Does not compute

I'm back. I have been two days without my computer. Turns out I computers have kernels and when they panic bad things happen.

The apple store hooked me up with a new logic board and I'm good to go.

American Narrative

Looking around at American culture I see few places where people tell stories. There are plenty of places to hear stories, the movies, television, but where can you go to tell a story of your own, and hear other peoples stories.

This Thanksgiving I spent an extra day at home and got to go to my fathers hunting cabin. The experience was nothing new for me, I had hunted as a child with my father. He was part of hunting club called The Mahogany Ridge Runners. Mahogany having a double meaning. One for the type of tree in the woods that they hunted and the other that Mahogany is a popular wood found in bars.

About 15 men sat around before lunch drinking beer and talking. Of course I made the rounds of introductions and small talk about Boston. After a while the conversation turned to hunting. Everyone has a story to tell, even Sam the 14 year old. Stories of what they saw in the woods, of deer they had killed. Even telling other peoples stories were fair game. The cabin was filled with the sound of conversations.

Having lived in the city for so long, where community sometimes seams forces or fake and conversations are usually more intellectual in nature, it was refreshing to see this form of community. Men, who only see each other a couple of time a year, settling into a comfortable space with each other. Able to tell stories from their lives and joke around with each other. This is something that I wish I could experience more of in my life.

PS on my way back from PA I heard the song the "Second Week of Deer Camp." I wasn't able to find a recording but there are the lyrics. It is a snap shot into hunting culture. Enjoy.

Question?

After having lunch with my friend Steve today, We came away with a question. Let me summarize.

As Followers of Jesus, what should our lives look like?
Should we be:

-regular attenders of a church?
-committed to a ministry?
-church planting?
-giving our time & money to the poor?
-witnessing the masses?
-a good person?

What if what it was about relationships?

-making time to be with God
-making time to be with other people

What if that was all it was about?
What if that was how we ushered in Gods Kingdom?

Would you be satisfied?
Would you be happy?

Photo from JurMous

Cabin Schematics 2

After a bit of research I think a 26' long stone wall will be a bit to complicated to build so I have done a little redesign on the cabin. There is still stone incorporated into the design. Now there are 4 stone piers that hold up the columns that make up the main structural frame.

The frame will consist of some rough cut trees that I will cut from the site. I want to leave them fairly natural. basicaly I'm thinking that I will only strip off the bark and leave the rough shape of the tree. It should look pretty cool on top of the stone piers.


The rest of the structure will be mostly timber frame construction out of trees that I cut down from the site. It's not a big cabin so I think the thickest tree I will need to cut down would be 12" in diameter.

Let me know what you think.....feed back is encouraged. Sorry but there are no fancy architectural rendering as of yet.

Do I detect a hint of Jesus in this water?

Now you can not only get Jesus and Mary images on your candles but on your bottled water too! Click here!

Voting

Yesterday at 7:15 I performed my civic duty and voted. As far as I can tell the only thing it gets me is the ability to complain about politics for one more year.

It turns out that I was among the few that did go out as it was a record low turnout.

Godtube

We now have it. Finally someone made a Christian version of YouTube. What is it called? GodTube of course. I really don't understand why Christians feel it is necessary to replicate the things we see in society and make them "Christian" and therefore more holy and better.

It is actually not a new thing, we've been doing it for a long time. There are lots of rumors that many old hymn have their roots as popular songs. Many believe that Christmas was started as an alternative to Pagan winter festivals.

Why do we do this? Why mimic culture to make Jesus more relevant? Isn't he relevant on his own? Or is mimicking culture just being "all things to all people"as Paul wrote?

Bad Jokes

Just the other day Slate.com announced the winners for there recent comedy contest. I submitted a joke but I was not a winner. It could be because my joke wasn't good but choose to stroke my ego and blame it on the poor video quality. The only video camera I have is the one on my cell phone. It turns out that it takes great video then its on a 1"x1" screen, not so good when it's blown up to normal size.

Check it out. There are some really funny jokes there.

Ironic

In my last post I told you that I was just diagnosed as dyslexic, but theres one thing that I forgot you tell you.

To help me better understand my dyslexia the doctor recommended .....a 400 page book.

I'll post a review when the movie comes out.