Mourning::it's a sad thing.

The day, as it where, is broken down into many different little pieces of time; some call these pieces seconds, minutes, and hours while others prefer to simply say today. In my mind, ‘today’ is far too broad and ‘hours and minutes’ seems to be a little too restrictive. I prefer and use dawn, morning, afternoon, late afternoon, evening, night, and bed to describe and schedule my day. I suppose, in a round about way, I could also describe the evolution of a lifetime in the same way. Dreams too. And experiments.

I do most of my living in the balanced part of the day; nothing extreme, rarely staying up when the schedule says bed and even more rarely getting up when the schedule says dawn. As such, dawn has become something of a mystery to me – I’m not sure exactly what it is and so I allow myself to imagine the bits and pieces of dawn.

Generally, the night belongs to punk roarak, mornings to breakfast and newspapers, day time belongs to noise and appointments, and evening belongs to Seinfeld and climbing. The cusp of day belongs to nobody except maybe seagulls, the pre-morning mist that mixes with the all ready over crowded farm air in Abbotsford, and that lazy one eyed cat who is on his eighth life.

Come to think of it, if Dawn was a person it would be felion-ified by that lazy one eyed cat emerging from under the hood of a volvo with only partial tail. Dawn, thankfully, is haggard and scruffy with not much biography left and even less biography to tell. Dawn speeds by before you know it; then you get up.

Most dreams and experiments are only pieces of Dawn. Then you get up.

Lao Tzu

Fighting is apart of hockey otherwise there wouldn’t be rules against it. The same is true with diving soccer players. In the same way, sin is apart of living otherwise there wouldn’t be rules against it.

Most often we can only ascribe value to something because of what is not there. For example, a water bottle is useful because it contains empty space. Doors, windows, the hole in the top of your socks, tunnel entrances, and straws are only useful because they are gaps in something.

Our eyes will be quick to judge beauty based on the absence of ugliness, significance in the absence of pithy, and life in the absence of death. The value, beauty, significance, and life of what is there lies in what is not there.

Nacho!

Nacho! Nacho! Nacho! I’m cheering for you padre!

Jack Black and Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess team up and deliver the perfect movie to watch when its too hot outside and too cold inside; Nacho Libre. Funny stuff, though, not nearly as many good one liners to annoy everyone with….maybe just a few good Mexican accents to throw around while eating tortillas on a patio.

I’ll place a bet that youth pastors across the nation are going to use this movie in sermon illustrations until even they are sick of their perfect one liner jokes. My money is on the table.

Other then that, if you don’t like Jack Black (which there are many reasons not to), don’t like Napoleon Dynamite (again, many reasons not to), don’t like wrestling (no reason not to), and don’t like Mexican food (I’m sorry if you don’t), then you should probably still pay the $8 to go see the preview for “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” with Will Ferrell. I was embarrassed because I was laughing so hard!!

‘When you become a man you will wear tight stretchy pants in your bedroom by yourself for fun’
-Nacho.

::trust

There are certain things that we trust and certain things that we do not trust. It seems, and maybe you have noticed, that the things we are inclined to trust are the things that we very much want to trust. For example, we very much want to trust airline pilots and the out of order sign on the pay parking meter. Nobody double checks to see if the machine is actually out of order; they are just happy to go with it and not pay.

However, when you have a flat tire in Hickville, CA and the tire place says, “closed” you still check all the doors, peer into all of the windows, and knock on the front, side, and back entrances. When all else has failed, you call the shop hoping that there might just possibly be someone inside to answer your desperate call for help. You very much do not want to trust the “closed” sign on the front door.

Isn’t it very interesting that we only trust what we want to trust? I think it is. I think that is why I so very much want to trust in a God who forgives and a grace that is…well…gracious. Because I need it.

A Subversive Story.

Today, marketing guru Seth Godin and downtown pastor Paul Moores, have each hit on one of the most fascinating aspects of the story of Jesus. The deep subversive and hard to see one. Read Seth’s post first and then read and leave your comments at Paul’s post.

It’s Friday night! Party down….
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The Story of Science

I read stories and write about stories more then I am admitting to right now. I actually fear that I am becoming a bit of geek, in fact, I first realized this when I admitted that the smell of books is better then a lot of things.

Humans simply love to tell stories…it is somehow attached to our very nature. As long as, and no doubt before, there have been camp fires to sit around there have been stories to tell. The manipulating of fire, or, in other words, the advancement of science, has been instrumental in the continuing of these stories. Or maybe it is the other way around?

Without the storyteller science is useless. It is true that science deals with objective facts, observation, and controlled experiments, however, how this objective data is assembled involves a degree of imagination, i.e. theories. And what are theories? Theories are nothing more then stories hiding under another name.

If it wasn’t for story we would still be walking on all fours living in a cave and wondering about how to style our unibrows. Story is the advancement of humanity; I wonder what the correlation is to the individual story? Stories move you forward.
-e.d.

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Mindfreak

So today was summer solstice; and by today, I suppose I mean yesterday. A mid-summers day. The longest day of the year in the northern hemi-sphere. Among the four highest days of Wiccan sabbat in the entire year. I imagine there is a great party full of naked witches dancing in the Stonehenge as I type this. But we’ll not imagine that for too long.

Oddly enough, I don’t have to imagine too hard. Actually, if you replaced Stonehenge with beautiful sunset beach then I don’t really have to imagine at all. More realistically, it may be something I want to forget...

Anyhow, this all got me thinking about performer Criss Angel, and no, not Criss Angel naked. He is something isn’t he? I’ve been wanting to catch one of his TV shows for ages and finally got the chance to just this evening. Wow! His slight of hand and illusions are outstanding; absolutely mind boggling. And then I thought of the witches. Scary stuff.

witches + criss angel + stonehenge

The Story Inside

Each one of us harbor deep hidden and subversive stories that may never escape the confines of our minds. Tragic. Tragic that these stories are never shared, tragic that these lifetimes are capped, and tragic that they are tragic. Often times, these great and lasting stories never reveal themselves due to the simple fact that these stories have too many unanswered questions.

What will they think?
Will I be embarrassed?
Do I trust enough?
How grace giving is my community?
What does this story say about me?

Hidden stories are tragic because they are cowardly stories. Your own secrets breed conspiracy theories against yourself and against the people around you. How dare we inflict ourselves with this!

Here and Now.

“Live what you were meant to live!”

It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t even a command. It was simply an irrefutable statement.

And so I wonder about my dreams; I wonder why my dreams are always free and the rest of the time I need a pay check. I wonder why dreams are always threaten by progress. I wonder if dreams are not so much a preferred picture of the future so much as they are an inspiring picture of the past. I wonder if dreams are destiny that went horribly wrong. I wonder if there is anything worse then being dead and still being alive to suffer it. I wonder if dreams are simply the distractions of the all important here and now. They might be.

There are some questions that are unanswerable; like, for example, “Why does everyone run towards a blood-curdling scream?” It is contrary to normal sense but mysteriously intuitive. Like Dreaming.

New Noise.

Leave your name and:
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you

Thanks to my friend Carissa for this.
e.d.