blog one another

Competitive pro worship

Oh gosh. After you watch it, you have to go back and see the stuff you didn't notice at the very beginning.

Pray for Kenya

I cannot absorb the news; it just seems like a world apart. So it was helpful for me to see this photo essay and read the captions. People. Faces. Stories.

I mean, this is Kenya, for crying out loud!
Pray.
(hat tip: Mike Todd)

And so it begins (take 2)

Well, here we go. Potluck at our place, this Saturday evening, 6:30. Let me know if you want to be added to the select list.

This week, we will devote ourselves to the following text:
Wow. SPs, they'll just read about them in the history books. I just go through that tech, literally. It's not how to run from an SP. It's PTSP — how to shatter or confront oppression. You apply it, then boom. — Tom Cruise

Erin sez

Erin: "What's an atheist?"
Kay: "Somebody who doesn't believe in any god."
Erin: "That sounds like me, in the morning."

Impromptu communion

Erin & I just went shopping for a few groceries. It's raining, so I was looking for a parking spot close to the store. I noticed an older man holding up a sign: "hungry, need help".

In front of our neighborhood Lucky grocery store? We live in middle-class suburbia, a place designed for comfort. This man was an uncomfortable reminder that the world is not all like this.

I parked the car, and we ran through the rain. The man had moved out of the rain to the sheltered area at the entrance to the store. I went about fetching a cart, not sure what to do, not sure what to feel, trying to fool myself into thinking that I didn't notice him. But 10-year-old Erin, bless her heart, said, "Did you see that man holding the 'hungry' sign? I feel sorry in my heart for him."

So we did our shopping, keeping our eyes open for anything that might help get him. As we shopped, Erin said, "I saw another homeless man not too long ago. As I was going to bed, I prayed for him quietly in my heart."

We picked up snack bars and orange juice, along with the rest of our shopping. We put the snack and juice into a separate bag along with a $10 bill. And we walked out of the store.

He was gone.

We looked around, but couldn't find him. Was he kicked off the premises? Where did he go in the rain? We walked in the rain. We searched by car.

I asked Erin what we could learn from this experience.
She said, "That we have a lot more than many people."
I said, "I wish I hadn't been afraid to talk to him at first. I could have asked him how we could help. We could have taken him shopping, or if that was too uncomfortable, we could at least have told him, 'Wait here, we'll be right back.'"

When we got home, I wanted to do something to help us remember this as a God moment. So we had communion, just the two of us, using the food we had hoped he would eat.
"The body of Christ, broken for you and for that man" — a Quaker Baked Apple Crisp Bar
"The blood of Christ, shed for you and for that man" — Sunnyside Farms Original 100% Pure Orange Juice

Technorati Tags: communion, poverty

Lost in iTunes

Well, it's taken me a month to use up my Christmas gift from Kay: a $30 iTunes gift certificate. A month! (Some of you are shaking your heads at me in wonder.) You see, because I love music so much and iTunes makes it so easy to spend money, I have trained myself to resist the temptation. So being given permission, well, it just made my head spin. Where to start? What to buy?

With new things about to begin, Soliton is on my mind, so the musical trigger of Coldplay was on my heart. So it seemed only fitting to start with:
Clocks, and
Speed of Sound

Trevor sez

"It's not every day that I wear a bra."

Prayer to begin

It's time.

++
How long before I get in
Before it starts, before I begin
How long before you decide
Before I know what it feels like
Where to, where do I go
If you never try, then you'll never know
How long do I have to climb
Up on the side of this mountain of mine

Look up, I look up at night
Planets are moving at the speed of light
Climb up, up in the trees
Every chance that you get is a chance you seize
How long am I gonna stand
With my head stuck under the sand
I'll start before I can stop
Before I see things the right way up
++

Coldplay - Speed of Sound

Kay sez

"Then why don't you put the cross in the trash?"

How Geek Are You?

75% Geek

This one's particularly fun because it shows a meter that rises according to your answers. (And it's nicely written in JavaScript so it all happens quickly in the browser with no page loading.) But I had to approximate my answer to the question, "When did you first start playing video games?" because the earliest they offered was 1980. Pfft. Kids.