So, Jesus and the apostle Paul are givens and I am not one to offer super-spiritual thoughts in things like this. Here are my five biggest influences in the way I think and work.
#5 – P.T. Barnum
For all of his quirks, P.T. Barnum was probably the greatest showman and entrepreneur of American history. He knew what people wanted before they knew they wanted. Some of his skill was learned, but most of it was just innate. He gave an unbelievably hurt and broken nation a form of entertainment they had never imagined and changed the world around him with performers and presentations. He single handedly brought America into the global entertainment market.
#4 – Bill Bryson
A few years ago, my wife bought me a book as a birthday present. The book, A Walk in the Woods, was by an Iowan who had lived in England for twenty years and at the time lived in Hanover, New Hampshire. His name was Bill Bryson and he made me laugh – made me laugh so hard I fell out of bed. Since then, I have bought or traded for almost every book Bryson has written. Bryson has influenced my style of humor and writing more than anyone else I’ve ever encountered.
#3 – Donald Miller/Brian McLaren
I know, they’re not one person; but I read Blue Like Jazz and A New Kind of Christian back to back and I think of them as one book, even if they aren’t. The composite of these two writers gave me permission to pursue Christ as I am rather than becoming something distinctly ‘Christian’ to follow God. They catalyzed my faith and my ministry.
#2 – Michael Card
Michael Card is one of the best Bible teachers of our generation, and he is a staggering musician as well. While his style is not a popular one, he has taught me more in his music than I learned in Bible college. Every time he is in the area, I am there – in the front row if possible.
#1 – Rich Mullins
If there’s anything to be said about struggling faith, Rich Mullins said it and said it in meter. Good musicians are rare in Christianity, and good song writers are even more rare. Rich Mullins was both – more poet than theologian, with a heart’s longing for Christ that few Christians could ever lay claim to. My wife introduced me to him, and I own every CD of his work.
Filed under: Media, Movies and TV, Personal, Things We Shouldn't Discuss | Tags: beatles, Rain, tribute bands
If you haven’t noticed, I am a huge Beatles fan. I don’t collect memorabilia or walk around mourning John’s murder, but I love their music. The Beatles are, were, and will forever be the greatest rock band on earth.
I have very strong opinions about people messing with the Beatles, so I approach cover bands with serious trepidation. That being said, there are several Beatles tributes who have won some notoriety, among them 1964 and Beatlejuice. These bands do justice to the Beatles music by trying to replicate the music of the band as nearly as possible.
Recently we found out about a band called Rain who not only replicate the music but, as nearly as possible, try to replicate the experience of seeing a Beatles show. This I had to see!
Last night, Nichole and I went to a show with Greg and Lori Jones. Greg is one of our elders at Grace and a fellow Beatles aficionado. (Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that I love having elders in our church who like the stuff I like.)
All I can say is WOW.
Rain is, for all intents and purposes, the Beatles. Their work is absolutely extraordinary.
You have to understand that I listen intensely to Beatles music. I replay songs to hear subtleties in George’s guitar work. My wife and I listen to their harmonies and note movements in and around the melody. We crank up the bass and tell everyone to be quiet so we can pick out tempo changes in Ringo’s drumming.
And Rain does it all. They have the Beatles idiosyncrasies; they uncannily have their voices; and they produce the kind of chemistry that audiences love.
I think one of my favorite things about the show was their performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” The original recording of the song has an interesting history, and George never really liked it. Although it features the uncredited guitar work of Eric Clapton and is unquestionably one of the best songs on The Beatles, George Harrison thought it would be better as a more acoustic, orchestral setting that would feed into an electric guitar finale. You can hear George’s original idea on the Cirque de Soleil show soundtrack Love, with an orchestral arrangement by George Martin.
Rather than replicating the recording from The Beatles, Rain performs the song as an acoustic guitar piece and then “George” gets up and switches to a Les Paul Custom and lets loose on the solos and the acoustic song turns into a rock anthem. I loved it; loved it; LOVED IT! It was amazing. I seriously almost started crying because it was a tribute to George Harrison, who I hold in the highest regard as a musician. It was fitting and beautiful.
If you have a chance to enjoy this show, you have to do it. Lay down the money and see it.
It’s official. The sermon feed is up on iTunes. If you want to subscribe, go to the iTunes store and search for Grace Baptist Merrimack. I suppose you could use other searches, like my name or something, but that was the one that worked for me.
Filed under: Church, Heritage & Grace Merger, Media, Movies and TV | Tags: captain kirk, elders, kobayashi maru, star trek
Last night, we had a joint elders meeting. Our merged congregation has been such a miraculous thing to start with that I think all of us are still kind of trying to keep up with the Holy Spirit. It is such a privilege to serve with these guys, and I’m not just saying that to impress people or convince you how cool our church is. They are just great guys who love the Lord and want to see Christ’s vision for our church.
But I digress…
As we were talking, one of the guys referred to a particular situation as a Kobayashi Maru. That reference alone made me love these guys even more!
Now, if you’re not a geek, you probably don’t know what that is, but as you can probably figure out from the picture, it comes from Star Trek.
The Kobayashi Maru is a training scenario which, according to the alternate timeline presented in the most recent Star Trek, was designed by Spock. It is no-win scenario designed to push cadets beyond their training and make them accept inevitable failure. Cadet James T. Kirk tackled the scenario three times and the last time he altered the programming of the simulation to allow him to win it.
When Kirk is accused of cheating he insists, “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.” In other words, there is always a way out. In his case, he did to the simulation what the situation was doing to him.
Back to our elders meeting. When the Kobayashi Maru was referenced, Greg Jones said, “So, you have to cheat?” And I instinctively responded, “Kirk did not cheat! There’s no such thing as a no-win scenario.”
I believe that. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a no-win scenario. Sure, some people are challenging and some situations result in less than the best results, but ultimately, a ‘win’ for the church is glorifying God through Christ. And THAT can happen anywhere and in any situation.
Filed under: General, Media, Movies and TV | Tags: al gore, avatar, dances with wolves, james cameron, orson scott card
All the hype, and I have to be honest, I don’t really like James Cameron’s movies so I was not expecting much in the way of originality. In other words, my expectations for this movie were not exactly high.
It met my expectations. It was half a billion dollars of beautiful mediocrity. Sure, the film looked absolutely amazing. But the characters and the stories were so derivative.
For example, I’ve seen the aliens who were connected so intimately to their ecosystem in Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead. I have heard the natives struggling against the cold industrialists in any number of films, although none quite as drawn out and painful as Dances with Wolves. And the preachy environmentalism was drawn directly from An Inconvenient Truth.
At over two and a half hours, Avatar was about as long as your average Cameron movie. It had the romance angle, the stunning visuals…yawn. If it hadn’t cost me $12, I probably would have spent most of the movie in the lobby. Actually, come to think of it, I had to go to the bathroom a lot, so I probably did spend a lot of it in the lobby.
Filed under: Church, Marriage and Family, Media, Movies and TV, Personal | Tags: music, nichole divietro, thyroid surgery, worship
Hey everyone out there in the blogosphere!
My wife, Nichole, is going to be having surgery on her thyroid on Monday, September 14. It is kind of a big deal because she is our music director and, to be frank, the most emotive singer I’ve ever known personally.
There is a potential for damage to her vocal chords – actually to the nerves that control pitch and tone in her voice. This is a huge prayer request for us. We believe our Sovereign God has given her this voice, this tool to bring glory to him and we’re trusting him to protect her voice so she can continue to lead our church in worship as only she can.
Here are a couple samples of her singing (which she is going to kill me for posting because they are candid and really unedited.)
(Also, as a side note, pray for our finances. The cost of the surgery is pretty hefty. We’ve already racked up a couple thousand dollars worth of bills just with consultations and tests.)
Filed under: Media, Movies and TV, Personal | Tags: BBC, David Tennant, doctor who, Georgia Moffett, Jennie, Matt Smith, The Doctor
I am continually astounded at the female casting in the revival of “Doctor Who.” Working on getting caught up on all the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) episodes, I watched “The Doctor’s Daughter” tonight, and yet again, they have brought in another brilliant female talent.
While the character of Martha Jones is still my favorite, I have a new favorite as well – the Doctor’s daughter, Jennie.
She is portrayed by Georgia Moffett, the real-life daughter of the actor who played the fifth doctor, Peter Davison.
Here are some of the reasons I love the idea of Jennie:
- The entire origin episode revolves around new life and regenerating something that is dead. We see The Doctor’s struggle with death in light of his own immortality.
- They introduced her as a Time Lord without any of the Time Lord baggage. The result is that she wants to be a hero.
- You really don’t know where she is going or what she is thinking. She is an anomaly in the midst of all of The Doctor’s own anomalies.
In short, the idea is absolutely brilliant! (And I’m not saying that because Georgia is a delightful looking girl, which she is.) It gives us a chance to see a different direction for The Doctor as he nears his final regeneration. You see, Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times and when the 11th Doctor makes his debut in the 2009 Christmas Special, he will have only two regenerations left.
Could Jennie, who has already regenerated once, be trained by the Doctor? Could she be the 11th Doctor’s companion? After all, the actor portraying the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) is only two years older than Jennie. Would make for an interesting dynamic, wouldn’t it?
And since she appears to have spontaneously regenerated due to the influence of a terra-forming device and maintained her physical appearance, could she be something entirely new? A type of Time Lord we have never seen before?
Jennie’s presence could practically reinvent Doctor Who if the writers have the guts to really let the story move. It makes me eagerly anticipate the new season and for the first time, I’m looking forward to seeing Matt Smith take on the role.
Filed under: General, Media, Movies and TV, Personal | Tags: enV Touch, LG, verizon wireless
I got a new gadget a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t been able to post about it until now because we had an ongoing series of posts dealing with ‘7 Deadly Thoughts.’
After years of using AT&T Wireless, we decided to switch to Verizon Wireless because almost everyone we know is on that network.
Because I generally ride my bicycle everywhere, compact and light are important to me. That’s why my primary computer is an Acer Aspire One 8.9” netbook. It is also why I went with the enV Touch when it came time to buy a new phone. I wanted something I could keep my calendar on without having to whip out my computer. I also wanted to be able to post to my blog, facebook, and even twitter. The enV Touch has all of that, so I am happy.
The funny thing about the new phone is that suddenly, I am connected to people. I am calling people, texting, and generally enjoying being connected. It is funny how one little piece of technology has completely changed my experience of long distance communication. I am actually enjoy talking on this phone.
This is why the Scriptures often speak of being RENEWED and REVITALIZED in the Spirit. It is not enough to just have the one nice thing you do all the time and is comfortably well-worn. The Spirit will renew things – doing the same thing in a different, fresh way. It keeps us on our toes, but it also opens doors to us that were there all the time but we didn’t see.
Just something to think about.
Ok, so if you haven’t watched the video of Britain’s Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle, watch it RIGHT NOW of this post won’t make any sense.
Watched it? Ok.
This video has 20,000,000+ hits as of 2:30 this afternoon. That is since it was posted on Saturday. Yeah, that’s over 4,000,000 hits per day.
Why is the video so popular? Because Susan is a nobody who spent her life taking care of her mom and she has this amazing voice that is better than any female vocal most of us have ever heard. When she talks, no one outside of Scotland can understand her brogue; but when she sings, the entire world is shaken.
It is cliché to say that we have learned a valuable lesson from Susan; but we really have. In a world where Simon Cowell (the same man who compliments Susan so profusely in the video) tells many contestants on American Idol that they “don’t have the look,” Susan is the anti-hero.
Unfortunately, her popularity will fade because we truly are obsessed with appearances and she is not one of the “pretty people” that we idolize. In fact, some of our fascination with her is tied to the fact that she is NOT one of them.
Makes me wonder how much of our Christian faith is “pretty” and completely devoid of spiritual substance. We look for the pretty as well – the big churches, the great looking musicians, the nice bindings on books. We reject the unattractive; and I think we are the worse for it.
Two Things I’ve Seen Recently
Gandalf Falls
I was watching Fellowship of the Rings this morning. Since there’s no way I could watch the entire Lord the Rings trilogy at one shot (the extended edition is about 14 hours of movie!), I have been working my way through it about 20 minutes at a time. This morning, I watched the scene where Gandalf faces off against the Balrog.
After Gandalf slips from the bridge Khazad-dum, there is this scene where the Hobbits grieve his passing. Aragon rouses Boromir, Legolas and Gimli and they move the Hobbits into action. There is this particular scene where Aragon and Frodo share a silent moment of grief for their fallen friend. Ultimately, this grief – the emotion of losing a loved one – is part of the complex motivation that moves Frodo to the final destruction of the One Ring.
Hawkeye’s Breakdown
Last night, I watched the final episode of M*A*S*H, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen”. The episode shows Hawkeye finally coming to grips with watching a woman smother her own child to protect a bus-full of wounded soldiers, doctors and refugees from a Chinese patrol. For the entire run of the show, Hawkeye had used humor and silliness to disguise his absolute terror at being in the middle of a war. In this episode, he is confronted with death he cannot avoid and he finally lets down his veneer. His dreams of big city practice are shattered and he decides to go home to Crabapple Cove, Maine, and set up a small practice.
Hawkeye faces other problems as well – knowing he will never see his best friend again, saying goodbye to Margaret and realizing he can never go back to the way things were. We are left to wonder whether Hawkeye will ever be able to adjust to life after the war.
How Grief Moves Us Forward
Together, these scenes got me to thinking about how grief moves us forward. None of us enjoy the grief we experience over the loss of a loved one or the dissolution of a dream. We are not supposed to enjoy it; nor are we to glaze over it and pretend like it did not happen.
Grief can be paralyzing. It can also breed dependencies (alcohol, sleeping pills, etc.). Sometimes it causes us to repress emotions. It is a very powerful emotion, and grief can be dangerous if it is not properly understood and channeled.
In Fragile Stone, Michael Card included a song entitled “Mourning the Death of a Dream.”
Each time we say goodbye it’s harder than before
Even after all the pain of parting still we find
That we must mourn the death of the dreams we leave behind.
There is a certain tragedy to the Christian message. In fact, it is full of death and violence. It does not do the message of Jesus justice to pretend like it is not a violent grace. We often allow the violence and death to paralyze us. We don’t like it; we avoid it. Or we indulge in it and get lost in it (some “prophecy” experts do this, almost relishing the death and destruction in the Apocalypse).
But the reality is that grief, violence, and pain are part of the human experience. We can be moved forward or held back. The decision is ours.
To move forward, we must embrace grief. We must intentionally resist the urge to repress, bury or vent. Instead, we must see pain for what it is and let it make us stronger.
Have you ever noticed that the grief and pain emotions are much more intense than anything else humans experience – even sexual euphoria? They can override love, self-control and even logic. When we try to repress something that powerful, we are bound to do damage.
The same could be said for trying to make sense of these feelings. They are inherently nonsensical. Rather than trying to “sort them out”, we need to go through them and stop trying to control them. Control anger; control depression; but don’t try to control grief. Let it advance you; go through it.
Again, Michael Card called this “sacred sorrow.”
