Lego is Ahead of the Curve

My buddy, Keith Monaghan (marketing guru, former D&D player, groomsman at my wedding) Twittered this earlier today from boing boing (which is supposedly the chronicle of the cutting edge of technology):

It ended up being simply one more reminder of how cool Lego (and Legoland) are - since they've been doing this to people for a couple of years now.

Pagans & Tax Collectors: Matthew 18 for the Theologically Challenged

This all started last August because a pastor made some guys stop playing Race for the Galaxy - really. For those of you who don't know what Race for the Galaxy is, a short aside: it's a difficult to learn but quick-playing (30 minutes or so) science fiction card game that is, once you get the hang of it, extremely addicting. OK, we're done with the gaming-related content for today.

Anyhow, that incident triggered a debate about how to deal with someone who had hurt and/or offended you - with particular application to how to deal with a figure in spiritual authority (in this case, a pastor at his church) who was the "problem child". The debate started out relatively civil (for the Internet) but soon degenerated into questioning of motives & finger-pointing that overwhelmed the original conversation.

One of the guys decided he had some real questions he wanted to ask... so he started a second thread entitled Treating Your Pastor Like... - and it's the stuff that got raised in that (much more civil) discussion that I want to deal with today.

Let's start with the key passage in the discussion - Matthew 18:15-17 (quoted here from the NIV):

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

This is one of those "easy to understand, difficult to live" passages in the Scripture - which, btw, contains a lot more of those than we want to acknowledge. (It's much easier to act like the book is obtuse & difficult to follow... cuz then you don't have to follow it!) Let me break it into bite-sized pieces:

• "brother" = follower of Jesus NOT someone who doesn't claim a relationship with Christ
• "sins against you" indicates that the sin involves you personally... and that it really is a sin and not simple a disagreement over cultural preferences
• "just between the two of you" means exactly what it says
• a refusal to listen allows you to crank the process up a notch & invite 1 or 2 other people to help you in resolving the situation
• only if all of these attempts fail should the issue be brought to the attention of the church

The sticking point in the discussion was the final phrase: "if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector." What does that mean?

This is where having some historical context is helpful - while we here in the 3rd millennium are not big fans of the IRS, we don't think they are corrupt minions of the evil overlords... which is a pretty decent picture of how 1st century Jews looked at them. Rabbinical writings of the time often used the pairing of "robbers & tax collectors" while Roman writers (such as Chrysostom) let ring with the pungent "brothel keepers & tax collectors."

Various translations use the words "pagan" and "Gentile" (people who are religiously & ethnically not Jewish) interchangeably. Gentiles were ritually unclean and so were to be avoided by devout Jews... so, we've got Jesus telling folks that the church has the right/obligation to ostracize habitually sinning people who claim to be followers of Jesus.

Some of Paul's writings help clarify what that is going to look like "when the rubber hits the road":

• This process applies ONLY to people who claim to follow Jesus.

But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. "Expel the wicked man from among you." (1 Corinthians 5:11-13, NIV)

• The ultimate end of any kind of church discipline is restoration.

If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent—not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. (2 Corinthians 2:5-8, NIV)

Next time out, I'll deal with the question: "Are there different rules for those in positions in spiritual authority?"

#29: Mäuse-Rallye

Mäuse-Rallye/Mice Rally

• designer: Gunter Baars
• publisher: Haba
• date: 2001
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: 2852/6.51
• age: 5+
• # of players: 2-4
• print status: OOP, according to some online stores, but still listed on Haba USA's site
• cost: I can't find any for sale right now... hmmm.

Flicking games are tricky with small children... the fine motor skills required to play Carabande well don't kick at age 4 or 5. (A great game, btw, now republished as Pitchcar - but still better suited to the 8 & up crowd.) But your average little kid LOVES to flick stuff - they just need a confined play space in which to do it.

Which is where Mice Rally comes in - each player has a flat wooden stick & three very detailed mouse heads which they bat about the track in turn, trying to avoid the holes & the cat (more on him in a minute). Each completed lap is worth a wooden piece of cheese.

Players only race one mouse at a time - if their current racer falls or is bumped into a hole in the floor, they start a new racer on the next turn. When you run out of mice, you take control of the cat, a larger piece (he won't fall down the holes) that can travel against normal flow of traffic and work to chase the other mice into the holes.

When only one player has mice remaining OR the cheese runs out, you total up your number of cheese + your surviving mice to see who has the most. (There's also a "first player to 10 cheese" way to play, but we don't use it much.)

These small wooden pieces ricochet around the inside of the box in very satisfactory ways - but their mouse shape (they have ears!) means that those ways aren't necessarily predictable. When you're playing with young kids, that randomness makes it easier for adults & kids play together.

We often use a variant (the person who posted it on the Geek is Jason Matthews, one of the designers of Twilight Struggle & 1960: The Making of a President, no less!) to get the cat into play more quickly - the first person to lose a mouse becomes a cat. When another person loses a mouse, he becomes the cat and the first cat player starts a new mouse.

The recommended age range is pretty good - though younger kids can play (and enjoy just knocking the pieces around), age 5 is about the time that kids can begin to play with some skill.

UPisodes

Man, I love Pixar... get a taste of their UPcoming film via some UPisodes at the Apple movie trailer site.

Dollhouse

I've finally caught up with Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, thanks to hulu.com, and I'm not sure what I think of the show.

On one hand, it's nicely crafted (as are all of Mr. Whedon's creations) with a sense of place & style that immediately mark it as a cousin to Buffy, Angel & Firefly. It's good to see Amy Adams & Eliza Dushku again (both had big roles in the Buffyverse). The plots don't always go in the direction you'd expect and there are Whedon-esque moments of humor.

On the other hand, it's a show about wiping people's personalities & hiring them out to do darn near anything, legal and illegal. There are some pretty heavy duty ethical, philosophical & theological problems raised - which, to their credit, the writers & creators are attempting to grapple with in small, bite-sized pieces. As I'll refer to at the end of this post, I'm not sure they're going to be given the time to work through all of that - which makes the show feel more exploitative than their intentions.

For long-time fans of Joss Whedon, a lot of this is familiar territory. The Dollhouse reminds me of a cross between Angel's hotel and the offices of Wolfram & Hart, while the cast mix of butt-kicking central character surrounded by a variety of supporting characters with a multitude of agendas plus someone on the outside searching for that central character feels like an echo (ha! unintended show reference) of earlier Whedon works:

• River & the crew of the Firefly + the Alliance bounty hunters
• Angel & the crew of Angel Investigations + Wolfram & Hart/Daniel Holtz/etc.
• Buffy & the Scoobies + any number of "Big Bad"s

Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. The reason Whedon returns over & over to this formulation is that it allows for a wide variety of story angles & arcs. He can flesh out both good & bad characters, allowing for gradations of motives & actions that give an unreal situation real resonance.

The problem for Dollhouse is that the mythology is developing too slowly for people to give it a chance... back in the day (see: the first couple of seasons of the X-Files), off-beat shows were given appropriate time to grow & flower. But when shows as wonderful as Firefly or Pushing Daisies get bumped off the air and/or relegated to crappy time slots (like 9 pm on Friday nights, where Dollhouse lives), it's unlikely that this newest show will be given the opportunity to shine.

#30: Pathfinder

Pathfinder

• designer: Edith Grein-Bottcher & Mark Berger
• publisher: Milton Bradley
• date: 1977
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: 2578/6.03
• age: 8+
• # of players: 2 players
• print status: OOP
• cost: variable (there are 3 copies available on BGG right now in good condition for $10-$15)

Pretty much every boy in the U.S. has played Battleship at one time or another... and, at first, it's a pretty cool experience. There's some thrills involved in "seeing"your enemy's torpedoes splash harmlessly next to your boat... and who can forget this?

Of course, after you play it a few times, the new wears off & you realize that the game is either a total crapshoot or a methodical exercise in working a search grid pattern. Either way, the game continues on way past the point where the fun ends...

And that's why I'm putting Pathfinder on my Kid Games 100. It has all of the good parts of Battleship (hidden goals to find, hiding things from the enemy, the tension of blundering about in the dark) with none of the boredom.

The game comes packaged (at least here in the U.S. - I haven't seen the European editions, though I know they exist) in a plastic case that holds the maze boards for each player as well as the pieces. The cover neatly fits between the boards to provide a screen for the players.

To start, each player designs a maze and places a small yellow pawn in it as the target. Targets can not be moved - they are the object of the game! If you find the other players' target, you win!

Then players enter from the left side of the 6x6 gridded board, called coordinates as they go. If you run into a wall, your turn is over... but if you can move, you can take another turn. Players also get to track their moves on a search board.

Because of the smaller grid and the easier to visualize objective (searching a maze), this game started working well with my son when he was 5. It took a couple of plays for him to get the hang of it, but the game plays quickly enough that it didn't discourage him.

This is worth finding... keep your eyes peeled at thrift stores, as this occasionally surfaces. And avoid ebay on this one, where people charge insane prices for it.

#31: Scene-It Disney

Scene-It? Disney

• designer: uncredited
• publisher: Mattel
• date: 2004
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: 3972/5.63
• age: 6+
• # of players: 2-4 players or teams
• print status: in print
• cost: $14.99 (Boardgame Revolution... this is for the Deluxe [2 DVD] 1st edition)

We're pretty big Disney movie fans here at the Jackson house... I'm sure that I have most of the Pixar films memorized (from my boys watching them over & over & over & over) and I can pretty much sing the soundtracks of The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins & The Aristocats verbatim, thanks to listening to the story/music records (does anyone else remember those?!) 1000 times when I was a kid myself. Which makes us the perfect audience for this particular version of Scene-It?, the DVD pop culture trivia game that swept the nation a few years back.

Look, this is no "You Don't Know Jack" (though wouldn't that be a cool DVD game?!)... but it is a very enjoyable trivia game that works with a wide variety of ages. There are "younger" & "older" (aka "kid" & "adult") question cards in each set, so kids as young as 5 or 6 (with a decent knowledge of Disney films) can do pretty well. There are some "Wheel of Fortune"-like questions that favor adults, but those can be skipped using your DVD remote.

There are multiple editions of the game - and it's not as simple as 1st edition & 2nd edition. Both editions have "deluxe" versions that come in metal tins with a 2nd DVD that contains enough clips for approx. 6 more games. If you can find the deluxe editions for a good price (as listed above), they're worth finding.

Replayability is always an issue with games like these - and that's addressed both with preset games and with multiple questions per clip. We managed to play the 1st edition about 50 times, and have logged 20+ plays on the 2nd edition. Think about it - that's 70+ plays off of two games - and that means (a) it holds up pretty well to repeat play, and (b) my kids keep asking to play it again!

Note: we play that you roll the dice, do the activity (My Play, All Play, trivia question, action card), then get to roll again for movement only if you answer correctly... then it is the next players' turn. This keeps pawns moving (no one is stuck at the start), shortens playing time, and keeps any one player from dominating the game with a string of turns. I recommend this method for all of the various Scene-It? games.

There are other kid-friendly versions of the game (Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, etc.) but since we don't have cable, they aren't Jackson-family friendly and so I can't comment on them. I will, however, let you know that Friends Scene-It? and Movie Scene-It? are both a lot of fun... the underlying game system is solid.

Revolutionary New Program To Deal With Debt

Props to Dave Ramsey for pointing this out.

Markology

Yet another meme... but I kinda liked this one. Thanks to Jenny Nichols for posting it to Facebook (or at least posting it where I could see it.)

Foodology

• What is your salad dressing of choice? 1000 Island...
• What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? Max's Bistro (mmm... sweet potato fries!)
• What food could you eat for 2 weeks straight and not get sick of it? pizza
• What are your pizza toppings of choice? Canadian bacon & pineapple OR pepperoni
• What do you like to put on your toast? what toast?... ok, if I'm going to eat toast, I want butter

Technology

• How many television sets are in your house? one
• What color of cell phone do you have? silver (the cheapie Samsung that T-Mobile gives you for free when you get a contract with them)

Biology

• Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right
• Have you ever had anything removed from your body? my gall bladder
• What is the last heavy item you lifted? boxes full of food from our fridge when it went out last Friday night & we had to move it all over to the church so we didn't lose any of it
• Have you ever been knocked unconscious? no... but I did have a fellow actor knock me on my rear end on stage with a roundhouse punch to my jaw because he thought that the stage punch didn't "look real enough"

Bullcrapology

• If it were possible, would you want to know the day you're gonna die? No... though a general hint might be nice
• If you could change your name, what would you change it to? I don't think so...
• Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? A thousand bucks is a lot of board games - I'd pull a Chad Carter & give it a go. (Extra points for those who can name what city Chad drank hot sauce in... and remember (ewww) what happened about 2 hours later.)
• Favorite holiday? Christmas
• Favorite day of the week? Friday (the first day of my "weekend"
• Favorite month? June is good (my birthday, Braeden's birthday, our wedding anniversary) but April is also good (Collin's birthday, the Gathering of Friends)

Currentology

• Missing someone? the Gulf Games crew
• Mood? I'm cheerful with a side of nervous (about getting everything done today)
• What are you listening to? Steve Taylor's "On the Fritz" album - yep, I got this album back in the summer of 1985 - it still rocks
• Watching? I watched part of the 1st season of "Bones" on DVD last night - does that count?
• Worrying about? accomplishing my goals for the day

Randomology

• First place you went this morning? In the house - computer; out of the house- church office
• What's the last movie you saw? in the theater - Confessions of a Shopaholic; on DVD - Hellboy 2
• Do you smile often? yes - I'm married to Shari & have two wonderful boys... Collin told me a couple of days ago that he wants to grow up and be just like me - "A Chinese noodle." How can I not smile?!

Questionology

• Do you always answer your phone? Not always, but I feel badly about it
• It's four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it? Someone with a wrong number
• If you could change your eye color what would it be? Unnecessary - I like my eye color (green/brown)
• What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic? cherry
• Do you own a digital camera? Yes
• Have you ever had a pet fish? Braeden had one for a month or so... it committed suicide - really.
• Favorite Holiday song? Behold the Lamb of God (Andrew Peterson)
• What's on your wish list for your birthday? more board games!
• Can you do push ups? yes, but not without an undue amount of strain & sweat. Remember Bill Murray at the start of "Stripes"... that's me.
• Can you do a pull up? One pull-up, sure. Don't look for more... and stop asking about my physical fitness - it's making me feel all 90 lb weakling. I'm just waiting for someone to come along and kick sand in my face and steal my girl.
• Does the future make you more nervous or excited? Excited... I love watching my boys grow up and mature, I pastor an amazing church and I'm more in love with Shari today than ever before. The future won't be perfect - but God will walk through it with me.
• Do you have any saved texts? Yes
• Ever been in a car wreck? Yes... all fender-benders.
• Do you have an accent? Depends on who I'm with... it's really easy for me to pick up inflections & accents, sometimes unconsciously.
• What is the last song to make you cry? "You Can Always Come Home To Me" (Andrew Peterson)
• Plans tonight? Oh, yeah - big plans. I'm going to watch Survivor and attempt to keep inside my Weight Watcher points.
• Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom? Having to close the church @ hickory hollow was pretty close...
• Name 3 things you bought in the last week. Lunch @ Yen Ching (good Chinese buffet, btw), a crossover cable for the office that didn't do what it needed to do & a package of Tanga Trash
• Have you ever been given roses? Nope... but I've definitely given roses.
• Current worry? Getting our family financially solid.
• Current hate right now? Pin the tail on the opposition politics - it took both political parties, an avalanche of greed & a national obsession with immediate gratification to get us to this point economically.
• Met someone who changed your life? Obvious answers: Jesus, Shari Jo & Braeden & Collin; Less obvious: Keith Monaghan, Connie Grosse, Tim Formby, Fred Raney, David Nunn, Chris Herndon, Jim & Sheridyn Williamson, David Foster... note: I don't mention anyone from the last five years 'cuz the whole "changed my life" thing needs time to figure out who really made an impact
• How did you bring in the New Year? staying up with Braeden to play board games... then waking up Collin to watch the ball drop on TV
• What song represents you? I pick three: "The Finish Line" (Steve Taylor), "Little Boy Heart Alive" (Andrew Peterson), "Hang My Head & Cry" (David Mullen)
• Name three people who might complete this? The usual suspects: Paul & Lorell... and someone else
• What were you doing at 12 AM last night? reading Kurt Busiek's "Astro City: The Dark Age, Vol. 1" - excellent graphic novel, btw
• What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? if I punch the snooze button, I get to lay here for an extra 7 minutes...

Rated UR & OE

Just finished catching up on 24, thanks to Hulu.com... I'm rating the current season:

• UR for "Utterly Ridiculous" - Look, 24 has never been the paragon of logic - I've always laughed about how quickly they can get across L.A., regardless of traffic. And some of the storylines (hysterical amnesia, cougar attack, crazy Chinese intelligence agent shows up out of nowhere, etc.) have been pretty over-the-top. This season, however, takes the cake... culminating in the last couple of episodes.
• OE for "Awesomely Exciting" - But, regardless of how logically problematic the plot twists are (is stinkin' EVERYone corrupt in the U.S. govt?!), the action is fast & furious and the tension is amazing. This is great storytelling... and I can't wait for the next episode.

Youth Pastors & Mind-Reading

A healthy church doesn't need a youth pastor.

As a former youth pastor (nearly 13 years of lock-ins, cold pizza & egg-in-armpit relay, along with some amazing spiritual moments in the lives of youth & their families), that statement hit me upside the face. And since I preached through Luke 6 and the whole "turn the other cheek" thing last week, I kept reading Mark Riddle's book, Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors: A Church Leader's Guide to Staffing & Leading Youth Pastors anyway.

In general, Mark says that churches rush to hire a youth pastor, do so for the wrong reasons, and then hamstring the person they hire with hidden expectations and inadequate support. This, my friends, was the story of my youth ministry life, with the wondrous exception of Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Silsbee, TX.

If I had enough cash, I'd buy this for every senior pastor/staff member who was working with a youth pastor. It should be required reading. There's chapters on why you should never ask a potential youth pastor about his vision for ministry, why churches really don't want to hire innovative/catalytic youth pastors (been there, done that) and an especially pointed chapter entitled "If You Aren't Going to Mentor Your Youth Pastor, You Don't Deserve One."

It's not a difficult read - well, I mean, Mark Riddle doesn't wax philosophical or get caught up in long-winded arguments. Instead, he makes his points quickly, cleanly & with passion... then gives you (and your staff) questions to process those ideas.

A key passage on overall church health & youth ministry success:

I was talking with Wayne, a senior pastor, about my company's consulting services. Wayne explained his situation this way: "We can't seem to find just the right people for our youth staff. We've bee through four middle school pastors in the past five years and three high school pastors in about that same amount of time. We need to find 'just the right people' to join our 'team.'"

"The Riddle Group can support you by..." I began.

Wayne interrupted me. "Look, I have my thumb on everything that goes on in that church and in that youth ministry," he said. "What are you going to tell me that I don't already know?"

I paused, looked him in the eye, and said, "I'm going to tell you why your church has been through seven pastors in five years."

At least, that's what I wanted to say.

Instead, I said, "My guess is that it's not about finding the right person for your church. The issue isn't a staffing problem, because after seven different youth pastors it seems like you've probably had every personality type in leadership already. I'd guess that the reason your staff members are leaving is likely something else present within the church."

We didn't get the job.

The weaknesses of your church as a whole will almost invariably be present in your youth ministry as well. If your church struggles with finding volunteers, lack of follow through, laziness, or consumerism, you'll find those same traits in the youth ministry.

See what I'm talking about? This is a MUST-read book for ministry.

However, I'm well aware that there are roughly five types of senior pastors out there, thus (sadly) reducing the potential audience for this book:

1. senior pastors who already get this stuff (a small group made up mostly of former youth pastors)
2. senior pastors who will read this book and learn important stuff (please, please, please... be part of this group!)
3. senior pastors who will read this book and cluelessly think it doesn't apply to them
4. senior pastors who will read this book and downshift into full-on paranoia about this being a way for youth pastors to blame them for their mistakes, thus causing them to find a way to boot their 5th youth pastor in the last 6 years (you may think I'm joking - but I'm the Amazing Karnak and I've got an envelope in front of my forehead with the name of AT LEAST one church in it)
5. senior pastors who won't read this book because it's about youth ministry which means it's automatically less important than the majority of stuff on their desk

There's good stuff in here for youth pastors, too - his two principles for deciding whether to take a position are dynamite, as are the questions you should ask. (I'm a big fan of questions... could have saved me a LOT of heartache if I'd been willing to ask 'em and learned to listen not only to the answer but the WAY they were answered.)

This would also be a very helpful book for youth pastor search teams. Much of the first half of the book argues for a hiring process with greater patience & faith than many I've been involved with. (I will say that my current church, NewLife Community Church, is an exception to this.)

A final personal note: I'm really thankful for Aaron Kellar, our former worship/youth pastor here at NewLife. Due to life circumstances, I didn't get to do all of these things for him, and yet he served diligently and with a profound love for Jesus. Way to go, dude.

Idea Camp: Video 4 U

They're putting up video of the conference at Vimeo... now you can see what we saw in the general sessions & some of the cool video stuff they showed us.

BTW, pass this along to anyone. One of the coolest things about this conference was the emphasis on being open-source.

Idea Camp: Link-o-rama

Want to follow up on some of the cool things I experienced and/or learned about at The Idea Camp? Here's some links to some nifty stuff:

• Church Marketing Sucks - I've written about this website/blog before - I admire the heck out of their iconoclastic tone & their rabid devotion to the cause of Christ. What changed is that I actually got to be part of a workshop with Brad Abare, the dude behind CMS. He's worth getting to know.
• Visioneering Studios - I need to more about these folks, esp. after hearing Mel McGowan (sp?) speak about church environments & redesign.
• Eric Bryant - I've already said lots of nice things over the years about Eric... he's an excellent author/speaker/friend. You should read his book, btw. (And not just because I've known him since he was a teenager.)
• DEIDOX - "short documentaries about an active God"... this is great videos (5 min. each) about what it looks like when individuals make a God-sized dent in their communities - inspiring!
• The Digital Sanctuary - Cynthia Ware's blog about technology (esp. new media) & the church
• The Chronicles of Dawnia - she calls her blog "an unremarkable soul in the service of a remarkable God" but I found her attitude about gender roles & innovation remarkable & God-focused
• Livin' Venti - Scott Hodge's blog - a pastor with a great sense of humor & a great sense of God who's really walking through the whole "traditional 2 missional" transition thing

Idea Camp: A Blast of Quotable Stuff

This is the first of (hopefully) a series of posts about The Idea Camp, an open-source conference that I attended this weekend. We'll just start with a crazy shotgun blast of stuff that caught my ear over the two days... these are, btw, NOT verbatim quotes. They're filtered through me.

• "Every project we launch is a social experiment... it's not the rest of my life. There's less stress that way - it's easier to launch an experiment." (Charles Lee)
• "We want to change the definition of revival... where it's not just the Christians who say 'Ooo, look - revival!' but the unbelieving world who sees 'revival' through the way we serve & love & make an impact in Jesus' name." (Matthew Barnett)
• "We get hung up and think that 'how we do the mission' is The Mission." (Brad Abare)
• "When did church become a destination?" (Brad Abare)
• "Why is homophobia so gay?" (Eric Michael Bryant)
• "We have a recession of optimism... nothing is destined to fail. It's amazing what God can do through a bad idea with people who are passionate to do good in the world." (Erwin McManus)
• "We don't like mega-churches because we're jealous & envious." (Erwin McManus)
• "Ideas are androgynous." (Dawn Carter)
• "We must downsize the number of causes that we 'support' & instead actually get involved in things that we're passionate about." (Charles Lee)
• "Please, don't be a wet blanket to our generation... Believe that the God inside of us is as big as He's ever been." (Zach Carter)
• "Unchurched people don't have the same smorgasbord of expectations as heavily churched people." (Scott Hodges)
• "You can't smokescreen your way through change... you have to be up front with your people." (Me!)

More to come...

Warning Signs

Most people notice warning signs: "Bridge Out" or "Wrong Way" or even "Do Not Back Up - Severe Tire Damage". Nobody wants to be featured on the evening news as the person who drove their car off into a ravine because they ignored the signage.

I want to take a minute to write about an important warning sign that can appear in your life. When you consider joining any organization (church, club, society, business, etc.), I beg you to open your baby blues wide & listen carefully. Watch & listen not just to the "sales presentation" but see if what these folks are claiming for their group is reflected in their day-to-day behavior.

Then... ask a question.

Heck, ask a lot of questions. An organization's response to questions will tell you volumes about the environment & personal safety level there.

There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions. (Charles P. Steinmetz)

If you find yourself & others encouraged and/or bullied into "quiet submission," then head for the door as quickly as possible. If the door's locked, leave a hole shaped like you in it - just as if you were a Looney Tune cartoon.

And this doesn't have to be a church, though they can sometimes be the worst offenders. In the last month or so, I've read about the horrors of the Mormon Handcart Tragedy (in the book Devil's Gate) and the evils of the USSR show trials & purges in pre-WW2 Russia (in the book The Forsaken)... so while I'm neither a Mormon or a Communist, it's pretty easy to figure out that they aren't exactly the same thing. The inference is, of course, that a belief in God is a NOT a reliable warning sign - it's the unwillingness to tolerate questions and/or disagreement.

God isn't afraid of your questions - He spends two whole books of the Bible (Job & Habakkuk) listening to and answering the questions of those who don't understand what He's doing. Jesus answers question after question without striking anyone dead or disfellowshipping them.

One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: "Which is most important of all the commandments?"

Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." (Luke 12:28-31 MSG)

The people who are afraid of your questions - be they fundamentalist zealots or left-wing ideologues - are interested not in your drawing close to truth but instead desire your lockstep response to their particular spin on reality. Escape from them as fast as you can - do not pass Go... do not collect $200.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. (Luke 7:7-8 ESV)

Beethoven Done Right

3 + 2 = 2 Much TV

Three Questions Left Over From the Academy Awards Show:

1. What was up with Tina Fey's left eye?
2. Anyone else notice that the humor was MUCH less political this year?
3. Why has it taken so dang long to make an Oscars show with that much fun & pacing?

Two Pleasant Surprises, Considering What I Wrote A Couple of Days Ago

1. Any "Chuck" episode that manages to include Jeffster, a Morgan flashback, and a splash of Chuck/Sarah sweetness says loud & clear that we are back on track.
2. An HRG-focused "Heroes" epsiode gave us some nice backstory and set up some interesting potential plotlines. Here's hoping this continues.

The Race Really is Amazing This Time

First, a bit from M. Giant's recap of the first episode of this season's The Amazing Race that made me laugh so hard I nearly cried:

In Interlaken, the leading four teams have already arrived, and Kleine Rugen Wiese turns out to be pretty easy to find on foot. Might have something to do with the guys in traditional Swiss garb banging on large iron kettles. Mel/Mike are the first to reach the clue box, which tells them, "Join the local work force." Phil narrates, "Teams must now choose a pair of these traditional antique cheese racks and climb to the top of this hill. Once at the top, teams will transport two hundred pounds of cheese from this aging-shed to the bottom of the hill." Then they'll need to stack them on a long shelf attached to the shed near the clue box, and they'll get their next clue. Funny, it sounds so easy when Phil says it.

But it's trickier than it sounds. The first sign of trouble is when the teams walk over to where these alleged "cheese racks" are scattered in front of the cheese house. I'm not sure how exactly to describe these cheese racks, but I'll give it a try. Imagine if you will two kinds of chairs: deck, and electric. Imagine further that kits from IKEA containing the pieces for each were dropped into a darkened cave filled with feral children who are ginked out on crystal meth. What you will fish out of that cave after two weeks is what the Swiss apparently refer to as a cheese rack. Now all you need to do is strap it onto your back, with the padded board resting on top of your head and the rickety shelf protruding straight out behind you, and you're good to go. To hell. Mel, Mike, Margie, and Luke each grab one, and then get a load of the climb ahead of them. "This is insane," Mike says. He doesn't know the half of it yet.

And, so you can see what he's talking about...

Sunday nights at 8 pm PST, people... don't miss out.

#32: Eureka! (Gamewright)

Eureka!

• designer: Peter-Paul Joopen
• publisher: Gamewright
• date: 2002
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: not ranked/5.43
• age: 6+
• # of players: 2-4
• print status: OOP
• cost: $24.95 (GamersParadise.com... the price is double the original retail - but the game is OOP)

Here's what impressed me about Eureka! (not be confused with Eureka by Ravensburger... an older but still enjoyable gold nugget hunting game) - it manages to combine an exploration game with a memory game and make it work.

It doesn't hurt, of course, that the folks at Gamewright also managed to make a very workable "junior" variant simply by removing a chunk of the rock (ie, "empty") tiles that both speeds up the game and gives the younger set a version where something 'happens' almost every turn because the board is nothing but special tiles.

But I digress - some of you wonder how the game works & are irritated with me for jumping ahead to my conclusions about the game. Some of you need to take a chill pill already.

The double-sided tiles are laid out in an 8x8 grid (7x7 for the junior version) and players each choose a starting corner. On your turn, you roll the dice & move vertically & horizontally to a space - which you flip over. A variety of things can happen - bats chase you away (and give you another turn); bears scare you back to your starting corner; lanterns let you sneak a peek at all the surrounding tiles; cave-ins make you lose a turn; danger signs can either lead to an extra turn or a lost turn... and most importantly, the gold nugget tiles let you put your claim markers on the board.

Each player has 4 numbered claim markers (1-4) and there are a number of gold nugget tiles with 1-4 nuggets on them. You can only mark tiles that don't already have a claim marker with a claim marker of the correct number... and you win the game by placing all four of your markers.

It's simple enough to play with 5 year olds (the only movement restriction is that you can't land on the same space as another player) while there are some interesting movement decisions based on how well you remember where things are. With 3 or 4 players, there some definite racing elements; in fact, the game works better with more players, as the gold nuggets and other tiles are revealed more quickly.

Pop Culture Update - the "It's Nearly The End of February" Edition

This is the post wherein I set down my crackpipe remote & type in a few thoughts about some recent stuff that I've read, heard, seen and/or otherwise "ingested". (Warning: there may be some spoilers in here - sorry.)

FILM (both in the theater & DVD)

• Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist: I'm of two minds about this film - one side of me likes the natural interplay between Nick & Norah and their friends, the edgy soundtrack that doesn't sound like every other teen film I've seen, and the sweet visual style of the film. The other side of me was offended by the casual acceptance of binge drinking, angered by the need to have the two leads engage in a sexual encounter the first night they meet (seriously? a high school girl getting an orgasm is a key plot point?!), and confused by the "my dad is a record mogul" twist that served mainly to give Norah a reason to dump her ex-boyfriend (re-dump?!) and provide a place for the two of them to get down & dirty off the mean streets of NYC.
• Confessions of a Shopaholic: The movie is schizo - there are moments of magic realism (talking mannequins) set alongside some very nice dramatic bits. At times, the heroine is a complete ditz... at others, she seems to know what she's doing. Weirdly enough, there's are pretty well-disguised nuggets of truth about the nature of addiction buried in here under all the slapstick and the bargain basement Sex in the City clothes-horsing. But is it a good movie? I'm not sure... Isla Fisher is no Amy Adams (though she does a nice job) and yet there's a number of high-quality people doing good work at the fringes of the film (John Goodman, Joan Cusack, John Lithgow). I'd say this will be a good DVD rental/popcorn flick.
• The Dark Knight: I know that lots of folks feel like this is the "best comic book movie e-var"... but I found it to be technically amazing and yet not terribly compelling. I think they'd have been MUCH better off if they'd stuck with the Joker/"Killing Joke" storyline and not complicated it with the Harvey Dent stuff.

BOOKS

• Ask A Mexican (Gustavo Arrellano): Everything that is wrong and right with alternative press newspapers (since the book is essentially a compilation of an alt newspaper column by the same title as the book): RIGHT - a willingness to tackle touchy subjects; a specific tone & viewpoint; a blistering sense of humor... WRONG - an overweening love for shock ("how lewd can I be?"); a tendency to beat dead horses to death a second time (we get it - it's all about sex); difficulty viewing complex problems from any viewpoint but their own... With all that, Arrellano is a good comedy writer... but the book is NOT for the easily offended. (His 2nd book, Orange County, was better.)
• The War: An Intimate History (Ken Burns): This huge book, filled with stunning pictures, both benefits & suffers from the constraints that Ken Burns & the makers of the PBS miniseries put on themselves - track people from 4 different towns throughout the U.S. (Sacramento, Mobile, Luwerne, Waterbury) through WW2. It really is an intimate portrait of war, this particular war, and how it impacted families & towns here in the U.S. At the same time, the intimate focus of the book would make the flow of the war difficult to follow if I didn't already have a pretty decent "basic" background on WW2. Still, this is an excellent work and I recommend to anyone interested in WW2.
• The Prodigal God (Tim Keller): A tremendous re-thinking of the interpretation & application of the Parable of the Prodigal Son - Keller renames it "The Parable of the Two Lost Sons" and does a splendid job of re-framing the story to help us see clearer the grace & goodness of God to both younger brothers (those who indulge in immoral behavior) and elder brothers (those who use their good behavior in an attempt to obligate God to perform for them). Highly recommended.

MUSIC

• Nothing new, actually... but I did find FlipSideMN, which has downloads of some very difficult find CCM from the 70's & 80's, including Prodigal, Crumbacher & Fireworks. (Let's put it this way: I'm not going to run out of synth-pop and synth-rock on my iTunes any time soon.)

TV

• The Amazing Race: thanks to some serious re-thinking in the production department, the first two episodes of this race are the best I've seen in a long time. They are doing minimal airport ticket-buying stuff (yes!) and giving lots more time to the challenges and the scenery. Plus, the Detours & Roadblocks have all been pretty cool to watch. And, if that isn't enough, the two most irritating teams (so far) were eliminated in the first two weeks. What's not to like about that?!
• Survivor: not sure what I think yet... but I'm pretty sure that "they rub me wrong" is a really lousy criteria for voting people off your tribe this early in the game.
• Chuck: With the exception of the 3D episode, Chuck has been "not awesome" since coming back. Sigh.
• Heroes: Ditto with a show I once loved... and this makes me very sad. There are good moments (and nothing as out-&-out oopidstay as Hiro opening the safe last fall) but it feels like it's falling apart. Still, I keep watching & hoping.
• 24: Leaving L.A. was a very good idea - chunks of this may be recycled from earlier seasons, but it feels fresh.
• Lost: My head is going to explode from all the wild & wonderful things going on here. Consistently the best show on TV.

GAMES

• Battlestar Galactica: I stopped watching the TV show back mid-season 2... but I know enough to vouch that the game captures the feel of the show very well. While I enjoy it a lot, I wish it was 45 minutes shorter (it runs 3 hours with a full table) and didn't threaten to feel a bit same-y after X number of plays.
• Mow: This is a simple little 6 Nimmt-ish filler from Bruno Cathala that has managed to delight every group I've played it with, gamers & non-gamers alike. The cow art on the cards compliments the light play.
• Flotte Flosse: A reminder: play kid games with kids to see if they're really good games or not. I played this a couple of years back & gave it a "meh" - it's basically a speed recognition game with fish nets. Then I found a cheap copy this year which Collin got as a Valentine gift - and we've played it 6+ times in the last week or so. The "teeth/no teeth" problem works like a charm with the kids... and they can play us pretty closely (so far, adults & kids have split winning the game). Another great Haba creation.
• Roll Through The Ages: Yahtzee meets Civilization... and as stupid as that sounds, it works like a charm. This threatens to become the "one last game before we go" game that replaces Race for the Galaxy.
• Zooloretto/Aquaretto: Finally played a combined game. We shouldn't have used the Savings Book expansion (it skewed the game in favor of cashiers way too much) but otherwise we had a great time. I wouldn't want to play this 2 hour version of the game very often, but there were some neat decisions involved in how you chose to develop your parks. I think both games are splendid, btw... and I love that Michael Schacht keeps developing new variants.

#33:Der schwarze Pirat

Die Schwarze Pirat (The Black Pirate)

• designer: Guido Hoffman
• publisher: Haba
• date: 2006
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: 1061/6.89
• age: 5+
• # of players: 2-4
• print status: in print
• cost: $35.99 (maukilo.com)

At our house, we call 'em "nose squeegees" - those bulbous things you use to suck snot out of the nasal cavaties of babies & toddlers. (I guess, if you want to get technical, they aren't actually squeegees... but that's not important right now.)

Leave it to Haba to produce not one but three different games using these devices as puffers: The Black Pirate (which I'll talk about more in a minute), Akaba (which will show up higher in the countdown) and Der Schwarze Pirat: Das Duell (which is a two-player version of the game that I haven't got to play yet.) The Black Pirate won the Kinderspiel des Jahres (kid game of the year) a couple of years back... and that's not a big surprise once you've had the opportunity to play the game.

Each player has a small wooden ship with a cloth sail... and there's a pirate ship (call him what you will - I like to call him "the Dread Pirate Roberts" but then again I'm the guy who got a "Have Fun Storming The Castle" t-shirt for Christmas.) On your turn, you roll the die and either get to move your ship or the Dread Pirate.

The trick of the game is how you move your ship... and that's where the nose squeegee comes into play. Depending on which ship you're moving (player or pirate) and what you roll, you get 3 or 4 "puffs" to scootch the ship across the board. There are raised islands and a raised border - each island has a harbor area which is your objective. Park the ship in a harbor (even just a little bit) and you get all the gold that has accumulated on that island (also generated by a die roll).

If you get to move the pirate, you can either use him to claim treasure from a harbor OR he can attack other pirate ships by bumping into them. You get to take some treasure from them via a method I won't bother to explain in detail but works very well.

When all of the gold is picked up, the game is over. You count your treasure & see who wins.

Getting the hang of the how to move the ships is the toughest part of the game... I'd encourage you to allow kids some practice time to get comfortable with moving ships before you add the pressure of playing against other players. (This isn't a bad idea for some adults as well.)

The age range is spot on here, though my 7 year old has done better with this one as he's gotten older.

This Is Me

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

The BBC Needs To Get A Grip (aka Book Meme)

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

• 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ()
• 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
• 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ()
• 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
• 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
• 6 The Bible - (x)
• 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
• 8 1984 - George Orwell (x)
• 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
• 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (x)
• 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ()
• 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (x)
• 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (x)
• 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (x)
• 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ()
• 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
• 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()
• 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ( x)
• 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
• 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
• 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)
• 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
• 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
• 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
• 25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
• 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
• 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
• 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
• 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
• 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (x)
• 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
• 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
• 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
• 34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
• 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
• 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
• 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ()
• 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
• 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ()
• 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
• 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)
• 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x)
• 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
• 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
• 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
• 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ()
• 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
• 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
• 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
• 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ()
• 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
• 52 Dune - Frank Herbert (x)
• 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
• 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ()
• 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
• 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (x)
• 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (x)
• 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (x)
• 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ()
• 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
• 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
• 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
• 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
• 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()
• 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (x)
• 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ()
• 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
• 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ()
• 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
• 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (x)
• 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (x)
• 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (x)
• 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
• 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
• 75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
• 76 The Inferno - Dante (x)
• 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()
• 78 Germinal - Emile Zola ()
• 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
• 80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
• 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
• 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()
• 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (x)
• 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ()
• 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ()
• 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ()
• 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
• 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
• 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
• 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ()
• 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (x)
• 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)
• 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
• 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (x)
• 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
• 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ()
• 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (x)
• 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
• 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
• 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (x)

46 out of 100... hmmm. (Thanks to Mike Siggins for pointing this out.)

Not-So-Fairness Doctrine

You, dear blog readers, need to know a little about me... well, at least about my sources of news & information on the Web & on the radio.

When trying to stay current via the Internet, I click my way over to:

• the NPR website
• Christianity Today's Hot Issues page
• the FOX News website

And, yes, that does give me a bit of virtual whiplash... but it's on purpose. We'll get to more on that in a minute.

When I'm out driving around in my car, I turn my radio dial to:

• KMJ 580 AM (Fresno-based talk radio, which carries Rush Limbaugh & Sean Hannity among others)
• KVPR FM 89 (Fresno-based National Public Radio, home of Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation... and the most important news program out there, Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me! OK, so maybe WWDTM isn't the most important... but it's certainly the most fun.)
• 105.9 JACK FM (which is actually just music & no news... but I figured I needed to come clean about my addiction to classic rock)

Again with the whiplash... and here's why. (I'm going to be forced to reference Extreme here, which will cause some of you to run screaming from the room. Don't worry, I won't be forcing you to watch the "Hole-Hearted" video... though I'm a thoughtful guy so I'll put the MTV link for in the post.)

Extreme - New Music - More Music Videos

Their next album, III Sides To Every Story, was divided into (wait for it) 3 different sections: Yours, Mine, and The Truth. Which is kind of how I see my encounters with the news media...the truth is somewhere in the middle of this mess.

Which is why I'm completely and utterly opposed to the reinstatement of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine. This less-than-brilliant bit of policy making was chucked overboard (thankfully) back in 1987... yet here we are 22 years later with those in power interested in bringing it back from the dead like some kind of weird zombie movie.

Simply put, the Fairness Doctrine requires opposing viewpoints to be presented by media outlets (holders of broadcast licenses) in an attempt to achieve "balanced" coverage. In practice, it means that TV & radio stations avoid controversial topics because of the potential regulatory fallout.

Religious broadcasters face the same kind of problems under the Fairness Doctrine - esp. since they deal with controversial topics where their viewpoint (pro-life, for example, or believing that sex outside of marriage is a sin) is not culturally mainstream. And while all media is "listener-supported" at some level (by advertising), much of Christian radio is listener-supported from donations to the station or the ministry... which would force people to pay directly for viewpoints they disagree with if "equal time" provisions were reenacted.

I'm living proof that the current system allows me access to the conservative thought (and rantings) of Rush Limbaugh as well the left-leaning reportage & commentary (and occasional rantings, though in soft, soothing voices) of NPR. Please don't squash this in a misguided attempt to force a false dialogue on the broadcasters & the American people.

Graceland

There's a great scene in the long-since-defunct dramedy TV series "Sports Night". (Actually, there are a lot of great scenes, but that didn't prevent it from getting cancelled. Sigh.) Dan & Casey, the anchors of the show, are waiting for the show to start, when Dan blurts out:

Dan: Eli's Coming.

Casey: Eli?

Dan: From the Three Dog Night song.

Casey: Yes?

Dan: Eli is something bad, a darkness.

Casey: "Eli's coming. Hide your heart, girl." Eli is a inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.

Dan: I know I'm getting the song wrong. But, when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.

OK, I'm the first to admit that the only Three Dog Night songs I knew before seeing this episode were "One (is the Loneliest Number)", "Black & White" and "Joy to the World." (We sang the last a bunch of times in elementary school music class, only without the verse about drinking the bullfrog's mighty fine wine.) Still, I understand what Dan's talking about - how you hear something the first time can lock in meaning & emotion for years to come. (We kind of talked about that in my last Grapevine article...)

Sometimes, it's because we get the lyrics wrong. My father-in-law & I spent untold time & energy convincing my bride-to-be (Shari!) that Ariel was NOT singing "pregnant women, sick of swimming" in THE LITTLE MERMAID - I lost count of how many times we rewound the videotape. For the record, the correct lyrics to "Part of Your World" are:

Betcha on land they understand

Bet they don't reprimand their daughters

Bright young women, sick of swimmin'

Ready to stand

Other times, it's because the the song grabs you by the throat because of a particular thematic idea or image. A good friend from college (who shall remain nameless) could hear the first few chords of Chicago's "Hard Habit To Break" and instantly be plunged back into the morass of his break-up with his first long-time girlfriend - so much so that he chose to avoid the album & the song. (He's happily married now... but I have no idea if the Chicago avoidance plan is still in effect.)

And in my case, it's making an assumption about a song based on the lyrical images intertwining with my personal background & theology. Ladies & gentlemen, I give you the title cut from Paul Simon's groundbreaking album, "Graceland":

The Mississippi delta was shining

Like a national guitar

I am following the river

Down the highway

Through the cradle of the Civil War

I'm going to Graceland

Graceland

In Memphis Tennessee

I'm going to Graceland

Poorboys and pilgrims with families

And we are going to Graceland

My traveling companion is nine years old

He is the child of my first marriage

But I've reason to believe

We both will be received

In Graceland

She comes back to tell me she's gone

As if I didn't know that

As if I didn't know my own bed

As if I'd never noticed

The way she brushed her hair from her forehead

And she said losing love

Is like a window in your heart

Everybody sees you're blown apart

Everybody sees the wind blow

And my traveling companions

Are ghosts and empty sockets

I'm looking at ghosts and empties

But I've reason to believe

We all will be received

In Graceland

There is a girl in New York City

Who calls herself the human trampoline

And sometimes when I'm falling, flying

Or tumbling in turmoil I say

Oh, so this is what she means

She means we're bouncing into Graceland

And I see losing love

Is like a window in your heart

Everybody sees you're blown apart

Everybody sees the wind blow

In Graceland, in Graceland

I'm going to Graceland

For reasons I cannot explain

There's some part of me wants to see

Graceland

And I may be obliged to defend

Every love, every ending

Or maybe there's no obligations now

Maybe I've a reason to believe

We all will be received

In Graceland

I know now that Paul was writing about the demise of his marriage and a road trip he took with his son to see Graceland. And, while I'm not a big fan of Elvis, I realize that he's talking about the palatial mansion with the music note gates on the south side of Memphis. Still, I hear lines like "I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland" and I hear echoes of biblical truth:

But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. (2 Peter 3:8-9, NLT)

And when I think about my the reality of my own life - the struggles with pornography & selfishness & bitterness - the line about "the girl who calls herself the human trampoline" feels like Paul Simon has been watching me with hidden cameras. "Losing love is like a window in your heart... everybody sees you're blown apart" - yep, someone get Garfunkel's buddy out of the spy van and tell him to take the bug out of my telephone.

But all of us are "bouncing into Graceland": those of us who've been human trampolines & those who've jumped on us, the poorboys and pilgrims, the old & young, those who are smarter than a whip or dumber than a post, well-behaved and/or ill-mannered, whoever. Regardless if you've put more miles than years on your life (tip o' the proverbial hat to Indiana Jones) or if you rival the Pharisees for your devotion & self-righteousness, you can be received in the gracious arms of Jesus.

Jesus does not divide the world into moral "good guys" and the immoral "bad guys." He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways...

...The gospel (good news) of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism. Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles -- it is something else altogether.

The gospel is distinct from the other two approaches: In its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change. (Tim Keller, The Prodigal God)

I've said it before, I'll say it again: no matter who you are, where you came from or what you have or have not done, Jesus loves you. Graceland is more than just the mansion of a dead pop star.

Bounce His way...

Six-Word Memoirs: The Valentine's Day Edition

Heard these folks talking on Talk of the Nation earlier today... the challenge is to write your love story (or not-so-lovely story) in six words. (There's a book, of course - which may make a nicer gift than a bag of those nasty chalky candy hearts.) My favorite:

"He sees the me I don't."

So, here's my attempt:

Peanut butter, chocolate - just like us.

The Two Ways

From Tim Keller's The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith...

The person in the way of moral conformity says: "I' not going to do what I want, but what tradition & the community want me to do." The person choosing the way of self-discovery says: "I'm the only one who can decide what is right or wrong for me. I'm going to live as I want to live and find my true self and happiness that way."

Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distant yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: "The immoral people -- the people who 'do their own thing' -- are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution." The advocates of self-discovery say: "The bigoted people -- the people who say 'We have the Truth' -- are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution." Each side says: "Our way is the way the world will be put to rights, and if you are not with us, you are against us."...

...the message of Jesus' parable is that both of these approaches are wrong.