just being christian

Ok, everyone.  I’ve seen the video.  Thanks for emailing it, posting it, sharing it, asking me about it. It’s hilarious.  It speaks some truth.  But I don’t see what the big deal is.

I’m not even that great of a Twitter user.  I follow 56 people.  52 people follow me.  I’ve dropped 530 updates.  Titter Grader gives me an 85/100.  Not exactly hall of fame numbers, there.  And yet, I apparently update more than most of my friends.  People have their opinions about that kind of activity.

Let’s set some things straight.

I don’t sit around all day in my underwear, eating microwave pizza and tweet from my laptop.  I walk around the city all day in my underwear tweeting from my cell phone.

Kidding.  I only tweet fully dressed.

80% of my online activity now occurs on my cell phone.  More like 95% if you count Twitter only.  Far more convenient than busting out the lappy or chaining myself to a desktop.  But what I gain in convenience, I loose in spelling.  My friends who fancy themselves to be the facebook spelling police have called me on my transgressions a handful of times (my titter and facebook accounts are linked).

My apologies.  I have fat thumbs.  And it’s hard to give a thorough proof read when you are speeding down the freeway at 80mph trying to wrap up a tweet before the stoplight turns green or pay attention to your daughter.  Quite frankly, I’m always multitasking when I tweet.  I’m hanging a ceiling fan, I’m watching something on TV, I’m cooking.  You can continue to correct my spelling, but (a) I’m already aware, and (b) I don’t care.

Which all begs the question: Why Tweet?

For me it’s a challenge and it’s fun.  I like to see if I can make people laugh in 140 characters or less.  I like to see if I can get a rise out of people in 140 characters or less.  Sometimes I give my own blog or someone else’s blog a little love.  But mostly, I’m just trying to get reactions from people.  A lot of times it works.

Look, the great thing about the new wave of online communication is that people can always opt out.  You don’t like what someone tweets?  Stop following them.  Your friends annoy you on the Facebook?  Adjust your sliders and their stuff won’t show up in your info feed.  It beats the heck out of people blowing up your inbox with annoying forwards as was the case a couple of years ago.

Finally, a word about this whole “Twitter and Facebook are stupid because if you were really friends with people you would just email or call them”.  That’s stupid.  There are tons of people on both sites that I communicate with a lot more because we got reacquainted online.  And I have some good friends that I call, email, tweet and facebook.  Since when is it bad to have options?

There’s no twouble wiht Twitters.  It’s just another nice online twool.

Renew and Restore

My friend Nate is a collector of all great Youtube videos displaying bad Christian music.  He lived up to his reputation last week when he sent me the above video.  I have to give the kids props, since this appears to be a do-it-yourself job without any kind of professional production.  Lots of entertainment value, nonetheless.

• I don’t condone stealing, but there you deserve some props if you can concoct a plan to scam Apple out of 9,000 ipod shuffles.  Unfortunately, you also deserve some jail time if you put your plan into action.
• A look at how the economy is helping set the Obama Administration’s agenda.
• Donald Miller is such a trend setter.  He’s uber-cool.  I’m, like, so totally over him.
• The new Punch Out game for the Wii is going to utilize the Balance Board.  I’ll wait to buy the game until they have a peripheral that will make me feel like I’m getting bashed in the face and occasionally punched in the kidney.
• Is there some rule against holding up “John 3.16″ signs at college basketball games that I don’t know about?  Even if that is the case, the security guard seems to have overreacted just a tad.
• My NCAA bracket is a disaster this year.  After the first weekend, my percentile ranking was 2.7.  That means over 97% of the entries were better than mine.  I attribute my decline to the fact that I only watch KU and Oregon basketball with any regularity.  Back in college (when I was an amazing prognosticator of the tourney) I watched as much bball as possible.  It’s all good, though.  Last night’s perfect sweep vaulted me to the 25th percentile.

Renew and Restore

I haven’t had a lot of warm and fuzzy moments during the NCAA tournament this year.  Partially because this is my worst bracket ever, and partially because there have been entire blocks of unintertaining games.  But one aspect of watching that has been beneficial is the video above.  Not only do I find it hilarious, but it sheds light on one of life’s great struggles.

For many years, I have been a heavy armpit sweater.  If I even think about vigorous activity, my underarms turn into a bog of perspiration.  From my high school years, I have relied on undershirts to absorb the brunt of the damage.  Heavy duty anti-persperants have also been employed to keep the pits as dry as possible.  It seems as though completely defeating my massive sweat glands is out of the question.  You can’t stop them.  You can only hope to contain them.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to try any of the Axe products.  While this commercial is sweet, funny and monogamous, most of them are far from.  The sports typically follow a story line where some dude uses an Axe product and as a result some type of orgy breaks out around him.  On the one hand, I refuse to use the products on that alone.  But I’m also a little scared to use them, because if the non-sweat related advertised results actually come to fruition I’d have a hard time keeping my marriage in tact.
Renew and Restore

When I get home from work on Wednesday nights, I have a good idea of what will be on TV. It’s Stacy’s guilty pleasure night, which means America’s Next Top Model is the entertainment of choice.  It also means I open the mail, take a shower, make some tea and do any number of things to kill some time until the show ends.

Over the last couple of years, I have gleaned some good modeling lessons from the show as it rolled in the background.  Modeling is emotional.  It takes a lot of effort.  It takes a long time to become good at it.

All of which I should have remembered when we took our first family portraits last week.  I was in charge of everything.  I set up the appointment and I picked out all of our outfits.  Not too shabby.  But man, if the whole process wasn’t just a whole lot crazier than I anticipated.

For starters, I needed to budget way more time for the circus.  I  thought a 10:10 appointment would be great because we’d have enough time to get around that morning, and I’d still be able to get to work by Noon.  Yeah, right.  Not only were we 5 minutes late, but I was 30 min late to work.  Double fail.

The time between tardies wasn’t all that fun, either.  Elli wasn’t in the best mood, and wasn’t terribly compliant.  I found it difficult to muster the focus necessary to keep up with the ladies.  They have a lot more natural beauty than I do, so it takes a lot of effort to hold my own in the frame.  I should have practiced my smile a little more ahead of time.

If that didn’t wear me out enough, we then had to choose which pics off the roll we wanted printed.  The photographer was great in that he took a ton of pics, but that made the decision making  a lot tougher.  Plus, Elli was running around like a crazy woman and there were a multitude of rowdy children in the waiting area.  Very rowdy times.

Following the shoot, I did come to one startling realization: my forehead is growing.  Baldness runs in the family, and it seems as though I will not be granted immunity.  It was nice knowing ya, hair.

Each night at The Hope Center, we close our time together with a 20 minute contemplative prayer ritual.  There are a few components to the ritual, and one includes the reading of and reflecting on a Psalm.  Following our reading of Psalm 45, we took a moment to journal our thoughts and then began sharing what stood out to us.

Sometimes there will be a boy who doesn’t pay very close attention, but still wants to share.  As we were bouncing around the room to give our insights, one such lad raised his hand.  I called on him, and he gave the vague answer, “verse 9.”  Naturally, I asked what was in verse 9.  He started reading.

“Kings daughters are among yoru concubines.  At your right side stand the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir.”

I’m not sure where he got the Bible that dropped the Concubine bomb, but it wasn’t the translation we usually read from.  And I’m sure he doesn’t know what a concubine is, considering he couldn’t even pronounce the word.  We was just looking for an option and pulled a verse out of the air.

Of course, it’s easy to see why a middle school boy might like the verse in the event he had a robust vocabulary and could properly define “concubine”.  At that stage of life you might be interested in knowing where to sign up for this apparently church-sanctioned program.

But alas, we hold to some higher standards than we see in the Psalms when it comes to respecting the person-hood of women.  So much to the dismay of middle school theologians everywhere, there will be no concubines.

Renew and Restore

The world is a better place having had Desmond Tutu as an inhabitant.  To be able to live passionately, but to do so with grace and dignity is a disposition I strive for.  So much wisdom.  So much experience.  Perhaps our greatest living prophetic voice.

For the record, the appearance on Craig Ferguson was fine, but you’ll find a much better interview over at the Odyssey Network.

Renew and Restore