More Retro Party Pics

There were so many good pictures from our retro going away party, I decided to put up the rest of them.  Enjoy. 

Our Going Away Party

Here are some photos from our retro going away party earlier this week.  If you’ll note, there is a strong 80’s family-portrait theme going on.  Oh yes.

New Back To The Future Movie?

Watch and laugh.

Que the Seinfeld in-jokes…

Basketball Games Are Bad For Proposing

I posted a wedding ceremony gone wrong last week, so this week here are two proposals gone wrong.  These two clips don’t need much explanation, except to say it’s probably a bad idea to propose if you haven’t already talked enough to know she’ll say “yes”.

Pet Peeves: One-Up-Manship

I was wondering aloud the other day if “piss” is a bad word.  Even though etymologically it’s basically just an English corruption of a French word, I decided “piss” is a bad word for little ears/eyes; but I need it for this post to describe “one-up-manship” or, as I have heard it described more commonly, a pissing contest.

Like I said, “piss” is kind of a bad word–at least not one I’d want my young kids to say–but it’s appropriate here.  A “pissing contest,” aside from the idiomatic meaning, denotes something vulgar, base, uncouth, and just plain gross.  This is appropriate because “one-upping” is just as base and uncouth.  I’ve been at parties when someone will tell a story–for example how he broke his leg skiing–and before he’s even finished with his story, someone will chime in with “that’s nothing, wait till you hear how I…”

Now I’m not talking about story swapping, where everyone takes turns telling about a particular subject, and I’m not even talking about healthy competitiveness.  What I’m talking about is the person who constantly tries to one-up everyone else, and always has a more extreme story to tell.

I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about when I describe this person.  You work with this person, or you see him/her at social outings, or maybe this person is you.  And while I know a few one-uppers, I don’t know why they do what they do.  Maybe they have daddy issues and need attention and acceptance by out-performing others.  Maybe they have a hyper-active sense of social competitiveness, and they want nothing more than verbal ownage (or pwnage if you prefer).  Who knows…

Regardless of who the one-uppers are, or why they act like they do, you can help stop the one-up-manship cycle.  The one-upper needs someone to compete with, and if he/she starts into a story, just let him/her win.  Don’t give him/her the competitive satisfaction of vying for supreme-master-of-everything; instead just let the story run it’s course.  Give a smile, nod, then walk away or move the conversation back to the original topic.  If you know this person well enough–he/she is your friend or someone you are close enough to say this to–call him/her on the uncool competition, tell the one-upper that nobody thinks they’re any better for having a bigger/badder/more extreme story than the first person.  It’s just a pissing contest, and when you get in one everyone involved winds up with pee-pee splashed on their shoes.  And that’s just gross.

Coming Soon: Retro Going Away Party

For anyone who reads my blog and also knows the wife and me, please come to our going away part.  It’s this Tuesday (Oct. 28th), 6:30pm at the Mosaic parsonage.  Here’s a link to the facebook event page, with directions and details on what we mean by “retro”. 

Packing Up Is Hard To Do

I know, I know, that IS a really clever title for a post on packing, nostalgia, and moving.  Okay, now that my hubris has been revealed, on to the actual substance.

My wife and I are moving soon, and I’ve been slowly boxing up stuff to get rid of and stuff to keep.  Before I got married about two years ago, I managed to move to five different apartments in five years.  So I think I’m pretty good at moving.  But one thing that still takes way too long is sifting through all the “important” nostalgic items.  I have been accused of being a bit of a pack-rat, and I think that’s probably true. I have a few boxes of stuff from the past 26 years of my life–from old toys, my second grade journal, to papers from my college years–and I always have a hard time parting with any of these mementos.

One of my favorite nostalgic things to do is to read through old journal entries; there’s something bitter-sweet about remembering what it was like to be in middle school, high school, a freshman at FSU, a 1L in law school…  I also have a lot of old notes and cards from friends, and I always get a little sad when I re-read them.  Probably the hardest part of packing up and moving is sifting through these old papers and deciding what to get rid of.

Aside from written things, I also have a box of old toys.  I’m talking Transformers, Battle Beasts, Ninja Turtles, Marvel actions figures–this is the good stuff my friends.  While it can be tough to throw away old notes or cards, I have whittled this toy collection down to just what I want to hang on to indefinitely.  I think it’s safe to say I’m a bit of a “kidult” when it comes to toys, so I really enjoy looking at these tangible reminders of my childhood.

I don’t often look through most of these old things, but when I do it’s a nice, somewhat sad, walk down memory lane.  I think it’s fun to be able to hang onto this stuff to one day show my kids, or just to remind me of a particular time in my life, but it’s funny that I’m putting this up the day after all those excerpts from Don Miller on our culture of materialism.  It’s stuff I don’t need, but stuff I like to have…  I suppose it’s ok to keep some mementos, as long as I maintain the proper perspective.  Maybe that’s why packing up is so hard to do.  (Oy, again with the cleverness!)

Excerpts: “Through Painted Deserts”

I’ve been reading Don Miller’s rewrite of his first book, “Through Painted Deserts” (formerly titled “Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance” in case you wondered) off and on over the past few months.  I finally finished it, and I have to say, it’s not my favorite from Don.  “Blue Like Jazz” and “Searching for God Knows What” were really great books, speaking deeply to some practical aspects of believing in God.  “Through Painted Deserts” doesn’t really do much of this, and instead focuses on a cross country road trip  Don Miller and a friend took in a 70s model VW sleeper-van a few years back.  While there are some kernels of insight into life, most of the book is straight up narrative.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the “good stuff” is too infrequent for me to recommend reading.  And although “Through Painted Deserts” wasn’t a great book, it was also not a bad one.  In lieu of making you read through the whole book, here are a few of the more interesting tidbits.

“In all our technology, we have lost touch with the earth, our heaters and air conditioners robbing us of the drama of seasons, our cars keeping our feet from pacing the land, our concrete and our shoes and our carpet delivering us from the feel of unprocessed earth.  We live on top of the created world, I think to myself, not in it.  And this van, this great wheelchair with a radio and a bed, we sit in it and roll at unthinkable speeds across a desert that would have cost our forefathers a season.  The earth cinched tight at the invention of the wheel.  It’s like a time machine, I think to myself.  It moves us through an age of work in a short week.” (64)

…

“Imagining [an Easter sunrise service at the Grand Canyon] reminds me again that life is more than clothes and cars and a new flavor of toothpaste, that it is community and creation and beauty and humanity.  And I think I am starting to prefer the latter to the former; by that I mean I am getting used to not having any music or television and not pulling over and buying something as a way of feeling some kind of change.  There is a serenity in life, after all, and once a withdrawal is felt at having left the lies behind, a soul begins to feel at home in its own skin.  …  I was raised to believe that the quality of a man’s life would greatly increase, not with the gain of status or success, not by his heart’s knowing romance or by prosperity in industry or academia, but by his nearness to God.  It confuses me that Christin living is not simpler.  The gospel, the very good news, is simple, but this is the gate, the trailhead.  Ironing out faithless creases is toilsome labor.  God bestows three blessings on man:  to feed him like the birds, dress him like the flowers, and befriend him as a confidant.  Too many take the first two and neglect the last.  Sooner or later you figure out life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the Owner of heaven.  It is a struggle, with labor pains and thorny landscape, bloody hands and a sweaty brow, head in hands, moments of severe loneliness and questioning, moments of ache and desire.  All this leads to God, I think.  Perhaps this is what is on the other side of the commercials, on the other side of the curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz pulls his levers.  Matter and thought are a canvas on which God paints, a painting with tragedy and delivery, with sin and redemption.  Life is a dance toward God, I begin to think.  And the dance is not so graceful as we might want.  While we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes.  So we learn to dance with the One who made us.  And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign. …  There is nothing I am missing.  I have everything I was supposed to have to experience the magnitude of this story, to dance with God.“  (90-91)

…

“I wonder as I gaze up at the night sky, this love letter from God to creation, this reminder that somewhere there is peace, somewhere there is order, and I think about how great His kingdom is, and is going to be, and I wonder, in this rare and beautiful moment, how I could ever want to walk away from it all.  …  I have absolutely nothing.  I have no money and no home and nothing but a pair of shoes and s a sleeping bag, and I am finally seeing how good life is, how beautiful it is.  I start realizing that this is the first time I have encountered beauty in nature.  I’ve read poems that have made my heart race.  I’ve read scenes in novels that have caused me to close the book, set my head in my hands, and wonder how a human could so brilliantly orchestrate words.  But nature has never inspired me until now.  God is an artist, I think to myself.  I have known this for a long time, seeing His brushwork in the sunrise and sunset, and His sculpting in the mountains and the rivers.  But the night sky is His greatest work.  And I would never have known it if I had stayed [home] in Houston.  I would have bought a little condo and filled it with Ikea trinkets and dated some girl just because she was hot and would have read self-help books, end to end, one after another, trying to fix the gaping hole in the bottom of my soul, the hole that, right now, seems plugged with Orion, allowing my soul to collect that feeling of belonging and love you only get when you stop long enough to engage the obvious.” (226)

…

“I’ve learned … that I don’t really know very much about anything.  I mean, I used to have all these theories about life.  I thought I had everybody figured out, even God, but I don’t.  I think the woods, being away from all the clingy soot of commercialism, have taught me life is enormous, and I am very tiny in the middle of it.  I feel, at times, like a droplet of water in a raging river.  I know for a fact that as a grain of sand compares in size to the earth itself, I compare to the cosmos.  I am that insignificant.  And yet the chemicals in my brain that make me feel beauty when I look up at the stars, when I watch the sunset, indicate I must be here for a reason.  I think I would sum it up this way:  life is not a story about me, but it is being told to me, and I can be glad of that.  I think that is the why of life and, in fact, the why of this ancient faith I am caught up in:  to enjoy God.  The stars were created to dazzle us, like a love letter; light itself is just a metaphor, something that exists outside of time, made up of what seems like nothing, infinite in its power, something that can be experienced but not understood, like God.  Relationships between men and women indicate something of the nature of God–that He is relational, that He feels love and loss.  It’s all metaphor, and the story is about us; it’s about all of us who God made, and God Himself, just enjoying each other.  It strikes me how far the commercials are from this reality, how deadly they are, perhaps.  Months ago I would have told you life was about doing, about jumping through religious hoops, about impressing other people, and my actions would have told you this is done by buying possessions or keeping a good image or going to church.  I don’t believe that anymore.  I think we are supposed to stand in the deserts and marvel at how the sun rises.  I think we are supposed to sleep in meadows and watch stars dart across space and time.  I think we are supposed to love our friends and introduce people to the story, to the peaceful, calming why of life.  I think life is spirituality.” (244-245)

It looks like Dan Miller only talks about commercialism, nature, and God in this book, but that’s far from the truth.  It’s a pretty light read, and these excerpts are honestly not really representative of the book as a whole.  Still, it’s not a bad bit of reading if you’re looking for some before bed material.  But you don’t have to take my word for it…

Worst. Best Man. Ever.

The phrase “worst best man ever” is an oxymoron that perfectly describes this video.   Watch and be horrified by the actions of the worst best man ever!  And it’s ok to laugh once you get over the initial shock of just how bad this best man really is.

What To Look For In a Church

As my wife and I get ready to move to a new city, we’ve talked a bit about looking for a new church once we get settled in.  Realistically there is, of course, no such thing as a perfect church, but I have learned that there are a few things to watch for.  Some of these are essential elements, while others are non-essentials that may alter my perception of a particular congregation.  Here are some of the things we’ll be looking for to help us decide on a new church.

Essentials:

• Biblically grounded teaching.  One of my favorite podcasts comes from Mars Hill Bible Church.  Rob Bell and the other speakers do a great job of going through scripture and pulling out practical truths and profound insights.  To be honest, I’ve learned more from Rob Bell’s sermons than I have from just about any other preacher when it comes to exegetical teaching.  I can totally understand why some churches don’t go verse-by-verse through the Bible–it can make for a very tough sell for visitors, and there’s a risk of looking overly esoteric to the “unchurched.”  So I readily admit that there’s a definite place for topical sermons, and Christianity at its core is about living out practical life lessons.  But at the same time, these practical sermons should be grounded in scripture, not just the pastor’s own life experiences or some kind of fuzzy humanistic moralism.  Probably the worst example of this kind of teaching is Joel Osteen, who I have never heard quote scripture.  The approach to preaching is that scripture should inform our views of an issue, and not that the issue should inform our interpretation of scripture.  Biblically grounded teaching (informed by tradition, but not blindly so…) is perhaps the best way to make sure a church isn’t going off on its own agenda.
• Discipleship and outreach.  “Discipleship” is the process of maturing believers.  In the way that discipleship is a refining of those inside of the church, the process of refining those beyond the church is outreach. “Outreach” means, at least as I use it, sharing the love of God with folks outside the church.  One of the things I’m looking for in a new church is a balanced approach to emphasizing discipleship for existing believers, and at the same time reaching out to non-believers to show God’s love.  While there should be balance between these two, I’ve been to churches where there is no emphasis on maturity, only on “conversion”–as if somehow the Great Commission does not exist.  I mention the Great Commission because the command is to make “disciples” and to teach them, not merely to get people to say the “sinner’s prayer”…  I really enjoy learning more about what it means to be a Christ follower, and I get very tired of hearing the same sermons/lectures/teachings over and over again.  This is why I think topical teaching is so hard to make relevant to more mature believers;  there’s only so many ways to teach on marital fidelity or tithing before the topic becomes stale.  Maybe I’ll change my mind at some point, but right now I think that exegetical teaching from scripture, combined with strong fellowship, is a much better way to encourage true discipleship, because it opens up the possibility of discovering new insights beyond what the pastor has experienced.  Outreach is important, and welcoming the unchurched is too–but I’m looking for a church that balances outreach with challenging believers of varying degrees to maturity, beyond the initial come-to-Jesus experience.
• Strong fellowship.  Probably my favorite thing about being a member of Chi Alpha (as an undergrad at FSU) was the fellowship.  I came to FSU knowing only a handful of people, almost no real friends, and as a very immature Believer.  After getting plugged into Chi Alpha I gradually made some solid friendships with folks who challenged me to grow as a Christ follower.  I really believe that without Chi Alpha I would be nothing more than a cultural-Christian today.  So when we move and look for a new church, one of the essential elements a new church must have is a strong emphasis on authentic fellowship.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the church has the same hang-out-at-all-hours college atmosphere Chi Alpha had, but it does mean the congregation has plenty of opportunities to allow folks to be in close contact.  Structured get-togethers–like Sunday lunches or other social activities organized and hosted–are a great step in this direction.  But one of the best ways to encourage fellowship beyond merely socializing is through service.  I saw this at Genesis Church in Tallahassee.  My wife and I have attended Genesis for over five years, and we’ve been involved with kids church there for most of that time.  Volunteering to help out was one of the best things we could have done, not just to “give back,” but also to make friends–from the kids church pastor and his wife (Stu and Jess, and later Phil and Evie), the other volunteers, to the many kids and their parents.  I’m not sure how long it will take us to find a new church, but we’ll be on the look out for one that both makes it easy to get involved by volunteering, and easy to hang out with other members.
• Authenticity.  This is probably most accurately described as a subset of fellowship.  I’ve found there are lots of nice people at church on Sundays who have no qualms about being a total jerk at work or school on Monday.  I don’t want to be one of these people, and I don’t want to surround myself with these people either.  I want to find a church where people are honest about their failures, are not afraid of admitting imperfection, and strive to learn and grow from their mistakes.  Authenticity also means that church members who seem friendly are genuinely so.  I’ve had more hypocritical cold shoulders in church from Christians than I have from folks who know nothing of Christ.  Church should be a family, not a clique.  I get really frustrated sometimes when I try to approach certain people and the response I get is more calculated than any politician could ever muster.  I’m tired of people in church who pretend to like you, who want you to shake their hand, who want you to come to their service/event/meeting, but want nothing to do with you as a person.  If God literally is love, then God is far from some of the folks I see on a regular basis in church–and I am not looking for that when I look for a new congregation.

Non-essentials:

• A website.  Part of the “outreach” I mentioned earlier is making folks aware of what the Church is, and what a particular congregation offers to the local community.  The who/ what/ when/ where of church can be kind of confusing to any newbie, unchurched or otherwise, and I think a good website goes a long way to both offer information and to demonstrate a real concern for those seeking a place to learn and fellowship.
• Simple worship setting.  Music style can be a major dividing issue for some worship-minded Christians, but I honestly don’t care about the style so much as the lyrics of the songs, and the way the songs are performed.  One of my biggest struggles in attending corporate worship services is that I get really distracted by the frills.  I don’t mind fancy lights or loud guitars; I do mind when the purpose of the service is less about God, and more about the band and the audience.  I have seen far too many ensembles that make a bad concert out of worship.  By this I do not mean bands that are well rehearsed, or that have a high degree of technical flourish.  I mean bands that sing for an hour straight with songs that are doctrinaly unsound, have little to do with God, and everything to do with easy emotionalism.  Worshiping with music doesn’t mean you have to feel like crying, or shouting, or jumping, or lifting hands, or any of the outward manifestations that so often go along with song in evangelical/emerging Christianity.  Worship is an attitude, a time of reflecting, to center ourselves and honor the Creator.  If you think I’m overstating how much this can be about the audience over God, then just take note of how often people will raise their hands during either the chorus or a key change.  What is it about that shift from verse one to the chorus, or from F to G major that so enhances our appreciation of God???  It may be cynical, but I think too often our worship is a self-serving emotional drug.  And besides this self-serving side of worhship, I sometimes get annoyed by the “look at me” lighting that crops up in some churches.  There is no way that seeing four women in denim vests circled around a Casio keyboard (or for a more modern take, four dudes with “oh is it still cool to wear girls’ clothes?” outfits strumming their redundantly reproduced parts on various electric guitars…) with a bright spotlight on them is going to advance my perception of God’s majesty.  So why do so many churches prop up the worship band?  I suppose this point runs the risk of turning into a rant, so I’ll stop here.
• Casual atmosphere.  I’ve learned to love wearing jeans to church.  Flip-flops too.  I think that most folks like the idea that they don’t have to dress up for God.  I mean doesn’t God see us the same, regardless of how we dress?  I know there are churches where dressing up is a way to show respect for God, to revere His power.  But I think we can still revere God by dressing casually (even if flip-flops aren’t always a smart choice).  I guess I think people who have to dress up to go to church run a higher risk of thinking of their time with God as something they do once a week–with the clothes they usually wear symbolizing the fact that the “real” person is not welcome on Sundays, nor is God welcome to visit the rest of the week.  Wardrobe is definitely not an essential thing I look for, but still a factor I consider.

So hopefully we’ll be able to find a church that satisfies all these elements.  I’ll be sure to update once we get out to Oklahoma and our search commences in earnest.

Proper Etiquette for Commenting

I honestly don’t get a ton of commentors here on my blog.  But I do read other blogs and forums, and there are often those who seem to have no idea how or why they should (not) comment.  So, I came across this little guide and thought it might be nice to pass along, for folks who might comment here or anywhere else.  These rules are from Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker, and I have to say I especially agree with the point about knowing when to email versus posting (no offense to anyone who has committed this faux pas…).  Check it out, let me know if you have any further commenting rules of etiquette.

Leaving a comment on someone’s weblog is like walking into their living room and joining in on a conversation. As in real life, online there are some people who are a pleasure to converse with, and some who are not. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged. Build your own online social capital and become a great blog commenter by keeping these simple guidelines in mind before you post.

Stay on topic.

Bloggers enable comments on specific blog posts to hear more about the content of the post. Don’t change the subject. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing a comment on a post about Hurricane Katrina that reads, “By the way, do you know anything about turtles?”

Contribute new information to the discussion.

Twelve people saying the same exact thing in one comment thread is useless and irritating. Before you comment, read the entire thread and make sure your comment offers something new to the conversation. If you don’t have the time or patience to read an entire thread, then don’t comment at all. The longer a comment thread the more likely someone has already said what you’re thinking, and the less likely it is to be read by future visitors anyway.

Don’t comment for the sake of commenting.

Commenters who only say “First!” or “Nice site” on an open thread have no business hitting that “Post” button at all. Further, only spammers comment for the sake of adding their name and URL to a web page. Useless comments will gain you the reputation for being a useless commenter.

Know when to comment and when to e-mail.

A weblog comment is a public one-to-many communication within the context of a blog post. An e-mail is a private interaction. A weblog comment that reads, “Oh yeah, that link is cool. By the way, how’s your sister?” doesn’t contribute to the public conversation and belongs in an e-mail message to the author instead.

Remember that nobody likes a know-it-all.

The best kind of comments come from thoughtful, knowledgeable people who add more information about a topic. However, tongue-lashings from condescending smartypants will go over as well on someone’s blog as they would in that someone’s living room. Expect to get shown the door in the form of the delete button. When fact-checking, pointing out a typo or dead link or asserting a dissenting opinion, do it in a respectful, friendly way.

Make the tone of your message clear.

No one can hear the tone of your voice or see your facial expression online. Sarcasm, in-jokes and exaggerations can easily be taken the wrong way in a public forum. Remember that a simple colon and a parentheses can change the meaning of a sentence entirely. Use emoticons or additional information to communicate the spirit of your message.

Own your comment.

Anonymous commenting, while sometimes necessary, can be seen as cowardly. Build your identity and own your words by placing your name and weblog address on your comments wherever possible.

Be succinct.

Longwinded lectures are for college professors, not blog comments. Stay short and to the point. Everyone appreciates brevity.

Cite your sources with links or inline quoting.

To comment on specific bits of a blog post, copy and paste the lines in question and add your response below each section. If you’re referencing information located elsewhere, provide a short summary and a link to your source so others can click through for more information at their discretion.

Be courteous.

Chances are something someone says in a comment or post is going to irk you. Still, personal attacks are unacceptable, useless and can quickly degrade a discussion to a third grade “Yo Mama” flamefest. Resist the urge, and be respectful and objective at all times.

Don’t post when you’re angry, upset, drunk or emotional.

There’s no taking back a published blog comment – once you post, it’s there for everyone to see and for Google to cache. Remember, you’re not going to show your best face in the heat of an emotional moment. If you find yourself angrily typing a message into someone’s blog comment box – STOP. Get up. Take a breath. Walk around. Give it a day. Revisit the thread when your head is clear. This goes doubly for public blog comments as it does for private e-mail messages.

Do not feed or tease the trolls.

No matter how many articles like this get written, there will always be people who surf around the Internet and inject pointless vindictiveness into any available textarea. Don’t let the terrorists win. Do NOT acknowledge these people with refutations, disagreements or even a mention of their screen name.

New Prince of Persia Trailer

The first Prince of Persia game was released in 1989 and now almost twenty years later, the series is still going strong.  Apparently there’s even a movie in the works, featuring Jake Gyllenhall as the protagonist and (Sir) Ben Kingsley as the villain.  Meanwhile, on the video game side of things, the latest installment will be released in December of 2008, and utilizes a stylized cell-shading visual approach.  The game itself looks pretty good, and this latest trailer shows off some of the unique visual style, but it’s the tie-in of the audio that I like so much.

I stumbled upon this trailer the other day and I was really impressed by the way the song and video work so well together.  The video is gameplay from the forthcoming Prince of Persia, and it shows off a bit of the interaction between the non-playable Elika and the Prince.  The song is “Breathe Me” by Sia (from Zero 7),  and has a refined yet gravel-y “it pains me to sing this..” feel–which fits well with the “find a little help from my friends” NPC co-op aspect of the game.  The trailer was released at a recent game expo (TGS ‘08), and if you’re interested in the game you can check out Ubisoft’s official Prince of Persia website.  Hope you like it as much as I do.

Pet Peeves: Traffic Hogs

What I feel like when I see a "traffic hog" at a red light...

I have a pet peeve.  I get really frustrated when people stop at a red light and don’t pull up to the car in front of them.  For lack of a better descriptor, I will call these inconsiderate people “traffic hogs”.  Now to be clear, I’m not talking about stopping and then leaving a few feet between the cars.  No, what I’m talking about are the folks who stop at a light and then leave two or three car lengths as a buffer.  These are the folks, often talking on cell phones or playing with the radio, who neglect to think about what a huge amount of space they’re wasting.  Every time I see someone like this I mentally scream “do you really need that much space???”  When people do this at a busy stop, it inevitably means there will be cars behind them who are forced to take up space that they shouldn’t.

For example, the other day I was stopped at a red light on Tennessee Street (one of Tallahassee’s busiest roads), near the intersection of Monroe Street (Tallahassee’s other busy downtown street), and as the light turned green I edged forward with traffic, until the truck in front of me stopped, as the light at the next intersection changed.  This left me stranded in the middle of the intersection and blocking cross street traffic.  Well I didn’t panic, I figured the truck and other cars would pull forward in time for me to clear the intersection.  No dice.  Seems some drivers need a good safe three-car-lengths-between-cars-just-in-case-there’s-a-freak-explosion-buffer, and they don’t have the sense of mind to think of the other drivers who are left to be honked at and given the middle-fingered salute.

I suppose this post is a bit of a way to redirect that ire towards those whom I hold responsible, but it’s also a request:  if you are one of these road hogs, please, please, pull up!  In most places you’re supposed to leave a minimum of three feet between cars, and that’s generally plenty.  And you most certainly do not need thirty feet.

If you aren’t one of these road hogs, then thank you!  You make my life a little more enjoyable, and I tip my hat to your thoughtfulness and consideration of other drivers.

American Idol Flashback: Brooke White

To end my run of American Idol videos I thought I’d finish with someone who wasn’t a reject.  Season seven of American Idol was one of the few that I’ve watched all the way from the auditions to final winner announcement, and through all of the songs and performers, one of the singers my wife and I really liked was Brooke White.  Brooke didn’t make it to the final round, but she was a stand out.  Here are some of my favorite American Idol clips of Brooke.

“Love Is a Battlefield”

“You’ve Got a Friend”

“Let It Be”

American Idol Flashback: I Am Your Brother!

Renaldo Lapuz never had a chance going into the American Idol auditions.  He’s over the age limit, and honestly not a great singer.  But his original composition was pretty catchy and he won over the judges and audience with his description of the awesomeness of Simon Cowell.  If you didn’t watch season seven of American Idol, Renaldo was one of the rejects, but he was invited back for the season finale and he performed “I Am Your Brother” with a full choir.  It was a really fun way to show off his personality and talents, and if you didn’t see it you should look for it on youtube.  In the meantime, here’s the song that made him famous.

American Idol Flashback: No Sex Allowed

Ok, this is one of the stranger songs from American Idol auditions, but maybe not THE weirdest (Keith, on “Like a Virgin” takes that honor in my opinion).  Still, this performance may induce a case of the heebie-jeebies if you’re not careful, so consider this your heads-up.  Here’s “No Sex Allowed.”

American Idol Flashback: Like a Virgin

Continuing with my week of American Idol videos, here is “Like a Virgin.”  What makes this performance so weird is not so much the bad singing, but the painfully awkward accompanying hand motions.  While there’s room for debate over some of the bad contestants–whether they’re serious or just trying to get attention–this guy doesn’t look like he’s pretending to be weird, although he sincerely believes he’s “very entertaining and unique.”

American Idol Flashback: She Bangs!

William Hung is perhaps the most famous (infamous?) of all the American Idol rejects.  He was so bad that he was actually able to put out an album of his singing–and people bought it just for the badness.  This audition was probably the first time I ever saw American Idol and decided it was an okay show (even if Simon Cowell is a bit of a jerk).  Here’s William Hung, doing what he does best–singing and dancing badly.

American Idol In My Head!

For some reason I’ve had three or four of the songs from bad auditions of American Idol stuck in my head the past few days.  I can’t stop mentally singing “She Bangs,” “I Am Your Brother,” or  the hilariously weird “No Sex Allowed.”  Sometimes I even catch myself doing the movements (at least William Hung’s movements…).  Since I can’t get these songs out of my mind, I’ll share them here over the next few days.  Be ye warned!

How To Do Well In Law School

I’ve been out of law school for about six months now, and I still catch myself feeling like I ought to be studying something or taking notes at home…  As I prepare to enter the work force as an honest-to-God attorney, I want to give a bit of unsolicited advice to law students.  To all you law students out there, and in particular the 1Ls and bottom-third folks:  I too have been through the bowels of hell, and Socrates is there…

While I enjoyed parts of law school, on the whole it was not a fun experience.  During my 1L year I wasn’t exactly a top performer, and in fact I managed to pull down four D’s over two semesters.  Yes, you heard me.  But by the end of law school I was making all B’s, which wasn’t enough to get me to cum laude, but it did help my estimation of what I was capable of–and I did pass the Florida Bar exam on my first try, so something clicked along the way.  I learned a lot in law school (some of which I mentioned in a past post), but the procedures and techniques I used are almost as important as the substance of what I learned.  From 1L  D’s to 3L B’s, I changed quite a bit about my approach to law school.  Here are some of the practical steps I took to move from doing badly to doing well.

Read everything.  I know this might seem obvious, but you have to actually read EVERY DAY for EVERY CLASS.  Ok, that’s overstating it a bit–but you should read before each class (and definitely not months later, the day before finals).  In my experience, most professors give between twenty to forty pages of reading for each session (give or take, based on how often the class meets), and this usually can be knocked out in an hour or two, at least after the first year.  During the 1L year, reading cases will take a long time; sometimes as long as a few hours for a single case.  As a 1L stuff can really pile up quickly, especially since you have to worry about legal writing assignments and fully briefing cases (unless you have a kind-hearted professor who doesn’t abuse folks with the Socratic method).  1Ls, don’t get discouraged by how long it takes to read, and if you aren’t seeing an improvement, make sure you’re reading for important details only–you should know the rule of law of the case and the holding (i.e., does it modify or merely clarify existing law), plus the facts of legal significance.  If you’re tempted to not read, especially as a 1L, heed ye this warning:  I put off reading for a few of my classes during 1L year until the week before finals–and I suffered the consequences by earning a D four times that year.

Don’t read everything.  I know this might sound like I’m contradicting my last point, but if you’ve been through a few semesters of law school you’ll realize that you’ve got to prioritize your reading, and really focus on taking good notes in lecture.  Reading for every class is the best way to go as a new to the law school experience, or if you aren’t sure what kind of testing style the professor will use, but to be honest, there are some classes where you can do just fine by skimming the cases and only taking notes on what the professor points out in class.  These are generally the classes where the professor doesn’t call on people, lectures the entire session–sometimes chasing obviously trivial tangents–and the professor will usually tell you what was important from a particular case.  You’ve got to get a feel for this kind of class, and play it safe by reading before class for at least the first few weeks and intermittenly during the semester if you feel like you aren’t understanding lecture.  But like I said before, you’re better off reading everything if you can.

Book brief. It took me a little longer than most folks to get the hang of book briefing, but when I did it changed my life.  For reals.  One of the best time savers any law student can practice is book briefing.  This is basically taking notes in the margins–as opposed to writing your case brief out fully in your class notes–and highlighting/ underlining/ bracketing important passages in the text.  It’s really important that as you read, you take the time to summarize these important passages in the margin, focusing on the individual points of a given argument as well as the big ticket items like the holding and dispositive facts.

Make your class notes into your final outline.  This may seem like a really simple point, but you should never try to incorporate your notes into your outline–that’s just a huge time-suck, and you’d be doing everything backwards.  Instead, supplement your class notes, reformat them if you need to, but make this your final outline.  I offer this advice at the risk of stating the obvious because during my 1L year I didn’t understand how to outline, or even what an outline was.  (Just for you noobs, an outline in law school is a pretty big deal, because you can usually bring said outline into the exam with you.  But even if the exam is “closed book,” the outline is your best tool for understanding the key concepts of the course.)  During my finals review of my 1L year I tried to re-read everything we’d covered in each course and outlining as I went.  That was not smart.  A much more practical approach is to use your course notes and only use your casebook where you need to fill in additional information (or you just don’t understand your notes).  Ideally, during the semester, you should be taking notes in class, pulling from readings and lectures, and after class go back over your notes to fill in material from cases if you didn’t have time during lecture.  So you want to have a good outline, one that gives you both a big-idea view of the course and it’s subparts, as well as important details about particular cases and aspects of the law (including areas your professor stressed during class).  If you take good notes during class, and you break areas up with headings, bullet points or some kind of list format, it’s really easy to make this your final outline by supplementing cases or issues during your final review.

Look over past exams.  Most professors tend to test the same issues again and again every time they teach a course.  There may be variations from semester to semester, or if there’s a major change in the law, but usually trends in what’s tested.  A great way to see what’s likely to be tested is by getting a copy of a past exam.  Lots of professors in law school will put past exams on file with the library.  Take advantage of this, look over past exams, practice issue spotting and responding to particular fact patterns.  You don’t have to sit down for four hours with each exam–feel free to just take notes on your copy of the old exam, or outline your answers.  But you’d have to be either crazy or overly confident if you don’t take advantage of the professor’s generosity,  especially given the fact that most courses are graded on a harsh curve–and you can bet that at least some of your classmates will do the extra bit of work to skew the curve in their favor.

Get rid of social distractions. Here’s the short version of this bit of advice:  Get rid of all your friends during law school.  To be fair, socializing may not be your own personal distractor, but it was for me.

I mentioned before that I didn’t read as much as I should have during my 1L year, and I suffered the consequences.  One of the big reasons I didn’t read is because I just was too distracted to force myself to read.  I mean seriously, who rather read about boring court opinions about acquisition by capture or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, over something fun like playing a frantic game of Mario Kart with your roommates, staying up late to talk about practical orthopraxy (trust me, it’s more interesting than it sounds), or making a midnight run for chicken fingers (Guthries!)?  I blame myself for my poor grades from 1L year, but part of my problem was that I lived with really fun roommates.  I liked to hang out with the guys way more than I liked to study.

Another “distractor” was my girlfriend.  Having a serious dating relationship takes up lots of time, not in a bad way, but because you wind up spending so much time together.  Nothing wrong with spending time together, but it was really tough for me to focus on studying–when we’d just “hang out and do homework togther” (her words…) and not on talking or making plans for the next date.  After my 1L year my girlfriend and I got married, so she’s now my wife.  And in my experience, it’s actually a lot easier to be married and be in law school than it is to date and be in law school.

So my advice is to ditch most of your undergrad friends (you’ll know who to stay in touch with based on who supports you during that stressful first semester), and dump or marry  your girl/boyfriend if you want to do well in law school.

Get a hobby.  The Xbox saved my law school career.  No really.  I got an Xbox 360 in September of my 3L year, I played a few hours each week (usually right after class as a way to mentally unwind), and I got better grades that year than any other year.  So there.  Now you may not be into video games, and that’s okay, but you should find some non-legal activity to take part in.  Law school can be incredibly stressful, and even when it’s not stressful, it can be mentally taxing to keep up with all the readings and various subjects.  Go to the gym, go jogging, walk the dog, watch a movie, do the dishes, do something to allow your mind time to process all of the information you stuff in during the semester.  Just be careful to keep this a “hobby” and not something that’s going to compete with your study time.

Realize the purpose of law school.  Some folks think law school is about “learning the law,” kind of like a physician learns human anatomy.  This isn’t totally wrong, but law school is about so much more.  The purpose of law school is essentially two things.  First, on a meta-level law school is not about learning the law per se; it is about “learning to think like a lawyer,” which means appreciating the subtle points of rational argument and analysis.  Secondly, you must see that, at the same time, law school is about learning the law, but it’s not so much particular laws as it is particular themes within the law.

Think like a lawyer… that’s what we’re told to do as law students.  This means you become adept at the fine art of comparison and contrast, learning to discuss what distinctions matter and why.  But how do we go from shadow-dwelling plebeian 1Ls to enlightened lawyers?  Aside from brushing up on the Allegory of the Cave, my advice is to try to enjoy well written court opinions.  Soak up the language of the Court, bathe in the didactic back-and-forth.  This may be a bit too far out for some folks to find helpful, but going to law school is a step toward “learning to love the law,” and this is a point of deep emotional significance.  If you’re in law school you probably realize that law school really sucks sometimes. There were moments when I had serious doubts about whether I was smart enough to “get” a particular subject or if I had made a poor career decision.  One of the things that really helped ground me in my law school experience, and made me feel ok about “the law” was learning to appreciate the depth of the opinions of major cases.  Sure there are some bad opinions in casebooks, and even some funny ones (Lord Denning anyone?), but there are also some opinions that make for compelling, soul-stirring reading.  Most of the Con Law cases you read as a 1L will be part of what I’m talking about (after you get past Marbury v Madison…), and it’s a safe bet that a good deal of U.S. Supreme Court opinions are too.  To fully appreciate this depth during the busyness of class preparation, I recommend you actually take the time to type into your notes the significant quotes from major cases–you’ll be surprised how often the language of the Court comes up in later cases or on exams.  When you re-write these quotes, and then re-read them later, you begin to have a deeper understanding of what these learned men and women really meant, and from this what it means to “think like a lawyer”…  Knowing a few of these quotes (at least well enough to paraphrase on an exam) is good for your grades, and more than that, will give you something to think about long after the semester is over.  Think of these Court opinions as beacon to show you how to think and communicate as an attorney.

The second side of realizing what law school is about boils down to recognizing particular themes within the law, as opposed to worrying about memorizing any individual law in itself.  One of the best books I read in law school was “Getting To Maybe,” and the authors cover this issue in great detail there.  I highly recommend this book to any law student.  Short of reading this book, I’ll tell you that there are recurring themes within the law, such as how do we interpret an existing rule (broadly or narrowly), and if “fair” means treating like parties alike while treating dissimilar parties dissimilarly, then how do we decide what distinctions are significant enough to rise to the level of legally dispositive?  These are some of the recurring themes, and until you can learn to spot these, you won’t be “thinking like a lawyer,” and chances are you won’t be doing well in law school either.

This won’t happen overnight, so don’t fret if you struggle with the basics during your first few months.  But please learn from my mistakes, take my advice if you find it helpful, and don’t be too hard on yourself if you aren’t doing well in law school.  These are some practical study habits you can implement, and I’m proof positive that they work (and may even  carry over to help pass the bar exam on the first try).

Recommended Music: Iron and Wine

Music you’re likely to hear in a coffee pub?  Um, yeah maybe some Enya.  But more likely Iron and Wine.  This group has a nice mellow sound, great for background music while studying or just hanging out.  And if you’re not into studying or hanging out, but you are into watching TV, you may have heard Iron and Wine’s cover of “Such Great Heights” during a commercial for M&Ms.  Good stuff.  If that’s not enough to get you on board, then for all you Florida State fans, Sam Beam, singer/song-writer of the group, is an FSU alum.  Woot.

Here’s a clip that speaks for itself.

Halo 3 Recon

Bungie, the makers of Halo 3, have released this trailer for a Halo 3 expansion.  Apparently this is going to be a stand-alone game, complete with a new campaign, multi-player maps, and achievements.  The Recon expansion will be a prologue to the events of Halo 3 and will feature an ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper) in some FPS action.  Looks like a nifty idea, though I honestly think it would do better as downloadable content.  I’m also really interested to see how they’re going to make the player weaker than the suped-up Master Chief, while still making the game fun and more advanced than the regular game.  Halo 3 Recon will drop (pun intended!) Fall 2009.  Here’s the trailer.

Buzz Worthy: Paramore

I was tempted to just use a “Recommended Music” topic for this post, but I had to pull up short of a full on recommendation/endorsement.  Instead I think of Paramore as buzz-worthy, definitely worth at least looking into.  I have to say, all I know about Paramore as a band is that they have a song on Rock Band 2, and it’s pretty good.  Here’s the video to that song.  For more information on Paramore check out the official band site.

More Bad Christian Music: The Renewed Mind Is the Key

My friend Pier — er, “The Portender” gave me a heads up about this video.  It’s arguably even worse (or better?) than “Jesus Is My Friend,” and features quasi-break dancing/ pop-and-locking and even some salsa moves.  After doing some extensive research (mostly via a quick scan of Wikipedia) I have learned that the group responsible for this travesty in song and dance may be a cult. So there’s a good chance orthodox/mainstream Christianity  bears no blame for this.  If “The Way International” is indeed a cult, then maybe my headline should read “Bad Cult-ish Music”; but then that might generate the wrong kind of traffic… And there’s still a good chance that the song in itself could be confused for actual Christian music.

Back to the video, I’ll sum things up in one word: weird.  Maybe even too weird to be amusing… but I’ll leave you to judge.  Here’s the video.

If this first link doesn’t work, try this one, which is from “The Soup” on the E! channel.

If you prefer, you can see the entire video (I know!) at myspace videos, at this link.

The Florida Oath of Attorney

The induction ceremony for new attorneys in Florida was held yesterday in Tallahassee at the state Supreme Court.  Although I completed the Oath of Attorney a week-and-a-half ago, I attended the ceremony (it’s recommended that inductees attend even if doing so is redundant…).  The Oath of Attorney contains some really interesting stuff, mostly as a distillation of the rules of professional conduct, but still very important stuff that I’ll keep in mind as I begin practicing law very soon.  Here’s the Oath:

I do solemnly swear:

I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Florida.

I will maintain the respect due to Courts of Justice and Judicial Officers.

I will not counsel or maintain any suit or proceedings which shall appear to me to be unjust, nor any defense except such as I believe to be honestly debatable under the law of the land.

I will employ for the purpose of maintaining the causes confided to me such means only as are consistent with truth and honor, and will never seek to mislead the Judge or Jury by any artifice or false statement of fact or law.

I will maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of my clients, and will accept no compensation in connection with their business except from them or with their knowledge and approval.

I will abstain from all offensive personality and advance no fact prejudicial to the honor or reputation of a party or witness, unless required by the justice of the cause with which I am charged.

I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or delay anyone’s cause for lucre or malice.  So help me God.

Beauty and Longing

As an undergrad I studied English literature, and with that critical theory, the philosophy of art and beauty.  I may be alone in this, but I think this is truly one of the most fascinating areas for philosophical contemplation and dialog.  And as a Christian, this is probably the best way to logically think about the necessity of a Creator; if ever there was an atheist who could convincingly argue a theory of beauty without reference to creation and creator, I’ve never heard of one.

I really enjoy talking about scripture and theology from a literary frame (meaning narrative theology), which by the way is something Donald Miller does a terrific job of introducing in his sermon “Story” and in most of his books.  Part of what I enjoy so much about this frame of reference is that it brings light to so much of life and scripture, and I’ve been trying to explore some of this in my writings here.  So in a post a while back I talked about the philosophy of good and evil (particularly in the video game Fable II), and in a more recent post I wrote about the function of escapism and what we can learn from our desire for more.  After posting on those subjects I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of “the good” versus the nature of beauty, and the role of subjectivity in each.  I think the distinction between how we use the word “good” to describe art, and what we often mean by it (i.e., “beautiful” or “beauty”) plays a huge part in how we talk about morality and creation, and I plan on revisiting this topic in the future.

In the meantime, I found this article from Christianity Today a few days ago, and I think it ties in nicely with the past posts I mentioned.  The essay does a really good job of explaining what I tried to say in my post on escapism.  And while this essay is a bit on the long side, it’s well worth your time to read all of it.  There are some really interesting bits (peanut and nougat) in it to chew on, which will hopefully be a good set up for what I write about later.

A Holy Longing, by David Taylor

The saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” suggests that attempting to say anything concrete about the nature of beauty is a futile task. As soon as one person deems something beautiful, ten others will show up deeming it ugly. But theologians of the early and medieval church did not assume beauty was subjective. Borrowing from neo-Platonic philosophy, they believed that for something to be beautiful, it must also be good and true, with God reigning as the ultimate source of beauty. Today’s church can be thankful for people like David Taylor, who connect such esoteric reflections to the church’s mission. As the arts pastor for 12 years at Hope Chapel, a vibrant congregation in Austin, Texas, Taylor helped believer artists make the connection between worship, creativity, and community. Here, Taylor makes a similar connection between beauty and gospel proclamation to answer this year’s cvp question, “Is our gospel too small?”

What more, you may ask, do we want? … We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. —C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

Many of the houses on my block in north-central Austin, Texas, are architecturally ugly. Built in the late 1950s, they are one-story, squat structures. Slapped-on metal porches hang out from exceedingly flat roofs. The asbestos siding is faded. The construction is cheap, the brick dingy and dull. Collectively they perform the duties of houseness fine. But I can’t say that I walk down my block and feel awe. I feel glum. I’m grateful for my house, of course, and many good people live on my street, but if I look too long the ugliness of our houses starts to weigh me down.

That feeling only increases as I encounter other uglinesses in the world at large: strip malls with their mass-fabricated façades; daytime talk shows with their voyeuristic gossip; relentless visual noise that drains and distracts us; racism; self-indulgent behavior; wastefulness; barely utilitarian church buildings; and “faith” movies that ignore every biblical notion of sanctification.

And the ability to make ugliness abound, whether material or moral, is in us all, sinners great and small. The effect of all this ugliness upon us is no small thing, either. Like a dementor in Harry Potter’s Azkaban, it sucks the life out of us. Ugliness makes our souls sick, leaving us dissipated and eventually deformed. Ugliness is one of the three anti-fruits of human rebellion, alongside falsehood and evil.

So what will rescue us from all this ugliness? God, of course. But what about God gives us hope in the midst of so much ugliness? A fundamental attribute of God: that he is beautiful. He is a beauty-full, beauty-making God who invites us to participate in his work of expanding beauty upon the earth.

The Beauty of God

Consider the ordinary dictionary meaning of beauty—”The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality.”

Then consider this God.

Our God makes beautiful material stuff. He fashions the carnival-colored, wacky-jumping flat lizard of South Africa and the severe environment of the Gobi desert in Mongolia. He constructs the extravagant diversity of life in the Amazon rainforest. He invents homier things such as the capacity to savor tea and toast.

Our Creator commissions a multifaceted work of literature: the Bible. In it, we find the comforting poetry of Psalm 23. There is the Apocalypse, teeming with strange symbols that inspire fear and awe. In the Gospels Jesus’ parables deploy allusive turns of phrase. There is no sentimentalism in the laments of Jeremiah, no slick or sloppy writing in Paul’s letters.

There is also, preeminently, the beauty of God’s self-sacrificing love—of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the cross the beauty of God is mangled, smelly, dirty, misunderstood, “banged with terror,” to quote one modern poet. It makes us weep. And it is good. And how it makes us yearn to be loved and love like such a God.

What we see in this Trinitarian God is his ability to make beauty shine forth from all kinds of lovely and messy, magnificent and broken things—things from which we expect beauty to be absent. The doubt-filled book of Job? That freakish quartet of singing beasts cruising around the eternal throne? These are beautiful? Yes, these things, directed by the hand of God, are beautiful.

I submit, then, that when we present a gospel that ignores or devalues beauty, we not only present a small gospel, but also a distorted gospel, because it misrepresents our God.

The God whom we preach can end up not looking like the Word made radiant flesh, but like the Word who belongs to a Mensa club. He has the answers, all of which are true, but no real presence. He is the Right Idea who looks nothing like the resplendent, technicolor Son of Man—”hair a blizzard of white, voice a cataract, face a perigee sun”—whose beauty captivated the heart of St. John. Likewise, instead of the Good Shepherd whom Mary of Bethany leisurely beheld, we can easily find ourselves following a worker-of-the-month carpenter, a driven good-doer who gets plenty accomplished for the kingdom, but who looks like a far cry from the transfigured Glory whom the early church fathers called the “everlasting desire of nations.”

We certainly must continue to declare Jesus as the Good Way and the True Truth. But he is not these alone. Jesus is also a Desirable Beauty, one who attracts us by the beauty of his person and works. And he has placed a deep longing in all humans for beauty. When you and I welcome the in-forming, re-forming presence of beauty into our gospel—our evangelism and social action, our worship and work, our praying and playing—we allow beauty to do something that only it can do: generate longing, a longing that is satisfied supremely in the Source of all created beauties, Jesus Christ. And this is very good news.

To be sure, beauty has its subjective dimension. I like a good mocha coffee. My wife prefers a good black tea. My architect friend Margaret favors the clean lines of modern architecture over the ornate gothic architecture I’ll take any day. There are the nonbelievers who fail to see the “beauty” of the crucifixion. In no way, then, can we make simplistic statements about what is beautiful. Still, there are at least three fundamental qualities that suggest the basic nature of beauty. Let me explain.

The Mechanics of Beauty

When we say of something, “That is beautiful,” what dynamics are at work? Three interrelated qualities: unity, complexity, and richness, all of which, when working together, evoke longing. Take a Mercedes Benz engine, a fine mechanical work of art.

First, all the parts of a Mercedes engine hold together, are excellently integrated—unified. Nothing is wasted, nothing missing. Second, the engine exhibits a complexity of action. Many things, electrical, chemical, and mechanical, are happening at the same time to produce wondrous functions. And third, the engine provokes, for Benz-lovers at least, poetic outbursts: “What a gorgeous engine! It’s perfect!” While philosophers might call this “radiance” or “richness,” car enthusiasts would call this ecstasy, for they sense that something “more than” is going on.

That “more than” is the pull of beauty, something we have all surely sensed at some point. I have sensed it in singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens’s melancholy “Sister Winter”; in the richly textured storytelling of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; and in both happy and dark subject matter such as P. L. Travers’s Mary Poppins and Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment.

All these works are beautiful, though never merely subjectively. For in every case they reveal the objective pattern of unity, complexity, and richness, which collectively evoke longing. Differently for each of us, they stir an ache in our hearts. The longing for what? For starters, the longing for joy, for order, and for more beauty.

Joy Anyone who has been on this planet long enough knows that joy and good food frequently go hand in hand. And by “good,” we don’t just mean good nutritionally—we mean good beautifully.

Consider the 1996 movie Big Night, the bittersweet tale of two Italian-American brothers trying desperately to keep their restaurant in operation. One brother, Primo, is shy and hopelessly impractical, but also a gastronomic genius, and he fancies a local florist, Ann. In one scene, Ann wanders into Primo’s kitchen, where he is fussing over a sauce. He looks up to see her and invites her to taste it. The taste of the sauce is so exquisite that Ann can do nothing but exclaim repeatedly: “Oh my God!” Primo takes her exclamation and turns it into a keen insight: “‘Oh my God’ is right, see? Now you know. To eat good food is to be close to God.” Then he quips: “The knowledge of God is the bread of angels. I’m never sure what that means, but it is true!” Here Ann breaks into laughter.

This scene reminds us of an essential connection between beauty (Primo’s finely crafted multicourse meal), joy (the merrymaking that ensues throughout the meal), and God (to whom the exclamations of delight are directed). The knowledge he talks about may not be saving knowledge, but it is part and parcel of God’s revelation of himself to his world. What a great gift we can offer our neighbors when our acts of beauty, such as a finely made meal, lead to sweet, true joy.

Order Insofar as beauty is marked by unity, when we make something beautifully we offer to others a vision of unity, or order. Such a vision can minister to the souls of people torn by fragmented schedules and broken relationships.

At Hope Chapel, we hang at the beginning of Advent two 9-foot-high, 6-foot-wide banners that feature the archangels Michael and Gabriel. They make for fierce, strange creatures, vibrantly colored in reds, purples, oranges, yellows, and greens. Angular in form, they hover protectively over the congregation. At the base of the banners, the colors brighten to hint that dawn approaches with the coming good news. Once a year, the banners act to “reorder” our sense of time, to reorient us to the time of Emmanuel. What time is it at Advent? It is the time that God has come; that he is here defending us and speaking now; that he will one day make whole all that is damaged around us and in us.

The order of spiritual time represented in the banners nourishes us frazzled, occasionally faint of heart congregants. The angels’ visual reminder puts us at rest: all shall be well, the Lord is near. Surely we need that reminder at least once a year.

More Beauty But beauty is actually much wilder than simply evoking in us a desire to have more “units” of beauty. No, we want, as C. S. Lewis keenly observed, to pass into beauty. In other words, we want to bathe in Mozart’s music. We want to become a part of the Swiss Alps. We want to receive our spouse into ourselves. We want not merely to behold the Bread of Life; we want to eat it, and in so doing, find ourselves truly known.

Psalm 27:4 states, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek … all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple.”

All the days of my life. That’s a long time and quite an exceptional desire. But I don’t think the psalm-ist intends to exaggerate. He has encountered the Source of all beauties. How can he not want this beauty forever? God has redeemed us so that we may worship him never-endingly as the glorious, tri-personal Source of beauty. God has also purposed to transform all of creation’s brokenness, as theologian Jeremy Begbie reminds us, “into something of infinitely expanding, superabundant beauty.” This too is good news.

Messengers of a Greater Beauty

My street is not without signs of beauty. One family grows tall vines in its front yard that yield luscious red tomatoes. Every March, Texas Mountain Laurels grace us with sweet grape-scented flowers. Human doings. God doings. These signs gladden my heart. They beckon me away from the ugliness in my own heart.

We evangelicals uphold the true and the good of our gospel, and rightly so. But there is also a great work to be had in expanding beauty upon the earth. To place beauty in the lives of our neighbors is to place a forestalling effect in their hearts against the downward drag of sin into ugliness, both moral and material.

Sometimes our beauty-making works will be an indirect witness to God, as with Mel Gibson’s movie Braveheart and its depiction of self-sacrificing love. Sometimes our works will be very direct testaments: Gibson’s Passion of the Christ is just that. But always, the effect of beauty upon us will be the same—to evoke longing for the Source of all beauties. Our privilege as those who walk with Jesus is to be able to say to our neighbors, with the Holy Spirit’s guidance: “That longing you feel in your heart for something greater than yourself? That is a longing for God himself. He truly can satisfy your deepest desires.”

To do this work does not mean we neglect the true proclamation of God or the practical love of our neighbor. It means we infuse all things with the presence of beauty—our discipleship and our public parks, our grocery stores and our popular novels, our meal-makings and mission projects—knowing that we are doing gospel work, proclaiming the full revelation of God.

My final prayer is this: that you and I would become, in all we say and do, messengers of a Greater Beauty, living signposts of that First Brightness, holy irritations against all that is ugly, so that at least once throughout the course of our neighbors’ day, they will, with God’s grace, long for him and perhaps even find him—the everlasting desire of all nations.

From Christianity Today, online at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/october/17.39.html.

Labrynith: Dance Magic Dance!

I must have watched the movie “Labyrinth” (not “The Labyrinth,” just “Labyrinth”…) over a hundred times as a kid.  I still think this is probably THE weirdest kids movie of all time (although “The Dark Crystal” is a very close second).  David Bowie plays a great villain though, and I guess there’s some kind of message in there too.  Maybe “be careful what you wish for, or goblins will come and take your half brother to a land of singing and dancing, dark humor, and eternal stenches”?  Weirdness aside, the film itself is quite a technical feat, and if you’re into behind-the-scenes information you might want to check out some of the DVD extras (I watched it on DVD a few months back…);  the stuff folks can do with puppets is amazing!  Here’s a sample to help prove just how amazingly weird–yet endearing–this movie is.  Revel in the nostalgia!

And baby said?  Garbled jibberish, that’s what!

So You Want to Buy a Wii…

The other day I was wasting time reading some of the forums on Amazon.com and I came across this question.  “Im thinking about getting a Wii.. Should i get one or is it just a waste of money?“  Yes, it is poorly written (first no apostrophe, and then they short change the ellipsis! Not to mention the lack of proper capitalization!).  But I noticed the time stamp, 2:22am PDT–which is pretty late (or early) no matter where you are, and I couldn’t help but wonder if some poor parent was stressing about Christmas gifts and was on the verge of making a very late-night shopping mistake.  So I took the time to craft a response, one that I think is far and away more than this slacker thought he/she would get, but nevertheless one that I think will be helpful.

Here’s my response, and hopefully it will help someone else, especially as the holiday season nears.

Q:  Im thinking about getting a Wii.. Should i get one or is it just a waste of money?

A:  It depends on what kind of games you want to play, and how you want to play.  Most Wii games tend to be great for social play or for younger gamers (and for some reason really old gamers too).  A few examples of this are Mario Party, Boom Blox, Mario Galaxies, Smash Brothers, Wii Sports and Wii Play, and Mario Kart.  Aside from being great for “casual” gamers, the Wii also has the novelty-factor of using motion controls for a lot of games.  This can get kind of old, especially for less casual games that you might play for a few hours in one sitting (like Metroid Prime Corruption or No More Heroes).  And right now the motion detection isn’t great–it’s about like using your TV remote to change the volume as a game in some really bad instances…  But that’s with bad games, and there are some really fun moments for older folks who have never played video games at all (grandparents, older parents, etc.) when they can play tennis in Wii Play or the Jenga-like games in Boom Blox using the Wii-mote to perform very natural motions.

All that being said, the Wii does have some limitations.  First the system itself isn’t all that advanced.  If you’re looking to play video games by yourself for cheap then you might want to look into just getting a PlayStation 2 or a GameCube, since they’re basically on par with what the Wii can pull off (minus the motion detection of course).

Another big drawback to the Wii is how expensive it is.  I know most folks look at the Wii and think “at least it’s cheaper than the other systems”, but that’s not really true, because you have to buy so many peripherals with the Wii.  The controllers are sold in two parts–the Wii-mote and the nunchuk, and each sell for $30-$40 each.  If you get four of each of these you’re looking at quite a large investment, and that’s just for controllers.  Games on the Wii tend to be a little cheaper, but they also have the drawback of being of sketchy quality (if it’s not made by Nintendo), especially if you don’t take the time to read video game reviews.  There’s a lot of “shovel-ware” on the Wii, because some developers take advantage of the fact that there are lots of really ignorant Wii owners who will buy a game just because of the cutesy box art.  You wouldn’t buy a book for $10 without knowing a bit about it would you? So why spend $50 on a game you know jack about?

The last drawback of the Wii I’ll mention is the fact that it doesn’t play DVDs.  This might not matter if you already have a nice DVD player, but it does demonstrate Nintendo’s lack of concern for the Wii as a technologically competitive piece of hardware that can be for more than just gaming.  This might not seem like a big deal, but trust me, when you look at the other major systems this is a huge let down.

So speaking of the other major systems, you should at least consider them before investing in a Wii.  If you’re more into playing games on your own (like not during a party or with the grandparents/kids around), and if you like the idea of using your video game machine as a kind of everything-entertainment box, you should definitely think about going with an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3.

I own an Xbox 360 and I have been very happy with it.  There are a ton of really solid games, ranging from “hardcore” (like Halo 3, Gears of War, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Call of Duty, and Half-Life The Orange Box), to really casual (like Scene It!, Tetris, Lego Star Wars, or Viva Pinata).  The most basic 360 is actually cheaper than a Wii right now (at about $200 US) though that doesn’t include a hard drive for saving large amounts of data.  I recommend getting a hard drive if you do get a 360, preferably at least the 60 GB, though if you think you’ll use it to download content often you should probably go with the 120 GB.  Downloading content onto your Xbox 360 is a pretty important capability, one the Wii can’t really compare with (at least not right now, given the total lack adequate memory space…).  Personally, I’ve really enjoyed using my 360 to download arcade games, and TV shows and movies (you pay for these just like renting online…).  Xbox 360 has a really good online experience, and it’s really easy to find your friends if you want to play a co-op or competitive game with each other online.  So you can see which system I’m rooting for.

To be (somewhat) fair, the PlayStation 3 is probably more powerful than the Xbox 360, although it’s online community/store is not quite as robust as the 360.  If you’re a PS2 die-hard, then you might want to move up to a PS3 for the sake of continuity and out of loyalty (I thought about it when I moved up from a PS2), or maybe for the PS3 exclusives (like Metal Gear Solid 4 or Little Big Planet), but I think the Xbox 360 has a better overall game catalog and probably more high-quality exclusives (like Gears of War or Halo).  The one area where the PS3 beats the competition hands down is Blu-Ray.  Right now the PS3 is one of (if not THE) cheapest Blu-Ray players on the market.  If you have a high-def TV, then this is a big plus, especially since Blu-Ray beat out HD-DVD as the high-def home movie format (if this goes over your head, then don’t worry about it…).  So my thoughts on the PS3 are that it’s waaaaay more powerful than the Wii and will likely still be getting play time long after the Wii gets retired in 2010/2011, and you can brag to your friends that you got a Blu-Ray player that also has some really kick-butt games.

As for the Wii, bottom line is no, it’s not just a waste of money if you actually use it, but don’t get one just because it’s the most popular system.  Getting a video game console right now is not something you should do lightly.  You need to ask what kind of games you want to play, and if you haven’t played any games in a while, think about renting a system, or playing at a friend’s house.  You also need to ask how you’re going to play–do you plan on playing only occasionally when you have people over, only playing games by yourself or with friends online, or maybe some combination?  How you answer these questions will determine what kind of system you should get, and whether or not a Wii would just be an expensive dust-collector.  Hope this helps. 

Flight of the Conchords

About a year ago my friend Phil Harris told me about the group Flight of the Conchords.  I’m not sure I can adequately describe all the funny things these guys do with song, costume, and themselves (they have their own musical TV show too), but I can pass along this very funny video.

Ain’t no party like my nana’s tea partaay–hey!

My Favorite Drinks From Starbucks

This may be an odd way to open up a post on my favorite drinks from Starbucks, but I need to say, first off,  I do not like coffee.  The smell is pleasant enough, but the bitterness of plain black coffee is not something that makes my taste buds come alive with enjoyment.  Bitterness aside, there are a few coffee-drinks that I love, and several from Starbucks top my list.  I know Starbucks takes a lot of flack for being so ubiquitously present, with stores sometimes every block in major cities, but there’s a reason there are so many franchises: people love the way Starbucks makes coffee.  My personal favorites from Starbucks are all on the sweet side of things, so if you prefer for your coffee to taste like salty dirt (zing!), then you may want to ask the barista to tone things down a bit. So with that caveat, here they are:

• Peppermint white chocolate mocha–I love this drink!  I almost always get this iced (hot is a bit hard to take in Florida most of the year), and there are times when it is too sweet even for me.  But I still recommend it for anyone who doesn’t like bitter coffee, and if it is too sweet, then try ordering just a peppermint mocha or maybe a white chocolate mocha.
• Pumpkin spice frappuccino–this is like a slushy with pumpkin flavored coffee; not too sweet and not too bitter, so it’s good for pretty much everyone.  The downside is it’s only available in the fall, usually starting in mid-September and leaving shortly after Thanksgiving.
• Peppermint mocha–this is the drink that got me turned on to the white chocolate mocha, since they’re almost the same thing.  Usually the seasonal version of this drink comes in right as the pumpkin spice is leaving, and officially stays until the end of the holiday season.  The seasonal sprinkles on top make this feel different than just any old regular mint mocha, but you can get the barista to make you one, sans sprinkles, year-round.
• Caramel macchiato–I used to get this drink pretty often, but too often it winds up tasting burnt and not nearly as sweet as you’d guess from the name.  A good drink to get hot, but make sure you test in time to ask for more syrup if you need it.
• Banana chocolate Vivanno with a shot of espresso–this sweet and savory smoothie-esque drink is supposed to be a healthy choice for those who like the caffeine of coffee but don’t necessarily like the high calories associated with some of the sweeter drinks.

So those are my favorite drinks from Starbucks.  What are yours?