Category Archives: Life

Morphin’ Time…

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And now for something completely different. A couple of weeks ago, I signed up to teach a course for our church during our Wednesday night activities. The course is a video presentation based on John Ortberg’s book The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Let me cut&paste a bit from the preface:

If you have ever been frustrated with the state of your spiritual life. If you’ve ever wondered why spiritual growth goes so slowly. If you’ve ever wondered if real change is possible. If you’ve ever felt confused or stuck in your spiritual life — you’re my kind of person.

…

Throughout the centuries, wise people have devoted themselves to following Jesus in this way. This series is an attempt to make some of that wisdom accessible to people who line in a world of freeways, corporate ladders and Xboxes. When you are through, my hope is that you will accept Christ’s invitation to live life his way because it truly is the live you’ve always wanted.

A facinating topic, to be sure. One that I’ve struggled with for much of my life. Spiritual maturity or growth is a weird thing. If anyone has a litany of things you must do to mature spiritually, run away, seriously. Not because a list of things to do is inherently bad, it just might be misdirected. These past few weeks in my daily reading of blogs, or studying for Sunday School, or just leafing through the book that goes along with the study, I’ve realized I’ve playing a bit on the fringes of my spirituality.

Its gonna get wordy, so if you’re interested click to continue reading.

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Zowowie! – Creative Zen Vision:M

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Creative Zen Vision: MLast night, we went to StuffMart and purchased for Angie a Creative Zen Vision:M.  She’s been wanting something that plays MP3s and that she can take with her (her laptop is a bit bulky) and play the songs she loves in the car, or around the town.  One of the requirements was that it can connect to her Rhapsody account, and be able to use their subscription service.  The sexy slick iPods are tied to the iTunes (I know they can play other normal MP3s, &c.) and isn’t compatible with the subscription service that Angie would like to use.  I had heard about the Zen Vision a few months back, and had a crush on it for a while, since it has some pretty cool video features (much more flexible than the iPod with codecs).  So we’ve had our eyes on this one for a while.  We bought an old style cassette tape adapter so she can listen to her music in the car as well. 

After we got home, it needed to charge up (via a USB connection, which is the way things seem to be going nowdays, and also handy as we both have our laptops) and so she left to go scrap/stamp with Natalie. *evil laugh* ITS MINE!!! *cough cough* at least for a few hours…

Time to put it through its paces, so follow the geekitude after the break.

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Forgiveness v. Justice… the point is Grace.

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Allahpundit over at HotAir has a good link to an article about one of the Amish girls being asked to be shot first, to give more time to her companions. Then as he is wont, goes on to post an excerpt to a post by John Podhoretz that cracks open the question of Forgiveness versus Justice. Two admirable qualities to uphold in a civilized society. The discussion proceeds in the comments, after Allah says:

Serious question: if it’s okay to turn the other cheek when it comes to child killers, why isn’t it okay when it comes to, say, Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein? That inconsistency among hawkish Christians has always troubled me.

Or is it perfectly consistent, and I’m just missing something?

Which is a wonderful question, and the level at which that is posed comes down to Individuals versus Governments. Individuals can choose foregiveness, or go the extra mile and head towards Grace, when faced with harsh actions towards them by individuals. It seems that is the case with these small precious children that chose personal sacrifice over retaliation. The coments follows my thoughts, and Allah’s pushes back admirably. But I think he is overstressing a well missed aspect of what a Christian is, and how one bases their theology. He is stressing Jesus’ point of ‘turning the other cheek’ and basically boils Christianity into ‘following the words of Jesus,’ which might be a popular belief about Christianity, but in practice is hardly ever followed to that letter. In fact, Scriptures became codifed to ‘include’ the gospels (or Jesus’ sayings) because some hair-brained fellow decided to strip the scriptures down to ‘what Paul said, and a bit of Luke for context’.

But Christianity, is based on much of Pauline theology (and I’d argue, as I think Paul would, that is also Jesus’ theology) and so we can come to Romans 13 and here what Paul had to say as the purpose of governments. Their role in dealing out God’s justice upon those that are misbehaving. That point is brought up tagentially in the comments, as is Aquinas’ Just War thoughts, but Allah keeps pressing on with the, that doesn’t mesh with the Sermon on the Mount stuff. Which I gather is the point. Not all things can be boiled down to the key phrases of the SotM. If anything the sermon on the mount is a commentary on Moses’ law, and pointing out that for every fence built by the ‘teachers of the law’ the law can be extended to fence those people right back into the ‘sinner’ category. The Sermon on the Mount is an exercise in telling us that we ALL fall short, we ALL need foregiveness, and most importantly, we all NEED grace. For the key to the kingdom of heaven isn’t some moral olympics, but the acceptance of a confessed and penitent sinner, that realizes they’ll never jump high enough to reach God.

So while the ‘consistency’ of ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ vs. ‘just-war’ is lacking, that is the point. We are lacking. That is why Christ paid our price, hung on a tree, and died, so God could redeem us all to himself.

Peace.

ADDED: And if AP reads this: How does a brother get the right to post to comments at HotAir?

Happy LOST Day!

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Ahhhhhh YEAH!!!!

Today we start finding out all sorts of other stuff.  Like:

  • Did Desmond, Locke and Eco survive the magnetic ‘disturbance’?
  • What are ‘The Others’ gonna do with the big three hostages: Jack, Kate and Sawyer?
  • Can Hurley find his way back to the tailie camp?
  • Will Michael turn the boat around and kick Faux Henry Gale in the ….?
  • Will Desmond’s girlfriend find the Island and save the day?
  • what else.. help me people!!!?

I didn’t follow much of the off season ‘Lost Experience’ so I can’t comment much on that.  From what I’ve gleaned at other fan sites, it is mostly periphery stuff regarding the Hanso Foundation and its roots and programs.  Much of that we’ve already gleaned from watching, you know, the SHOW.  So I don’t expect the ‘experience’ will have much to do with the actual series of episodes that we all stay up late to watch and re-watch on Wednesday nights.  Bonus:  Tonight is fall-break night at church, so we get to watch LOST together as a fam.  Errr… wait, the kiddos!  They’ll make noise and ask questions, and… *sigh*  Well its getting DVR’d anyways, so I may re-watch it after bedtime.

Supposedly the first episode has a Jack centric flashback, much like season two’s first episode.  I went back, and was thinking that the pilot had a Jack centric flashback too, but reading the synopsis, I don’t think we got flashbacks until the second episode (which was Locke-centric, and then a Kate centric)  Jack didn’t get his flashback until the third regular episode.  Kinda makes sense since Jack was supposed to be killed at the end of the pilot.  Anyhoo my turn for speculation:  We will find out that Jack’s father was having an affair with Jack’s wife.  (I predicted it last year after The Hunting Party episode, but I can’t find where I blogged it… I can only point to a message board post does that count?)

Enjoy!

Lost, Jericho and Heroes.

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Two seasons ago we were introduced on ABC to the Lost television phenomenon in a wild new two-hour premeire that changed some of the perceptions we have while we watch a television drama. Lost combined tragedy and a well developed mythology into a show that was more about an island, than the people that crashed in the spectacular tail-falling-off crash that became its tell tale signature moment.

This season the other networks are playing catch-up, two new series try their hand at a serial television drama that after their premeire’s have many questions that have left unanswered.

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Fascinating… a hole in the wall.

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One of Protein Wisdom’s guest bloggers, Dan Collins points to an interesting article on “minimally invasive education.” The introduction to the article explains the premise (a fascinating skinner box experiment).

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Based on the results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.

more below the fold.

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None of the above…

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apologies to Monty Brewster if what Allahpundit is reporting is true, then I may follow the lead of Ace and deity at HotAir.  I’ll take a step further, any candidate with an ‘incumbent’ by their name, won’t earn my vote.  I’d love to see the faces of hapless pols as they realize that they can be run out of office with the mark on a ballot.  Replace the whole House of Representatives, and 1/3 the Senate in November.

TV updater-a-thon…

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Its been a while since I’ve gone over my shows… so I’ll do this off the top of me head.

House continues to rock, though the formula hasn’t changed much. I did like last night’s episode, especially when he realized (or DID he) that his young fan was attracted to him because of some kind of spore. Or maybe he made it up, because he knew that would be a ‘bad-thing’. Still think he has the hots for Cameron.

The Heroes pilot was good on Monday night. I like that this will be an ensemble show, and enjoy the different flavors of characters. The mystical scientist-now-taxi-driver will slowly put the peices together. The freaky cheerleader that can’t kill herself is an intriguing story-line, and nice to make the ‘wolverine’ character nice and cute. Scary mother/father pair for that one, though the mother didn’t act quite as horrid when she didn’t have the dog in her lap… maybe the dog has some kind of force-field it emits that causes brain malfunction. Ali Larder’s character is interesting, I think she’ll end up being Hulk-like where if you make her mad, you won’t like her so much, as the thugs found out. The Japanese teleporter… hilarious, with the Star-Trek references.. HA!

Jericho gets its second watching tonight (the a LOST review *woooooo*) and we’ll see if this ends up being just a drag or we start answering some questions and asking others. The story left quite a few loose ends, and if they want to keep their audience, they need to provide some answers along the path. That is the genius of Lost is the answer one or two and ask two or three more in their story line. Jericho needs to move along that path, or it won’t last the season, at least not on my DVR.

Brothers & Sisters wasn’t on my A-list, but I ended up watching it my last night in KC. Not bad, some very familar faces, and some great talent. Though I wouldn’t trust Slone with my money, though it is smart to put Tom Grace right there to keep an eye on him. Interesting casting of Flockhart as a conservative radio talk-show host, who has an even more conservative neanderthal husband who wants to keep his wimmin-folk barefoot and pregnant… *sigh* so much for stereotype busting. And the loyal husband that is sneaking around with a woman… predicatable, and someone has to see the Caleb Nichols line with the patriarch falling into the pool after a heart attack. This show will be the snarkfest, as it goes on.

Grey’s Anatomy best written show on television. Bar none. Doesn’t have the mystery of Lost, but the dialog and characters are top notch. Using dark and twisty to describe the title character of Meredith Grey, the relationships of all the young doctors in love, the tying the past (Meredith’s mom and the chief) to the present (Derek and Addison, and the problems the Chief has with his marriage…) just all together great stuff to watch, and laugh and morn. Steven Harris’s breakdown at the loss of his wife was terrific.

Six Degrees was a good pilot, there was a good thread that wound through the episode that came to a nice close, several questions asked, some kinda answered. A typical J.J. Abrams type of plot, that is a good mix of dialog and action. Interesting characters, and some predictable moments. The boyfriend that cheats for instance, at the end we get the confirmation we ALL knew was going to happen. The rest is all watching the train-hit-the-car. The mystery girl who is running from something, and the connection with the disillusioned assistant DA. The lost photographer that re-finds his eye. The little brother trying to the the right thing, while being drug down by his own problems. Lots of stuff to keep an eye on.

On the reality set, mild interest in Dancing with the Stars its gonna come down to Joey vs. Mario (who was EXCELLENT in his Nip/Tuck guest spot, which is another guilty pleasure show that is rocking this year… and by rocking I mean… well parental discretion is strongly advised.) So I’ll keep an eye on the standings, but won’t get drug in until the later weeks. Survivor is still strong on the DVR, though the same things happen year after year… I love the formula. The Biggest Loser is another family favorite, don’t we all wish we could do nothing but workout and eat veggies for a few weeks? TAR is a watcher too… mostly because all the cool kids watch it.
Gripe: Why do the telephone voting shows get so much TIME. We really don’t need a 30-60 minute wrap up show to discover the vote, that irritates me to no end. DwtS does it, and so does AI. I’d rather they have like a 3-minute lottery spot, and tell you what the result was, and see you next week. Then we don’t have to reserve 30 minutes of valuable DVR time for what boils down to a 2 minute payoff.

Okay, no tell me what I’m missing.

Lauren’s lesson from space

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Lauren got to listen to Anousheh Ansari in space on , the world’s first female space tourist, the first female Muslim, and the first Iranian in space. WFAA ran a story on their newscast, and have a video available. I wasn’t able to see Lauren in the video, but I’m sure it was a neat experience to listen to a real-live-astronaut from outer space.

UPDATE: Anousheh has a blog (word press, of course)