I, Robot

I know this film came out a long time ago but I finally got around to watching I, Robot thanks to Bryan who found a cheap copy for me! Back in the 70s and 80s I was a huge Isaac Asimov fan and I, Robot is, perhaps, his best known book. What people who have not read the book don’t realize is that it’s actually a short story collection about robots tied together because of a few common characters (most notably Dr. Susan Calvin) and the three laws of robotics:

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

A collection of short stories does not easily become a film so I was curious what the film would be like. It turns out that the film is only based loosely on the book - Asimov didn't have nearly as much action in his stories. The film does include the three laws and Dr. Calvin but that’s where the similarity ends. I will say that the way the mystery wraps up (and I won’t give away the plot) is very much like something Asimov would do – having the three laws broken only to show that they really weren’t broken.

Will Smith is only somewhat believable as the main character (Detective Del Spooner) and Bridget Moynahan plays Susan Calvin in a way that makes you think that she is perfectly comfortable around robots. I’m not sure that was intentional. Don’t watch this for the acting. Asimov's Robot novels featured a detective, Elijah Bailey, but Bailey and Spooner have almost nothing in common. I'm not sure the film makers even thought about the Robot mystery novels despite the fact that this is a robot mystery based on Asimov's work!

However, the effects were a lot of fun and the movie hooked me. There are a few places at the end where the camera work is dazzling (in a special effects kind of way, not a Lord of the Rings awe inspiring kind of way) and the scene where the house is destroyed with Will Smith inside is really fun to watch. Overall, I'm glad I saw it and would recommend it to people who like Science Fiction and action movies.

Jessica's Boots

I have, for quite some time, been critical of people who are critical of Christians who operate in the mainstream of the entertainment industry. I think of the heat that Amy Grant took for her “Baby Baby” video which was completely harmless. Grant was shown in romantic situations with a man who wasn’t her husband. In this case, romantic doesn’t mean sexual – it means that they were shown taking walks, goofing off, hugging and other things of that nature. But some in the Christian community just couldn’t get past the fact that she was acting in a video with someone other than her husband. Other examples of this are the hassles that accompanied Michael W. Smith’s song “Love Me Good” or Sixpence’s “Kiss Me.”

I write all this as an introduction to what I’m about to write about what I saw on MTV this morning while eating breakfast. When Jessica Simpson first broke into the industry one of the few things that separated her from Britney and Christina was that she said she was a Christian. I actually remember looking at her web site early on when I heard this and, if I remember correctly, she even addressed the issue in one of her posts. She was trying to make it in the industry with her morals intact. I gave her a lot of credit for the stand she took on premarital sex. She seemed to be at least trying to be a person of faith and standards.

So this morning I saw her new video, “These Boots Are Made For Walking”, a tie-in to the new Dukes of Hazzard movie. She, of course, wears what one would expect – the Daisy Duke look of super short cut-off shirt and shorts but the dancing that she does goes pretty far beyond what I can see as what a person of faith would do. I was pretty stunned by the whole thing until, near the end of the video we, for some odd reason, get to see her wash the Dukes’ car in a bikini. At least I think it was the Dukes’ car – frankly it’s hard to pay attention to the car.

Is this video consistent with what Simpson professes?

EDIT: I found out I'm not the only one who noticed this. An article at SouthFlorida.com inlcudes this quote from Jessica's dad:

Simpson's father Joe, the aforementioned pastor, isn't bothered by the apparent sexiness of the video.

"She is not trying to be sexy. If you watch her, she's laughing throughout the whole thing," he tells "Inside Edition." "She's dancing like a crazy thing, like her mother and sister would dance at the house and be stupid. This is not her trying to be a Playboy model, which is what we're hearing."

Is he watching the same video I watched????????

Tunas at GRAM

My band, the Lazy Blue Tunas will be playing at the Grand Rapids Art Museum this Friday at 6:30! Come on out!

The Very Best Gift of All and Together All God's People

If you look here you can see the Christmas play that Laura and I have most recently published. So recently, in fact, that we haven't even received our copies yet. The Very Best Gift of All is the sixth Christmas play for children that we have published and there are two more waiting at Faith Alive to see the light of day. We don't know if they'll both come out next year or if they'll do them one at a time. We've really enjoyed our association with Faith Alive. They've been great about publishing many of our plays and asking us to write curriculum and other assorted things for them. This particular play had a different title - it was called The Gift of Grace, a title which I still prefer.

This will be the first time in eight years that Laura and I do not plan to write a new play for our church to perform for it's Christmas program. We are writing a short one-act play for the Banner to publish that is designed to be done at home with familes but no full-out play this year. we will recycle a program for the first time in over a decade.

Speaking of Faith Alive, I received in the mail yesterday a copy of Together All God's People which reflects some of the material which a team, of which I was thrilled to be a member, presented at a series of conferences on intergenrational worship. We travelled far and wide together and had a great time encouraging the church to think more intergenerationally. I'm please that a resource book came out of this. Thanks to Karen Wilk for putting it together!

Is It A Lost Cause?

I have been reading Marva Dawn’s Is It A Lost Cause. There are some things in the book that I like but the further I get into it the more things that annoyed me slightly at the start are getting to me. First of all, there is something about the tone of the book that sets my teeth on edge. We want authors to be authoritative. After all, no one wants to read a book that is so namby-pamby that it never really says anything. However, Dawn’s tone is both authoritative and bossy. She references her own books often – books that cover a wide range of faith related topics. I remember reading Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down and feeling that she had an attitude in the way that she wrote. It was almost as if all of her chapters should start with “OK, listen up. Here’s another thing that I suppose I have to teach you people about.” (It reminds me a bit of the lead actor on CSI Miami – the one who plays Horatio. He seems like every one of his sentences should end with “you stupid twit!”)

This particular book is about raising children. It is clear to me, someone who is raising or has raised four kids that Ms. Dawn has not. Many of the things she writes about I agree with – kids do need boundaries, for example. But I know that some things are easier to say than they are to do. It’s that hedging, that acknowledgement that this is hard, that I don’t hear in Dawns’ tone. She also tends to paraphrase research that she doesn’t actually cite giving the illusion of scientific backing where there is none.

My favorite gripe, though, is where she readily says she has seen no research but is sure that faith-based programs would be more successful in promoting abstinence and drug and alcohol than non faith-based programs. After all, she says, they can get at the spiritual root of the temptation (p 135). Apparently Ms. Dawn has not read that there is just as high a rate of alcoholism in the church as in the mainstream population or that Christian kids get pregnant too.

There are many good things in this book, just as there were in her books on worship. I just having a hard time listening when her tone speaks just as loudly as her words.

Saturday at the Rienstra house

Ron challenged me to a blog-off regarding the Rienstra-Keeley July 4th Weekend family get-together that we had yesterday at Ron’s parents’ place on Lake Michigan. It was wonderful. We got things off to a great start with lots of food preparation and discussion about grading and defending grades to students. Grading turned out to be a theme for much of the day – Ron is just fresh off a semester as a TA at Fuller so he had some students who were not happy with his grades and we spent a fair amount of time thinking together about the difference between criterion-referenced grades and norm-referenced grades (although I’m not sure those terms ever got mentioned). I’m a fan of criterion-referenced grading because I think it is more inherently fair unless the school at which you are grading specifically states that the grades are norm-referenced. Ron was told to be norm-referenced at the beginning of the semester and that was perhaps a big part of the issue. Bethany is soon going to be in the same position so she particularly interested.

Laura made some wonderful stuffed mushrooms with apparently only a few of us liked (the kids were not about to try them) so I had lots of them which is a great thing. Ron showed us his skill as the Grill Master and I took up the mantle as Assistant Grill Master (or is that Assistant to the Grill Master?) Either way, the burgers were great and so was the salad that Laura made (I was the assistant salad maker – or at least the assistant to the salad maker). After dinner and conversation (which included Ron’s mom and dad) about the Emerging Church movement and Debra’s work we retired to the beach.

A rousing game of Frisbee keep-away for some of us and a walk down the beach for others tired us out just enough that we went up to the deck and heard about Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus, and graduation ceremonies (focusing on rocks and presidents).

Back to Holland for fireworks (where Meredith joined us). It was a wonderful day. The best part was having our two families together again for the first time in nearly a year.

the "blog" of "innapropriate" quotation marks

Bethany has started the "blog" of "innapropriate" quotation marks. Now why didn't "I" think of that?

U2 - Keyboards under the stage

This link answers a question I've had for a while - how does U2 get the keyboard sounds when they play live? I wondered if it was an under the stage keyboard player or taped ekyboards. Here is what the posting at @U2 says:

"Terry Lawless is (again) providing keyboards from under the stage (think 'City of Blinding Lights,' for example); "

Shirley MacLaine - just as strange as ever

According to MSNBC.com:

"“Bewitched” star Shirley MacLaine isn’t a fan of the TV series that inspired the flick. “I didn’t like the show itself, but what I loved was that ‘Bewitched’ made witchcraft acceptable to the public,” the new-agey actress told the Toronto Sun. MacLaine plays the role of Endora, who in the TV version was played by Agnes Moorehead, who died in 1974. MacLaine, who believes in past lives and such, said: “I never met Agnes in person, but I talked to her recently and she’s doing fine.”"

Shirley MacLaine made headlines when her book Out On A Limb was published a number of years ago outlining her "interesting" beliefs. One wonders exactly how she talked to Ms. Moorehead.

By the way, the name of the witch she plays is Endora - this is a Biblical reference. Anyone know it?

One

From the CRC web page:

Citizens in more than 80 countries worldwide will be donning the increasingly familiar white wrist band on July 1 to show solidarity in holding world leaders to the Millennium Development Goals, which would cut global poverty in half by 2015.

The first “White Arm Band Day” takes place just five days before the G8 leaders convene in Gleneagles, Scotland to discuss poverty in Africa. Cancellation of debt to poor nations, fair trade and more and better aid will be the focus of the talks.

Governments are feeling the pressure to make responsible choices by campaigns such as Micah Challenge, the worldwide Christian campaign under the Global Call to Action Against Poverty umbrella. The Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC) is a major supporter of the Micah Challenge campaign, a sister campaign of Make Poverty History in Canada and The One campaign in the United States.

“Wearing the white band is the first step for a lot of people”, says Karen Bokma, CRWRC social justice coordinator. “To really raise our voice against poverty, every person needs to sign the campaign petitions as well.”

A More Profound Alleluia – review

I have finished A More Profound Alleluia edited by Leanne Van Dyk and truly enjoyed it. The different essays compliment each other well and the overall effect is not that of an anthology but, rather, it reads more like a single-author book, which in this case, is a very good thing. All of the authors address their topics with a sense of authority (the people who are writing clearly know their stuff) and sensitivity to a number of Christian traditions. There were things in each chapter that made me stop and think. I highly recommend it.

U2 TO DONATE MILLIONS TO AFRICA

I continue to be impressed with these guys. They are each (including their manager) giving a million Euros towards eliminating poverty in Africa. That's five million Euros or about six million dollars.

Read more here

A More Profound Alleluia - post #2

I continue to read A More Profound Alleluia edited by Leanne Van Dyk.

In every chapter there has been some line that has deepened by understanding of either worship or of theology. As I was thinking back on the book today I considered this line from John Witvliet’s chapter: “The Holy Spirit is the forgotten participant in the Christmas drama.”

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Christmas. In fact, my wife and I have written eight Christmas plays for kids, six of which are already published with two more in press (you can see the newest one here) and John’s right. We’ve never once mentioned the Holy Spirit in any of the plays.

This summer we have to write a short play for families to use at home to be published in The Banner. I’m guessing that the Holy Spirit will show up in the play somewhere.

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

My daughter Bethany pointed me to The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation because she is preparing to teach Public Speaking at the University of Georgia in the fall. It's a fun site and has a really cheesy version of the Gettysburg Address if it was presented in powerpoint format. Pretty funny. The point, of course, is that we have a wonderful speech that gets seriously dumbed down because of the use of presentation software.

I use powerpoint a lot in my classes so this got me thinking again about it. I like to think of myself as a thoughtful powerpointer. I use it to organize my thoughts and to give my students a map for where I'm going. I wondered if my classes were dumbed down because of powerpoint just like the Gettysburg address was in this example.

Then I had a thought - I wonder how many of the people standing in Gettysburg "got it" when Lincoln delivered his speech? I wonder if they only sort of heard what he said, if they really didn't follow it or if they left saying - what was the point of that?

Just because a speech is wonderful oratory doesn't mean it accomplished it's goal. One reason why this speech works so well is that we've read it again and again. Maybe an outline on a screen (hopefully not as dumb as the one in this example) would have made this great speech connect with the audience even more than it did?

A More Profound Alleluia

As I mentioned earlier, I’m reading A More Profound Alleluia, edited by Leanne Van Dyk and I’ve really been enjoying it. In the second chapter, "Confession and Assurance – Sin and Grace", William Dryness writes about that part of worship in which we confess our sins and hear the assurance of pardon. After the assurance, in many congregations the people are encouraged to pass the peace of God. Dryness says that when people turn to one another and say “good morning” it is a missed opportunity. He says:

When we look at one another and say, “the peace of the Lord Jesus be with you” we are extending to one another the reality that, having been reconciled to God, we are reconciled to one another.

I like this a lot. For the first time, I realized that this act of passing the peace is much more than just a churchy way of saying hello. It is a significant act of rejoicing in the unity that we have as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Bad Preaching and Bad Art

Thanks to Beth at U2Sermons for this quote:
"Trying to change the way art itself works, for the sake of the so-called 'service of the Gospel,' just does a disservice to both. Art is a terrible preacher. If you want to preach, be a preacher. When you try to force art to preach, you get bad preaching and you get bad art." --Colin Harbinson at the Rencontre Europeene d'Artistes, Paris, June 2005

This speaks to much of the issue of CCM that I’ve referred to more than once on this blog. This is one reason why I prefer worship music to CCM lately – the artistry of worship music is in it’s appropriateness to worship where CCM is often made with an eye toward evangelism. I think that what happens is little evangelism but we get a lot of people who are already in the faith listening to the music because it makes them feel good.

There are, of course, some bright spots on the CCM scene but a couple of them have left – Phil Keaggy and Charlie Peacock to mention two of them. I also like the stuff that Jars of Clay and Watermark have done. But these aren’t the people who get on CCM radio. This also speaks to why I’m so moved lately by the music of U2, David Wilcox, Over the Rhine, Sandra McCracken, Ric Hordinski and others. There is a lot of good stuff out there that is worth pursuing.

There is also a lot of excellent worship music being written lately - and I'm not just referring to the plethora of Praise and Worship music that is being sold in Christian Book Stores. I'm thinking at least as much of the music that is being written in the Iona community by John Bell, by the music of New Yorker Jorge Lockward, the Reformed University Fellowship community in Nashville lead by Kevin Twit and by other modern hymn writers who are doing remarkable things in worship music.

By the way, I’m presently reading A More Profound Alleluia edited by Leanne Van Dyke and I’m really enjoying it – comments on that later.

Also look here or here to see a picture of my father's day cake

Sprinkling

Our lawn is yellow. This is not an unusual occurrence in the summer. In fact, it is a usual occurrence for our lawn in the summer. That’s because generally we don’t sprinkle. We don’t have underground sprinkling so we have to schlep a hose around the yard and then turn on the water in order for it to get wet. That seldom happens.

I prefer to think that if God had wanted a lawn to be green he would have sent rain. It really is, from a theological perspective, somewhat presumptuous of us to water our lawn. It’s as if we’re saying that we don’t trust God. The way I see it, you can tell how holy someone is by seeing how dry and yellow their lawn is in the summer. I am clearly the holiest guy on the block.

By the way, this often works in the winter as well – I trust God to send sunshine to clear my driveway of snow. Yup, it’s all a matter of having faith.

another surprise

A few days ago I wrote that my son is only interested in classic rock. He just came home from work and put Eisley on in his room. I'm shocked.

Emergent leaders respond to criticism

Kent pointed me to this site which has a fairly lengthy letter from a series of leaders in the emergent church movement responding to criticisms of their work. Much of it is well intentioned and nicely articulated. One of the ten points is that people should respond to their writings after actually having read them – always a good idea. (I’m especially sensitive to that given the at times unfair critique of the letter that some of my Calvin College colleagues placed in the Grand Rapids Press regarding the visit of President Bush.)

I certainly don’t think my little blog entry regarding Dan Kimball’s book (and his subseqent response) counts as one of the major criticisms that he has faced – and, frankly, I was unaware that there was so much criticism out there. But, since I’ve already engaged him in conversation about it, I’ll make one additional comment about the letter.

The fifth point reads as follows:

Fifth, because most of us write as local church practitioners rather than professional scholars, and because the professional scholars who criticize our work may find it hard to be convinced by people outside their guild, we feel it wisest at this juncture to ask those in the academy to respond to their peers about our work. We hope to generate fruitful conversations at several levels, including both the academic and ecclesial realms. If few in the academy come to our defense in the coming years, then we will have more reason to believe we are mistaken in our thinking and that our critics are correct in their unchallenged analyses.

Why should those of us in the academy only respond to those in the academy and not to the people writing these books? It seems to me that this point says that we won’t listen anyway so we shouldn’t engage in conversation with the church professionals. I find this request puzzling at least and a bit troubling. Is it that academicians expect a different type of discussion and are playing by different rules than these writers? Are we reading “popular” writings and criticizing them because they’re not academic writings?

Still, much of the letter is well written and interesting. After recently attending a somewhat standard contemporary worship service (in what I think is the Willow Creek / Saddleback format) I’m thrilled that people are looking to the more traditional church to get back some of what has been tossed aside and if that is the outcome of the emergent conversation then we will be blessed by it.

EDIT: Bethany's comment made me re-read the paragraph that I quoted and I agree with her. The paragraph is a call for academic supporters to respond to academic critics rather than a call for academics to quit bugging them. This makes sense now.

Lazy Blue Tunas - One Trick Pony - June 16

My band, the Lazy Blue Tunas will unveil four new songs tomorrow night at the One Trick Pony in Grand Rapids - well, new for us anyway. It promises to be another fun night of rockin' so come on out. While you're at it, say "Happy birthday" to Bethany.

Reflection and Renewal

In addition to my position in the Education Department at Calvin, for the last 14 years my wife and I have also directed children’s ministries at our church, a job which has some real benefits. We get to know some children over the course of a number of years so that now, kids who are graduating from college were in our programs since 2nd grade. We get to see kids go from being held in their parents’ arms at baptism to participating in children’s worship and Sunday School, to being active members of our worshipping communities. In addition, many of them help out in our programs as leaders or teachers passing on some of the things they learned from their teachers. It’s a real gift for us to have been in this church for so long in this position.

But, church staff positions are draining and, because we have a staff position the church has left it up to us to fit vacations in. We’re not very good at that and so, consequently, over the past 14 years we’ve missed probably less than 20 Sundays, and even when we’ve missed we’ve often made sure that things are covered.

This summer, however, we asked the church council for two months with no responsibilities for refection and renewal, which they granted us. Today marks the first Sunday. It is wonderful. We went and visited another church with quite a different worship style and – here’s the best part – got there just in time for the service and left right afterward! We didn't have to plan for the day, nor did we have to put in extra hours thinking about the service ahead of time. Amazing.

We haven’t turned off our brains however and spent a good hour debriefing on the service we attended afterward. We have been challenged to think about how children fit into worship at a church with a very contemporary style – this isn’t clear to us at this point. We know that the church we visited has some active programs for children but when there is a contemporary service, very slick and professionally presented with few of the trappings of traditional church, is there a place for children to be included? They can watch and sing along but is there more to it than that?

Paul McCartney in Red Square

Even though Paul McCartney in Red Square doesn't come out for two more days I got a copy last week and finished watching it today. Generally, this is nicely done. However like Macca's other recent concert videos, this one has almost no shots longer than 2 or 3 seconds. This makes the video more exciting but leads to a bit of a frenetic pace and doesn't really let you focus on the band and the players. It would be nice to have at least one McCartney video that focuses on the stage and lets you see what's going on without tons of quick cuts and shots of the audience loving the concert. Also, I think that Paul's voice is starting to show its age occasionally. But I'm certainly not going to criticize him for still rockin' at a ripe old age. That part's just cool.

One real nice touch here is that Paul focused this DVD on what made this concert (actually, two concerts, as a concert in St. Petersburg about a year later is also presented here in a shorter film) unique - where it is being filmed and the songs that he does for these shows. There is a lot of film of the place, of PM visiting sites in Russia, spending some time with Vladimir Putin and the setting itself, as well as a few Russian talking heads speaking of the impact of the Beatles on them 30 years ago and how wonderful it is to see Paul now. This, unfortunately gives the video a sort of self-congratulatory tone which McCartney videos often have. In this case, though, it is an historic concert so I guess it's OK to be pleased with yourself for filling Red Square with fans who were not allowed to buy most of the songs you're playing when they came out!

Finally, during the European leg of McCartney's world tour he replaced about five songs from his Back in the US tour with five other songs (some of which he hadn't ever performed live - like "She's Leaving Home" or "Two of Us") and he made sure that these songs were included on the DVD. Also, the St. Petersburg concert was part of a Europe-only tour from last summer and it also included some songs not seen elsewhere (like "Helter Skelter" and "I've Got a Feeling") and the short St. Petersburg video includes those songs.

So, if you're a Macca fan, buying this is a no-brainer. If you're only a casual fan then here is a chance to see Paul perform many of his biggest hits live in front of a very appreciative audience.

Is Coldplay the next U2?

I went to my local Best Buy on Tuesday and picked up the new Coldplay album, X & Y, partly because I couldn’t resist all the buzz about it, partly because it was cheap ($9.99) and mostly because I knew that at least one of my daughters would really appreciate and the other would at the very least be interested. Just to complete the picture, my son listens primarily to music made prior to 1979 (which means he really digs my Yes and Allman Brothers albums for example) and my youngest daughter is only moderately interested in any music that isn’t Superchic[k].

I had previously thought that Coldplay was mostly a lot of chord thumping with whiny vocals but I’d revised that by listening to Parachutes a few times lately (although Rush of Blood does reinforce my previous notion a bit). I also heard in the media that Coldplay is the band “most likely to be U2” in the future so I certainly couldn’t resist that. I even heard that they had a picture of U2 put up in their studio while they recorded to remind them what they were shooting for.

So, I’ve heard the album a few times now and it is growing on me. There are certainly some similarities to what U2 do well – a quirky vocalist who sings over a thick layer of sound, a bass player and drummer who can really drive a song with their kinetic playing, a sense of not being afraid to reach perhaps a little too far in trying to make a statement and, finally, a sense of soaring melody that can get in your head and stay there.

There is a big difference, though. U2 has a well-documented faith-based lyricist who’s thoughtful and compelling songs have a kind of real depth and weight that give U2 a sense of urgency and moral authority that are hard to come by any other way. When I listen to a U2 song (or at least many of them) I feel challenged to be a better person. When I listen to a Coldplay song I feel like I’ve heard Chris Martin sing about his relationship. It isn’t that all Coldplay songs are about relationships and all U2 songs are about God – but at their core, U2 is playing with much more important stuff than Coldplay is. I’m not sure I want Martin to get all political and everything – after all, how many songs about fair trade do we really need – but the style of the songs they do aches to have some important lyrics to go along with them. It’s not a surprise, then, that the song that has bee singled out by rolling stone as the high point of the album is the most scaled-back song of the lot - the hidden track "Til' Kingdom Come". It’s hardly the most elegant or the most melodic, but it’s the one where the music better fits the personal character of the lyrics.

It’s good to remember that this is only Coldplay's 3rd album and if there was one word that I think characterizes both War (U2’s third album) and X & Y it is potential. It will be interesting to see where they go from here.

CCM, worship music and Bono

I've written about my love/hate relationship with CCM before here and here so this is hardly a new topic for me. It's amazing though how, when I go into a Christian Book store and look at the music section, much of it leaves me cold these days. It just seems that someone somewhere has unnecessarily and unnaturally restricted the allowable topics in the music so that it has no soul anymore.

So it was great to read that Bono more or less feels the same way. Beth at U2Sermons pointed to an audio clip of Bono in which he is pretty harsh on much CCM and then mentions that worship music, on the other hand, is something he's interested in. He says:

"God is interested in truth, and only in truth. And that's why God is more interested in Rock & Roll music than Gospel."

It's a pretty short audio clip and it's really worth listening to. The fact that Bono calls much of CCM "happy-clappy" says that he's heard enough of it to have formed an opinion. He characterizes God's reaction to much of the music as - "please, don't patronize me!" As is often the case, Bono's offhanded quips cut to the core of an issue much more than my paragraphs do.

A Long Strange Trip in an Ice Cream Truck

Reading Phil Lesh’s book (see my earlier post) made me remember that I never did read Dennis McNally’s history of the Grateful Dead called A Long Strange Trip and, seeing as how my local library had a copy on their shelf, I figured I’d read it too. (Actually, I interrupted Marva Dawn’s Is it a Lost Cause to read it, which is probably only fair since I interrupted Jeremy Begbie’s Sounding the Depths to read that – so I’m in the middle of three books.)

McNally has been the Grateful Dead’s publicist since 1984 so his book has some personal weight behind it, like Lesh’s book, and McNally is actually a writer so I had some real hope for this one. I’m finding that I’m enjoying it a bit less than the Lesh book possibly because Lesh’s writing voice is a bit more conversational but also because Lesh could concentrate just on his own story and doesn’t have to try to “tell it all.”

However, one of the things that was in both books that I really enjoyed was that the original plan for Grateful Dead records (their own record label which they started in 1973) was going to bypass the regular record industry and sell their records out of the back of … ice cream trucks.

Sometimes I miss the 70’s.

Raising hands

I recently attended a graduation ceremony at which a parent, while closing in prayer, invited those of us who were comfortable with it to raise our hands to bless the graduates as he offered a prayer / blessing. I did not raise my hands.

Before the reformation the church had all the access to God and the people had almost none of it – people didn’t have a direct line to scripture, for example and they certainly had limited access to the sacraments. The only way to get to God, at that time, according to the church, was through the church. The reformation changed much of that and, as Protestants there are now only a few things that we don’t have direct access to. We read and interpret scripture ourselves; we have our own Bible studies. Some of us even write books and articles about worship without being ordained by a church. But there are a few things that the church still owns, those being primarily the sacraments and, at least in my tradition (Reformed) , the act of raising one’s hands while giving the blessing.

I am more than happy to give a blessing to people – and I do, especially in children’s worship as the children leave. I touch them on the shoulder and say “God bless you, Madeline” or something to that effect. I also am happy to read the Aaronic blessing at certain occasions. But the lifting of hands when issuing the blessing, as a representative of the church, has been restricted to those ordained as ministers of the Word. That’s not me.

So, have I put too much weight on this? Was I just being a stick-in-the-mud by not raising my hands? Is this an example of the church becoming less important in the eyes of today’s Christians? Are we just a group of people who get together to sing and praise God rather than a people set apart?

I really would like some feedback on this one.

Searching for the Sound by Phil Lesh

Here’s an old joke:
Q: what do deadheads say when the drugs wear off?
A: Hey, this band sucks!

I’ve never done drugs but I’ve nonetheless been a fan of the Grateful Dead for quite some time. My friend Pete bought the Europe ’72 triple-album when it came out and we were in college and I enjoyed much of what I found there. But it wasn’t until a different friend dragged me along to a show in Denver in ’78 that I really fell in love with the band. What I understood much later when the Dick’s Pick’s series of CDs started being released was that a big part of the fun of the band was the improvisational nature of their music and how the songs shifted from show to show. That meant that when they were on they were really on and when they weren’t they didn’t always do too well. It also lead to them having a reputation of being “sloppy” and of being a band that you either had to “get” or not.

I was always a little uncomfortable with the band’s name and also with their drug-heavy image because, as much as I liked the music, their apparent heavy drug use (especially psychedelics) was something I had a hard time turning a blind eye to. I also thought that if I ever got a chance to meet them I might really dislike them – they were just too emblematic of that whole hippy culture that I sometimes found irritatingly laid back.

Since Jerry Garcia’s death, though, I also found that Phil Lesh – the bass player – had assembled a nice little band which took the concept of group improvisation even further than the Dead had but seemed more rehearsed. I actually liked them better than the dead on many occasions and the concert I took in a few summers ago at Pine Knob in Michigan was one of my all time favorite concerts. Even on tape, the version of “Scarlet Begonias -> Fire on the Mountain” they played that night is amazing. Phil seemed to have escaped the drug-haze of the Dead and appeared to have turned out to be a great player, musician and perhaps even a nice guy. In fact, I actually thought I’d be able to have a really fun converstation with him because he was really focusing in on the stuff I appreciated (ie. The music) and had left behind the stuff I didn’t (ie. Drugs).

So it was with great interest that I picked up his new book, Searching for the Sound: My Life With the Grateful Dead. Lesh has an easy writing style and you can hear his voice as he writes. I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit because of the musical insights. Lesh pulls no punches regarding the band’s drug use and his own bout with alcoholism but does not celebrate it the way Rock Scully’s book about his time as the Dead’s manager does. However, Lesh does credit LSD with opening their minds to a sort of group-think that he claims transcends usual thought. He also talks about music in a religious tone that seems a bit too much. He obviously has a God-shaped hole in him but Lesh has attempted to fill it with music. He celebrates his lengthy marriage to Jill but doesn’t even blink when he talks about the fairly large number of divorces that band members (including Lesh) have experienced. He regrets falling into alcoholism in the late 70’s but doesn’t appear to regret much else. This is the laid-back attitude that gets to me – it’s all cool, unless it’s not, and even when he has to convince Jerry Garcia’s that he has to dump his long-term girlfriend in person he has a hard time assigning any blame to him. By the way, Garcia finally wrote a letter – which was fine with Phil. So much for "in person". I don’t quite see how Lesh can be so focused on how much joy his family has given him and so oblivious to the way that infidelity has plagued so many of the relationships of his close friends.

God’s Precalculus

About 5 years ago I wrote and published a Precalculus textbook that had sales figures that were off the charts. The charts didn’t go that low. Let’s just say that no one has picked up the film rights yet. The arrival of royalty statements are the occasion for laughter at our house – we’d never dreamed that we’d see numbers so low. So it is with only some authority that I can write about a Precalculus book that I just found out about even though it’s been out a few years. The book is Precalculus for Christian Schools by Kathy D. Pilger, Ron Tagliapietra. It’s published by Bob Jones University Press. I have not actually seen the book but it is on Amazon and one of the reviewers there quoted from it. Here are the quotes:

"Carl Friedrich Gauss first proved the fundamental theorem of algebra. There are many fundamental theorems: of arithmetic, calculus, and so on. These are so fundamental that many other theorems are derived from them. In the Bible, there are also fundamentals, without which Christianity would not exist: the deity of Christ, His substitutionary atonement, and the inspiration of the Bible, to name a few."

"A line can be described either by its slope (a ratio) or by its inclination (an angle). These terms describe the deviation from the horizontal, but the word inclination also has a non-mathematical meaning. Without Christ, man is inclined to sin. The Word of God should shape our attitudes (inclinations)."

"If you are given the length of two sides and the angle measure opposite one of those sides, you can use the law of sines to solve the triangle. However, this does not always determine a unique triangle. As a result, it is called the ambiguous case. Ambiguous means open to multiple interpretations. Some people say that you can interpret the Bible in any way that you want. However, there is no ambiguity in the Bible."

"A person is eccentric if his behavior deviates from normal. Jesus Christ expects His disciples to be eccentric, since living a Christlike life is not normal in this world (Titus 2:14). Likewise, in mathematics, conic sections are eccentric if they deviate from a circle. Eccentricity is a measure of this deviation. The eccentricity of an ellipse (e) is the ratio of focal distance (c) to the length of the sentimajor axis (a): e = c/a. Since c and a are distances and c < a, the eccentricity of any ellipse is 0 < e < 1.

"The concept of limit can be used to illustrate an important truth. Suppose you lived eighty years and there was no life after death; your life on the earth would be 80/80 = 1 = 100% of your existence. Now, let's assume that your life after death was eighty years long: your earthly life would be 80/160 = 1/2 = 50% of your entire existence. If life after death were 720 years, your life here would be only 80/(80+720) = 0.1 = 10%. Now extend it to eternity: (the limit as x approaches infinity) 80/(80+x) = O. In other words, this life is very insignificant in light of eternity. It is no wonder James said that life is "vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

I’m tempted to just let the quotes stay there without comment since I’m sure that nearly all of my readers will have the same reaction that I did. However, because I don’t know everyone who reads my blog, let me be clear.

I believe that this is exactly the wrong way to integrate faith with mathematics. I would suggest that this is NOT an example of integrating faith – this is an example of tacking on biblical language in a totally unrelated way to the topic at hand. These examples show that the authors do not believe that Math is ALREADY God’s – they appear to believe that they have to make it God’s by concocting ridiculous connections to religious moral lessons.

In my book I attempted to reflect my faith in the types of topics that we covered and the types of questions we had our students think about – pollution, population, debt, and other things that would lead them to evaluate their place in God’s world. I can’t wait to use these excepts in class as a counter example!

Read another blogger's thoughts here.

More on the emerging church

A few days ago I received this comment from Dan Kimball, author of The Emerging Church in reference to my blog entries regarding his book. First of all, thanks, Dan, for taking the time to engage in a discussion on this. I’m thrilled that you noticed my blog!

Since some of my readers may not have seen his comment I’ll quote it in its entirety here:

hello --

this is Dan K. - i think you are misreading the intention of what i wrote there. i agree with what you are saying, but that was actually the point of why i wrote that. i was saying that in the modern contemporary church, we DID isolate ourselves and remove any form of liturgy or historical forms of worship. so when i began adding some more mainline traditional expressions of worship things to our worship gathering, i had no idea that other contemporary churches who began rethinking church, were also doing the same. my point was to show how isolated in thinking and disconnected from the "traditional church" most of them are. but we are now rediscovering what others have been doing all along, outside of most megachurches who primarily only use very contemporary expressions of worship.

So, it wasn't to say that we thought we were original, it was to say that we in the contemporary church have been naive and ignored traditional church forms of worship. to my surprise, we discovered others were doing it all along, not that we were saying we were the first to think of it.

make sense?

Dan

This puts a different spin on the discussion. I think that part of my problem is the term “vintage worship” that Dan uses throughout the book. I may have not read it carefully enough but I’m not sure that he defines that term anywhere. Coming at this book having read Ancient Future Faith by Robert Webber I saw Kimball’s “vintage worship” as apparently MUCH older than he seems to be indicating in his comment to me. And, frankly, I’m not sure I misread it. His line about being “the first protestants to use candles…” may have been hyperbole and it may have been tongue-in-cheek but that doesn’t indicate a wide knowledge of the more traditional denominationally based churches that have been flourishing in the US for the past decades. (By flourishing, I don’t mean 10,000 members but more like 200 – like the church I attend.)

I think Kimball is right that many (dare I say “most”?) leaders in contemporary mega-churches have isolated themselves from the larger, more historical church to their detriment. Many seem to have a sense of history that goes back no further than Rick Warren or Bill Hybels. It is ironic (although Brian McLaren would say absolutely predictable) that the most successful churches in terms of numbers had thrown off the very things that would allow them to connect with the next generation of young people.

The Beatles

I’ve been watching The Beatles Anthology DVD over the past couple of weeks and that has reminded me to listen to The White Album (actually named The Beatles) on my commute. What a wonderful album this is! I remember back in 1968 when, as a high school freshman, I got this album and was absolutely astonished at the way that the Beatles had once again morphed from the psychedelic Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt Pepper summer-of-love house band to produce this wonderful eclectic collection of songs. I remember that some reviewer said that this album proved it was clear that Lennon-McCartney were the most accomplished songwriters since Strauss.

The things that really stick out on this album, aside from how many amazing songs are on it, is that the styles that the Beatles go through range from 40’s jazz standards (“Honey Pie”) to a send-up of late 60’s British Blues (“Yer Blues”) to a Beach Boys tribute (“Back in the USSR”) and every where in between ending with a syrupy string-laden finale (“Good Night”).

My main reason for writing this entry is that I am aware that a number of my readers are in their early 20’s (you know who you are) and some of them may not have grown up in a house that exposed them to the classics. If this is an album with which you are not familiar, get it and listen repeatedly until you realize why it’s so great.

Death by Meeting

I also recently finished reading Death by Meeting : A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business by Patrick Lencioni. Since I'll be taking over as chair of the Education Department in a few weeks I thought it would be wise to read a little about leadership. This book is written as a "fable" followed by a section in which Lencioni explains his plan for making meetings more productive and less boring.

First of all, I found the fable part of the book very easy reading and it sparked quite a few thoughts and conversations with people. Just the title of the book alone was a conversation starter! It got me thinking about meetings and caused me to wonder why I often try to avoid them. They are usually with people I enjoy being with and are almost always about things that are important to me. So why so I so often try to think up ways to skip them?

I think it is partly because I have other things to do and I don't consider meeting productive. Also, I tend to work quickly and I can't control the pace of a meeting - it takes me longer to do something in a meeting than it does on my own. I forget that the result of collaboration is usually a lot better than the result of solo work.

But back to the book itself - by the time I got finished with Lencioni's fable I had pretty much digested his wisdom on the issue and found the explanation part of the book to be redundant and boring.

I did get a least a couple of good ideas out of the book though, one I hope to use with the Education Department's administrative assistants as soon as I start - I ran the idea past them and they liked it a lot. If that idea proves as useful as it might be then the time and money spent on the book will be well worth it!

More on The Emerging Church

Here are some follow-up thoughts on The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball. I'm about half-way through the book now and it's really starting to bug me. The problem I have is similar to what I noticed in converstations with a young couple who were worship leaders of a church in California - they seem to have no sense that the world of the church is bigger than their little mega-church world. Dan Kimball writes that he thought he was the first protestant to use candles in church until he ran into a few other emergant church people who had to. WHAT? Does he really think that no other protestants have used candles?

He also thinks that some of his innovations of using "vintage worship" all went away when Willow Creek and Saddleback came into being. He is ignoring the whole part of the church who have stayed somewhat "traditional" while being responsive to changes in culture.

I'm not suggesting that those "traditional" churches have it all together but Kimball acts like they don't exist.

The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball

I'm presently reading The Emerging Church and have a number of thoughts about how post-moderns and moderns connect (or, rather, often don't) and I realize that even though I think I'm a pretty cool guy for someone my age I really incredibly modern. I like to think that I have a bit of "post" in me because I listen to cool stuff and read cool things and hang out with younger people but I'm a pretty modern guy under all that alleged postiness. So I'm trying to get a look inside the emerging church to see if I have a place in it or if I'd be better at more of a thoroughly modern place.

One thing in this book that jumped out at me yesterday was that if all the non-church-going people in the US were turned into one nation it would be the fifth largest nation in the world and the largest English-speaking nation in the world. (Who can name the other four? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?) So we have a huge mission field right here on our doorstep. I'm not sure where I'm going with this but I've been thinking about it a lot for the past 24 hours.

Confusion

Yet another sign that too many people confuse a certain political stance with faith.

I was going to write more but realized that I was speechless.

More from Bono in Conversation

Here is another of my favorite quotes from the new Bono book. (see my last post for the link)

Bono: I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond (sighs) in allowing myself to be transforrmed by that love and acting in that love, that’s my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try and live this love. Now, that’s not so easy.

Assayas: What about the God of the Old Testament? He wasn’t so “peace and love.”

Bono: There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you’re a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access to a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross. (200)

Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas

I'm reading Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas in order to write a review for The Banner and I'm really enjoying it. This is probably as close to a memoir as we're going to get out of Bono for quite some time and it's absolutely fascinating. If there is still anyone out there wondering if Bono is serious about his faith (and could there still be those people after those last two albums????) this book will wipe out any doubts. There are many good quotes and I'll probably be posting some of them soon when I realize that my 100-word review will have room for none of them. Here's my favorite so far: "if I"m studying the scriptures, they become alive in an odd way, and they make sense in the moment I'm in, they're no longer a historical document."

Herd of Buffalo Disrupts Traffic in Md.

This article is worth noting.

"More than a dozen police cars and a police helicopter were used to herd the roughly 10 beasts, authorities said"

First of all, a helicopter? How cool is that. Secondly, roughly 10 beasts. Apparently, the authorities have a hard time counting to ten accurately and they need to estimate.

Exploding toads baffle German experts

Sometimes a news report just begs to be commented on - like this one.

Among other things, it says "Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported: they exploded."

and "So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death."

Waiting for Episode III

I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I saw the first one (Episode IV) way back in 1977. I remember being blown away by the new state-of-the-art effects and the fact that here, finally, was a science fiction movie that was fun, exciting and the worked on many different levels. It took the world by storm, of course, back then and the next two films were worthy sequels. They stand out as, perhaps, one of the best trilogies of all time – three solid films with no clear weak spot.

Then came Episode I and, with it, a certain amount of disappointment. It’s hard to say what the problem was, however. Was it that the film was noticeably worse than it’s predecessors or was it just that it was no longer the 70’s and our expectations had changed?

I’ve re-watched Episode II just this week and I’m now most of the way through Episode I (Circuit City had the DVD for $9.99 which I found irresistible even though I already had it on VHS). They’re enjoyable enough and I love the crystal clear DVD transfer and the extras on the discs but find myself wondering why they seem so different from the first three films. So, in preparation for the theatrical release of Episode III, here are a few random thoughts about Episodes I and II.

1. Hayden Christiansen was a poor choice for Anniken Skywalker. His acting is wooden.
2. Natalie Portman almost makes up for it.
3. The decision to make Jar Jar Binks a minor character in Episode II (instead of a major one) was exactly right.
4. The decision to make Jar Jar Binks a major character in Episode I was exactly wrong.
5. I am getting a real charge out of watching George Lucas connect the dots on the way to the situation we know in Episode IV. That puts us in an interesting situation – we know where the Episode III has to go but the question is “how will it get there?”
6. Darth Maul’s dual lightsaber was very cool.
7. A concept for the people of Naboo to consider – railings around walkways.

Constant Comments

Comments are, in some way, the coin of the realm in blogland. I know that I read a number of blogs and almost never comment – not because I don’t value the post that I read but either because I have nothing constructive to say or, to be honest, because I’m too lazy to leave a comment. So I tried yesterday to leave a few comments on some of the blogs I frequent but it’s hard to keep it up. Bethany and I talked about it and she suggested that no comments are better than mindless ones. She occasionally gets comments (on her Xanga blog) like “congrads (sic) on having a great day!” from people she doesn’t know and she suggests that this is more annoying than helpful. On the other hand, blogging without feedback does make one wonder if anyone cares.

This might seem like a shameless plug for comments – and it sort of is – but not just for me. I think that many of us ought to make more comments than we do. If we value the fact that others blog we should support it in the best way possible, with comments. I’m going to try to do better.

The Volunteer Revolution

Since I’ve written about television so much lately I figured I better prove that I actually read too so here are a few thoughts about the last book I’ve finished, The Volunteer Revolution by Bill Hybels. Spoiler alert! If you want to be surprised, read no further. OK – you’ve been warned – I’m giving away the ending. Volunteering is good.

Seriously, that’s the point of much of the book. I was ready to not like it after chapter one because Hybels seems to be saying that in order for your life to have meaning you have to do work for the church (and he’s willing to define church very broadly here). So, for example, people who run a business get no satisfaction and aren’t serving God until they put on a pair of work gloves and tend to the garden on the church grounds. Really – this is a reasonable summary of chapter one. Now I’ll admit that things got better as the book went on (although, from that point on it became “here’s another way to volunteer or to get people to volunteer”.) But still, it’s amazing that he could get a whole book out of this. There really isn’t much to it.

This book does show some of the ideas that have come out of the massive Willow Creek ministry in Chicago so, for example, it tells about the car repair ministry, which is a pretty cool idea. So, if you’re on a church staff and part of your job is to line up volunteers to do things this book may inspire you to keep at it and it may remind you that asking people to clean the nursery is just as important as asking them to read scripture in or lead singing. Otherwise, I don't think there is much here.

The return of the real Alias

A week or so ago I wrote about West Wing and ended by saying "Now, if only Alias would get back to first/second season form I'd be even happier." Well, I finally watched this week’s episode (4.15) and I’m happy to report that we may be seeing the beginning of a very good set of episodes. One of the things that made seasons one and two so good was the idea that there was always something going on that we didn’t know about – somebody had a plan (usually nefarious) that was complex and we eventually found out that this plan was really what was driving the plot – usually it was Arvin Sloan who was manipulating people. There was a reveal and a “oh, wow – that’s cool” realization that all was not as it appeared. That is what made the show so wonderful. In season three it lost that – there was some mystery but not the kind of gripping plot twists that made me not want to miss a single episode (and – I haven’t).

This new season (Season Four) had promise as Sydney and Jack and all the other great people got reassigned to a new black-ops division of the CIA. But that promise seemed to have been squandered on self-contained episodes that had no compelling arc that made me want to keep watching. In fact, I even toyed with the idea that maybe the show had lost its appeal for me.

Then, this week’s episode hit and I saw that spark that had been missing for so long. It could be that Alias is back! With seven more episodes left in the season I think we might be heading towards a finale that will be lots of fun.

Talking Jesus and Moses dolls

Dean pointed to this site which reports on a company which will market talking Jesus and Moses dolls. They intend to have a Mary and David too. That people are trying to make money off of Jesus is nothing new but this strikes me as a particularly egregious attempt. Moses recites the ten commandments when you push the button on his back.

What I really wonder, though, is ... who buys this stuff?

Here's my favorite line (emphasis added): The company has hired a marketing firm with expertise reaching out to churches and church schools to generate sales, Livingston said. "In the beginning we don't feel it'd be right to put it in Toys R Us and be next to a Barbie or a Bratz," he said.

You think maybe the marketing expert would have said "if you're going to make a Jesus doll, don't have his partner say thou shalt not make any graven images."

A Word to Worship Band Leaders

This post about seeing U2 is pretty good. I got there by following a link from Beth at U2 Sermons (who often sends me to pretty good places) and I enjoyed the effusive praise that Brad Hightower heaps on U2. I feel the same way except I have to wait until September to see them. He went to the concert with his church's worship band, which just goes to show you that ministry takes many different forms.

My favorite line in the blog entry, though, is at the end: "I hope all you worship leaders out there are listening. Excellence and craft is vital to moving and inspiring a congregation toward positive and productive moral action." Yeah. Good stuff.

The Simpsons

As long as I’m saying nice things about television, let me say some nice things about the Simpsons. I was never much of a Simpsons watcher until this year. A couple of years ago I was listening to a lot of Phish and heard via the internet that Phish was going to be on an episode of the Simpsons so I watched it. It was funny. Really funny. I realized then that I’d been missing out on some pretty good stuff. Lot’s of social comment, movie and television references and some pretty on-target lampoons of many things we hold dear.

This past summer, in preparation for a drive to Denver I bought a portable DVD player so “the kids could watch in the car” and also the first two seasons of The Simpsons for “the same reason.” And that’s when I really got hooked. Hooked enough on the crystal clear quality and commentaries, in fact, that I still don’t watch the Simpsons when they’re broadcast. I just can’t deal with commercials.

So anyway, now I’m part way through Season Five (yeah – I’ve gone a little overboard) and I have decided to list some of my favorite episodes:

1. Life on the Fast Lane – Marge Takes up Bowling – Season 1
2. The Way We Was – How Homer and Marge met – Season 2
3. Homer the Heretic – Homer skips church and meets God – my all time favorite – season 4
4. Homer's Barbershop Quartet – not a fabulous episode but it’s really about the Beatles and it features George Harrison – season 5
5. One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish – Homer eats poison food and has 24 hours to live. – Season 2
6. Bart vs. Thanksgiving – features my all-time favorite line from Marge’s mother: “I have laryngitis. It hurts to talk. So I'll just say one thing... You never do anything right.” – Season 2
7. Homer Loves Flanders - Ned and Homer become best friends. Includes many great lines like when Homer yells "Hey, Flanders, over here! I got us some kick-ass seats." The funny part is that they're IN CHURCH. - Season 5

The West Wing

I have loved West Wing since the first episode - sort of. I thought that it was one of the most well-written and well directed shows on television for the first four seasons. Then Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme left and the tone changed. The snappy dialogue was gone, the direction was "jumpy" and my dear show had changed to the point where I didn't care nearly as much anymore.

There even came a point last season where I stopped watching. It was sad.

Then, near the end of last season I happen to watch the season finale (in which Leo fell in the woods) and I was intrigued. Some of the old fire was still left in the show. They appointed CJ as chief of staff and there were some interesting things starting to happen. It felt like the show was being reinvented instead of just trying to hang on for one more season.

Most people I know assumed that the show would have to quit when Jed Bartlett's second term ended. After all, the prospect of The West Wing, the Library Years doesn't have a lot of excitement to it. But, much to my surprise they added a bunch of good new characters and kept the focus shifting between the election process and the White House and they won me back. I think this show can survive and even thrive with a new President.

Then, last night, for the season finale they put it all together into an episode that ranks as one of the best episodes of this season, if not the entire series. It had a great twist at the end and set up the next season really well. It was great!

Now, if only Alias would get back to first/second season form I'd be even happier.

Redemption Songs

Kent would like to hear a bit about the new Jars of Clay album so I'll write a little. JoC came out of the box with a first album that knocked everyone's socks off. They had a unique sound, one that was not an obvious rip-off of a mainstream sound. In fact, their first album had huge mainstream success. They never again had that kind of success in the mainstream, however. Perhaps it was the position they found themselves in with respect to Christian radio. Christian radio requires a certain number of JPMs (Jesus per minute) or the stuff doesn't get played. My perspective is that this has gotten worse over the last half-decade, not better.

This emphasis on textual homogeneity has been one of the factors that I believe has fueled the current worship music boom - partly. I think there were a couple of factors at work here - maybe even the Holy Spirit although I think marketing was also a big part of it.

Two things were happening at the same time in CCM. First of all, artists (by which I really mean artists) were starting to chafe at the restrictions being placed on them by the industry. Charlie Peacock, Phil Keaggy, Wes King and others all either left or were released by their labels because of artistic issues. Some of which are that unless a song is an obvious song-about-Jesus it won't get played on CCM radio. Sometimes, it appears, Christians want to write and sing about other things too. Imagine that.

Secondly, Martin Smith and Michael W. Smith both released albums of worship music (Cutting Edge and Exodus) - music designed to be used in worship settings - which had decent pop and rock sensibilities. Remember, previous to this there was basically one type of praise and worship sound and it was, frankly, pretty bland. Out of the blue comes this new worship music which energizes people and coincidently solves the textual problem. Artists can sing worship music and feel like they're doing something authentic - after all, the text ought to be about God if it's music designed for worship. No more of this "how do I turn a song about riding my bike into a metaphor about God" stuff to worry about! Artists jumped on the bandwagon in droves because they could feel completely good about the music and, to be frank, it sold well.

In fact, it sold so well, that artists who were pretty content singing about whatever they felt like (like Jars of Clay) were badgered by their record companies to make a worship album. Jars resisted this for a while and then did it their own way - which is not to say that they took 12 of the same 30 worship songs that everyone else is doing and recorded it their way. They followed the lead of their friend and pastor Kevin Twit and did their own Indelible Grace album.

This album, Redemption Songs, is pretty good - not great in the way some of their others are but it sure has it's moments - like "Nothing But the Blood". It has some of the same strengths and weaknesses of the IG albums but has a much higher profile so maybe it will get noticed. The Passion group did some hymn settings but, I don't care much for that album at all.

The bigger question, though, is whether CCM can continue to survive if the artists can't find artistic satisfaction doing the only stuff that sells.

Psalm 116

What can I give back to God for the blessings he's poured out on me? I'll lift high the cup of salvation -- A toast to God! I'll pray in the name of God; I'll complete what I promised God I'd do, And I'll do it together with his people

I finally bought the U2 Elevation Tour 2001 DVD and heard Bono recite this at the beginning of "Where the Streets Have No Name." This is from Eugene Peterson's translation of Psalm 116:12-14 in The Message. The last phrase has a different emphasis than the NIV - "I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people" - but I really like the sense of community in the Peterson version.

This is a great passage for the time just after Easter, isn't it?

Too Much Is Not Enough

Spring break has changed a lot in the past 30 years. Back when I was a student, spring break was a week off from school. Now, spring break seems to have become a time when a disproportionate number of people leave Michigan to head to warmer climes so that they can ... well, I'm not sure what, exactly. But so many people head south for spring break that schools have had to give up the Friday before spring break just because they were fighting a losing battle. Now, this year, for the first time, the school my kids attend have put Parent-Teacher conferences, and all the partial-school-days that go along with them, on the week just before spring break, thereby giving parents who desire an even longer break nearly two full weeks. How are we supposed to convince students that the work they do this week is important if the schools and parents don't treat it that way?

I don't think this is all because we need a break in March or that life has gotten too intense. I think it has to do with money. Too many parents have enough disposable income that this once-in-a-childhood type of trip has now become a yearly event. Not only is it yearly but this sort of trip is now expected and seen by kids as some sort of right that they deserve.

I'm certainly not immune to materialism. I like stuff a lot. But it is times like this that I am really concerned about the path that our society is on. As Bono says "too much is not enough."

Until the End of the World

This link contains a really wonderful exploration of the connection between the Maundy Thursday story and the U2 song "Until the End of the World." Bono really clinches it in the last verse of the song: "In my dream I was drowning my sorrows/ But my sorrows they learned to swim./ Surrounding me, going down on me/ Spilling over the brim./ In waves of regret, waves of joy/ I reached out for the one I tried to destroy./ You, you said you’d wait until the end of the world."

The power of grace continues to surprise me.

Thanks to Beth at U2 Sermons for pointing out the link to me.

Red Lake, Minnesota

There was another school shooting this week. This time in Red Lake, Minnesota. Ten people were killed by a young boy with a gun - or guns. This is the first one of these since Columbine but somehow, the Columbine shootings still seem pretty recent.

From what we know about the adolescent mind, it seems pretty clear that teens are going to make bad decisions. Their brains are wired in such a way that the higher decision-making areas just aren't developed yet. We see it all the time in schools and, no surprise, in the way they drive. When I taught high school I dreaded after-school parking lot duty. I saw so many potential accidents and near-misses that I couldn't stand watching. So, it's pretty clear that some kids are going to make some really really bad decisions. Some kids will feel ostracized. Some willl get angry. Some will want revenge. There is little we can do about that given the nature of people and of adolescents.

What we can do is minimize the danger by getting rid of guns. This strikes me as a pretty clear solution to the problem. This is an easy way to minimize the damage that kids can do when they go off the rails. Come to think of it - it might minimize the damage lots of people can do. Why are we so obsessed with guns? I don't get it.

Popification

Because of the aforementioned Itunes-Pepsi free song giveaway, I've been able to add to my music collection a lot lately and it's been great. One CD I downloaded last week is the first album by the Corrs, Forgiven Not Forgotten. It's great. I like it a lot and, in fact, it may be my favorite Corrs album - always a dangerous thing to say when you've only had it for four days but still, it's really good. (Full disclosure - I have not yet heard Talk on Corners.) One of the things I like about it is it is more rockin' and more Irish than their later stuff. This seems to fit a pattern that I've seen in a number of bands, especially in CCM, and that is what I think of as "popification." Bands put out a cool, quirky, interesting first album and then producers and record companies get a hold of them and steer them decidedly toward the middle of the road. I blame the record companies but I really have no evidence of this. However, I feel pretty confident that it comes as a result of trying to sell more albums.

Now I have nothing against selling more albums. Musicians and business people need to make a living just like I do. But why is there is pull towards homogeneity that seems so prevalent?

This doesn't always happen at the second album - it can happen at various points in an artist's career. Other examples of this phenomenon are Considering Lily, whose strange but interesting first album was followed up by an incredibly forgettable second (and last!) album. Margaret Becker put out a fabulous album late in her career (Falling Forward) which had some success so it was followed up by a popified lousy album. Phil Keaggy's company got a hold of him and made him put out True Believer, my all-time least favorite PK album. My daughter Bethany thought that Jars of Clay had done this on their second album but I'm not so sure I agree. Besides, they have made up for it.

I'd love to hear examples of this from others.

So Much More

I haven't yet written anything about So Much More by my good friend Debra Rienstra and I really need to do that because it's wonderful. I'm only about halfway finished with it (grading and writing have taken up most of my spring break so far) but I am really enjoying this book. Debra is a fabulous writer - she has the ability to address very complex ideas in a way that describes them clearly and succintly. This book is not Christianity for Dummies. It is far too articulate and intellectual for that. It is, however, Christianity for Beginners. Even so, I, a seasoned believer, am finding wonderful new ways of thinking about the Christian faith that are enriching my life. This would be a great book to give to a thoughful friend who is thinking about Christianity.

EDIT: I got caught up in the book today when I should have been grading papers and I finished it. It is wonderful throughout. Debra even addresses the issues of pain and evil with gentleness and a wonderful combination of both an academic and pastoral heart. This is a book about the heart of Christianity written for those who's heart is very close to their mind.

MTV's 'Spiritual Windows' mix faith with rock 'n' roll

Thanks to Beth, over at U2 Sermons, I was pointed to this article about MTV's newfound spirituality. This really fits in well with much of what I've been reading about the impact of post-modernity on culture. It seems that a thirst for things spiritual is more than just an academic idea - it's starting to show up in tangible ways on MTV, of all places!

U2 inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

U2log.com // U2 inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame // 2005-03-15

Another reason to like U2: How many bands are there that have been around as long as U2 and, when they do concerts, don't just do oldies? Not many. Let's think this through.

As much as I like Paul McCartney (and I like him a lot), nobody really wants to hear "Driving Rain" instead of "Sgt. Pepper." Even if he did a concert that was a 50/50 mix of old and new people would be irritated. In fact, for his last ten albums or so, he plays two or three on the tour (assuming there is one) and then they are never performed live again. Even though Flaming Pie was hailed as one of his great albums he played NOTHING from it on the tour to support the album that came after that one on the US leg of the tour and one song in Europe. I'm not just picking on McCartney here. As I said, I really do like him a lot - even his new stuff.

Are there any other artists who didn't become an oldies band? The Grateful Dead managed to pull it off, mostly because they had no hits. It's easy not to get stuck playing your hits if you have none.

The Rolling Stones? Oldies band.

Yes? Oldies band (although on the last tour they did play "Mind Drive" which was a real kick).

Are there any bands that you can think of who managed to have hits a long time ago and can still pull off doing "fresh" concerts?

Playing in the Band

I played at the One Trick Pony last Saturday night with my band, the Lazy Blue Tunas - here is a picture!

Stan Grenz

I learned late last night from Bethany that Stan Grenz passed away. I'm stunned and saddened by this. I met Stan just once, about six weeks ago. I heard him and his wife Edna speak about worship at the Calvin Symposium on Worship and the Arts and then, about a half hour later, at the dining hall Stan sat with me at lunch. We had a wonderful chat about many things including postmodernism, the joys of being co-presenters with our wives,and ministry to children. Stan was very supportive of my work and gave me some good advice regarding my recently submitted book - it turns out I'm working with the same editor that he has worked with on a few books.

I was impressed with Stan's wonderful manner and his obvious concern for other people as well as his quick mind and grasp of detail as well as concept. I liked him a lot.

To read more about Stan, go to emergent-us: Brian McLaren Remembers Stan Grenz.

How to dismantle the fall semester

My friend Ron got tickets for the two of us to travel to Chicago in September and see U2!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have to wait 6 months for this show now but I'm pretty geeked about it.

The power of television

This ebay item, eBay item 3962513751 (Ends Mar-14-05 13:22:33 PST) - PENTAGON Crane AMERICAN FLAG Sept 11 2001 9/11 ORIGINAL was featured on ABC World News tonight. It is a flag that was flying at the Pentagon on 9/11 and the owner needs to sell it to pay medical bills. It had been on ebay for a week and had built up to a bid of $79,000. After the report aired I went to ebay and watched the bid steadily climb for about ten minutes to over $100,000 then came back a while later and was astonished to find that Within 3 hours of the broadcast it was up to $314,000!

It pays to advertise - especially when the advertising is free!

Lazy Blue Tunas - One Trick Pony - March 12

My band, the Lazy Blue Tunas will be playing at the One Trick Pony in Grand Rapids on Saturday night March 12 from 9 until midnight. The Pony is a great place - I even bring my kids - and for the first time we are adding a drummer, the amazing Eddie Eicher.

This promises to be a show that people will be talking about for at least the next day so come on out and enjoy a night with the Tunas!

New Colors

I'm not sure I like this but I was getting a little sick of the other colors. Unfortunately, this is a bigger deal than when you change colors on Xanga because there are personalizations that don't transfer over. This one looks better though, right?

things Bethany wrote: Apocalyptic Pacificsm

In her latest blog entry, things Bethany wrote: Apocalyptic Pacificsm, Bethany once again does a nice job of the kind of synthesis which she is so good at. If you haven't read her post yet you should probably do that first.

Go ahead, do it now. I'll wait.

OK, I have not yet read Dark's book (which is actually Kent's fault, since he borrowed Bethany's copy over Christmas vacation when I had hoped to read it) but it seems to me that U2 is nearly a perfect example of the kind of Apocalyptic art and living that Dark refers to. (Besides, it's been a couple of days since I worked U2 into a post and though I should.)

I also wonder if Tori Amos is very slowly (very very very slowly) getting there. Having been raised as a Methodist, she deals with some issues of faith in her new album, The Beekeeper. Sometimes I think she's just loony (Original Sinsuality? oh, please.) but she at least trys to look at what it means to come from a background of faith and apply it to the world. Now if she would only take the next step...

New Music

I can easily get into musical ruts, where I listen to a lot of the same old stuff over and over. This past winter I listened to music in my car in a typical me" fashion by playing through a lot of artists or sets in chronological order - so, for example, I played all my Eric Clapton from the first Cream album until, I think, Money and Cigarettes, when I took a pause from this system. I have a 6-CD changer in my car and so I listened to a Clapton every 6th CD. Yeah - pure geek.

Anyway, I got some free itunes songs from Pepsi caps and started getting some new music. Around the same time Bethany played me some music from the soundtrack to Garden State and introduced me to Frou Frou. I was taken with both albums and bought one and downloaded the other through itunes.

[Funny Garden State story - I went to Best Buy to buy it and asked the 22 yr-old clerk where I could find it and she said "Oh, that's a great album. I love that one." She stopped in her tracks and turned and looked at me (looking , I'm sure, at least my age) and said "is this for you or is it for somebody else?" Thanks - I feel much younger now.]

Then my friend Ron gave me the new Tori Amos album. I hadn't really listened to Tori Amos before and I LOVE IT! Finally, after Gideon Strauss noticed my blog I started clicking around on his blog and his daughter Shimmer posted about a band called Eisley and I listened and liked it too! Bethany said they were on her list so I figured I might as well get their album Room Noises. So I downloaded that one from itunes. I haven't had this much new music in my life in a couple of years.

Pretty exciting. Thanks to all my influencers!

Save Toby is a hoax - I'm shocked!

I have great news.

According to Snopes, Save Toby is merely a hoax and the amount of money donated is a fixed number that is changed manually periodically. This means that the rabbit Toby is safe.

I was getting attached to that little bunny too and now I don't have to worry. I wonder if I can get my $3000 back...

Save Toby again

Save Toby is up to $17,000 - either this guy is really getting donations or he is changing the number by hand. It was $16,... this morning.

Why do I keep checking?????

U2 - Rattle and Hum (1988)

I was fortunate enough to get my very own copy of the DVD: U2 - Rattle and Hum (1988) from my youngest daughter for Christmas and I'm presently on my second play-through of it. There is a lot to like in this film and I remember watching it soon after it came out. One thing I didn't notice before is another example of where Bono's seemingly unthinking actions while he sings are often tied directly to what he's singing. The case in point this morning which I noticed while eating my morning pop-tart (Strawberry) was during "Bad" when he sings about "this lifeless lifeline" and the microphone cord that he's been playing with is there, being held up as a lifeless lifeline. If I hadn't noticed that this stuff happens often with him I wouldn't have thought anything of it but Bono apparently puts a LOT of thought into what he does while he's singing.

Just another reason to like U2.

I should mention that my current reading of Stockman's book has added to my understanding and appreciation for this film. I think Stockman is right on target with his analysis of this film as a journey through the mostly American U2 influences and I think the album has been unfairly religated by some (not Stockman) to the "oh yeah, they also released this" pile partly because it is hidden in the twin shadows of Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.

God, Part II

I'm reading Steve Stockman's book Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 and I noticed that he missed the point of the beginning of one of U2s songs - rare for him, I think, because most of his comments are right on target.

The song "God, Part II" is, indeed, about John Lennon and starts out with the lines "I don't believe the devil, I don't believe the book" which Stockman takes as a counterpoint to the litany of things Lennon does not believe in as listed in the song "God" from JL's Plastic Ono Band album. (This is a great album, by the way, just don't listen to it if you're already depressed.) The lines in this case are more about The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman - a book that was released just before Rattle and Hum was released which said many negative things about Lennon. There was a bit of a controversy with the book's release and this song was Bono's two cents defending Lennon's legacy. The devil in the first line is Goldman

I disagree with Stockman's assessment and, it seems to me that he entirely missed the book connection.

Neo-Calvinists?

Another blogger has discovered the group of bloggers who hang around the Worship Apprentice offer, and with whom I occassionally dialogue. I should note that I was not invited to this dialogue - I just pulled up a virtual chair and have been enjoying the talk. Somedays I don't read much of it because I am too busy but I usually enjoy the posts.

So, Mr Strauss, welcome to our little corner of the blogosphere.