reading through a house season two dvd review...

beautifully written, but i realized in this description:

A mesmerizing Hugh Laurie completely inhabits the character of Dr. Gregory House. A cynical idealist, he expects the worst in people, then is disappointed when he's proven right. He's insensitive but not uncompassionate. The most moral character to ever have a drinking, gambling, and hooker problem, and the most likeable character to treat people with such utter disdain, House is as reckless with his patients as he is with himself, though with better cause. He gets the cases no one else can figure out, and each episode revolves around his search for the medical truth, which is usually buried in some personal truth.

That may be the show's formula, but it's not entirely predictable. Plot and character revelations are often as surprising as they are logical. Everybody lies, as House says, and the motive for the lies tends to be the key to the case and to the character.

is me.

uh oh.


(post 300)

pride & prejudice: elizabeth bennet on humor

as an aside, im kind of a sucker for keira knightley, particularly for the roles she picks - usually characterized by strength and stubbornness and loyalty.


(p. 42)
"Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!" cried Elizabeth. "That is an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would be a great loss to me to have many such acquaintance. I dearly love a laugh."

"Miss Bingley," said he, "has given me credit for more than can be. The wisest and best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is ajoke."

"Certainly," replied Elizabeth --- "there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenver I can."

psalm 104

O Lord My God, You Are Very Great

104:1 Bless the Lord, O my soul!
O Lord my God, you are very great!
You are clothed with splendor and majesty,
2 covering yourself with light as with a garment,
stretching out the heavens like a tent.
3 He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters;
he makes the clouds his chariot;
he rides on the wings of the wind;
4 he makes his messengers winds,
his ministers a flaming fire.

5 He set the earth on its foundations,
so that it should never be moved.
6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
7 At your rebuke they fled;
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
8 The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
to the place that you appointed for them.
9 You set a boundary that they may not pass,
so that they might not again cover the earth.

10 You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills;
11 they give drink to every beast of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;
they sing among the branches.
13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate,
that he may bring forth food from the earth
15 and wine to gladden the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine
and bread to strengthen man's heart.

16 The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17 In them the birds build their nests;
the stork has her home in the fir trees.
18 The high mountains are for the wild goats;
the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.

19 He made the moon to mark the seasons; [1]
the sun knows its time for setting.
20 You make darkness, and it is night,
when all the beasts of the forest creep about.
21 The young lions roar for their prey,
seeking their food from God.
22 When the sun rises, they steal away
and lie down in their dens.
23 Man goes out to his work
and to his labor until the evening.

24 O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. [2]

27 These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
30 When you send forth your Spirit, [3] they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.

31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works,
32 who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke!
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
35 Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more!
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Praise the Lord!

useless facts that might one day become useful!

well, at least theyre good conversation starters.

1. Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the western Pacific.

2. Blondes have more hair than dark haired people do.

3. Belgium is the only country that has never imposed censorship for adult films.

4. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.

5. Bees kill more people a year than sharks do.

6. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow film down so you could see his moves.

7. A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside.

8. Brazil is the only country to have played in every World Cup soccer tournament.

9. Bulls are colorblind, it is the motion of the cape which angers them.

10. Babe Ruth kept a lettuce leaf under his hat to keep cool during a game.

11. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

12. Cards may not be played in the street with a Native American.

13. Broccoli and cauliflower are the only vegetables that are flowers.

14. Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed and continue living.

15. China has more English speakers than the United States.

16. By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds.

17. Cheese is the oldest of all man-made foods.

18. Before 1850, golf balls were made of leather and were stuffed with feathers.

19. Bill Clinton is the only President ever to be elected twice without ever receiving 50% of the popular vote. He had 43 percent in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996.

20. Children grow faster in the springtime.

21. By the time a child finishes elementary school she will have witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television.

22. A healthy human eye can distinguish between 500 shades of gray.

23. Banana plants are the largest plants on earth without a woody stem. They are actually giant herbs of the same family as lilies, orchids and palms.

24. Casanova wore condoms made of linen.

25. A man and woman in Mexico city were engaged for 67 yrs and finally married at the age of 82 yrs.

26. Back in the mid to late 80s, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered 100% compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

27. A Horse has 18 more bones than a Human.

28. Barbers are forbidden by law from shaving a man's chest in Omaha, Nebraska.

29. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis sativa (marijuana) on their plantations.

30. A kangaroo can jump up to 3 meters high and leap up to 8 meters.

A Rat With A Whisk And A Dream

By KIM SEVERSON
Published: June 13, 2007

Correction Appended

FOR someone who works in a restaurant, watching a rat try to become a chef might seem like just another day at work.


or movie audiences, a rat with culinary aspirations might be more appealing. Especially if it’s a rat that the chef Thomas Keller helped teach to cook.

The rat is Remy, the animated French star of “Ratatouille,” the summer offering from Pixar Animation Studios that opens June 29.

While earlier Pixar projects centered on child-friendly subjects like bugs and monsters, this one takes viewers deep into the world of French haute cuisine.

The story is a classic underdog tale that leans heavily on Cyrano de Bergerac. Remy, a food-obsessed rat with an exceptional sense of smell, dreams of becoming a chef. To get there, he teams up with Linguini, a clueless garbage boy at Gusteau’s, a once-great Parisian restaurant that has fallen into disarray since the death of its chef, Auguste Gusteau. Remy teaches the lowly kitchen worker to cook dishes that impress even the powerful food critic Anton Ego, who is given voice by the actor Peter O’Toole.

Although the story line has its charms, the precisely rendered detail of a professional kitchen will appeal to the food-obsessed.

The Pixar crew took cooking classes, ate at notable restaurants in Paris and worked alongside Mr. Keller at the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.

“As a former actor and dancer, I have spent a lot of time in restaurants, but I had no idea of that vast difference between France and America, and especially the three-star restaurants in Paris,” said Brad Lewis, the producer.

The spectacle of French service was of particular note, and the film’s examination of how it can fade was influenced by studying La Tour d’Argent, a centuries-old Paris restaurant that lost two of its three Michelin stars. The cheese course in the film is copied directly from the one at the Parisian restaurant Hélène Darroze.

Gusteau’s is an amalgam of several restaurants in Paris, including Guy Savoy, Le Train Bleu and Taillevent. At a staff meeting at Taillevent, Mr. Lewis finally understood the intensity of high-level service.

“They had recorded that one woman took 10 minutes between her first sip of white Burgundy and her second,” he said. “So they concluded that the wine was too cold and were going to adjust accordingly.”

The intricacies of wine service in the movie are but one detail dedicated eaters will appreciate. The curve of the copper-bottomed sauce pans, the steam from a pot of soup or even the way slices of leek fall off a knife are expertly rendered.

The characters that inhabit Gusteau’s kitchen are drawn with precision, too. There is the gruff cook who might have killed a man. The only woman in the kitchen epitomizes stereotypical French rudeness. But she eventually warms to the garbage boy, taking time to explain that getting the freshest produce requires a bribe and that the only way to tell if a baguette is fresh is by cracking off a piece and listening to the sound of the crust.

No character understands what it is to be a great chef better than Remy, the rat, who is furious that Gusteau’s image is being used to sell frozen food on American TV.

When the late chef, who appears to Remy as a guiding spirit, suggests that anyone can cook, Remy’s response will be applauded by those who follow chefs the way others follow baseball players. “Well, yeah, anyone can,” the rat says. “That doesn’t mean anyone should.”

The team at Pixar, which is owned by Disney, worked with Mr. Keller and other chefs to create a menu for the restaurant. Michael Warch, manager of the film’s sets and layout department, also holds a culinary degree. He used the kitchens at the Pixar studios in the San Francisco Bay Area to recreate dishes for the animators to study.

Throughout the film, the characters work on dishes like steamed pike with butter, braised fennel and heirloom potatoes or grilled petit filet mignon with oxtail and baby onion ragout topped with truffled bordelaise and shaved Perigord truffle. The idea was to create food so authentic that people would leave the theater with an urge to cook and eat. But it turns out that computer-generated food can look much scarier than a computer-generated bug or car.

“We didn’t want something to look really photo-real,” said Sharon Calahan, the director of photography and lighting. “If it starts looking too real, it starts getting pretty disturbing.”

A scallop, for example, needs ridges and bumps to look realistic. But add too many and the shellfish becomes grotesque.

Bread, particularly the soft crumb inside, was difficult to create because it is so familiar.

So were green vegetables, for similar reasons. “Lettuce was really challenging,” Ms. Calahan said. The human eye is particularly sensitive to shades of green because there are so many variations in nature. Lettuce can easily appear too minty or a jarring lime green. “Your brain knows what color lettuce is,” she said.

In fact, the filmmakers said that almost all the food was a challenge, even the bits that were rotting in a compost heap.

“It was actually more difficult to make the food look realistically bad,” she said. “The trick was figuring which parts of the food to exaggerate.”

Mr. Keller, who has lent his name to a companion children’s cookbook for the film and is the voice of a restaurant patron, helped guide the culinary education of the Pixar team and subsequently became friends with Mr. Lewis, the producer.

The chef’s handiwork is most evident in the final dish, the one on which the entire plot hangs. The dish is the movie’s namesake, and needs to be so special it will impress the restaurant critic.

Mr. Keller cooked a fancy layered version of ratatouille called confit byaldi. “We had to think about what would make the food transformed,” Mr. Keller said. “What would transport him back to his childhood in a Proustian sort of way.”

With the Pixar team recording his every move, Mr. Keller had a last-minute inspiration as he took a palette knife to the vegetables. “When I picked up a layer of the byaldi and it compacted, I realized at that moment how the dish would come together.” The solution was fanning the vegetables out accordion-style.

Mr. Keller, who describes “Ratatouille” as “extraordinarily clever,” said he is impressed with the film’s dedication to kitchen detail. But he is more taken with its ultimate message: in a nutshell, don’t listen to anyone but yourself.

“It’s about somebody who is willing to take the risk, to take the gamble on doing something regardless of what the critic is going to say about it,” Mr. Keller said.

And he suggests people focus on the message, not the rodent.

“It’s not so much about a rat. It’s about ideals.”

Julia Moskin contributed reporting.

"Africa's a continent. Not a crisis."

echoes many of the frustrations im sure kristines thesis on the (red) campaign addressed.



i've been thinking about it a lot lately, africa. i'm not sure why. i'll keep sifting, it'll come to me.

the buzz totally worked though. i went out and bought the vanity fair issue. mine has maya angelou & chris rock on the cover.



kind of similarly, the new fast company issue features china as a global economy as well. i really need to subscribe. i guess in september when i move back to glacier point.

read here: the next cultural revolution.

Trevor Corson - Boiling Point

hm. would the slow food movement constitute a thoughtfulness toward food that hints of zen?



cause yeah i think i'd be one of them. that machine thats described scares the heck out of me.

michael frost - not community... communitas!

alternative look:

so i went back to study [acts], and i realized that the blissful early days of the jerusalem church were also short lived. in fact, i realized that the inclusivity of sharing possessions, eating together, and gathering under the apostles' teaching, as delicious as it seemed, was actually a contravention of jesus' command for them to take the gospel to the very ends of the earth. as i read on, i realized that the early jerusalem church was in fact a community in transition. once a traveling missionary community of disciples, centered on jesus, it had become a static group, camped in jerusalem. but this was not its intended future. after the persecution that resulted from stephen's bold and offensive ministry (acts 6-7), the church was scattered, and through that dispersion it rediscovered its original mandate: to be a missionary people, a community on the move.

i began to fear that we had lost something important in all our work building community. i began to wonder whether christians don't do well to build community as an end in itself. we build community incidentally, when our imaginations and energies are captured by a higher, even nobler cause. though it took me a while, i came to realize that christian community results from the greater cause of christian mission.

YES!

i think the unity of a shared vision is greater than that of a shared need for something to do on friday nights. etc. (gross generalization i know) - but as in all things, we need to continue to become more missional people driven by grace-gratitude-unto missional hearts.

he adds,

have you ever been on a short-term mission trip overseas and felt such a special, intimate, profound sense of connection with your fellow travelers? when building houses in mexico or working in orphanages in haiti, we connect with other christians at a level entirely different from the one experienced each week in our local church. this isn't just because of the exotic locations or the spicy food. it's because we are in a liminal state. we are not living at home, nor are we really living in mexico. we are in transition - a resident in neither place, really.

lamentations 3 (esv)

Great Is Your Faithfulness

3:1 I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
2 he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
3 surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.

4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
he has broken my bones;
5 he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
6 he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.

7 He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy;
8 though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
9 he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
he has made my paths crooked.

10 He is a bear lying in wait for me,
a lion in hiding;
11 he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate;
12 he bent his bow and set me
as a target for his arrow.

13 He drove into my kidneys
the arrows of his quiver;
14 I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,
the object of their taunts all day long.
15 He has filled me with bitterness;
he has sated me with wormwood.

16 He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
17 my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness [1] is;
18 so I say, “My endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the Lord.”

19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
20 My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; [2]
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man that he bear
the yoke in his youth.

28 Let him sit alone in silence
when it is laid on him;
29 let him put his mouth in the dust—
there may yet be hope;
30 let him give his cheek to the one who strikes,
and let him be filled with insults.

31 For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
33 for he does not willingly afflict
or grieve the children of men.

34 To crush underfoot
all the prisoners of the earth,
35 to deny a man justice
in the presence of the Most High,
36 to subvert a man in his lawsuit,
the Lord does not approve.

37 Who has spoken and it came to pass,
unless the Lord has commanded it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that good and bad come?
39 Why should a living man complain,
a man, about the punishment of his sins?

40 Let us test and examine our ways,
and return to the Lord!
41 Let us lift up our hearts and hands
to God in heaven:
42 “We have transgressed and rebelled,
and you have not forgiven.

43 “You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us,
killing without pity;
44 you have wrapped yourself with a cloud
so that no prayer can pass through.
45 You have made us scum and garbage
among the peoples.

46 “All our enemies
open their mouths against us;
47 panic and pitfall have come upon us,
devastation and destruction;
48 my eyes flow with rivers of tears
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

49 “My eyes will flow without ceasing,
without respite,
50 until the Lord from heaven
looks down and sees;
51 my eyes cause me grief
at the fate of all the daughters of my city.

52 “I have been hunted like a bird
by those who were my enemies without cause;
53 they flung me alive into the pit
and cast stones on me;
54 water closed over my head;
I said, ‘I am lost.’

55 “I called on your name, O Lord,
from the depths of the pit;
56 you heard my plea, ‘Do not close
your ear to my cry for help!’
57 You came near when I called on you;
you said, ‘Do not fear!’

58 “You have taken up my cause, O Lord;
you have redeemed my life.
59 You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord;
judge my cause.
60 You have seen all their vengeance,
all their plots against me.

61 “You have heard their taunts, O Lord,
all their plots against me.
62 The lips and thoughts of my assailants
are against me all the day long.
63 Behold their sitting and their rising;
I am the object of their taunts.

64 “You will repay them, [3] O Lord,
according to the work of their hands.
65 You will give them [4] dullness of heart;
your curse will be [5] on them.
66 You will pursue them [6] in anger and destroy them
from under your heavens, O Lord.” [7]

GLEN PHILLIPS
Don't Need Anything

I've got gardens growing, got quiet days
clothes on my back, food on my plate
got friends to help me if I call for them
don't need anything I don't have

got eyes to see this beautiful land
feet to take me where I want to stand
if there's work to be done, I've got these two strong hands
I don't need anything I don't have
I don't need anything I don't have

some years the rains don't come
some years floods clear out the plains
but if those waters wash this town away
I would still have enough if she was with me

I've got a roof overhead, stars if I choose
but I've no need to fly, I've got no itch to move
got almost nothing, but I understand
that I don't need anything that I don't have
I don't need anything that I don't have

this is pretty intense. and smart.

On a rare sunny late afternoon in Half Moon Bay, 20 minutes south of San Francisco, 70 people mingled at a beachside cocktail party. As they sipped blush wine and watched the waves rush up on shore, the barefoot guests, faces glowing in the late sunlight, marveled at the break in the summer fog and looked upon a surreal tableau.

A stark 80-foot shale cliff towered over a long, slightly curved table set with white linen and elegantly mismatched plates. The sea’s high-water mark etched a line of dark sand two feet from the last chair. Up the beach a safe distance from the water, mesquite smoke drifted from a pavilion where guest chef Lewis Rossman and his staff, of Cetrella Bistro and Café in Half Moon Bay, labored over a grill.

Guests had come to this dinner, hosted by a group called Outstanding in the Field, for a simple reason: to eat at this table between bare earth and open sky with the same farmers, fishermen and winemakers who had coaxed the crops to ripeness and the seafood to the plate...

isaiah 30 (esv)

Do Not Go Down to Egypt

30:1 “Ah, stubborn children,” declares the Lord,
“who carry out a plan, but not mine,
and who make an alliance, [1] but not of my Spirit,
that they may add sin to sin;
2 who set out to go down to Egypt,
without asking for my direction,
to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh
and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!
3 Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame,
and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation.
4 For though his officials are at Zoan
and his envoys reach Hanes,
5 everyone comes to shame
through a people that cannot profit them,
that brings neither help nor profit,
but shame and disgrace.”

6 An oracle on the beasts of the Negeb.

Through a land of trouble and anguish,
from where come the lioness and the lion,
the adder and the flying fiery serpent,
they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys,
and their treasures on the humps of camels,
to a people that cannot profit them.
7 Egypt's help is worthless and empty;
therefore I have called her
“Rahab who sits still.”


A Rebellious People

8 And now, go, write it before them on a tablet
and inscribe it in a book,
that it may be for the time to come
as a witness forever. [2]
9 For they are a rebellious people,
lying children,
children unwilling to hear
the instruction of the Lord;
10 who say to the seers, “Do not see,”
and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right;
speak to us smooth things,
prophesy illusions,
11 leave the way, turn aside from the path,
let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”
12 Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel,
“Because you despise this word
and trust in oppression and perverseness
and rely on them,
13 therefore this iniquity shall be to you
like a breach in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse,
whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant;
14 and its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel
that is smashed so ruthlessly
that among its fragments not a shard is found
with which to take fire from the hearth,
or to dip up water out of the cistern.”

15 For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
“In returning [3] and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
But you were unwilling, 16 and you said,
“No! We will flee upon horses”;
therefore you shall flee away;
and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”;
therefore your pursuers shall be swift.
17 A thousand shall flee at the threat of one;
at the threat of five you shall flee,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain,
like a signal on a hill.


The Lord Will Be Gracious

18 Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.

19 For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. 20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. 21 And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. 22 Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”

23 And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, 24 and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. 25 And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. 26 Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

27 Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar,
burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; [4]
his lips are full of fury,
and his tongue is like a devouring fire;
28 his breath is like an overflowing stream
that reaches up to the neck;
to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction,
and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads astray.

29 You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel. 30 And the Lord will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and storm and hailstones. 31 The Assyrians will be terror-stricken at the voice of the Lord, when he strikes with his rod. 32 And every stroke of the appointed staff that the Lord lays on them will be to the sound of tambourines and lyres. Battling with brandished arm, he will fight with them. 33 For a burning place [5] has long been prepared; indeed, for the king it is made ready, its pyre made deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.

Jaeson Ma - Constipated Christians

In our Christianity, we feel like we have to get more knowledge and more understanding and what happens is that we go to the next conference, the next tape, the next cd, the next person, the next inspirational message, the next altar call and we become what I call constipated Christians. We get so much good stuff but guess what it goes nowhere because we're not going...One of my favorite revivalists his name is Charles Finney, he brought the great revival, the second great awakening and you know what his definition of revival was? This was his definition of revival: Revival is notihng more than a total commitment to be radically obedient to God. It's not about the numbers, its not about getting hit by the holy spirit and feeling lightning bolts on you, its not about doing this or having a special encounter, its simply saying Jesus, what did you say to do and doing it. He says, "If you love me, you will obey my commands" John 14, Isn't it interesting that in Acts 5 it says "and he will give the holy spirit to those who obey him and we wonder why the Holy Spirit isnt working in our life maybe because we've been disobedient to God. We wonder why we dont see miralces happening in our lives and the holy spirit moving in our lives, maybe because we have no been obedient to God's word..now we don't obey out of fear, we obey because it's our blessing to obey its our blessing to see God bless others, its a blessing to see the spirit of God move.

Whether you're a cessationalist, a discessationalist, a charismatic it doesnt matter to me what matters to me is whether or not we obey the word of God. Do we teach people more information, do we teach people more knowledge or do we teach people more obedience? If we just clap our hands, say amen, take notes and get entertained sunday to sunday, large group to large group, bible study to bible study but theres no obedience to the word of God in our life, we will not see revival in our own life we will not see revival in the nations.

So I ask us tonight 9:10 10 minutes over, you know whats funny? I dont know if you guys had that guy from Africa Speak, Georgio Des Jr. He said the number one reason he believes other nations in the world, I've seen revival in Africa, Indonesia, China, Argentina, its amazing there's 25,000 people coming to Christ everyday in Africa, 27,00 everyday in South America 38-39,00 everyday in China, revival is breakign out the book of Acts is breaking out all around outside of the West...and he says I believe the biggest stumbling block in America is not anything else but one thing: time. We wanna put the holy spirit in a box, we wanna put him in a program we wanna tell him what we want him to do and not let welcome him in to let him do what he does best, change lives. I'm gonna ask us to night very simple, will you be willing to go, will you go? If you made converts but not made disciples, if Jesus is not lord of your life will you make him lord of your life tonight? He's either Lord of all or none at all. Not even 99% it has to be 100% everything laid down, then freedom comes. You hold onto it you're stuck in your own sin, your own selfishness, your own fear and that is your prison. But the moment you let go is the moment you're set free in Christ Jesus. You know the word lordship we think of it as something negative. Oh in America its all about me, we the people its a democracy, you know the kingdom of God is a not a democracy, its a kingdom. Its not about what we want to do, the king says I am the king and i say this and thats how its done. we say no you do what we want to do he says no i am the king Lordship means to be under protection. It's not just some suffering its to be submitted and I'm saying are we submitted wholeheartedly in Christ because we trust him so much we know he loves us so much we cannot do anything else but follow him. Are you willing to obey him not just learn about him are you willing to teach others to obey?

also been reading about shane claiborne and the "monastic way" recently:
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/newmonastics/index.shtml




came across this article:
http://www.burnsidewriterscollective.com/social/2007/05/no_clothes_for_a_year.php


really thinking about it. hm.

donald miller - a better storyteller

fascinating article about the power of story in sharing the gospel.




i agree with his idea that people are over rules and formulas. i'm not sure if i agree to the extent that the main role of a christian is to be a better storyteller, but it does sound like a right step.


and maybe this is nitpicky, but...

A 40-something woman approaches Miller with two plastic grocery bags filled with copies of his books. "I've already bought Blue Like Jazz 13 times," she gushes. "But I gotta have all these to give to people. I'm a Jesus girl, but I also like to go out and do tequila shots with my friends. This is a book I can give to those friends."

and this following observation:

Miller's words are a mirror for his fans, and they love what they see—so could his popularity be read as (yet another) indication of our culture's deep narcissism? It's a fair critique in an age when people document the minutiae of their lives in written and visual media—blogs, YouTube, cell-phone pictures sent at every passing moment. Such self-expression is not testimony; it's not a profession of anything but self. It is public without being communal.

The danger for Miller is that fans would see themselves in his writing, be comforted that those selves are as they should be, and believe that there is no conflict between loving Jesus and, say, doing tequila shots with your friends.

is this not alarmist?
i've always shied away from extremes.
but i dont see how this is immediately, unquestionably sinful... done casually.
(is it that it's so hard to do this casually?)

boundless.org - five principles of discernment

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001494.cfm

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001495.cfm



really really good articles.