A simple question?

Simply the best question ever from a marriage prep book.

Are you gay and marrying me to cover it up?*

(*True question from an actual marriage prep book)

Growing Up

There are many rites of passage in life. First kiss. Graduating High School & College. First job. I am about to embark on another. The first house. Over the past two months I have been getting pre-approved for obscene amounts of money and looking at houses twice the cost of my parents.

It all started for me as the dream of buying my own house and fixing it up. Sense I was a little kid I have watched programs like "This Old House", fixated on all the ways you could improve on your home. I guess that might explain why I worked in a hardware store as a kid, and ended up being an Architect.

Even with a background in Architecture, this is a frightening idea for me. Now it's my house, it's my money, they're my ideas, and good or bad, I have to live with them. I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I enter this with a bit of trepidation.

Today I am putting an offer on a house. (technically it's the second offer I have submitted, the other property fell through, but that's a post for another time) It's a 1900 brick Victorian row house in my neighborhood. Just off Maverick Sq.

I hope all go's well and that I get the place so I can start a grand adventure.

Tradition and Culture

Image via Wikipedia

This past week I gained a new appreciation for tradition and culture. Specifically religious traditions and cultures. Every church had it's own traditions, meaning it's customs and beliefs, Every church has it's own culture, meaning they way their traditions are carried out. Sometimes they are explicitly taught. Sometimes they are unspoken. But they are always there.

This past week it was my turn to provide the content portion of my house church meeting. I decided to focus on prayer, something that I have come to appreciate more and more from my previous church experience. I come from two religious traditions with two different religious cultures. One fairly traditional, Christian Missionary Alliance, and the other charismatic, The Vineyard Christian Fellowship. My experiences on prayer were more shaped by the latter, through small groups, retreats, and all night prayer meetings.

I wanted to share some of my experiences from the past 10 years with my new house church, but I only had one hour to do it. As I struggles with how I might do this I realized that following Jesus is a lot like looking at a sculpture. Our religious tradition and culture help to shape our thoughts on what we see. But if we allow ourselves to move around the room we can see the sculpture from another vantage point, and gain a deeper experience, understanding and appreciation of what we are looking at. We can see those things that are not visible from any another place in the room.

The same is true with religious traditions and cultures. By trying our new and different way of experiencing God we can gain a deeper understanding of him. And by reflecting on our past religious traditions and cultures we can gain a new found appreciation for what we once had even after we have moved on to new experiences and vantage points.

Politics as usual......

If you have been following the news lately you have been hearing about the health care debate. Recently it had devolved into more of a shouting match.
There was a opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about death and end of life care in America., but it has gotten away from us.

Included in the health care bill in Congress was a provision to provide counseling on end of life care. In typical political fashion, the Republicans latched on to this and stared referring to it as a death panel. And in typical Democratic fashion, they let them get away with it.

Now this provision has been removed from the bill. (Click) Who wins in this kind of debate? The Republicans claim victory over the Democrats. Citizens don't get the health care they need. One more meaningful national conversation is avoided.

Revelation

Image by ehpien via Flickr

There has been a rising source of tension in my life recently. The small group that I am involved with in my neighborhood. We can't seam to settle on what exactly we are doing. We seam float around from one idea to another. Every idea seams to be just as revolutionary as the next. But today I realized that this group is different from any other that I have been in and perhaps am the one who should change.

Most small groups are content spending each week politely discussing a topic and moving on to a new topic the next week. Not this group. My friends add the extra step of dreaming up big ways of how these new ideas can be integrated into our lives.

I realize that I have been wanting complacency and the status-quo, when others are inviting me to dream for a bigger more fulfilled life.

The Shack - Book Review

Cover of The Shack

While on vacation I started reading the book "The Shack" by William P. Young. This has been a widely popular book sense it has come out even making it to the NY Times Best Sellers list.

On one hand I can understand why. The Shack attempts to explain everything anyone would want to know about God. How does the Trinity work. Why did Jesus have to die. What is Gods plain for the world. And the most important question in the book, why is there pain in the world.

As for myself I did not like the book. To me The Shack seamed to be one persons attempt to spread their own theology. What little plot that exists is only there to support the long philosophical arguments about God.

Undoubtedly some will find this very helpful, but I feel this book is a snapshot of some of what is wrong with Christianity today. To often we seek the easy answers, the explanations that will satisfy our deepest questions. What I find fascinating about Jesus is that his narratives were different.

Jesus spoke in parables. Short story's that explained little, but drew the listener into into a deeper questioning. The Shack reads as if some one is preaching to you rather than asking you to question more.

iWoz - Book Review

Cover via Amazon

I recently finished reading the book iWoz; How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. This is the autobiography of Steve Woznaik. I found this book to be a delight, not only because it is an easy read, but because it also feeds my fascination Apple computers.

In reading this book I was fascinated with how passionate Woz is. Wither it is engineering, education or parenting, he throws all he has at the task at hand. You can almost feel his grittiness as you read the storeys from his youth. I wish I had half of his enthusiasm.

One of my favorite bible passages is about the sheep and the goats. In it Jesus makes the point that we may be surprised at who gets into heaven. I wouldn't be surprised if Woz is up there. Although respecting Jesus, he is not a "Christian". But this does not stop him from giving generously in many circumstances; selling apple stock to employees who didn't get any before the IPO, putting on a rock concert even though he lost 12 million dollars, teaching computer classes at his kids school. He even has a street names after him in San Jose because of all his philanthropy.

My only critique is that in his zeal for engineering he often descried, in some detail, the engineering projects he worked on. This sometimes got tedious, especially for someone without an engineering background, but those parts are easy enough to pass over.

Ps...then looking at pictures of Woz, especially during the 80's & 90's he reminds me of my father. The could easily be mistaken for brothers.