bring the funk.

I've moved the blog again.

2010-11-26T21:31:00.001-08:00

I know, I know... I'm hoping this is the last time, too.

#1 - I've been a terrible blogger for a couple years now - let's see if this time sticks.

#2 - I've moved this whole thing over to the wonderful world of Wordpress, as our family embarks on a serious adventure. Check it out at http://www.adambam.com/blog

Cheers.

Lake Tahoe 2009

2009-08-16T09:12:00.001-07:00

We went to Lake Tahoe. It was beautiful, to say the least.

Shea found the water a bit chilly, so she rode on my shoulders...

Another Love... [Part I]

2009-01-31T22:41:00.000-08:00

I love being a dad. The end.
-----------------------------

There's been far too little blogging going on around here for a long time (for many, many reasons). Nonetheless, I've been itching to tell the world about our newest baby girl, but I've also wanted to put some thought and effort into it rather than simply post a picture with some stats. Months ago I resolved that I would not blog again unless it was about Maya.

So, without further ado, let me introduce my beautiful Maya Annaliese...

*thanks again, Beth, for an amazing birth announcement!*

| PROLOGUE |

So, if you're interested in my wife's lovely version of the labor and birth process, check out Part 1 & Part 2. My version may be slightly less graphic :-) but that’s because she’s a better writer than I. (Forgive me in advance, as I am rarely very good at telling a concise story)

Allow me to lead into the actual birth story with something seemingly unrelated. I would say that the past 5 years have been an important and unexpected journey for both Tara and myself. It's been interesting as we wrapped-up our undergrad, got married, transitioned to the “real world,” charted our collective path forward as “one,” learned more about the world outside of the American bubble, went back to school, traveled abroad, intensified our wrestling with faith & spirituality, got pregnant, had baby Shea immediately following grad school, experienced raising a daughter, and then pregnant again! ::surrrrrprise:: … needless to say, we could have never foretold all the twists and turns life would take (nor would we want to).

I recount all of that to outline the arch of life events that have permanently (and unpredictably) shaped both of us together and individually. The way we perceive the world around us is now… changed. Realities that were commonplace are now intriguing. Situations within our everyday experience now beg questions and curiosity rather than melding into the unnoticeable background. It’s sometimes an uncomfortable place to be, but more often it’s exciting and vibrant which I think comes with unpredictability and newness. If I could wrap it into one phrase, I guess I feel like we’ve gradually shifted to wearing different “lenses”… now confronted with views that point toward journeys rather than destinations. (This paragraph has been vague, I know. Even Tara’s probably reading and at this point thinking, “Heh?”)

What I’m getting at is that these nebulous concepts ultimately end up presenting us with very practical lifestyle questions: Why do we truly want to buy [insert consumer good of choice]? Why do we eat those ingredients we can’t pronounce? How much trash do we create and energy do we use? Why do we buy products from that company? Why do we hold that political/racial/spiritual/cultural viewpoint? … and so on… A lot of these questions usually stem from books we’re reading, experiences in school, conversations we have with friends, and often movies that we see. Such was the case after we watched the documentary, The Business of Being Born.

With the birth of our first daughter, Shea, we were generally going with the flow of standard birthing protocol simply because it was our first pregnancy, and we were generally preoccupied with getting used to the fact that WE WERE GOING TO BE PARENTS! Yet during our second go'round with Maya, following various conversations and after viewing that documentary, we again found ourselves asking culturally uncomfortable questions, this time about why the American medical community approaches childbirth the way it does (Tara also wrote about her thoughts on the film here). After much deliberation, we decided to transfer our care from an OB to a wonderful Certified Nurse Midwife, and honestly, I think that was one of the best decisions that we've made as family. The resulting birth experience, for me, was phenomenal, and I'll use my next post to describe why that was...

Progress.

2008-11-04T22:46:00.001-08:00

I'd like to offer a wide range of thoughts, but for tonight I'll just leave it at this:

...my patriotism for this country is ultimately trumped by my citizenship in a larger story. But, nonetheless, the outcome of this election has left me proud, hopeful, and energized about what may be ahead of our national community as well as our global community. Tonight will be remembered for many, many years.

Now let's all get to work.

*more Callie Shell photos here

+

2008-09-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Forbidden City, Beijing, China
January 2007

(For those who've forgotten (or didn't see)... read my explanation of these "+" posts here.)

Political Perspective from Greg Boyd...

2008-09-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but this election is wearing on me. Don't get me wrong, I'm engaged in the latest happenings, watching as many of the speeches and highlights as my schedule allows. I feel the gravity surrounding this particular election in relation to our country's current state of affairs and history, and I'm definitely going to vote. But as the campaigning roars on, I'm increasingly realizing the inherent brokenness of our political system. It's irreconcilably polarized. Substantive dialogue is consistently drowned out by the "us vs. them" blabber. I realize that this is the "beauty" of democracy and that alternative systems of governance produce a far grimmer outcome... but that doesn't erase my disappointment with my fellow countrymen's failure to acknowledge and respect "the other."

Author Greg Boyd recently wrote a post at his site regarding politics that resonated with me. If you claim to pursue the way of Jesus (and even if you don't), I'd recommend reading Boyd's thoughts. It articulates a refreshing [and greatly needed] element of perspective:

"True Believers" and the Religion of Politics [excerpt]

I call them “true believers” (a phrase coined by Eric Hoffer). You see it in their teary eyes, their wide smiles, their intense frowns, their enthusiastic poster-waving. They’ve heard every canned phrase a thousand times before, yet applaud as though it was a new revelation each time it’s repeated. “America is the last, best hope of the world!” “Country first!” “We’re going to change the way things are done in Washington!” “We’re going to keep America safe.” “Our opponents say… but we know…” “We have the answers and our opponents just don’t get it.” “God bless America!”

The true believers passionately embrace all this. The hope of the nation and even the world hangs in the balance — if only they can win. It’s almost as if these sincere folks have forgotten that these exact same sentiments, hopes and dreams — almost always in the name of “God and country” — have been around since the dawn of human history. It’s almost as if these committed devotees have forgotten that these same sentiments, hopes and dreams have fueled most of the bloodshed throughout history.
more...

Hiking Chevelon Canyon with my bro...

2008-09-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

Well, seeing that I've had such a prolonged absence from the blogging realm, I figured I might as well record a bit of what I've been up to. I haven't forgotten about "the list," and I still plan to finish it out. But in the meantime, I'll toss out a few posts to catch-up anybody who's still reading this weak-sauce blog.

A couple years ago, my brother, Dave, talked me into going into the northern Arizona wilderness to hike our little boots off. Over the course of two and half days, we did around 23 miles and probably a couple thousand feet of elevation change, most of it without trails (thank you GPS:). Oh yeah, and we almost died... (joke... kinda). But I was definitely starving and walking funny by the time we made it back to the truck.

This year we decided we'd head back to the same location, but we only had wife/child-clearance for one night (which was just right). So it was back to Chevelon Canyon on the Mogollon Rim, northeast of Payson. The below video is nothing special, but it shows the beautiful Arizona forests that exist less than a couple hours north of the barren desert of Phoenix.

Bamford Bros Hike Chevelon Canyon from Arizona Bam on Vimeo.

I Am Alive.

2008-09-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry. I haven't blogged for a long time. I'll try to get back on track, etc.

I love my daughter (and my wife, duh)... they're a lot of fun.

Four Years Ago.

2008-06-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’
- Robert Browning

Green Building | Sustainable Architecture [Part 1]

2008-05-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

How about a I kick this off with a little background on how I even came to be interested in these concepts...

When I was about half way through high school, I was thinking that I might want to go to college to study architecture. There's a lot about it that still really appeals to me today... but long story, short I didn't study architecture. I studied music and then global business... go figure. No regrets, though.

So, fast-forward (or rewind, depending on where you are in this boring story so far) to the end of 2005, and I'm sitting (as a real estate developer) at this fancy-schmancy economic forecast luncheon in Phoenix where there were three main speakers for the morning. The first two were your typical, run-of-the-mill high-octane economists from some big investment banks, which is the type of person that you expect to hear pontificate at these events. But the third guy was different... his name is Wellington Reiter. I felt sort of bad for him because when it came to his turn, droves of round men in business suits were already filing out of the ballroom, indirectly writing-off anything he was about to say as irrelevant to their future. But as soon as he launched into his presentation, I was locked-in (for the first time all morning). Reiter's talk simply offered a vision for what the future of urban planning & design COULD look like (specifically in Phoenix) both in commercial and residential applications. Concept sketches of high-density yet comfortable housing... urban landscapes that leverage design and solar power to energize the city and create natural oasis-like parks... mass transit networks that would actually integrate the sprawling suburbs. An entirely different [read: sustainable] direction, and I loved it. But nobody else seemed to get into it. The whole experience really got me thinking... but unfortunately it didn't get me thinking in a self-reflective way. That came later.

Now fast-forward to the end of 2006, and HEY, Tara's pregnant! Whoa, awesome! Whoa, scary. Just the reality of the pregnancy significantly changed the way I perceived the whole world. My priorities were instantly rearranged (and have been ever since;-) In that time, Tara started reading up on a lot of different aspects to being pregnant, many of which dealt with how healthy living makes for a healthy baby. And she would draw me into the things she was learning about... like harmful chemicals in foods & plastics, the ecological benefits of cloth diapering, indoor air-quality, etc. And it seemed like over the months spanning the birth of our daughter, we both started to get a glimpse of how truly interconnected the world is. We were beginning to see that a healthy life for us and for our children requires mindful actions and a healthy earth. You may also recall that we read Sleeth's Serve God Save the Planet, which despite its rather stark title had a strong impact on our worldview (see more of my thoughts here and here). And this was also about the time that, despite the political polarization of the global warming issue, the general consensus coming from experts around the globe was that the physical planet is, in fact, not in good shape, and that a lot of the research data points to humanity playing a significant role in the problems.

So, here we are halfway through 2008... I'm still involved with the family biz, these sustainable design concepts excite me more than ever, yet my path towards implementing them in the future is a bit uncertain. Towards the end of last year, I led a look at a potential business venture, which involved building a spec home in one of our developments. I set a target to build a LEED certified finished product in a native desert setting, and the process of walking through the details of the LEED requirements, researching different design aspects, and learning more about photovolatic solar energy was a blast! Unfortunately, we've tabled this venture at the moment while the market drains into a black hole;-)

So that's how I became interested in this stuff. And, this post has (as usual) gotten kind of long, so I'll hold it there for tonight...

UP NEXT TIME:

I'll run down some of the key tenets and techniques of sustainable building that I've learned
I will take a closer look at how far pre-fab homes have come in recent years
I'll offer some resources (web, book, and local) for your own exploration if you're interested.

*Photo credit: LivingHomes

Still Alive...

2008-05-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

Beh. I know... long time, no post. There's just been "a few things" going on lately (primarily business shtuff). Should be getting a little more space shortly.

Thanks to everybody who voted or left a comment with a vote! That was a fun & intriguing experiment... I would not have guessed that the green building/sustainable architecture topic would have taken the cake, but I'm excited to kick things off with that one. [Disclaimer: I'm sure I'll have something similar to this on the actual post, but don't get your hopes up too high!... I'm definitely no expert on the topic. Just someone who likes to think about it and learn something here and there.]

----------

Earlier tonight, I conducted an audio interview with Florida artist/sculptor, Eric Higgs [cool dude]. More on all of that later, but I'll wrap this up with a thought that he brought up during our conversation. We were talking about his creative process, and we were discussing some of the underlying energy inherent to minimalism. He said something to this effect [I'm paraphrasing]:

"I take my creation concept, and I just start eliminating things. I take things away until I remove something that actually [adversely] affects the piece by its absence. And through this process, you can hopefully progress something down to its purest, most potent form."

I like that. It can apply to so much.

Help Me...

2008-05-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

To: Any reader of this blog who is actually STILL reading after my very spotty posting over the past couple months...
From: The Sporadic Blogger Bam

I'm struggling a bit with the blog here. I'm not short on ideas for posts, but rather I have a hard time guiding myself on which idea I should focus on next. So, I figured I'd try out the "poll" element on the sidebar here and get a little reader-interaction going on.

The following are all post ideas that I will eventually cover [at some point]. I'd love it if you would go through them, decide on your top three selections (assuming you ACTUALLY CARE... heh), and then place your vote to the right. My plan is to then follow the winning topics in order of most popular to least.

Wow, this could really backfire on me if NOBODY votes... or if my wife is the only one that votes (Tara please vote)... so, back me up here, folks. (This is also a great [anonymous] participation opportunity for any of you "lurkers" out there... don't worry, I judge you not... I like to do my fair share of blog-lurking too... it should really have a better-sounding term because I don't think there's anything wrong with it... anyway)

In no particular order...

A - Backyard Vegetable Garden Update
Picking up where this post left off, we've actually got some wicked photosynthesis crankin' the backyard these days...

B - Iraq War Film Reviews/Reflections
I've been doing a lot of documentary-watching exclusively regarding the war over the past couple months, and I would love to try and distill some of my take-aways...

C - Creative Non-Violence Series
I know, I've been threatening with this series for a while. Wherever this ends up in the poll, I can't guarantee that I'll pound out the full series in consecutive posts...

D - Questions & Ideas About the Problem of Population
This is one that I've really been meaning to just get out there, but for whatever reason I just haven't pushed it across the line. The gist of the post will be to offer some perspective as to how our planet's population is sky-rocketing, what that means for Americans, and more specifically what that might mean for our own families [and family sizes]...

E - Wheaton College Professor Fired for Divorce
Thanks to Moses for giving me the heads-up on this one. I'm not really sure where I'm gonna go with this, but it definitely raises some timeless questions...

F - My Explorations in Green Building & Sustainable Architecture
I'm increasingly convinced that the way we build houses around here is broken. But there are a lot of fresh ideas out there... manufactured housing has come a LONG way, my friends... seriously!

G - Thoughts on Patriotism
How patriotic am I? How patriotic should we be? I wonder...

H - An Inside Look at Studio L
A few months ago, I finally pieced together a home recording studio... and then a week later, we found out that we were pregnant again (SURPRISE!!). Thus the studio will need to find a new home in the house shortly (oh the irony). But while I figure that out, I'd love to give you a look at the gear that makes this little studio hum, offer my two cents on how far technology (and affordability) has come in audio recording, and maybe it will be helpful for somebody out there who is thinking about getting a recording set-up. PLUS, I'll give you a quick taste of some of Studio L's first creative output!

I - Neighborhood "Walkability"
This is one that I just came up with after reading Brenda's post. It's funny to think back to some of the different places I've lived in recent years and how drastically different the walkability has been...

Now go hit the polls!!

+

2008-04-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Too many days between blog posts here... a sign of the times.

Some of my favorite blog posts by Joshua Longbrake [seemingly put on ice at the moment...] are his creative additions (generally photography), which are always simply marked by a "+" as the title. So, I'm going to copy this minimalist concept of his (hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right?) and begin offering up some of my meager creative content to the blogosphere from time to time.

And today isn't even MY creation. Ha! [hey it's my blog... I make the rules around here: there are no rules]

=====

My wife shows signs of being a fantastic photographer. My daughter shows signs of being increasingly stunning with each passing day. Pretty good combo, I would say...

DEAL...

2008-04-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

... OR NO DEAL??

If you happened to be watching Deal or No Deal on NBC earlier tonight...

... and as the camera panned across the audience near the runway...

... you found yourself wondering, "Hey, was that Ad-- nah..."

... Yes. It was me, and my college buddies. :-)

More on my 4-seconds-combined small-screen debut later... (I haven't even seen it yet!... gonna have to get a TV again eventually)

Bye!

P.S. Howie Mandel: very well-dressed & much shorter than I realized.

What Could Be Better?

2008-04-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Well, my friends, what could be better than hanging out with my little lady in the backyard this last weekend?... [answer to follow pictures]

What could be better than that? Well, hanging out with BOTH OF MY KIDS in the backyard! Yeah, that's right, we've got "anothah one in tha cookah" (as the say in Boston... I'm guessing). I'm pretty sure most of you who read this blog probably know this already, but it's worthy of a post nonetheless!

(And, no, this is NOT some last-ditch effort at a weak April Fool's joke;-)

All smiles at the Bams...

The Backyard [A Pictoral Journey]...

2008-03-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! Yeah, yeah... weeks have passed since the last post, I know. A lot's been goin' on (took that weekend trip to LA, been working on Shea's "sleeping" habits, work's been hittin'-the-fan, etc.) More on all of that later...

But for now, I'd like to take you on (what I consider) an amusing tour of our backyard through the years...

Seeing that Tara and I bought the house in which I happened to grow up from my parents after we moved to AZ following college, our backyard is the setting for a lot of my childhood memories: over the years my brother and I played hours of catch, smear-the-[guy-with-the-ball:], & homerun derby; my dad put in a tetherball pole on the sideyard for my 10th birthday; and on an early-release school day back in 1991, I got my first kiss back there... coincidentally from a girl named Tara, HA! (Just for the [wife] record, SHE kissed me! I was defenseless, disoriented, befuddled, bewildered!;-) Anyway...

Given the modest size of the house, the backyard is on the larger side of things. And as time wore on since we first moved-in in 1986, the yard had lost much of its pizazz by the time Tara and I took over.

A shot from the patio looking out shortly after we moved-in (2004).

So, after we took the first year to get settled inside the house as newly-weds (read: paint EVERY interior wall surface, replace light-fixtures, fans, hardware, etc.), I set my sights on the backyard. I was born into a family that always seems to minimize the amount of work involved in the projects that lay before us... the logic goes something like this, "eh, that shouldn't be too bad... I'll just do it myself." :) Thus begins the backyard saga...

As I set out to start the work, I happened to also be starting grad school at the time. I like to spend a decent amount of time creating and designing, so this project was hardly a chore... but, to put it plainly, it. took. for. ever. for me to finish. I used my time in the yard as a release of sorts from the mind-numbing study sessions and stressful days at work... so I'd get an hour here, an evening there... and fortunately I have a very patient wife (when she wants to be;-)

I basically wanted to start from scratch with a clean canvas back there, so I went crazy on whatever was left of that wiry old lawn and KILLED IT ALL, BWAH HAHAHAHA!!-- sorry, got carried away there...

The yard with grass annihilated and the patio extension excavated and formed.

After working out the details of the new design, I decided that a larger patio would make a big difference, so I hired a concrete guy to do the new patio that Tara helped design. While that work was being done, I embarked on another self-imposed side-project of larger than anticipated proportions: a house for Charlie... our bizarre pet.

This dog is 100% weird.

I had this grand idea that I would convert the side yard into a dreamy dog-run for Chuck. A fenced space just for him with his own stretch of grass and a custom-built doghouse. So I installed a wrought-iron fence & gate, and I launched into my doghouse design that I (of course) spent way too much time on...

Ya' darn right I framed-out the doghouse and installed carpet!

So, after killing the old lawn, removing the old tetherball pole that my dad set in FOUR FEET OF CEMENT, digging-up & relocating countless sprinkler heads/zones (kill me), having the new patio built, having the curbing run, relocating the existing walkway pavers, planting four trees, building the doghouse, installing the fence & gate, planting shrubs and flowers galore, spreading 15 tons of decorative rock, spreading new topsoil, and laying 1,800 sq ft of Mid-Iron sod... voila... no big deal, right?... pshhhh.

Everybody loves Before-&-After pictures....

Before

After

Before

After

So, Charlie got his luxurious dogrun, and what does he do??? REJECT IT!

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen him actually lay down in that blasted doghouse. When we first shut him in the dogrun, he learned that he could use his mad-hops to jump the six-foot gate to the front yard and go cruisin' the neighborhood. Puh... ungrateful mutt.

Which brings me to today. I find myself over there in the dogrun this afternoon with a shovel. And I'm digging up the pristine lawn that I've maintained for Charlie that he never uses (my first tinge of rejection as a father ::sniffle::). Why would I do that, you ask? Because rather than simply growing flowers, grass, and shrubs, we're gonna try our hand at raising food, my friends!

In recent months, we've been helping build a community garden with a bunch of friends, and a number of our friends also have some sweet gardening going on at their homes. And as Tara and I have learned more about the environmental, community, & health benefits to eating locally grown, organic foods, we've got the bug, too.
So, instead of watering & mowing Charlie's stupid patch of grass which he snuffs at with disdain (which makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE), I dug it up today. I'll be relocating his house to the main yard (maybe he'll like it out there, HA!), and building a raised-bed vegetable garden in the side yard.

Thus begins the garden saga... we're a little late to the dance in terms of the planting season this spring, but Tara's got some seedlings growing in a tray right now, so we're goin' for it! Updates and pictures to come as things progress...

Wheaton College Hastert Center?

2008-02-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

I'm not a frequent letter-to-the-editor author (in fact, I think this is the first one I've ever written). Yet in the recently published alumni quarterly from my alma mater, something caught my eye. And it stuck with me for a few weeks. Eventually, during one the many extended drives to my job site, a response began to formulate in my mind. For whatever reason, as I was laying in bed the morning after my bout with Shea's bug, I felt compelled to write it out and send it in. I imagine the chances of it being published are fairly slim, and being published really wasn't my motivation for writing it in the first place. I think I did it more for myself... for my own clarity as I wrestle with my initial emotions & evolving perspectives and to sort out why I felt the way I did. So I'll share it here as fodder for thought...
Hastert Center Prudent Decision?

As a recent alumnus I count my time at Wheaton an incredibly valuable season in my life. Yet, upon the arrival of the winter 2008 issue, I was struck by the disappointing contrast displayed on page 5. The College’s recent unveiling of the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy subtly promotes to the public a controversial political tone, which does not represent the richness of Wheaton’s heritage or the range of worldviews that currently comprise the college community.

Far from being an attack on Hastert as an individual or on partisan politics in general, my disappointment rises from the ideals that are indirectly advocated by this center’s title: political stature and empire power. Much of my pride in Wheaton as an institution lies in numerous individuals whose progressive actions have humbly shaped the college and the world over the past century and a half: Blanchard & Burr for their abolitionist activism, Elliot & Saint for their radical love, Graham for his tireless voice of a new creation, etc. I fear that the creation of this new center under Hastert’s name undermines the focus of our counter-cultural history in favor of celebrity and endowment.

The issues surrounding government and economics have an ever-important place in a Wheaton education. Yet, in a world where empires are marked by compromise, I hope that wrestling with the interaction between politics and Christ’s teachings is elevated above the status of public office.

Christo et Regno Ejus.
I did my best to be concise and to the point (which is definitely not a strength of mine:-), and hopefully my point comes across.

The concept of a private, Christian educational institution is a difficult one. There is a constant rub between the pursuit of excellence and the humble ways of Christ (my sophomore dorm-floor buddy, Ariah, has written about his struggle with this dichotomy). I went through varying degrees of spiritual crises myself during my time there (some that I am still working through and expect to for the rest of my life). Yet, what I enjoyed about the College was how the community generally welcomed the questioning... that we were frequently directed to prod and inspect our surroundings... to grapple with the things being presented to us, etc. And it's in that spirit that I wrote this editorial piece.

Wheaton's alumni community is peppered with radical lives and powerful minds that embodied sincere efforts to engage the world... the people I speak of were not predisposed to building the empire of a nation, but instead were/are overwhelmed with a compulsion to subvert the status quo and build the Kingdom of God in a multitude of ways. Accordingly, I worry when it appears that the College leadership has embraced political positioning for the added benefit of a bolstered financial endowment.

The irony in all of this to me is that the school's President Litfin (a man whom I respect) writes his closing column in the same issue about the task of a Christian scholar:

"The Christian's intellectual task is, they believe, incomplete until we look along our subject matter, asking in what ways what we're seeing relates to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This is essentially what it means to think Christianly about a subject, and it extends into every course, across every discipline, throughout the entire curriculum."

I guess I'm just not convinced that this level of analysis is displayed in the establishment of this new center.

Anywho, as if this post wasn't long enough already, I want to also point those who are interested to a recent article written by Andrew Sullivan at Time.com, My Problem with Christianism (HT: Zach Lind). I won't go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that it articulates many of my current sentiments very well. I'll close with this excerpt...

"I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back."

I'm Back!

2008-02-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

Welp... sorry for the hiatus here folks. After a session of fun-with-the-stomach-flu with Shea a couple weekends ago and general life craziness lately, blogging's been put on the back-burner. But here's a quick update to prove that I'm still alive:

- I've still got that silly "population" post coming... I'll get right to it! (later) :-)

- I'm excited to tell y'all more about Studio L when the time is right... so sooner than later.

- I'm looking forward to having a Man's Weekend (Meekend?) in LA pretty soon with my old college buddies (pictures [maybe video?] to come post-Meekend...)

- I mentioned that I plan to do a series on non-violence, and that's still in the works. But as an intro to these matters, I'm participating in a conversation with Jake (my wife's childhood-friend's husband near Rochester, New York... whew, what a title!) on his recently established blog, Faith in Freedom. He began his thoughts with this post, and expanded with his take on war, to which I have just responded. Hop over there and check it out if you're interested, and add to the discussion (constructively) if you'd like.

**photo credit - War by Gadjo Dilo

Of Mice and Apples...

2008-02-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

Alrighty folks... sorry the blogging has been a bit lacking lately, but I can explain! Actually, I don't have any great reasons, but I do have a few new things in the works that I'm excited to share.

Sidenote: My buddy Chris (hey man, thanks for reading... if you're still reading... if not, then I just wasted 97 characters of Blogger server space for nothing...;-) recently told me that I need to mix in more light-hearted thoughts on here to keep my readers interested and not depressed. So, I'm gonna try! [But don't forget that over 18,000 children die everyday from preventable hunger and malnutrition. ::heavy pause:: I'm trying not to forget.] OK!

So, I haven't forgotten about my blogging prospectus that I posted back in December... life just keeps moving on and I've only knocked off a couple of the posts that I intended. But I'm still planning to get through those... so bear with me. (I'll try to tackle those population ideas in my next post).

But tonight, I'd like to tell you my quirky little story about Mice and Apple(s)...

To provide a little context, after six years of planning, scheming, and outright waiting, I am about to have a fully functional digital recording studio in our home [which has arbitrarily been dubbed Studio L... {cue the funky horn section with a breakbeat:}]. But I'll save those details for another time. The point is that I've been piece-mealing together various components for this studio, some of which include computer hardware.

If you haven't figured it out by now, Tara and I are fully Macintosh-kool-aid-drinking-people. In fact, I think I was probably a Mac fanboy before I even owned a single Apple product (as I cut my teeth on Macs in the studios back at Wheaton). Aaaaanyway, I decided to order the new Mac keyboard (wired) and the Kensington PocketMouse to enable me to convert my MacBook Pro into a desktop setup at home. So, the FedEx truck rolls up this afternoon, professionally prank-knocks my front door, and when I open it up and look down, my boyish grin turns upside down.

"Hmm. That's an awfully small box. Either Apple's reeeeally good and figured out a way to dehydrate the keyboard so that I just have to add water to get it back to fullsize, or there's no keyboard in there."

There was no keyboard in there. I got the Kensington... and I got a Wireless Mighty Mouse. Not A mouse... MICE... meeses, if you will. I don't want TWO (even though that Mighty Mouse looks kinda cool)... I wanna mouse and a keyboard. So I call Apple to see if I can just take it by the Apple Store nearby to swap it out. No, it was ordered online so it has to be resolved with the online store. ::humph::

And here's where it gets good, ladies and gents:

The fella says, "Sir, I'm committed resolving this issue for you." cool, me too

"Because this was our fault, what I'm going to do is get the keyboard in the mail to you..." grand

"... we'll send it expedited for no charge..." fine

"... you can have the ($70!!!!) wireless mighty mouse for free..." SERIOUSLY???

"... and we're going to credit your debit card $25 to compensate you for the hassle." WHA????

Wow. So there you have it folks. That's how to keep your loyal customers happy and coming back for more. So, I'd suggest that you order something from Apple.com... say, a printer cable... and maybe, JUST MAYBE, they'll accidentally include the wrong item!

One can hope... ;-)

Proud daddy...

2008-02-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

Tara just made a short video for her mom on her birthday...

Happy Birthday, Grandma! from Arizona Bam on Vimeo.

Needless to say, I'm a proud papa. :-]

Emerging Desert has launched...

2008-01-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

Per my buddy, Jacob's, initiation, we've been tossing around the idea of launching a Phoenix Emergent Village cohort for a few months. Well, it's now official, and we want any of you that happen to be in the Phoenix area to feel welcome to check it out and join the conversation (and those of you not in AZ, join us online):

http://EmergingDesert.blogspot.com

The Story of Stuff.

2008-01-25T18:11:00.000-08:00

I know what you're thinking: "Wow, two posts in two days!?" Amazing, right?

Actually, I just came across this short film earlier today, and I was very impressed & encouraged... so I had to tell the five of you about it, too!! It's called The Story of Stuff, and I cannot recommend it enough. It is a very important, fast-paced, cleverly-delivered 20 minute experience. (Maybe this film is old news, but it's fresh to me... I really hope it has a viral spread). It really resonated with me because Annie Leonard (in conjunction with Free Range Studios) has been so successful in reframing the current reality of the developed world in a concise, factual, and unpretentious way.

Check it out!

Seven Unremarkable & Random Facts...

2008-01-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

Welp, folks, I've been tagged by Katie on this one, so I'm gonna stand and deliver! :-)

Here are the rules for the game:
*Link to the person that tagged you
*Post the rules on your blog.
*Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
*Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
*Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

OK, so I read some really insightful words by a dude in Seattle recently, and one his thoughts was this:

"It is impossible to truly know someone via the internet. ... The internet is a place where everyone puts the things out there that they want to be known, for obvious reasons."

I'm sure I'm guilty of that in all sorts of ways, so I going to try to throw out a few random facts that I'm not particularly proud of... just to keep things real around here:) [this could be brutal...]

1. I really do not like any sort of contact with my belly-button.
I couldn't really tell you why this is, but it just doesn't feel right to me... maybe because it's somewhat like an "amputated region", if you will... ha, gross! In my mind, it's similar to touching wooden popsicle sticks and/or wooden spoons to my teeth...eek (not the "amputated" aspect, just the "not right" part). Suffice it to say, I can't stand to even touch it myself... so don't even think about it (TARA!).

2. For the better part of my childhood, I had poofy hair... and i was short... and scrawny.
That's pretty much it people. Poofy hair + short + scrawny² = LADIES MAN. And by "ladies man," I really mean "ladies mascot." I had no game, as they say. The ethos that I just described above carried me well into high school where all the girls thought I was cute... cute like a 1991 troll doll. Fortunately, I grew smart enough in junior high to cut off the brillo pad, God donated to me a few more inches, and I toned-up just in time to catch Tara's eye at Wheaton. Whew.

3. In third grade, one of my prized drawings was my detailed rendering of M.C. Hammer.
Too Legit, baby. I spent a lot of time drawing as a child. It was the thing that my best friend, Clint, and I would do day after day as we aspired to be cartoonists for either Disney Studios or Warner Bros. (this was back in the Animaniacs & Tiny Toons days). So, given my acute perception for the fine arts, what else would I spend days upon days working on than a tedious drawing of Hammer himself? Envision it, friends: bulky gold chain on the wrist, masterfully trimmed mustache, and, of course, the signature shaved lines on the side of his head. My mom helped me frame it, and it hung on my wall for years.

4. I tend towards being quite orthogonal.
I came across this word for the first time a few months ago in this cool article, and when Tara heard the definition she said, "Whoa... that's you." And I agree, to a point. For as long as I can remember, I've been a borderline case of OCD... but really it's just a tendency of mine, not an actual condition. Truthfully, I think my attention to detail in certain situations is simply reflective of my bent to be orthogonal. Aesthetically I'm, more often than not, drawn to clean, profound lines where the simplicity begets a deeper reality/symbolism... a harmony and balance. One thing that rubs me wrong, though, is when people interpret this tendency of mine as "linear." I just don't perceive myself that way...

5. I believe that social enterprise is changing the world.
Organizations such as the Skoll Foundation and Ashoka are really on to something here. This stuff really gets my mind pumping.

6. I am white.
Most of you are probably saying to yourself, "Uh, yeah Adam... I know (idiot)." No, unless you REALLY know me, you don't understand that I'M REALLY WHITE. Embarrassingly so... but only in an America-gotta-be-tan-for-my-photo-shoot sort of way. I've often thought we should move to Norway... or Sweden... where most people look JUST LIKE ME! [kidding].

7. I don't know what happened to my toes!...
...but they seem to work just fine. Alright, this is pretty embarrassing (in any country), but for whatever reason my toes are pretty dang ugly. Tara and I were just laughing about this one, and she had the grand idea that we TAKE A PICTURE OF THEM! Oh man, THEY LOOK BROKEN DON'T THEY?! Ha, I don't know why I went along with her on this one, but here goes nothin' [apologies in advance... I did my best to "pretty it up" with a little sepia-tone and vignette]:

Good, great, grand. Thanks for making it this far! And, in line with the rules, I now tag the following victims to carry-on this tomfoolery: Jacob, Justin, Jeremiah, Jamie, Whitney, & Moses!

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2008-01-21T16:15:00.000-08:00

Today is MLK Day. As I've progressed into adulthood (ever so slowly:-), I've increasingly encountered the words and teachings of MLK in my reading and listening. To be honest, I've felt somewhat cheated that I wasn't exposed to these words earlier in my life. I remember, as a child, when the official celebration of MLK Day went through some controversial times here in Arizona. And on top of that mess, I don't think anybody ever provided me a true-to-life picture of who Martin Luther King was as a man and as a leader. Sure, I'd heard the "I Have a Dream" speech at school, but then I'd also hear not-too-subtle murmurings from my Caucasian, upper-middle class surroundings about his marital infidelity... you know, because REAL leaders and world-changers never deal with ANY sin in their life! This subconscious, generational racism and hatred still makes my head spin. (oy... I obviously have some baggage here)

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that MLK said and wrote some phenomenal statements in his lifetime... statements that shook the world and hearkened back the path laid out by Jesus... and here's what is most important: MLK embodied the revolution of which he spoke, and it got him killed.

Here's to the memory of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for... and died for.

" [we are] bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism.... This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all.

...I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."
- "A Time to Break the Silence" (speech, meeting of clergy and laity concerned about Vietnam, Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967)

"There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. There is a fire raging... for the poor of this society. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved."
- The Trumpet of Conscience

::fatherly sigh::

2008-01-20T21:49:00.000-08:00

My daughter took her first steps today.

::weep::

I know I'm supposed to be "thrilled," but I can't help but feel like this is her first step towards not needing Daddy and Mommy as much anymore:-/

I know that I don't post about my experience as daddy a whole lot on this blog... but that's really just because I can't keep up with this little girl! Every parent says it, but my baby Shea REALLY IS growing up too quickly! There have been MANY challenging parenting moments for me during her 8.5 months thus far, but I can't even describe how overwhelmed with love I am for this little wonder-woman.

Note to Shea: Slow down... please.

[man, am I gonna be a sobbing-wreck when she goes to her first day of school!]

Back and Forth!?!? Father, Save Us!!

2008-01-16T10:43:00.000-08:00

Oh man, ahahaha, I'm still chuckling about THIS VOICEMAIL that I learned about on Jonny Baker's site. Oh please go listen to it... all the way through (the "remix" at the end is priceless).

Now that's funny stuff... and fairly depressing, as well. God save the Church from ourselves...

Action for Kenya...

2008-01-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

As I drove home from my office today, I faced a searing contrast in my heart. I drove down the tree-lined suburban street to the west where the purple sky was masterfully smeared with pink and orange. And in my peripheral, I took in the mother walking with her child and the retiree jogging along the sidewalk. And there was an insular peace...

The contrast came when I thought about how perhaps a similar sunset presided over the slums of Kenya 10 hours earlier. Except, rather than the pleasantries of the American Dream, that same sun likely descended over mobs of people crushing each other while grappling for food & water handouts, violent political protests, and tribe-based conflict which has erupted throughout the country over the past few days and has already claimed the lives of well over 500 people.

As I've written before, I'm increasingly convinced that to internalize and embrace these contrasts (instead of explaining them away, as many of us were indirectly taught) is a necessary way for us to better understand the needs and the realities that have cracked God's creation. Sometimes, as we begin to perceive the pain of others, we feel compelled to act in anyway we can...

My buddy, Justin, has recently taken a position with a great organization that is well-positioned in Kenya to offer relief to many of these people who are facing the resulting perils of the riots and conflicts. If you have a moment, read the following words from Justin, and if nothing else, please embrace the hundreds of thousands of affected people in your prayers...
Kenyan Crisis: Join Us in a Response

Life in Abundance International (LIA) invites you to join us in meeting the urgent physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our brothers and sisters who are suffering from post-election violence and instability in Kenya. Utilizing the experience and church partnerships of our LIA-Kenya team, LIA is immediately seeking funding to begin its relief effort in the Mathare region of Kenya, which is home to 500,000 of the country’s poorest people. Our relief effort will include, but is not limited to, the following provisions: medicines, clothes, blankets, food, and shelter rehabilitation.

As always, LIA will work with local churches to provide these provisions. It is beautiful for the Church to serve a desperate and hurting community in this capacity. Please join us in this effort by praying for peace, stability, reconciliation and restoration in Kenya. But don’t stop your involvement there: take action! Contributions to LIA’s relief effort can be made on-line (after logging into PayPal – identify your donation as ‘Relief for Kenyan Crisis’ or by mail (please send donations to the LIA USA Office).

Additionally, as they become available, updates will be periodically posted on our website. In the meantime, please review the links below:

Video: Violence Continues in Kenya
NY Times: Kenya Crisis Worsens As Opposition Cools to Talks
The Standard: Photo Gallery
Nation Media: local headlines

Thank you,

Justin Narducci
Life in Abundance International
Phone: 626.213.2203
Email: Justin [dot] Narducci [at] LIAInt [dot] org

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T23:57:00.000-08:00

Here I am, at the in-laws' place in the Bay Area of California. I always enjoy making the trip out here, and I am constantly telling Tara how happy I am that she's not from North Dakota or some other fill-in-the-blank-bummer-state! (no offense N. Dakotans;-)

Tara and I had a funny little exchange on Facebook the other day (especially considering our current setup)...

Mistletoe? Psshh. HDTV! It's a groovy kind of love, people:)

The End of Suburbia.

2007-12-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

I love movies (just had to get that out there). I love the motion-picture medium, I love transcendent acting, I love the special effects, I love the wide range of audioscapes, on and on. And yet, when I look at my Netflix queue and history, it’s completely dominated by DOCUMENTARIES. If that makes me a GEEK, well then give me the pocket-protector because the wedgie fits! Documentaries are rockin’. Oftentimes biased towards a particular viewpoint, yes, but a great source of new perspectives nonetheless.

Accordingly, I’ve experienced a number of impactful documentaries lately. One of which deserves a separate post (which I plan to give) and another that I’ll talk about now...

It’s called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. I watched it a few weeks ago and when it finished, I just sat silently... and thought... and worried (a little). Okay, I’m not gonna lie to you: it pretty much freaked me out for the evening. Yet given a few weeks to reflect on the topics, I’m not freaked out anymore, but instead I’ve been downgraded to simply “soberly concerned.” ;-)

The premise of the film centers upon the concept of Peak Oil (yes, despite the inherent downfalls of Wikipedia, this link offers some decent info on this concept). And while certain people interviewed come across as “alarmists” foretelling a Malthusian catastrophe, the science underlying their theories pretty much stands alone.

At Thunderbird, we were consistently guided to keep the concept of Risk Management in the forefront of our sights as business managers. And this film profoundly touched the risk management nerve in me. I’m increasingly convinced of the unavoidable problems of American suburbanism (both from a land-developer’s perspective and from a spiritual perspective). Obviously, this view is in direct opposition to what I currently do for a living, but the intricacies of that situation and my plans for the future aren't something I'm going to divulge on a public blog [but feel free to ask me about it all if we're ever hanging-out in person:-]. Anyway, without fleshing out anymore of the details of the film, how about I just pose some of the questions that have been rolling around my skull as a result?

- What if the suburban lifestyle (which America promotes and accelerates) that thrives on consumption, individualism, and driving becomes virtually unworkable in the not-too-distant future due to oil production issues?

- What will the economic & social transition period look like? How devastating will it be?

- Could the transition effectively eliminate the “middle class” (for some amount of time)?

- Is New-Urbanism the only solution? If not, then what else?

- America looks to be, hands-down, the most ill-prepared for this new world economy... could this “event” effectively end the six to seven decade reign of U.S. geopolitical dominance?

And more personally…

- What does this mean for my family?

- What sort of actions should I take right now to prepare/safeguard?

I really do have quite a bit of confidence in the entrepreneurial zeal and innovation that is a hallmark of American culture, but there’s definitely a rub here, in my mind. While my parents’ generation (the Baby-Boomers) will likely live almost their entire lives in a world that operates under U.S. hegemony, I feel fairly comfortable saying that my generation will see these circumstances unexpectedly change. And it’s kind of uncomfortable to think about: because, as Americans, we’re used to calling the shots in a lot of ways... we’re used to having numerous currencies pegged to our dollar... we’re used to countries importing our entertainment, our culture... we’re used to foreigners speaking “our” language in THEIR land rather vice versa. Even I, someone who dislikes many of these aspects of the U.S., am instinctively unnerved by the thought of living under a different regime.

So, there it is. Sorry for the wordy post... (why do my ramblings end up being so wordy??) I’ve formulated some responses to the above questions, but nothing of much worth. I’d be very interested to hear anybody else’s thoughts on these matters.

(And we haven’t even touched on the spiritual implications of all of this! Oy… must lie down:-)

*Photo Credit: SingInYourSleep

Serve God, Save the Planet (Part II)

2007-12-13T22:02:00.000-08:00

My lovely wife recently finished this book and wrote out her resulting thoughts, and this reminded me that I never wrote the Part II of my review that would logically follow my Part I (uh, duh). So, in contrast to Part I which was mostly transcribed statistics, I’m going to throw out some more intangible thoughts that I’ve been rolling around as a result of this book lately.

Just to clarify, I never want to come across as claiming to be an expert in these matters. That’s certainly not the case (which is a notion that you should feel comfortable applying to pretty much anything I write about on this blog!:-). While I often enjoy getting into the science and tedious details of some of these complicated issues, I’m very certain that I’m only getting a glimpse of the larger realities, and thus I feel most comfortable simply talking about these matters from my perspective as a regular guy with a family in America who’s trying to pursue Jesus.

And it’s at this level of interaction where the author, J. Matthew Sleeth, connected with me. I don’t think everything he writes in this book is gold-plated truth or wisdom. But the framework that he proposes ideas within is what resonated with me. Instead of touting from a soapbox about how the sky is falling and that there’s a toasty place in hell for all of us who are contributing to the problems, Sleeth speaks plainly to our humanity... to the systemic mindsets that are manifested in problems of our physical world. Let me give you an example:

“The content mind is one of the greatest obstacles to a rich spiritual life. The content mind is a proud mind. It has nothing to learn; it has an answer to everything and no more questions to ask” (62).

The motivation of the book is not to persuade readers to be “treehuggers.” Rather, Sleeth is challenging all of us to strive for a proper sense-of-self... to view our actions within a global reality... to live radically and counter-culturally because this is what Jesus incited his followers to do. And when this is done, it just may end up looking treehugger-y... and it can be transforming & divinely beautiful.

While I’ve read some reviews from other folks who felt that Sleeth comes across as judgmental and preachy, I didn’t get that sense. While he does speak about some very specific lifestyle issues (e.g., electricity use, parenting, food, Sabbath observance, consumerism, etc.), I never perceived his statements as black-and-white declarations. I just took them as really challenging observations/propositions on his part. The fact that I felt stung a few times points only to my personal conviction, not a superiority complex of Sleeth. And that’s because, above all, he speaks to the condition of our hearts:

“It is not our possessions or our homes that will keep us out of heaven, but our unwillingness to set them aside in service of the Lord” (142).

So, yes, I highly recommend the book because it really stirs up some motivation to actually make some changes in my lifestyle (rather than just stirring up a bunch of head-nods and thoughtful “hmmms…”)

Hmmm.

Enough on that.

(I was now going to transition to talking about a film I recently viewed, but this is long enough... so come back in a couple days and I’ll post my film thoughts then. Thanks for reading!)

*Photo Credit: Forestgladesiwander

Bleh.

2007-12-04T19:36:00.000-08:00

I was trying to talk myself into making a decent post tonight... but that's not going to happen. "Why?" you might ask. Because I have a head cold. And I'm a pansy. A pansy with a head cold.

So in lieu of a post of any substance, here's my upcoming blogging prospectus for those of you who are even remotely interested:

- Gonna wrap up my Serve God, Save the Planet review that I left open-ended (plus I'm gonna throw in a film review of a recent documentary that seriously caused me to pause.)

- Gonna get a few thoughts out on the concept of "population" and pose a few related questions that are rolling around in my head.

- Gonna get a series of posts going on the concept of "non-violence," which will likely included meanderings from Fight Club, to Jared Diamond, to my childhood fist-fights, to Darfur, to James Bond, to the Revolutionary War, to Jesus Christ, to Transformers, to Uganda, to the Forbidden City, to the Mennonite tradition. Yikes, how am I going to make sense of all that?? I have no idea... but tune in to find out!!:-)

----------

Okay, I'll leave you with a haiku (the beloved poetic form of my buddy, Justin;-)... because, really, what else would I leave you with??

Head Cold Pansy

Sinus explosion
Wishing for softer tissues
Snot... tremendous snot.

Aesthetic Adjustments...

2007-11-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

One of my biggest attractions to the Mac OS X experience is the overall aesthetic feel. It all just flows and renders so nicely. I've always liked all sorts of design, but haven't had much time to dig into it myself since I was a boy. But, I've got this blog, and I figured I should at least have some design-fun with it. So, I've been dinkin' around with different Blogger hacks that I learned at this site, and I decided to pop in an image-based header. It's kinda fun.

After taking a picture of my semi-hollow body guitar, I created the image within Seashore (a great open source image editor for Mac OS X), which has a very alluring pricetag ($free) for those of us who aren't talented enough to justify the cost of professional tools like Adobe's Creative Suite ($CHA-CHING$). I was also tipped off about Pixelmator (more like a $ch-:) by Matt, which I've been impressed with but haven't pulled the trigger on picking it up just yet.

Also, to round things out, I've added some albums that I'm currently listening to on the sidebar as well as a cool javascript element from LibraryThing below the albums. Plus, I threw in a random iSight picture of the fam, just because. Enjoy!

**Update**
I've also just added a "Recent Videos" sidebar element which dynamically pulls from our Vimeo account. After interacting with Vimeo for the past few months, I can't recommend it enough. The interface is clean and simple, and the whole site is just plain intuitive, in my opinion. Now that our video camcorder speaks to iMovie '08 natively, my export-resolutions and file sizes are much improved, so watch for more video output from the Bams in coming months;-).

Pray for Peace.

2007-11-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

My heart and mind are heavy for the Middle East right now. If you're the praying type, please talk to God about the Middle East Peace Conference being held in Maryland this week. More than a dozen Arab countries will have delegates present for the dialogue aimed at ending the seven year impasse between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. Some are skeptical about any progress that can come from this kick-off meeting, but I’m floundering to find any alternative to latch onto for hope in this region.

To help bring some perspective to one aspect of this cripplingly complex situation, I want to pass on some words to you from the "inside." My friend Philip, an Egyptian-German who was my suitemate in the dorm during our freshman year at Wheaton, maintains a blog titled Tabula Gaza. Over the past couple years, Phil has been residing in the heart of the Gaza Strip in an effort to reach out to the Palestinian people who are suffering and often misrepresented by popular media outlets. Since returning to Cairo for graduate school, Phil’s most recent post is a letter that he received from a friend back in Gaza, which describes the current state of affairs. While I encourage you to read the entire letter, I’m going to present the final paragraph here:

"It's hard to not feel like we're in a large concentration camp as I see Gaza's empty streets, and the hopeless feeling in the air…and just the gloominess that has covered Gaza. I think most people feel abandoned as we are literally locked up in this small, concentrated space and we don't know what the world plans for us, or what to expect next. It's hard to imagine what being in Gaza does to someone's will until you've come here. You no longer feel alive, in fact, you're not living; you're just killing time until some sort of change happens. Sadly, Gaza has become desensitized to the rest of the world, as it feels like the international community has turned a blind eye to the reality that is Gaza, and as long as Israel is allowing some food in and hasn't completely cut off electricity or gas... and as long as we are kept alive, no one will ask about us.

But just because we are breathing, that doesn't mean we're alive."

God wants us to ache for this woman and her people because this is not what He intended for His creation. (For another glimpse of this woman’s bloody reality, read this story.) It doesn't matter where you come down on these issues politically... the current state of this region of the world is something that we are obligated to grieve as human beings… as children of God. In America, where uncensored information about the rest of the globe is so readily available to us, I have a hard time stomaching the fact that our dominant culture is far more interested in the cover of Us Weekly or Sports Illustrated than in having a basic understanding of what’s happening outside of our insulated lifestyle (especially within the Church). How can we expect to learn to be a voice for the voiceless if we don’t even care to learn about their plight, be it outside America or within?

Just as I did not choose to be born in Denver, Colorado, USA, these children of Gaza pictured here do not choose to wake each morning in fear of Israeli raids and airstrikes. And they still have no say in the matter.
----

Tara and I watched the film A Mighty Heart this afternoon, which details the events surrounding the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and how his pregnant widow, Mariane, coped with the aftermath. It’s a difficult and raw movie, yet it does an artful job of portraying the powerful subtleties inherent not only to Pearl’s story, but to the regional strife in general. The simple lesson that this movie drives home for me is that it is quite nearly impossible for violence to solve anything. This is a lesson I have repeatedly encountered from various mediums over the past year, and one that has really challenged my instincts (I plan to flesh this out in coming posts).

So, to bring this back to my original intent, please seek out peace... pray for reconciliation… long for warring tribes to embrace humility and healing. Kingdom come…

Degrees of Separation (Thorns). [Part 2]

2007-11-17T14:01:00.000-08:00

Okay, just to recap the main points from last time:-)
- The advanced world around us (particularly in the U.S.) confronts us with a deluge of distractions from God... oftentimes in unassuming areas of our lifestyle.
- A key temptation is to separate our faith from our lifestyle... to justify certain aspects of how we live (or to glaze over particular social issues) as unrelated to what we believe about who Jesus was and the movement he came to enact on this earth.

Let's jump to some excerpts of one of Jesus's parables (that I'm sure many of you have heard) as recorded in Matthew 13:

"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop - a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear."

I want to pull out some ideas from the italicized section above regarding the thorns. Let's hear how Jesus later explained this particular section of the parable:

"The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful."

Also hear how Eugene Peterson adapts the same passage in his interpretation, The Message:

"The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the kingdom news, but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it."

This is where I conclude degrees of separation = thorns.

Thorns that separate... temporal worries... deceptive "wealth"... wanting more and more... chokes it... precludes fruit. What are these thorns? Fashion trends? Houses? Cars? Electronics? Debt? Church buildings/financial-"needs"? Television? A Job? Career goals? Food? Obviously none of these inherently strangle-out what God is trying to do with those who believe in Him. But I do know that various combinations of this list act as degrees of separation for many people around me... especially myself. And this isn't the kind of situation where we realize what's happening and say, "Hmm... yeah, that's not too good. I should get around to making some changes at some point." If we are who we say we are (follower of Jesus), and we're about what he's about (building the Kingdom), then these separating thorns are severely important to identify and address.

Now, I don't really know exactly where I come down on the whole "once-saved-always-saved" debate, but I find myself leaning towards there being a much more dynamic reality at play than simply saying the proper prayer to shore up your eternal destiny. I guess what I'm resistant to is this view's lulling sense of security that often creates complacency and impotence in its adherents.

Life is to be lived, not won. People are to be unconditionally loved, not converted. The kingdom Jesus spoke of is not simply an enchanted afterlife that we get our ticket for now, but rather it is intended to be brought forth within our world today, our city, our neighborhood, our home by humble action. humble. action.

This takes me to a few final thoughts on degrees of separation = pride.

The common thread in all of this is an adjustment of how we perceive ourselves. I would argue that at the core of building the Kingdom is the minimization of self. The deception of wealth pumps pride into our veins: I need this, I deserve that, I want this, I'm unhappy without that. As we hack away at the gaps between God and ourselves we begin to see how little we really do need (by our cultural standards), and it also bears a genuine mind of gratitude for the essential things that God does provide for us: health for my little girl, shelter for my family, lack of violent war in our streets, etc.

Don Miller gave a fantastic talk at Mars Hill last week titled Story. (I highly recommend giving it a listen). The key takeaway for me is that our lives are all stories being written in real-time. And stories where the main character is primarily driven by self-service, by shallow goals, and by near-sightedness are boring. They don't draw interest to the character's personality and they lack value.

Degrees of separation make our stories boring. They feed our bloated sense of self, and they distract us from what would make for a wildly interesting journey: one charged with challenge, action, devotion, uncertainty, & faith; lined with selfless love. And this is a lesson that I'm trying to learn so that I can pass it on to the next generation.

*Image credit: Flightsaber

Degrees of Separation (Thorns). [Part 1]

2007-11-12T21:13:00.000-08:00

And we're baaaaack. (sorry folks, I'll try to be a bit more regular at the blogging here... maybe somebody makes metamucil wafers for blogging, hmm:)

True to form, I've got more swirling around in my hat-rack than I know how to articulate, so I'm going to try my best to flesh out a concept that I've been grappling with over the past weeks (and, as it turns out, my entire life! duh duh duuuuh): degrees of separation.

>>Somewhat Unnecessary Disclaimer: Chances are that if you're reading this, then you know me personally. If you know me personally AND you know that I have a blog, then the chances are fairly high that you are in one of the following categories: a) a Christian; b) at one time were a "believer" and/or are currently investigating spiritual elements. [If you do not fall into either category a) or b), then you should leave. JOKE! Please stay and bear with me. Hopefully these ideas apply generally to the human experience...]

So, degrees of separation. A number of messages and written words that I've been exposed to recently (mostly from Rob Bell and Matthew Sleeth) have planted a new perspective within me. The more I roll it around, the more I realize the breadth and depth of the concept. At face value, it's very simple and logical... yet when I choose to take my personal life down the rabbit hole, I'm confronted with a mosaic of mirrors and pathways.

Here's the simple version:

The world (and more specifically, culture) in which we live can subtly impose degrees of separation between God and ourselves.

Simple enough. Most of us can probably jive with that at some level. Yet it's the personal application that opens things up for me...

In the "God is Green" series that Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan recently walked through, Rob offered the thought that so much of our "advanced" lifestyle, while admittedly adding "comfort," has simultaneously pumped degrees of separation into our day-to-day. For instance, so many of us feel distant from God's natural creation, yet we go from our garage to our car to the office to our car to the garage (or better yet, if you live in suburban Phoenix, it seems everywhere you look is fully comprised of something manmade or manipulated landscape). We aren't even compelled to think about the origins of our food because it's always right there in the supermarket (nevermind if that particular fruit's in season right now or the distance it traveled to get there). Our beef comes butchered and ground, and our chicken breast comes cleaned and skinless in a shrink-wrapped bag. Our water comes out of a faucet with the turn of a little knob. We get as much electricity as our appliances desire from those plugs in the wall. Our trash disappears in seconds when that truck swings by. Our gasoline always comes out of those filling-stations if we give them enough money.

Point being, as advanced as all of this is, one might argue that these conveniences have profoundly distanced us from God. If we want to actually learn about the implications of our beef's origins, or what kind of power plant shoots electricity to our house, or where our trash goes after it has "disappeared," then we've got to intentionally seek out, read, probe, investigate... or in other words, we have to chop through the degrees of separation. And I am increasingly convinced that to passionately pursue God in the U.S. necessitates an awareness of these separating elements. Notice I say awareness rather than avoidance. I'm not advocating that we all start our own farms while living off of the grid and jogging everywhere we need to be. But I also wouldn't rule any of that out either;-) In my mind, it's the awareness that sets up change... that pricks our heart in a Godward manner. As Rob said in one of his sermons, "Removing degrees of separation brings us closer to God."

We all have our specific situations where radical, counter-cultural changes may be opened up to us... and a willingness to enact these changes in our lives is what I'm advocating. The prevalent temptation that we face is to mold our faith to our lifestyle, rather than our lifestyle to our faith. Maybe this sounds sort of fundamentalist... or hippy...

Anywho, this is getting long, so I'm going to make this a two-part post. In the next installment, I'm going to bounce another notch deeper into the rabbit hole and offer some more personal insights into this concept, as well as expand on these thoughts:

degrees of separation = pride

degrees of separation = thorns

Messages From the Past For the Present...

2007-11-04T18:54:00.001-08:00

21st Century Schizoid Man

Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door.
Twenty-first century schizoid man.

Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-first century schizoid man.

Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-first century schizoid man.

Epitaph

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
As silence drowns the screams.

Between the iron gates of fate,
The seeds of time were sown,
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known;
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.

From the 1969 King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King

Serve God, Save the Planet (Part I)

2007-10-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

Tara recently got me reading a book that we picked up for her birthday titled, Serve God, Save the Planet by J. Matthew Sleeth, MD. You may recall back in this post where I began describing some of our journey towards intentionally respecting the earth that God so amazingly created. Seeing that today is Blog Action Day, I thought I'd pass on some ecological/lifestyle stats from Sleeth's book that jumped out at me. I've decided not to comment on them much at this point because they paint a fascinating & jolting picture all in their own right:

Rate of forest destruction worldwide = 1 acre per second

Number of species going extinct = more than 100 per day

The U.S. uses more natural resources than any country in history

In the next ten years, 20 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer (1 out of every 15)

Currently, more than 700 man-made toxins can be found in human tissues

If every household changed its five most used light bulbs to compact fluorescents, the country could take 21 coal-fired power plants off-line tomorrow

"This would keep one trillion pounds of poisonous gases and soot out of the air we breathe and would have the same beneficial impact as taking eight million cars off the road" (Sleeth 66).

Approximately 64,000 Americans die annually as a result of soot in the air

One power plant in Massachusetts was alone found to cause 1,200 ER visits, 3,000 asthma attacks, 110 deaths annually

The average American watches 1,700 hours of television annually

The average school-age child attends 900 hours of classes a year

By the time a typical American reaches age 71, they will have spent a solid 10 waking years in front of a TV

There are 300 million television sets in America, which consume five times more energy than is produced by all the geothermal, biomass, solar, & wind sources in the U.S. combined

Ten times more energy, water, & grain is needed to produce a pound of beef or pork than to produce a pound of milk or cheese

The loss of rain forests in South America means that the clouds they once made no longer blow across the Atlantic to drop their water on Africa

As a result the Sahara grows by thousands of acres per year

Nearly a billion people live in chronic hunger

Every 10 days, a quarter of a million people die from starvation (25,000 every day)

Haiti's forests have been cut down and shipped to the U.S. As a result, Haiti has lost 90% of its topsoil

In America, junk mail fills 340,000 garbage trucks per year all bound for landfills

4 out of 5 pieces of junk mail aren't recycled

About 70% of U.S. electricity is generated by fossil fuels, 20% nuclear, 9% hydropower

Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and methane combine for the remaining 1%
We have been developing these alternative sources for three decades

This is a lot to take in at once, but my goal in relaying this info is to drive at a major theme: an element of interconnectedness defines these statistics. Nearly ALL of us in America play a role in the problems, and ALL of us have the option sitting right in front of us to play a role in the solutions...

*Note: While I haven't taken the time to research and provide cited references, I have a reasonably high degree of confidence in validity of each of the above statistics. Of course, I'm completely willing to be persuaded otherwise if contradictory data is out there... but I haven't seen any.

We Feel Fine.

2007-10-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

Those that are close to me know that one of my favorite web destinations is the TED site (especially since they started posting videos of the various presentations over a year ago). I think I originally learned about TED a few years ago via John Chandler's stellar blogging and have admired it ever since.

Anyway, the latest presentation** that I viewed was given by Jonathan Harris on his project titled We Feel Fine. This melding of art + digital programming + humanity really captured me. I found the thought-process behind it all and the dynamic results simply beautiful (...not to mention Harris's incredible knack for minimalist asthetic).

This from the Mission of the project:

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.).

Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved. The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel?...

Since starting in 2005, they've collected nearly 9,000,000 feelings from almost 2,000,000 unique individuals all over the globe. I encourage you to check it out, and spend some time rolling around with other peoples' emotions. It effectively erases physical and social barriers, and I think there's great value in that.

Ok, so let's see if I can get my feelings pulled into the We Feel Fine project:

I am feeling a lot of tension when I think about how to follow the ways of Jesus in the American suburbs (but that's a subject for a separate post...).

**If you have a spare 17 minutes, below is the Harris presentation (he explains his projects far more interestingly than I have...):

.

Head of Radio...

2007-10-01T10:53:00.001-07:00

I overfloweth with great anticipation!

Radiohead has just made their new studio album, In Rainbows, available for pre-order.

In true Radiohead-curveball fashion: you name your own price when you pre-order the album download.
Seriously.
No, really.
I just did it. Just fill in the blanks.
Welcome to Radiohead in their post-EMI contract world.

(Sidenote: I think this is really a fantastic experiment, but if you're a Radiohead fan, I think that you should pay what you deem their art to be worth... rather than see how little you can pay to consume... just my two pence.)

I'll plan to post my thoughts on the album after I am able to download it on October 10th...

::anticipatory grin::

*Photo credit: Dead Air Space

Rite of Passage

2007-09-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

A couple nights ago, I was watching a recent episode of the Charlie Rose Show (I highly recommend this talk show) in which Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder were interviewed regarding Penn's latest movie as writer/director & Vedder as score composer/performer, Into the Wild.* The film is based off of John Krakauer's book of the same name and details the true story of Christopher McCandless's adventures & ultimate tragedy in the early 1990s. I thought the interview with Penn and Vedder was mostly interesting, but the subject matter surrounding McCandless's journey was what really captured me.

Here's a synopsis of the closing years of McCandless's life from Publisher's Weekly:After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature.

In the Charlie Rose interview, Sean Penn explored the notion of a "rite of passage" that McCandless seemed to impose on himself:
"I think in a societal, organic sense [a rite of passage] almost doesn’t exist anymore in terms of something that presents itself to you (whether you choose it or not) it’s something for your survival and it’s mandatory. That exists very seldomly, particularly in our culture here in the U.S. Increasingly, I think that men and women are recognizing that this is not a human luxury, but a human need: to test one’s self, to find one’s self, and most importantly to return to one’s self..."

These ideas got me musing on the effects that modern American society and technological advances have had on our development as individuals (and consequently, as a nation). When I look into the direction taken by Christopher McCandless, it's sobering to see how certain decisions led to his death, yet I can't help but sense that he was on to something.

Is it possible that our "advanced" culture is gradually drawing us away from the necessity of interacting and grappling with the physical world?... away from the raw process of maturity? I think many of us, at some point, endure a disruptive event that forces us to either shrink back or grow up; but in 21st century America it seems that these events tend to be trite, virtual, or contrived for those with excess. Being human seems to require an almost primal simplicity at times, and I think our material crap can really get in the way. (It does for me anyway)

Well, enough rambling about that. I'm really looking forward to seeing this film at some point (and hopefully read the book ahead of time). In my mind, all of these thoughts keep tying into the concept of degrees of separation that I still want to write about sometime soon. Until then... adieu.

* You can view this particular interview here.
Photo Credit - www.intothewild.com

Commemorating an Uncle...

2007-09-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Tad S. Taylor (2.22.1950 - 9.7.2007)

My uncle died last week at 57 years of age. Tad Taylor (my mom's younger brother and a very well-liked man) had an infectious, rhythmic laugh, an ever-present sense of humor, a trademark bald head, and scores of friends and family members who are heavy with pain at his unexpected & abrupt departure. Tad was an incredible fisherman who taught me how to fly fish on the Madison River in Montana and gave me my first fly rod years ago. He was the kind of fun-lovin' uncle that seemed to always have a different nickname for me (although he generally referred to me as "turkey-lips":-), and wouldn't hesitate to hop on the Xbox with my brother & me for a quick game of Halo when visiting from Texas for Thanksgiving. While the burden of his death is heaviest on people such as his wife, his children, and my mom, I'm also going to miss him as I find myself wishing that I had valued our relationship more while he was still around.

Death confuses me. It is an incredibly disruptive force. It raises so many questions, and yet, for those of us who remain it also brings certain aspects of our lives sharply into focus.

Death is certain... unavoidable... unpredictable.

I felt the gravity of this fact as I rocked my baby in my arms during Tad's funeral. Shea's eyes shine with wonder as she experiences all sorts of "firsts" each day, while at the same time we found ourselves contemplating how Tad's journey has drawn to a close. This is a finite journey that we're all experiencing. (Of course many of us have faith in a larger reality, but my thoughts here are limited to our experiences that are constrained by time) All of us, including my daughter, are facing a quantifiable number of days on this earth... and this is a sobering thought for me. And what's more, as I transition fully into adulthood, the departure of those near to me will only increase in frequency as time progresses. I don't like that... but I can't hide from it either.

Accordingly, I don't think I give death enough thought, especially for something that is such a huge component of being a member of the human race. It seems that we should strive to maintain some sort of balance in our living when it comes to these realizations: embracing our mortality, and the mortality of those around us, to a degree that helps us appreciate and optimize the present without being scared of the future. I need to work on this.

As was said at Tad's funeral, "What love leaves behind far exceeds what death can take away."

Decisions While Standing at a Crossroad...

2007-09-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

Welp, it's an important time in history to be a human being (some may say). From the range of views pumping out of pop culture/the mass media, I hear one side claiming that this generation (OUR generation) is staring global problems AND global solutions in the face like no people group to come before us. On the other side, I sometimes hear voices saying that to agree with this notion that we are a "generation standing at a crossroad" is incredibly self-absorbed, and that to fill our heads with these shallow, bandwagon-joining ideas of "saving the world" is little more than idyllic fantasy. I think I see where each side is coming from, but I definitely tend to side much more with the former than the latter.

Never before in history has so much wealth existed on this earth... so much mass production of goods... so much excess. Never before has digital information touched every country on the globe... tools of empowerment becoming so readily available. Technology continues to plow forward with innovation, systematically uncovering information and solutions to long-standing problems. And yet the problems are of unprecedented proportions as well: never before has humanity seen so much material disparity between haves and have-nots, such massive and multiplying populations, such uncontrollable pandemics, such irreparable damage to our environment, etc.

These circumstances demand intervention on a grand scale, and human intervention can always be simplified to one origin: individual decisions to act. If we sympathize with the dying poor in the developing world, yet our sympathy ends at sentimentality... the poor still needlessly die. If we are concerned about the increasing pollution in our cities and with the mounting data that points to human-caused climate change, yet our frustration isn't powerful enough to change our very lifestyle which is contributing to the problems... then how can we characterize certain decisions we make as anything other than selfish or lazy?

These are realizations that I've been rolling around in recent months, and I think they apply to so many aspects of our daily lives. The challenge is finding the proper balance of learning, realizing, taking action, and being realistic.

Along these lines, there's a "green" movement gaining momentum in our country and among pursuers of Jesus who are trying to build God's Kingdom on this earth. Tara and I are trying to learn more about what we can do to reduce our impact and embark on some new lifestyle adventures along the way. We've got a looooong way to go, but the path certainly looks intriguing. Tara's really been guiding us in new directions at home, and I've recently had some exciting ideas come along in this realm as well, but this post is now far too long... so I'll save the idea-sharing for another post:-)

*Photo Credit - "Marc:" on Flickr

Thank you, Vusi Mahlasela.

2007-09-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

My wife tells me that I don't post enough (and I agree). She says that I shouldn't be afraid to just post random things because that's what blogging's all about: giving people a window into what's happening in your realm (and I agree... I like to agree with her because she's smart and good lookin' with a capital "GOOD LOOKIN'"). So rather than posting wordy, in-depth commentaries about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the spiritual application of the concept regarding "degrees of separation," or my musings about my medium-term plans for what to do with myself and my family [all of which are dominating my mind these days], instead I'm going to succinctly thank a musician that I just discovered: Vusi Mahlasela.

South African singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela was a crucial artistic voice during the fight against apartheid, and now in the new modern-day nation. Blending traditional African music with soul and blues, his music showcases powerful vocals and poetic lyrics.

As someone who used to spend a lot of time playing guitar, I love the tone that he produces with his fleshy-fingerstyle. But beyond that, as I watched him play and sing for the first time, I was reminded of why I originally fell head-over-heels in love with music when I was 17 (wittingly or not): There are times when I experience a profoundly intimate connection with someone's creativity in sound... just me and the notes, the words, the melody. And it rings throughout my humanity... sweeps me into the reality of what beautiful is, that God made this, and that there's hope for this messy world because a God that can create such nuanced wonder most certainly has a plan for His people going forward. [That probably doesn't really make sense, but it does for me;-]

Anyway, I hope Vusi's music, his creativity, grabs you as it does me...

Whew! Transition to dénouement...

2007-06-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

dé|noue|ment [noun] - the final part of a narrative in which the strands of a plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

Looking back over the recent months, there have definitely been a lot of strands thickening the plot lately. And yet, within in a matter of a few weeks, our own personal dénouement seems to have taken place (and not a moment too soon) after nearly two years of intense rising action. Seeing that my last post here was in December of last year (good grief), I'll do a quick rundown of the most noteworthy recent events:

I became a daddy.
My little girl, Shea Marin, was born on April 29th, and wow... what an incredible experience that was! The weight of the implications surrounding the birth of my daughter is oftentimes more than I can manage in my mind (much less describe in a blog post), so I'll not even try to convey all of those thoughts at the moment. Here are some internal snapshots from the journey thus far:
- I am SO in love with this little person...
- Having an infant reveals my selfishness and weakness...
- It is amazing, regardless of how much I internalized it beforehand, how one tiny baby can rock your entire reality and worldview...

I finished grad school for now (pretty much:).
On May 4th, I walked across the platform to receive my MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and it has never felt so good to come home from the office and wind-down as opposed to ramp-up for conference calls, case-reading, and various other forms of self-inflicted torment. After 20 non-stop months of being in class, three continents visited, 20 ridiculous professors, and many classmates-turned-friends, I count the grueling experience well worth the sacrifice (although, one that I will not soon replicate:) I wrote "pretty much" in the header because Shea was born the morning that I was supposed to be in Glendale for the final week of lectures, so I'll be making that up in August and THEN I'll get my diploma... [kinda like the time I couldn't get my diploma from Wheaton until I paid $150 in past-due parking tickets... insufferable Public Safety officers!!!]

I went to China.
As part of my Thunderbird study of the Asian business environment, we spent a long week in Beijing in January earlier this year. Entirely fascinating land that I hope to revisit someday with my family. Journeying through the Forbidden City and hanging out in modern-day Tiananmen Square creates quite a background and framework for the present paradox that is China today. I got this very intangible vibe from the culture that I think stems from the rub of free-market forces marching out of step of the Communist Party.

And as I witnessed the Party guard lower the PRC flag in Tiananmen Square as the sun went down over the polluted urban sky, a sobering reality came over me that I was experiencing perhaps the early markings of a burdgeoning world military power to be reckoned with in the not-too-distant future... time will tell.

My bros came to visit.
In February, four of my closest friends from my Wheaton days popped down to the desert to see me one last time before I became a boring father;-) Man, did I make some poor choices when it came to college buddies!! (ha, I jest) No, honestly, it was such a great time to have the five of us in one place again... a tradition that we plan to execute for years to come. Whoever said that many of our closest friends are made in college knew what they were talking about.

Still working on finding rhythm...
Zach Lind titles his blog "Finding Rhythm," and I really resonate with those words. As Tara and I (& Shea) progress on our journey through life together, we find ourselves increasingly pushing to discover some of the sacred life "rhythms" that Jesus has in mind for his followers. Stay tuned as I continue to stumble along this path in community and share some thoughts along the way...

Indifference: absence of love

2006-12-02T21:59:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I came across a quote on Troy Anderson's blog, Seek Justice, that really resonated with me. I'd like to pass it along here:

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

-Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), from his Millenium Lecture series speech at the White House, April 12, 1999

I'm going to be a daddy!

2006-09-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

Well folks, it's official... the stork should be paying us a visit next spring. Tara is currently around 8.5 weeks along, which makes the baby due around May 1st (a seemingly popular time of year among our family). We had our first doctor's appointment last Monday where they performed an ultra-sound, and baby Bam decided to make a cameo appearance for us, playing the nebulous-yet-articulate role of "blob with a heartbeat":)

Needless to say, we're beyond excited! Although now, no matter what I cook for dinner, Tara holes-up in the bedroom with the door closed to keep away from the smell (which isn't that different than before the pregnancy, actually!).

Laying the Foundation

2006-09-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

Many months ago, I began reading Jeffrey Sachs's latest book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. In the mix of grad school and work, it has taken me much longer to get through this book than I would have liked, but I've gained some amazing insights from the experiences of Sachs nonetheless. After I read the intro to the book (last year...geez), I wrote a proclamation of sorts that I'll post below. These words are mostly directed at myself as I attempt to stay focused on the issues that truly matter to me, and re-reading this has often times drawn me back to the basics.

The goal is simple: emanate love in action. The task is monumentally complicated: eradicate extreme poverty around the globe by 2025. As we begin this journey, I often feel the strength of the disease in my stomach; the evil that has dragged cultures, countries, and continents by their hair to these wastelands of despair. This evil is manifested in the corrupt developing-world governments, in the child sex-slave owners, in the AIDS pandemic…but perhaps this evil is most horrifically displayed in the developed world, where we look deep in the eyes of a suffering child and, in good conscience, look away with indifference.

I am resolved to not look away anymore. I want to be used for the greater-good. I want to learn how to be commandingly effective for love & justice. It is my prayer that no matter how impossible future situations may feel, that somehow we will be able to lean back on the simple truth that the Creator is more than able to accomplish His design. I understand that His will may not look exactly like our goal, but I am certain that it does not look like the world does today. Soli Deo Gloria.

interesting, Smithers....

2006-06-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

I came across this earlier today and found it to be interestingly funny. I'm not sure about the scientific truth involved or the study at Cambridge, but I could definitely read it without much problem...how 'bout you?

Cna yuo raed tihs?

*i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Europe is nice.

2006-05-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hey hey...props to all my [1.5] readers (love you, honey)!

I've been home from my trip to Switzerland for over a week now, but I'm still trying to get back in the groove with school, work, life, etc. Anyhow, enjoy the photos on my Flickr.

...it doesn't mean that we too can't not die in a freak gasoline fight accident!

2006-04-20T16:12:00.000-07:00

True to form, I really don't have much to post about...so...I might as well introduce you to our dog.

This is Charlie...sleeping...

This is Charlie helping me install a new diswasher...while sleeping...
[yes I have enormous feet, thanks]

This is Charlie about to go clubbin'.
[word.]