books and blogging

Sometimes I wonder if anyone still stops by anymore, what with my continually decreasing frequency of posts. However, for today I will not wonder and will instead get to the point.

There exists the distinct possibility that I will be published for the second time in my life, though my name will not be on the cover. I've been contacted about my participation in a blog book collaboration that I participated in, specifically it was a series of blog-type discussions about a variety of spiritual topics. I think I've mentioned it in the past: A New Kind of Conversation. Turns out they just finished editing the book, and in that process decided that some of my contributions would be included. Per the expectations that were set at the beginning of this experiment, I'll be receiving a complimentary copy of the book in return for my thoughts and writings being included. I'm fairly excited about it, especially since I had almost completely forgotten about the whole thing. The book should be up for pre-order at your favorite online booksellers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Buy.com, etc) if you're interested. Otherwise, maybe I'll keep ye olde blog around a little longer and give you a review when I have the book in hand and read it.

On that topic, seeing as my blogging has become more and more sparse, I've been debating about officially closing up this shop; maybe take an archival copy for my own writing bag of tricks, post one last piece and move on to something else. Lately, it just seems no matter how much I try to slow my life down, things get more complicated and my schedule fills up leaving very little time for much else. I haven't decided, and maybe I never will, but I don't know that this little blog will get back to the type of content and purpose that it had at the beginning for quite some time. But then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing...

the long pause

And with baited breath, they waited until they could wait no more. One by one they visited with dwindling frequency, losing hope that anything would change. I like to think that's the case, since my lack of writing leaves me as parched for deep thought exercises as just about anyone else. As is the usual case, my only pitiful excuse for my lack of any written words is of course my crazy schedule between life and work. A few short updates on those topics...

Work continues to keep me busy, such is the norm. Between career building tasks, project assignments, and the daily grind of maintenance I do not lack for things to do. At times I find this a blessing, and other times a curse -- the curse portion is usually when I am inundated by tedious, repetitious tasks which drives the creative side of me up a wall scrambling for some kind of relief.

In other areas of life, I've found a whole new arena of spiritual nourishment that I've been enjoying immensely. I've gotten involved in a new church plant in my area. And when I say involved, I mean that I am working with the core team of people who are forming the worship, generating the marketing, and overall doing a lot of organizing. In particular, my areas of influence have become designing and maintaining the website (duh!), as well as working with the Tech-A/V team which supports the audio and video aspects of worship. I've been discovering that I have a real knack for working the audio mixer for the worship team, and as a result I'm becoming a bit of the go-to guy in that arena. Of course, its hard to discover a new talent if you don't have talented people to work with, and it amazes me how quickly the worship team came together to create beautiful music which I love helping fine-tune. Maybe once I get a few more people up to speed on operating the board, which is 50% art since you need to have an ear for it, I might try my hand at joining the worship team. My guitar skills are rusty and spotty, but I think I could get them up to par enough to lend a hand. Check out the website, I'm excited about this whole endeavor.

Northwest Hills Community Church

On a slightly different topic, I'll leave you with a couple of thoughtful morsels to ponder. Why do certain Christians feel the need to use overly religious, or pseudo-righteous, and biblical language and/or trite phrases when they talk amongst themselves? For example: for the cause of Christ; remember, be holy as He is holy; etc and so on, you get the picture. I'm certain there are probably situations where this might not seem out of context, but when things get tossed in the mix of normal conversation it just sounds odd. Or maybe it's just me and I have a cynical side that just cringes every time I hear phrases that are just dripping with religious overtones and "Christianese." Just to clear things up right away, I'm not criticizing the people who do this or passing judgment, there are some really nice people who I've met who do this from time to time -- I just silently cringe and move on. So maybe the second question is, whenever we find a situation where we might normally toss out some religious/spiritual/biblical phrase, should we stop and think for a moment to ask the question: could I say this with plain speech, without religious overtones, and still make the same point?

Personally, I don't have much use for overtly religious phrases, I think they just cloud any issue you discuss. I find it much more constructive to take the insights we gain from scripture, apply them to the world around us, and use the resulting knowledge as our language and point of reference.

Oh, and on the ReGroup front, things are currently in stasis. Everyone who is involved is being pulled in a lot of different directions, so scheduling another meeting has been tough. We definitely will, it just might be a while... like, we're talking end of summer or into the fall.

regroup has begun

So it only took about 3 months longer than I anticipated, but ReGroup finally made it off the paper and into reality. Honestly, I couldn't be more pleased. I was organized, I was ready, and our house was open and ready for some of our friends to come over and join in this new experience. Once we all sat down and got the ball rolling, everything I planned was tossed right out the window.

At first I was concerned that getting started was going to be like being back in college, you know the times when the professor is practically pulling teeth to get something, anything, out of the students. But, since the whole point of getting this group together was to provide a safe place to talk about whatever topics we might not be comfortable bringing up in other environments, that's where I started. Luckily, once the first topic was tossed out there the conversation flowed and twisted and moved under its own power so that I only pulled a couple of items from my jotted down ideas (which I had up my sleeve in case nobody could think of anything). Interestingly enough, we spent a good part of the night discussing a few topics that all sort of hovered around the grander topic of death; things like predestination, heaven and hell, divine influence on lives, and that ultimate question, "why do bad things happen to good people?" We didn't end up bringing any scripture into the discussion, since this was more of an introductory gathering and involved a little bit of probing as to where people sat on certain issues. However, the discussions have spurred me to gather more information, seek advice, and I'll eventually pull together some scripture references to help provide some food for thought on the topics we discussed.

We've already decided that we do want to continue meeting; everyone seemed to have a good time and thought the time was well spent. For now I think we'll be meeting on a monthly basis, since anything more frequent I think would feel oppressive. From my perspective, it gives me more time to find information to add more depth to previous discussions, and maybe find material that will transition to a new topic. I think it would be fairly obvious that getting stuck on something for a long period could be detrimental, unless we're all enjoying the continual discussion that is. In some ways the first ever ReGroup meeting was anticlimactic for me, but that was actually a good thing. I didn't feel a lot of pressure, and I never really talked through any of the finer structural points of where I wanted to go with the group. Honestly, I never even brought the name ReGroup up, and I think it was better for it. I've stated from the beginning that ReGroup should be about meeting the ever-changing needs of people seeking answers and faith with a "come as you are" mentality; I think the first meeting did just that.

terribly exciting business

When you have a few spare moments and want to read something exciting about the state of business and finance in America today, check out this article.

Terribly Exciting -- by Ben Stein (yes, THAT Ben Stein)

Exciting enough for you? I won't ruin it for you, but let's just say I thought he nailed it.

nothing beats a live performance

There are some truths I cling to fiercely, and two of the more fun and experiential ones that I love go something like this:

Beer tastes better on tap.
Music is better experienced live by a band that knows how to play live.

Last night, I had the absolute pleasure of catching Switchfoot live, as their tour swung in through Hartford. To put it bluntly, they rocked the place hard and had a great audience. The Webster Theatre may not be in the greatest part of Hartford and its standing room only, but it keeps you close to the band and the music was loud. Having never seen Switchfoot in concert before, I was hoping for a good show; after all, they had to live up to my experiences of shows like Smashing Pumpkins, Live, Counting Crows, Korn, Billy Joel, The Dixie Chicks, and countless Dave Matthews Band performances. Switchfoot blew my expectations out of the water! They fed off the crowd's energy, had some interaction, played awesome renditions of many of my favorites, and the music was loud (I know I said that already). Their warm-up band, Copeland, wasn't too bad either, but their was that obvious difference between the rookie and veteran tour performances. Copeland's music was loud and the songs were good, but to me it sounded like they were overcompensating with volume because the whole time it sounded like blown out speakers in my ears (that kind of scratchy, peaked noise). I would have attributed it to the large speaker in a small space, but I didn't get any of the same during Switchfoot's set.

More importantly than the technical aspects of the show, there is just something spiritually uplifting for me when I experience my favorite bands live - well maybe not all of them, Korn is a bit harsh for spiritual nourishment. Being in a crowd, singing along at the top of my lungs, cheering the band, and just letting myself experience the music - the sound, the feel, the emotions - it all just invigorates you and recharges your soul. Even the temporary partial-deafness after the show is worth it. I could have milled around in the crowd after the show to pick up some merchandise or my official bootleg CD (Switchfoot has been recording the first few songs and giving them away at the end of the show), but I had to get back and there's a site out there where people are making the bootlegs available online (again legally, Switchfoot even mentioned and encouraged it in their newsletter). I might still order some tour schwag from their site, it was an awesome show and worth a t-shirt.

Cheers!