Personal Favorites from 2008

Great Music:

Kanye West //808s and Heartbreak

Apples in Stereo //New Magnetic Wonder

Brooke Fraser //Albertine

Coldplay//Viva La Vida

Kings of Leon //Only by the Night

Black Kids //Wizards of Ahhhs

Bell X1 //Flock

Kyte //Kyte

Duffy //Rockferry

Books

Atonement //Ian McEwan

The Great Gatsby //F Scott Fitzgerald

Boy and Going Solo //Roald Dahl

Nine Stories //J.D. Salinger

Celebrate Recovery Bible

Movies:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Atonement

There Will Be Blood

Quantum of Solace

Cloverfield

Juno

Iron Man

No Country For Old Men

Australia

Ghost Town

Remembering Advent: My favorite Christmas Verse

A while back I was given a book called Living Your Strengths which through a series of questions breaks down your 5 greatest strengths. One of mine is Empathy…yes, this will lead to the part about my favorite Christmas verse, just stick with me. Here is how the book defines Empathy:

Empathy

You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective. You do not necessarily agree with each person’s perspective. You do not necessarily feel pity for each person’s predicament—this would be sympathy, not Empathy. You do not necessarily condone the choices each person makes, but you do understand. This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions. You anticipate the need. Where others grapple for words, you seem to find the right words and the right tone. You help people find the right phrases to express their feelings—to themselves as well as to others. You help them give voice to their emotional life. For all these reasons other people are drawn to you.

You might be thinking how exhausting it would be to feel all these feelings and sharing peoples perspectives, but I actually find so much joy in relating to others and meeting an emotional need.

Taking this into account about me I want to lead you to my favorite verse for Christmas:

Luke 2 :19

“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” NIV

“But Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often.” NLT

Because I need to feel, sense and experience what others are feeling, sensing and experiencing I have often wondered what Mary must have been going through from the time she was young and in love then visited by the angel and told she would give birth to the son of God. I love how the author takes a moment to give us a glimpse into the heart of Mary. She was not an unfeeling robot like some weirdo from a cult that never questions or wonders what is going on. There was a stolen moment of time where she, shaking her head in amazement, purposefully tucked these precious things away in her heart. Saving them deep inside her to reflect on time after time all through her life.

The reason this is so sweet and so very special to me is because I have so many moments with Jesus that I have tucked away deep in my heart. Times of sorrow, times of deep questions and pure joy. Times of quiet walks on a English countryside, or a picnic bench surrounded by Aspen. Times of incredible friendship, or unmerited love. The 3 minutes alone, in my wedding dress staring at the sunset, before my dad came to walk me down the aisle to my future husband.  All of these poignant  times are special because they are only between Jesus and I.

All these moments I have treasured in my heart and think about them often, just like Mary.

What I’d Say to the Martians by Jack Handey

People of Mars, you say we are brutes and savages. But let me tell you one thing: if I could get loose from this cage you have me in, I would tear you guys a new Martian a-hole. You say we are violent and barbaric, but has any one of you come up to my cage and extended his hand? Because, if he did, I would jerk it off and eat it right in front of him. “Mmm, that’s good Martian,” I would say.

You say your civilization is more advanced than ours. But who is really the more “civilized” one? You, standing there watching this cage? Or me, with my pants down, trying to urinate on you? You criticize our Earth religions, saying they have no relevance to the way we actually live. But think about this: if I could get my hands on that god of yours, I would grab his skinny neck and choke him until his big green head exploded.

We are a warlike species, you claim, and you show me films of Earth battles to prove it. But I have seen all the films about twenty times. Get some new films, or, so help me, if I ever get out of here I will empty my laser pistol into everyone I see, even pets.

Speaking of films, I could show you some films, films that portray a different, gentler side of Earth. And while you’re watching the films I’d sort of slip away, because guess what: the projector is actually a thing that shoots out spinning blades! And you fell for it! Well, maybe not now you wouldn’t.

You point to your long tradition of living peacefully with Earth. But you know what I point to? Your stupid heads.

You say there is much your civilization could teach ours. But perhaps there is something that I could teach you—namely, how to scream like a parrot when I put your big Martian head in a vise.

You claim there are other intelligent beings in the galaxy besides earthlings and Martians. Good, then we can attack them together. And after we’re through attacking them we’ll attack you.

I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves. But you have treated me like an intruder. Maybe it is not me who is the intruder but you.

No, not me. You, stupid.

You keep my body imprisoned in this cage. But I am able to transport my mind to a place far away, a happier place, where I use Martian heads for batting practice.

I admit that sometimes I think we are not so different after all. When you see one of your old ones trip and fall down, do you not point and laugh, just as we on Earth do? And I think we can agree that nothing is more admired by the people of Earth and Mars alike than a fine, high-quality cigarette. For fun, we humans like to ski down mountains covered with snow; you like to “milk” bacteria off of scum hills and pack them into your gill slits. Are we so different? Of course we are, and you will be even more different if I ever finish my homemade flamethrower.

You may kill me, either on purpose or by not making sure that all the surfaces in my cage are safe to lick. But you can’t kill an idea. And that idea is: me chasing you with a big wooden mallet.

You say you will release me only if I sign a statement saying that I will not attack you. And I have agreed, the only condition being that I can sign with a long sharp pen. And still you keep me locked up.

True, you have allowed me reading material—not the “human reproduction” magazines I requested but the works of your greatest philosopher, Zandor or Zanax or whatever his name is. I would like to discuss his ideas with him—just me, him, and one of his big, heavy books.

If you will not free me, at least deliver a message to Earth. Send my love to my wife, and also to my girlfriend. And to my children, if I have any anyplace. Ask my wife to please send me a bazooka, which is a flower we have on Earth. If my so-called friend Don asks you where the money I owe him is, please anally probe him. Do that anyway.

If you keep me imprisoned long enough, eventually I will die. Because one thing you Martians do not understand is that we humans cannot live without our freedom. So, if you see me lying lifeless in my cage, come on in, because I’m dead. Really.

Maybe one day we will not be the enemies you make us out to be. Perhaps one day a little Earth child will sit down to play with a little Martian child, or larva, or whatever they are. But, after a while, guess what happens: the little Martian tries to eat the Earth child. But guess what the Earth child has? A gun. You weren’t expecting that, were you? And now the Martian child is running away, as fast as he can. Run, little Martian baby, run!

I would like to thank everyone for coming to my cage tonight to hear my speech. Donations will be gratefully accepted. (No Mars money, please.) ♦

Remembering Advent

A Troublesome Joy

by Bill Wylie-Kellermann

In liturgical tradition, this is a Sunday associated with joy. However, we are not talking about the ersatz variety hawked by our own culture like a marketing device attached ephemerally to things. That joy, so called, proves itself empty and without substance, a commercial fiction. If these readings are any clue, however, Advent joy has content about which we may be scandalously concrete.

The “good news” of the Isaiah reading is a joy from beginning to end. It is like the very oil of gladness that blesses those who mourn in lonely exile here (61:3). Or like the smiles of prisoners who circle their outdate and see it now closely come. It is a joy outrageously specific in content.

For the exiles this litany of liberation is about homecoming. Hence, for example, the repair and rebuilding of ruined cities (61:4). It is the joy so concrete you purchase a hammer and a saw. Imagine this good news in Gaza or Sarajevo, south central Los Angeles or southwest Detroit.

It might be recalled that when Jesus preached on this text to inaugurate his ministry (Luke 4:16ff), he was driven not only out of the pulpit, but out of town. The plan was to stone him. We ought thereby to be mindful that not everyone shares this joy. The captors and binders and debtholders, the rich and the ruiners of cities, the mighty on thrones and the proud in the imagination of their hearts—in short, all those invested in the present order—find this joy to be a trouble.

Just so, the priests and Levites are sent out by the Jerusalem authorities to scrutinize and size up John (1:19). His vocational reply must surely mystify them, like a claim to be the voice of prophesy itself. And his troubling conviction, that the one who comes stands already in their midst, must drive them up a wall. Yet for us it remains a present and abiding joy.

looking for some feedback. please help.

I recently read the article below on RelevantMagazine.com and had some mixed feelings. I deeply respect my friends and readers opinions and wanted to share the article with you in hopes of hearing your heart on Rob Bell’s views. Please read and let me know what you think.

Rob Bell On Saving Christians

RELEVANT

Rob Bell is no stranger to new ideas. In his new book, Jesus Wants To Save Christians, he and Don Golden examine the disparities between the message of Christ and the message of the modern, Western Church. RELEVANT talked to Rob Bell about the ideas he and Golden explored.

In the intro of your new book, Jesus Wants To Save Christians, you describe the specific theology you are trying to articulate as a New Exodus perspective. How is this approach to reading the Bible different from a systematic or biblical theology?

Systematic theology dissects the story, cutting the body of the text into separate pieces for the purposes of study. Biblical theology puts the pieces back together into a living narrative. Both do so from a particular perspective influenced by the reader’s history, culture, politics and economic status. The New Exodus is one perspective, taken from the side of the weak and marginal and the God who cares about them. We’re interested in the big story because that’s what the Bible is—a story that unfolds across history. Who are the major characters, what’s the plot, how do we take part in it? Perhaps this is why Jesus can be hard to understand. It’s hard to understand the later parts if you haven’t been brought up to speed on where the story has been so far.

The literal and metaphorical idea of Exodus is a key part of the story God is telling—why don’t we hear more about the connection of Exodus in our churches today?

The Exodus is about the oppressed-slaves-being rescued. Less than two hundred years ago in our country, people in churches owned slaves. Exodus would have been an awkward story to tell in those settings, because after all, the Pharoah character is the bad guy. Needy people talk about Exodus. Jesus said it. It’s hard to enter the kingdom of heaven when you’re content with the kingdom you already have. If we aren’t talking about Exodus it’s because we aren’t looking for one. That’s when we know we need the needs of others. Their Exodus can become our own.

In your book you say, “To preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless is to miss the heart of God.” In what ways do you believe the church in America has “preserved prosperity” at others’ expense?

I think it’s wise to avoid generalities such as “the church” because whenever I hear people make sweeping generalizations about “the church” I always think “yes, but I know lots of churches where they are compassionate, where they are intellectually honest, etc…”Perhaps one obvious question a church can ask herself is “What percentage of our budget is spent on us and what is spent on others?

The Church has missed the heart of God by speaking out against abortion while keeping silent about war. Both are forms of violence used to preserve prosperity. Abortion is prenatal war against the powerless child. War is postnatal abortion that destroys innocent life. The kingdom is life for the fetus and life for the civilian. The church embodies this life in a world of expedient and preemptive killing.

It can be difficult to understand the plight of the powerless when we have so much, what can church leaders do to help connect their communities with the heart of God for those suffering right now?

The most powerful thing we’ve seen is when people make a friend from outside their bubble—through a tutoring program, a job skills training class, a Habitat for Humanity build project-when “the poor” has a name and a face and personality for you, everything changes. And check out http://www.thecommon.org. An eminently practical tool to help churches share needs and resources within the community.

The traditional mold for doing church has been to invite people to our churches and to build bigger programs and add more staff as we grow. As you describe, this inward focus is a luxury many international churches can’t afford. In what ways should we rethink our strategy for church success?

There are organizations (Look out, here comes a plug for coauthor, Don Golden’s work at World Relief) who connect western first world resourced churches with churches in the third world. When an entire church sees how just a little generosity on their part can seriously help another church, it’s intoxicating. They want to do more and it helps put their own blessing in perspective. We shouldn’t resist the tendency in our churches to launch building campaigns. Good things take place when Americans are unleashed in this sort of way. It rallies churches and gives them focus. People are energized, resources are shared and communities are served. We could, however, reconsider the kind of buildings we build. Ezekiel imagined a New Exodus people building a temple for the true worship of God. Only, the building he pictured was actually the people themselves. Imagine a church launching a million campaign to build up the poor, to house the homeless and to care for the sick? Peter saw Christians “like living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.” We should embrace the American gift of the grand and the great. Celebrate it and inspire it toward a more compelling vision of what it could be.

How can churches aid in subverting the myth of redemptive violence?

At a personal level, gossip and slander and divisive language is evil to the core. It causes stress fractures in us, our churches, and our culture that destroy any sort of common good. On the larger, national level, “question war.” The Roman Empire had this phrase “peace through victory” that is simply not true. Yet people still use it today. Jesus taught a third way—not passive acceptance because “that’s just how things are,” and not violent revenge, but a third way. Where are the experts in third way? Where are those Christians so thoroughly versed in third way that world leaders call them in when things get dodgy to give courageous, innovative, creative, freedom-loving (!) counsel on how not to resort to the same old guns and bombs.

As the title of the book suggests, Jesus Wants To Save Christians. In your opinion, what are the biggest things we need saving from?

Boredom. Which is really despair in its non-caffeinated form. And boxes. Where we live in fear and where we put those who unsettle us.

You describe the plan of God for the church to be a gift to the world. Many people today would say that the church is anything but. What are some crucial changes that our churches need to make to become a Eucharist that is broken and poured out for the world?

1. Master the art of doubt. Faith needs it to survive.

2. Surrender the compulsive need to constantly remind people that according to your worldview you’re going to heaven forever when you die and they’re going to burn in hell forever.

3. Celebrate the good and the true and the beautiful wherever and whenever you find it regardless of the label it wears or the person it comes from or the place you found it. All things are yours.

4. Remember that the tax collectors and prostitutes loved to feast with Jesus and the religious establishment gossiped about him and dissected his teachings and questioned his commitment to orthodoxy and eventually had him killed. There’s a lesson for us there.

Advent vs. “Countdown to Christmas”

My friend Seth emailed me, along with other friends and family, an invitation to join him in taking time to remember Advent through this holiday season. In all honesty due to lack of maturity, respect and time I desperately needed some spurring on in this area.

A few nights ago I found myself driving in my car, singing a Christmas hymn and overwhelmed at what Christ chose to do for us…for ME. I sang along, “O Come O Come Emmanuel” as I cried and said thank you over and over. Maybe it is because I am traveling the slow road through Celebrate Recovery and have a new sense of God’s grace in our lives and the price Christ paid for me, or maybe I am growing in my relationship with the Lord and see how His birth was the first step in our romance. Or maybe it is the Holy Spirit welling up inside me, emotional and rejoicing at the birth of Christ. Whatever the reason, I have decided to not let the next 22 days go by in stress, exhaustion and day-to-day living, as a countdown to Christmas Day. Instead I choose to honor Christ, his birth, his death, and resurrection each day in whatever ways I can.

Advent vs. “Countdown to Christmas” by James K.A. Smith I was jarred yesterday upon entering the sanctuary: the banners and colors for advent were black. A stark black cloth was draped across the pipes of the organ, and four narrow black banners stretched vertically across the front of the sanctuary–the first marked with a flame at the base, indicating the first Sunday of Advent. This dark simplicity was so jarring because it stood in such contrast to the festive colors that have lined the city streets, the labyrinths of the mall, and even the grocery store since before Thanksgiving. The reds and greens of a secularized “Christmas” are woven through public and private spaces, accented by glittering silvers and golds, and twinkling lights of all colors. Having gathered from this dazzling, festive space outside, the black banners of the sanctuary come as a shock. Which, of course, is exactly the point. Having been more deeply formed by Hallmark and Target, even Christians have confused Advent with our culture’s “countdown to Christmas.” Most specifically, we have forgotten that Advent is a penitential season akin to Lent. It is a season in which we are confronted with our need for a Savior, thus we relive Israel’s anquished hope and expectation. It is a season whose garments are the sackcloth and ashes of the prophets or the camel’s hair cloak of John the Baptist, not the jolly get-up of Santa Claus. Advent is a season marked by fasting in longing, living on the meagre diet of John’s locusts and honey–not the sumptuous extravagance of corporate “Christmas” banquets or the fabled indulgence of office “Christmas” parties. We’ve been trained to want Christmas without waiting; rather than a beginning, Christmas day has been turned into a culmination, an end point. After December 25, it’s all over except for the soon-to-be-broken toys and the mounds of leftovers. Thus we busily feast before the day. Advent gets subsumed by the frantic “countdown to Christmas.” But the result is the exact opposite of Advent which is a season of penitential longing, formative denial, and hungry hoping. This hungry hoping was captured, I thought, in a classic hymn we sang yesterday: O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. O come, thou Wisdom from on high, who orderest all things mightily; to us the path of knowledge show, and teach us in her ways to go. O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny; from depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory over the grave. O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here; disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight. Advent is not yet Christmas–it is preparation for that twelve-day feast. The black of the Advent sanctuary weighs heavily on us, the same way that the darkness of the Lenten sanctuary–culminating in the darkness of Tenebrae–births in us an affective, intense desire for the inbreaking of Resurrection Sunday, for the light and white and lillies of Easter! So, too, the black of the Advent sanctuary can foster in us a new repetition of Israel’s hoping. How I’m looking forward to the transformation on Christmas day! Then, in the midst of festive light and dazzling color, we’ll sing the refrain with new fervor: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel.

A Delightful Christmas Mix by Kate (with help from Dillon)

I made a mix for Christmas. Let me know if you would like a copy!

1. Coldplay-Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (live)

2. The Ravonettes-The Christmas Song

3. Sufjan Stevens-O Come O Come Emmanuel

4. The Polyphonic Spree-Happy Christmas

5. Eisley-The Winter Song

6. Copeland-Do You Hear What I Hear

7. Bright Eyes- Blue Christmas

8. Feist- Lo, How A Rose E’re Blooming

9. The Flaming Lips-Christmas at the Zoo

10. Death Cab for Cutie-Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

11. Pedro the Lion-God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Pictures from the Coldplay show

waiting for the lightrail and gettin’ pritty, pritty excited…

“clocks”

Chris Martin doing his stand up routine.

“in my place”

“The Scientist”

just a personal show in our section, no biggie.

just got to hold chris martins hand for a second, thats all.

no big deal.

For video of full songs visit my facebook or click HERE.

4 More Days, Shelley!!

Cellar Door

Dustin and I had a fabulous fall fest of our own this last week with carving a pumpkin, roasting the seeds and watching Donnie Darko. We watch Donnie Darko every year about this time, it is such a great movie and since it is set in October of 1988 it is the perfect creepy Halloween movie.

I have begun an awesome routine of wikipediaing (new word to our Enlgish vocab) movies as we watch them to find out facts about the production, the cast and behind-the-scenes info. It really enhances the movie watching experience. In Donnie Darko, Drew Barrymore plays a serioulsy post-modern english teacher, maybe a little too post modern for 1988, who is fired for a reading assigment of Graham Greene’s “The Destructors”. As she is packing her traditional I-have-just-been-fired plain cardboard box full of knick knacks from her desk, Donnie asks her why she has written the words “Cellar Door” on the black board behind her. She says to him that someone once said Cellar Door is the the most beautiful phrase in the English language. I went to wikipedia to see what she was referring to, and I love what I found:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cellar door is a combination of words in the English language once characterized by J. R. R. Tolkien to have an especially beautiful sound. In his 1955 essay “English and Welsh“, commenting on his affection towards the Welsh language, Tolkien wrote:

“Most English-speaking people…will admit that cellar door is ‘beautiful’, especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”

Tolkien also once used the phrase to illustrate a point about his writing process during an interview:

“Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me – ‘cellar door’, say. From that, I might think of a name, ‘Selador’, and from that a character, a situation begins to grow.”^[1]

Tolkien’s discourse is the most likely origin of this concept and the only documented one. Further insights into why Tolkien found the word cellar-door aesthetically pleasing can be found in considering texts in his constructed language of Quenya. The poem Namárië opens with the words:

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva.^[2]

Tolkien’s text contains a large number of sonorants and a paucity of stop consonants; only the brief stops /t/ and /d/ appear in the opening of his text. It contains many open syllables and few consonant clusters. Vowels are mainly monophthongs, and few diphthongs or other vowel sounds more complex in articulation appear here. These same phonetic features distinguish the English word cellar-door. Note also that Tolkien’s pronunciation of that word would not feature any rhotic sound, since he was speaking with non-rhotic accent: [ˈselə ˌdɔː].

Compare this text with another poem in one of Tolkien’s constructed languages, the evil inscription of the One Ring in his Black Speech of Mordor:

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

This text contains many consonant clusters (/zg/, /θr/, /kr/) and a far larger variety of stop consonants.

Misattributions

Nonetheless, this phrase has been subject to a legendary degree of misattribution. The story may be traced to 1989, with R. Lederer’s Crazy English^[3] alluding to a survey, conducted in the 1940s, probing the word in the English language generally thought to be the most beautiful. Contributing to this survey, American writer H. L. Mencken supposedly claimed that a Chinese student, who knew little or no English, especially liked the phrase cellar door — not for what it meant, but rather for how it sounded. Some accounts describe the immigrant as Italian rather than Chinese.

In 1991, Jacques Barzun repeated the claim, attributing it to a “Japanese friend”:

I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was “cellardoor.” It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find l and r difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, had never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside — the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the word’s appeal. He also enjoyed going to restaurants and hearing the waiter ask if he would like salad or roast vegetables, because again the phrase ‘salad or’ could be heard. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the l and r sounds and d and long o dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare it with “celandine,” where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely.^[4]

The remark is attributed to “a famous linguist” in the dialogue script of Donnie Darko (2001). When asked about the origin of the phrase, the film director attributed it to Edgar Allan Poe^[5].

It also features in Neil Young‘s song The Needle and the Damage Done, The House that Dripped Blood by The Mountain Goats and Talk Dirty to Me by Poison. It is also used in the Lemonheads “It’s A Shame About Ray”.

Bizarrely, in a recent newspaper interview with the UK Metro paper^[6], Denis Norden is first asked what his favourite word in the English language is. He replies “cellar door”, stating that a teacher at his school told him this and he adopted it as his – later realising the teacher said “celador”. This word is associated with Norden as his TV show It’ll be Alright on the Night was bought to the screen by Paul Smith, who started the Celador production company.

Just something interesting that I thought I would share on this warm autumn day.

Cellar Door.