and are really only hinted at. But there is something in the way that they got together that is troubling. Cash’s first wife, Vivian, is just sort of cast off when Cash pushes her beyond the limits of what she can stand. Yes, I know that she left him but, realistically, he left her long before that. Nonetheless, this is apparently what happened in Cash’s life (the director spent a lot of time with the couple before they died) and the film does a fine job presenting it. What I'd really like to see now is a film to finish the story. I want to see how Cash made the rest of the transition to the thoughtful Godly man that he became for the last half of his life.

'Dark Angel' Season One

It took me just two months to watch the whole first season of Dark Angel since I got it for Christmas. I had read about the show and thought it sounded interesting. When I saw it on sale for $18.88 (or something like that) I thought picking it up was a no-brainer. I have written about it before, after I had seen just the first episode. Since then I have been slowly but surely working my way through all 21 first season episodes. Dark Angel is the story of Max (Jessica Alba), a genetically engineered soldier who escapes from her training institution, Manticore, as a child. She was bred to be a soldier and has a bar code on the back of her neck. Since her escape she tries to pass as a normal person. She lives her life as a messenger service delivery person in post-pulse Seattle, the shell of a city after some sort of electromagnetic pulse wipes out much of the technology and culture. It’s like the great depression but set in the not-too-distant future. The city is consistently dirty with the buildings mostly looking like the remnants of a war zone. Corruption is rampant and movement is severely restricted. In her quest to find the other eleven “brothers and sisters” who escaped with Max she takes to a life of crime and is caught in the act by Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly) who, seeing something he likes in this genetically enhanced woman, enlists her to help him in his one-man crusade against corruption. If she helps him, he tells her, he’ll use his considerable connections and computer savvy to help her find her siblings. She agrees and the rest of the season is spent bringing Max closer to her sibs and also closer to Cale.

No one is going to suggest that Jessica Alba was robbed of an Emmy Award for her work in Season One of Dark Angel. The writers aren’t going to get cited either for great dialogue – they sometimes work the futuristic slang a little too much. But overall, the episodes are at least entertaining and at times riveting as Max uses her skills and attitude to single-handedly get herself out of a number of scrapes. Her relationship with Cale has multiple layers and the writers handle them just about right most of the time. The futuristic hip-hop soundtrack is interesting and used to good effect. The supporting characters do a fine job of adding just the right amount of color even though some of them (Kendra, for example) just sort of disappear as the season goes on. As with many series, (Alias leaps to mind) things crank up nicely as the end of the season draws near and the season ends in a way that I found surprising and disturbing. It made me start to think about buying Season Two, which means that, despite my reservations, I enjoyed it enough to spend more money on it.

A review of 'The Gospel According to the Simpsons' by Mark Pinsky

When I was at the APCE conference in St Louis I looked over the Cokesbury books table and picked up a few things, one of which was The Gospel According to the Simpsons by Mark Pinsky. I picked up some other more serious books too but this is the one I read first. I have been watching the Simpsons on DVD for about two and a half years now (see my previous post about them) and presently I’m working my way through season 7. I find the treatment of faith to be remarkably even-handed on this show. The things about evangelical Christianity that the Simpsons mocks often deserve mockery. They go after the trappings of our faith rather than our faith itself. Do they cross the line sometimes? Yes, they do. But more often, I find myself reflecting on the critique in a way that makes me think more deeply about what the church is doing to people that we ought not do.

I found myself wondering, though, if there was a whole books worth of stuff about the spiritual side of the Simpsons. Once I got about a third of the way into this book I was pretty convinced that this book, at least, wasn’t it. Overall, my biggest problem with this book is that there’s too much reporting and not enough analysis. (The author is a writer for the Orlando Sentinel so maybe that’s what happens when a reporter writes a book.) This especially comes through in the first half of the book when Pinsky covers a number of the Simpson characters one at a time. Each chapter is mostly just a detailed review of the plots of some of the key episodes with too much detail. I found Pinsky’s discussion of Apu and Hinduism to be actually more helpful than his discussion of any of the Christian characters.

I was looking forward to the last chapter, called “conclusion,” with the hopes that I would finally get some real analysis but, alas, even that chapter was mostly a set of quotes – some even from my colleagues, Quentin Schultz and Bill Romanowski. I did find one quote, from Harry Shearer, the voice of many characters on the show, enlightening. Shearer suggests that one reason for the rich religious variety on the show is because the show is animated and the producers can have a much larger set of supporting characters than a typical situation comedy. As I thought about this I realized that the huge number of recurring characters in the Simpsons is, indeed, one of the things that makes the show special. You couldn’t have that many characters in a show with live people in the parts – no one would be willing to pay that many people to have them at their disposal. Overall, though, I ended the book with few insights that I hadn’t already thought myself from just watching the show.

Rethinking an article about Singleness

My daughter Bethany pointed me to an article in Boundless called Rethinking the Gift of Singleness.  It got both of us pretty riled up because the author implies that single women are living outside of God’s will.  While she’s at it she takes a swipe at higher education by calling it “a protracted education system that doesn't really educate.”  I’m not going to go into depth on all the ways this article bugs me because Bethany has already done such a good job in her recent post about it.  Go and read her blog post.  

The decaffeinated life

About a month ago my doctor told me that I needed to get off of caffeine.  I tried to suggest that I go half and half with my coffee for a while but he said “nah, just do it.”  So I did.  Aside from the headache on day one and the sense that I was dragging for much of the week after that it hasn’t been so bad.  I wasn’t one of those people who had coffee all the time but I really enjoyed my cup of coffee in the morning and a couple more throughout the day as well as a can (or two) of pop (or soda, depending on where you’re from).  So, aside from missing the drug I was also missing the taste and the comfort of drinking the coffee in the morning – I enjoyed sitting in my family room on Saturday morning before anyone else in the house was up, watching a DVD and drinking a good cup – or two – of coffee.  Two years ago (I think) I decided that I would try “expensive” coffee and started buying Starbucks.  It was good.  It was very good.  But that particular pleasure is lost to me now.  Decaf just isn’t the same.

It hasn’t been easy though.  One week after starting on my new lifestyle I was in St Louis for a conference and the hotel had a Starbucks right in the lobby!  I was mostly startled, though, to find that, in many food establishments, if you want a caffeine free drink you’re stuck with something clear – a 7-Up type drink.  I’m not a huge fan of 7-Up.  I don’t hate it – how can anyone hate that stuff, there just isn’t enough there to hate.  But I don’t really want to pay for it.  So I’ve been disappointed to find that some of the excellent caffeine-free soft-drinks (Caffeine-free Dr Pepper and Mug Root Beer, for example) tend not to be available at many fast food places.  But I’m not going to go on a decaf crusade.  I don’t want to be that guy.

So, my energy level is back up, my stomach feels a LOT better and I now have the moral high ground with those of you still addicted to that terrible substance.  But I promise not to be a zealot and try to decaffeinate my friends.

Rock's next megaband may be ... no one

This article suggests that we may not ever have another megaband on the order of the Beatles, U2 or Led Zeppelin. It starts with the obligatory "will it be Coldplay?" question but then goes on to say that because of the diffuse nature of media today, it may not be possible.

I'm not so sure about that. After seeing Coldplay on the Grammy Awards I'm less convinced that they have what it takes. But, then again, U2 didn't have what it takes for world domination after their third album either. They were able to do this because it takes a truly execptional band willing to grow and change and adapt. But maybe it's more than that. Do you need a band with big anthemic songs to be like U2? Can Bruce Springsteen only pack stadiums when he sings "Born in the USA" and not when he sings "Nebraska?" I'm not sure about that either. I think there is a place for gentle songs to grab the culture but probably not on the sclae that U2 does. I can't see an acoustic band playing the Super Bowl.


(Thanks to Scatter O' Light for pointing me to the article.)

Coming late to the 'Lost' party

I found a great price on the Lost Season One DVD set and, even though I wasn’t immediately grabbed by the pilot, I like JJ Abrams’ work on Alias and so I wanted to like Lost. Watching broadcast television is hard for me because I have to remember to tape it (no, I don’t have a Tivo) and then I have to label the tape and, well, you get the idea. I’ll do it for a few shows that I really want to see but can’t have too many in rotation. The tapes get confused and I get really frustrated if I miss an episode - I'm a little compulsive about things like that. So when Lost first came on I had Alias and West Wing and that was pretty much all I could handle. Plus, as I said, it just didn’t grab me.

It turns out that I like almost everything better on DVD. I like knowing that the last episode is already there waiting for me. I like not dealing with commercials. I like the picture and sound quality and I like the convenience of being able to watch it whenever I want to without tapes stacking up and feeling like I’ve mislabeled something.

But, since I could get Lost pretty cheap I picked it up and I loved it. It got better as the season went on. The flashback method of telling the back-story of the castaways works really well and the mysteries on the island are a great way to move the interpersonal story along. This show is well cast, acted, directed and shot. No wonder it won a Golden Globe Award. I am now a fan.

So, can I dive into season two in the middle or do I just wait for the DVD?

'How the Bible was Built' - a review

I recently picked up the book How the Bible was Built by Charles Merrill Smith and James Bennett. It is a thin volume that I thought would have a lot of good information on the history of the canon. I was sorely disappointed. As I read it I read things that seemed unlikely. The authors don’t give any indication that there could be any difference of opinion on their version of how the bible cam to be – they merely present it as fact. They present, for example, that Manassah wrote Deuteronomy just before a priest at the time of Josiah found it. This is one of the options that are considered by authorities but it isn’t a done deal, as Smith and Bennett make it out to be. This is typical of this book. Things are presented as "the way it is" rather than "the way it might be" - I'd even settle for "the way it probably is" when, I believe, there is still much discussion about these issues. I was so disappointed with this book that I didn’t even finish it. Definitely NOT recommended.

Great old Christan album cover art

Check here for some wonderful examples of old Christian album cover art, like the one shown in the picture at the left, which Meredith and Bryan could use for their album cover! (Thanks to Nathan Hart for the link.)

One wonders why, if these twins are so good, they have apparently run out of gas.