Writing...

Feb.'s come quickly.
I have an editorial and an article to write for The Brew.
I also volunteered to write four devotionals for my church's Lent Devotional book; and they're due on the 1st.
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Kevin's blog inspired me to share a recipe of my own.
This is a dessert you can get at that one coffee shop. The name has slipped from my memory for the moment but here's the recipe.

Gold Coast Tiramasu Wannabe
Get a French press of the Gold Coast Blend.
Get a slice of Marble Pound Cake.
Get a barista (who tows the company line of "Just Say Yes") to pour a shot of espresso over the pound cake.
Sip the Gold Coast and notice how well it pairs with the drenched pound cake.
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The film "Paradise Now" is intense, heartbreaking and beautiful.

Read this Kiekegaard quote this morning and couldn't stop thinking about it.

"It was said of Christ that he would reveal the thoughts of many hearts, and this he did. How? Simply by proclaiming grace. He who proclaims the law forces a person into something. People try to hide themselves when faced with the law. But grace, the fact that it is grace, makes them completely unconstrained. Face to face with grace a person really learns to know what lies deepest within. Tell a child to do something--this does not mean the child does it, nor do you really get to know the child's nature. No, but to say, "You are free, you may do as you please"--then you find out what lies deepest in the child." - Soren Kierkegaard's Notes and Journals.
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Beck's 'The Information' rocks the catskills.
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I posted my article on ending my newspaper career on The Brew. It's the first article I've posted to ever contain profanity.
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Beside the Oscars nominations being announced, the Razzie's were announced, too.

Subtle Nachos...

I watched "Nacho Libre" over the weekend. I was mildly surprised. All fart jokes aside, there was an odd subtlety that reminded me of the style of movies like "The Royal Tenenbaums". If you can believe it, the style and soundtrack were subtle, making it seem more than a little indie.
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I'm thinking of doing a Chicago vs. Dallas post.
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I posted a new author on The Brew: William Fortenberry writes on The Death of Ivan Illych. Check it out.

New Brew

I posted Dan's article on rethinking how one does church on The Brew.
I was hoping to go Chicago for Founder's Week this year but I ran out of money. Alistair Begg is preaching and that was the big draw for me. I can just taste a traditional Lou Malnati's slice. I can taste the smoothest mocha from Intelligentsia. Anyone's who still up there should grab one for me.

Winter in Texas

t's finally gotten into the 30s and 20s down here. I'm hoping for snow during a weekend-long rain storm. But everyone keeps laughing at me or saying, 'Keep hoping.'
Instead of snow, Texas only gets ice; making Southern drivers who don't know how to drive even worse. And I also find out that because of the inclimate weather, my church might cancel their services on Sunday.
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I posted my article on the end of Arrested Development on The Brew today. If you've never heard of the show, check out the article to get a glimpse.
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Another great waste of time is www.willitblend.com. The site it pretty self-explanatory an simple fun. The machines used in the videos are what are used to make Frappaccinos at the one coffee shop. You know the one.

Getting Busy

I'm starting to get busy again. It's been a while and I almost forgot what it was like. Gauging your time and seeing what you fit into a given day. I'm in a book club at church; helping lead a movie night and discussion for the college group at church; writing articles and organizing the magazine; etc. etc. It's almost like I'm back in school again.
Something that's taken up some of that time is www.freeshow.blogspot.com . Don't visit the site unless you want to waste some time.
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There's plenty more Brew articles coming for January. I just posted Jamie's article on losing a parent today. Many more are to come more frequently.

La Villita Drive-By - Real Crime Series

School had just let out in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago and kids were walking home or taking buses. I was working in the press room that City News had at the Chicago Police Headquarters on the South Side. I had a computer monitor in front of me and two police radios squawking to my right.

Little Village, also known as La Vallita to it’s many Mexican residents, had many gangs, one of which reared its head that afternoon when someone shot a high school student walking with his girlfriend.

One of the police radios squawked up when the report came into Chicago’s 9-11 center. Person shot in the 3100 block of South Kedvale. I wrote down the address and then got online to check out the address at whitepages.com, a sort of online phonebook where you can put in a generic address, such as 3100 South Kedvale, and get all addresses and phone numbers to match.

I punch in the numbers and get around five addresses and phone numbers. I pick one that seems to be in the middle of the block and call them up. A middle-aged man answers the phone.

In as understanding a voice as I can muster, I tell him that I am a reporter from the City News Service of Chicago. Then I say that a shooting had occurred on his block and ask if he had seen or heard anything.

He pauses and then tells me that a kid was shot on his front lawn.

I can’t believe my luck. Sometimes people hang up on you or say they didn’t see anything. Or they answer the phone with “Bueno,” giving you the signal that they probably don’t speak English.

So I keep talking to him, asking questions and catching a great news story that just fell out of the sky.

Some vehicle drove down his street and shot the boy (what you have to call males under 18 in news copy) who was walking with his girlfriend. The boy fell onto the lawn of the homeowner, whose kids saw the shooting and then went outside to help. The father grabbed some towels and blankets to help the boy until the paramedics arrived.

Police and the fire department (which sends the paramedics and ambulances) came to question witnesses and help the boy. They talked to the girlfriend, the homeowner, his kids and other neighbors.

I asked the homeowner if his kids would be wiling to talk and, luckily, they were. I put on my “Sorry-to-have-to-do-this” voice and heard from a son and daughter what they saw. They heard a couple loud pops from a gun and then looked outside to see the boy fall into their yard. They told their dad what happened and were outside to help the boy and his girlfriend, who escaped unharmed.

The kids’ voices wavered while trying to tell me about all the blood. I held my bulky phone between my head and my shoulder while scribbling down all I could on some paper at my desk.

The dad was put back on the phone and told me about the girlfriend’s bookbag, which cops initially took as evidence but then tossed away near some garbage cans. He had picked this up to take it back to the girlfriend, who has since gone home.

Thinking quickly, I asked the dad if there was an ID card in the bookbag. He found one and read me the name and address of the girlfriend. I double checked this info with him and thanked him for all his help. To make me seem more caring of their situation, I told them that their info, which included a description of the vehicle the shooter rode in, would hopefully help catch the people who did this.

I then used the White Pages website to get the girlfriend’s phone number. An elderly lady answered and I gingerly asked if the girlfriend was there. I did another slow introduction and then asked if the girl could answer a few questions about the shooting. She declined, which I was fine with, having been able to talk to an eyewitness to the shooting.

This was one of around five times when a story fell in my lap or I was able to put together a great story.

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On a different note, I think I'm addicted to Facebook.

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The newest Brew article will be posted tomorrow; Lonnie wrote another amazing, beautiful and raw article. Check it out on Monday.

I'll putting together two articles for this month: one on the end of Arrested Development and on the end of my journalism career.

Add Another One To The Lists...

So I got a Facebook site today. It's pretty shnazzy, technologically speaking. So whenever I post here, it will automatically post the same thing on Facebook. Pretty cool, huh? I'd link to my site but I guess you have to have a Facebook to look at other's page. So if you have one, look me up.

As promised, the Real Crime Story is coming.

And I'm thinking of putting together a satire issue of The Brew in the near future. Any takers? Let me know. I'd like the issue to be sharp, and smart. Writing that is both of these is not easy to produce; nor does it come quickly. If interested, email me and let me know.

The inspiration for this is a book I'm reading: Serrated Edge. It's a biblical defense of satire. So all those who don't think this kind of writing appropriate, I stick my tongue out at you.

Fact or Fiction

I finally finished Tom Clancy’s Teeth of the Tiger over Christmas.

I was reading it on the flight to Ohio when the guy sitting next to me on the plane asked me if I was a Clancy fan. I told him I was a fan of how technical and elaborate his novels were. Once bit of chit chat led to another and the guy, named Matt, told me that he worked for the space intelligence department of the Air Force.

Now, having forsaken all my reporting instincts and put a lid on my curiosity, I merely sat back and listened to all kinds of interesting facts about space intelligence.

Matt pretty much sits at a computer and keeps up with what’s going on around Earth’s space. And naturally, since Matt was part of the intelligence community, there was only so much he could tell me. Any reasonable person, though could guess what his work covers.

One could guess that since there are millionaires now paying to get shot into space, then there is much more space activity going on in the private sector than is publicized. So our government needs people to keep track of it so that they can keep up with it. One could also guess that there is also much more going on at the international space station than is publicized.

One thing that Matt didn’t keep a secret was that the space intelligence community regularly sends things into space with shuttle launches. Although the launches usually take place very early in the morning, they are not a secret. Only the specific equipment sent up in those launches are kept secret.

A humorous side to the launch site in California is that the beaches near the launch site have been closed off to the public because a rare species of bird lay their eggs in the sand. Foot traffic on the beaches would crush the eggs, so says PETA. Some of the more militant PETA members have swam up to the beach to “protect” or protest any use of the surrounding areas. They were promptly arrested and charged with endangering wildlife, as well as trespassing.

Perhaps one of the craziest factoids I learned was about ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). The military test launches these missiles to remote islands in the Pacific. And, according to Matt, these missiles can reach anywhere in the world in about a half hour.

All this talk about intelligence made me wonder how much of Clancy’s novels were fiction. In Teeth Of The Tiger, a covert intelligence community is set up to accomplish what the CIA, FBI, NSA couldn’t. I wondered if Clancy’s novels became the what ifs that made the government think in a certain direction. An uncle of mine, who is a retired police officer and gun enthusiast, told me that Clancy spends so much time at the Library of Congress researching everything for his novels. Clancy has become so knowledgeable about the military, government and everything related to both that the U.S. hires him as a consultant.

And on a completely unrelated note, an older Clancy novel, Debt of Honor, published in the late 90s, seemed to eerily predict 9/11. At the end of the novel, a Japanese patriot flies a jet liner into Congress, killing most every elected official and leaving Clancy hero Jack Ryan to become president.

Creepy.

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I posted an article on bi-polar disorder by Sarah that defines potent last week on The Brew. I also posted an article by Trent that tries to create a position on mental health and spirituality that is in the middle. It’s worth a few reads (because after the initial read, most will be too pissed off to see the wisdom in it).

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I also updated The Beach Picayune so that you can look up posts by topic, making it easy to find older Real Crime Stories, posts about Clark Stacy or posts about depression. Check it out.

A Quickie

A Quickie
I had some Costa Rican coffee this week that was smoov as butta. Tasted like bittersweet cocoa and was delicious.
Also got a free sample to brew of some Ethiopia from Dunn Brothers Coffee. I had to compare it to the Ethiopia at the Coffee-Chain-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless, which I'm used to. The sample, which was not roasted as dark, had smack-you-in-the-face grapefruit flavor; the stuff I'm used to has more of a lemony flavor and an herbal smell.
And yeah, you really can get all this just from drinking coffee. Kinda like getting an earthy flavor or roundmouth feel in wine. And, yeah, 'roundmouth' is truly a word.
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I posted the full version of my article, Re-Entering the Faith, which I previewed this past week, on The Brew. I also posted an article by Lonnie Smith (Mishraile) on figuring out the balance of focusing on God and yourself when trying to heal from a mental health issue. It's pretty solid.
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I'm working up another Real Crime Series installment about a drive-by in Chicago that I covered. I updated to the beta version of Blogspot and began categorizing the blogs so you can look up certain ones by theme. For a listing of all the Real Crime series, check out the "Coming Soon" post from Feb. 10, '06.

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Watched the first disc of 30 Days, a tv series by Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame. Pretty well done. The episode on Muslims in America (Disc 1) is certainly worth a view.

Pho For All

Had some amazing pho (pronounced 'fa') today after church. It's about the third or fourth meal at a Vietnamese restaurant since I moved here. And there seems to be no shortage of Vietnamese restaurants around the NW Dallas area.

I found out that during the Vietnamese war, Dallas was one of the cities that they evacuated Vietnamese people to. Apparently they settled down in and around Richardson, TX (near NW suburb of Dallas) and there's plenty of restaurants.

My buddy and I were the only white people in there for a while (which means you're in the right place for real Vietnamese food). I had some great coffee, which they drip-brew in a small cup at the table. The coffee drips through a small filter onto a bunch of sweetened, condensed milk, which you mix together while it's warm and then pour over ice. Oooohhh, is it good.

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Got a little frazzled this weekend over Christmas plans. And then I realized that I write best while I'm frazzled, pissed off or depressed. Realized that I hadn't worked on my novel for a while, either; it's probably because I hadn't been frazzled, pissed off or depressed enough recently.

So I stopped by the DPL and picked up some music to help me write. I found Eminem's Curtain Call; Foo Fighter's There is Nothing Left To Loose; and Elliot Smith's From a Basement On The Hill. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll finish the chapter I started six months ago.

Thanksgiving and The Brew

So I know it’s been a long time coming but I’m finally writing about my drive to Ohio and back for Thanksgiving. But, hey, you can’t rush perfection.

So here goes.

So there were three nuns in a van driving down I-40 in Tennessee.
No.
Really.

They were behind me in traffic for about a half hour while driving up on Nov. 22. That’s when I got out my digital tape recorder from my reporting days to entertain myself on the trip. “A van full of nuns is tailgaiting me…I just passed a brown pickup truck with a fish symbol on the back and…Oh crap! The nuns just ran him off the road. Well, not really. But that would be something to see.”

The nuns stayed behind me for a while but then passed me going about 90 m.p.h. “I’m sure they’re [passing me] ‘cause they know they can get away with it. They’ll get pulled over and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. How fast were we going? My speedometer’s on kilometers because that’s how it is in Rome’ or something like that. I’m sure that’s how they get out of it. Or like, ‘Son, have you been going to church? Or blah, blah, blah.’”

Other religious experiences on the trip included passing a white church van emblazoned with the words, “Special Forces for Jesus Ministries.” It was as real as the nuns going 90.

Driving through Tennessee was the highlight and downside to the trip. On the drive up, I counted 17 Tennessee State Troopers between Memphis and Nashville.
17.

Traffic also sucked on the way up because I hit Nashville about 5 p.m. (this was after leaving Dallas at 6:30 a.m.). Yeah. I was about ready to call it quits then. But I plowed on, frazzled and cussing at rush-hour traffic for the next two hours. Some clips from the tape recorder would not be suitable for this blog.

But driving back through The Big T on the way home was great. I enjoyed the Smoky Mountains and the fall colors, all while listening to the O, Brother Were Art Thou soundtrack. That was ideal.

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The Dec. issue of the Brew is up and running. I posted an editorial on Mental Health and Spirituality tonight, with an article by Lana Wood to come in a few days. You can still submit article for Dec. Go to www.thebrewmag.com and click on the ‘Contribute’ link at the bottom of the page.

Consolidating...

So I started a Myspace account to help promote The Brew. That makes my blogs three-strong and me content-weak. So I'm not going to try to keep up three (which means neglecting one or the other to maintain them all) but post the same things on all of them.
So if you don't like blogger, I'm at
www.xanga.com/sonofa3

www.myspace.com/sum

And coming soon, how I fared whiled driving to Ohio for Thanksgiving.

Giving Up On Answers and Suspending Judgment

I finished God in the Dark by Os Guiness this week and was humbled and changed. Reading Guiness’ answer to the question of ‘Why, O Lord?’ put something into words that I had been struggling with for a while. It was an idea that helped me deal with the suicide of a friend a year and a half ago.

Clark Stacy killed himself in March of ’05 while I was still a crime reporter in Chicago. Two years prior at Moody, I was his resident assistant but kept up with him after I graduated. I was naturally shocked when I heard the news on my way to work the overnight shift.

During a lull around 2 a.m., I did what I could to corroborate the news. I found online the small newspaper in Tennessee that ran his obituary the day after the suicide. I instantly thought of what I could do to find out more. I could look up the local medical examiner, hospital, or sheriff’s office. A friend had called me to fill me in but any news story had to be corroborated. I had to get the facts myself.

An hour later, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get any info. Why would anyone from small-town Tennessee talk to some small newswire reporter from Chicago? And if this was a suicide, no one would be talking about it anyway. I considered all the other roadblocks to getting information. I also considered my need to direct a sole reporter to best cover the city for the next 7 hours.

I stopped trying to find answers through reportorial means. Instead, for about two months I turned to the community that he and I used to be part of: Moody Bible Institute. I went to a sort of memorial chapel, talked to his friends still there and then listened to some crazy drama involving professors at MBI and Clark’s parents.

The man who counseled Clark at MBI was just as dumbfounded. I didn’t ask but the counselor gave me his professional opinion (which I wasn’t going to ask about for obvious reasons). I felt privileged that he told me what he did but I still didn’t couldn’t figure out why it all happened.

More months went by and I gave up trying to find answers. My anger burned out and I knew that I would never have the answer that I wanted. I was just going to have to accept that and, somewhere in the back of my head, try to accept that God was all that I was taught he was.

And then comes Guiness to tell me this:
“It is difficult to hold an impersonal universe personally responsible, and nothing less than personal responsibility will do. The only remaining option is to call God to the bar and charge him with the injustice of suffering that is otherwise inexplicable. Through doubt we can get even with God.”

So where does that leave me? What am I to do? Believe that God is good?

Guiness told me that “To suspend judgement on why something is happening is not the same as denying that something is happening. The former is faith, the latter is repression, which should have not part in the Christian faith.”

His idea is that you don’t know why but you can know why you trust God who knows why. You suspend judgment of God who knows why.

Guiness concludes by stating that all doubts about the Father are silenced in the Son, to which no suffering can be compared.

There’s not much to say after that.

The Brew Served Up

So I moved down here to Texas to try to start some kind of publication with a buddy of mine from college. It's coming together nicely and (if I haven't already mentioned it to you) it is called The Brew.
You can check out the finished product at www.thebrewmag.com when it served up on Nov. 1. (Right now the website is a just a possible logo).
We have all the articles in for the inaugural issue, which features the topic of boredom. The magazine will make money online by people visiting it. So if you like what you read, visit it more or tell others. You can respond to articles, visit contributor weblogs, even by The Brew T-shirts and memorabilia.

Here's a sample of an article I wrote for it on boring people.

So I tried a drink the other day called Sparks. The orange, extreme-looking can boasted itÂ’s ingredients in bold lettering easily read from far away: Premium Malt Beverage With Caffeine, Taurine, Energeene, Awakeene and Yellow Number Five. It seemed oxymoronic to have both a stimulant and a relaxant in the same drink. So what would the result be with both of these in your system? WouldnÂ’t each of the opposing ingredients cancel out the effects of the other? Would you feel relaxed as you stayed up all night to finish that magazine article that is due in the morning? Would you be rehearsing various ultimate Frisbee plays while trying to say the alphabet backwards?

I wanted a little adventure in my life so I closed my eyes and stepped out into the perilous unknown that this beverage represented. I didnÂ’t know if IÂ’d bask in the rich flavor of the energy drink or scrub my tongue to destroy every molecule of malt. I was ready for whatever may come because I knew that it wouldnÂ’t be the end of the world. My life would still go on after the can was empty and my stomach a little fuller. I may be wiser for having guzzled some disgusting combination that nature would never dare to bring together. Or I may discover the perfect liquid indulgence that would calm me down after a hard day of work but conversely propel me into a long night of writing.

IÂ’m realizing more and more that I am one of those restless kind of people. They donÂ’t like getting into ruts or being in the same place for very long. It may have something to do with me being born in between May 21 and June 21 or it could just be me always being curious about how things could be different. Either way, I like testing things out and trying something new.

I like knowing people that also are in motion and up for something different or adventurous. Seeing others move forward challenges me to keep up; not for competitionÂ’s sake but in order to get to where theyÂ’re at. And because of this, IÂ’m not fond of those who arenÂ’t moving forward or are not adventurous, especially in their faith. It irritates me to be around stagnant people, mainly because I used to be one.

Disbelieving For Joy

This seems like a nonsensical idea. But Os Guiness explains it in a beautiful and compelling way in chapter 9 of God in the Dark. The ninth entry is titled Scars From An Old Wound: Doubt from Hidden Conflict.

Man, I sound like a book report. Or a news story. For some reason, I had to find a way to shove as much information possible into the led or the first paragraph. Force of habit, I guess.

Well anyway, it was comforting and challenging to read this (like the entirety of this book). This is one of those books that you either read and change yourself accordingly or you read and completely deny that it has anything for you.

Here’s an excerpt that explains the disbelieving for joy idea:
“That was the moment when Jesus appeared [to his disciples after his death], and he caught them on the raw before the sedative of passing tim had dulled the pain. He stood before them, the sum of all they wanted. But for sheer joy of what it would mean in true, they refused to believe in case it might not be. What they were saying in their doubt is that it was too good to be true, and this way they adroitly protected the wound and refused to risk opening it. The one fact that they wanted became the one fact too much, so they disbelieved for joy.

“This doubt comes from the fear of being hurt where we have the scars from an old psychological wound. It is one to which many of us are prone. Are not most of us wounded at some point? Don’t we all have deep conflicts that are unresolved, perhaps unacknowledged? It is not necessarily that we have conflicts and scars that stand out publicly, livid and unhealed, but that even if our wounds are invisible, we know they are there, and we instinctively know the pain that pressure on them brings.”

This whole book is just what I need read during this time of life. I’m trying to recreate my faith or restructure it and adjust to all the things that have gone on over the last eight years. I think the book would be a polarizing force for anyone who reads it.

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On a much different note, I figured out how to rip off the Half Price Books chain. Read how on Son of A Beach.

Emergent Church and Christian bookstores interview

I wrote a freelance article for Aspiring Retail magazine on how the Emergent Church's use of art and how Christian retailers can reach out to this demographic.
I got some great responses and the article was beautiful.
Here are the questions and repsonses I emailed to Aaron Lindloff, arts pastor at Life on the Vine, a suburban Chicago emerging church.

-How would you describe the role of art in emerging churches?Many evangelicals are suspicious of the emerging church, perhaps because it's a movement and not a denomination that you can pin down. Here we have a Christian movement that wants to embrace all of the arts, not music alone, but poetry, dance, and the visual arts. The emerging church movement elevates art because it respects the imagination, seeing it as a redeemed part of our life in Christ. Surely our imaginations can be used for evil, but also they can help us understand and experience God. Traditional evangelical churches have typically used art to illustrate a point. They USE art. Emerging churches, such as ours, display art and experience it. One might say that we submit ourselves to it, insofar as the art is a window to heaven. True, sometimes our art makes a point, a rebuke of some kind, but the overriding purpose of our art is devotion. Some evangelicals say that we are depreciating the Word of God. Rather, we are complementing the Word of God with the Image of God. We are affirming that God has fashioned humans as both rational and intuitive. Furthermore, our heavy display of Christian images serves to combat the barrage of perverse images we encounter in our culture.

How and what kind of art is used in your services?In our services we rely heavily on digital images. We project images of photos, paintings, sculptures. Some photos we take ourselves; others we find for free online or we subscribe to a stock photo site. Most of the paintings and sculptures that we project are found for free online, because they are public domain, made prior to 1923. Lining the walls of our sanctuary are a series of framed prints which are changed every month or two, depending on our sermon series. These come from art books. The altar is an important and central image. Besides being dressed with a vestment corresponding to the church calendar, we place on it an Orthodox triptych of Christ's resurrection and a cross. We choose different types of crosses depending on the time of year. For example, September is missions month, so we display a Celtic cross with a circle in the middle, representing the world. A green cross is displayed during the rest of green time. A rusty metal cross is displayed on the altar during Lent, along with a crown of thorns or three spikes. Aside from the children parading around the sanctuary in an orderly fashion every Advent and Easter, we do not dance yet. That's a tricky one to do... artfully.

How would you describe good art or how does good art function?Rather than defining good art versus bad, let me describe how some of my emerging generation friends and I define ourselves aesthetically. Post-Kinkadian. Referring to Thomas Kinkaid. Referring to the giant dove with Edwardian scripted Bible verses superimposed. Referring to multi-colored calligraphy on a poster. (Calligraphy can be okay, so long as it is faded and scratched onto some water-stained paper.) Kinkaid is a good example of what happens when a Christian artist hasn't any accountability. Life isn't like that. The Christian life isn't lighthouses and sunbeams breaking through the treetops. This generation wants to be real. That's one of our tenets. Be genuine. That doesn't mean we don't have hope or don't want any happy pictures around. It means we don't decorate our homes or churches solely with the bright side of life. We want crosses, crosses with Jesus ON them, cross with Jesus off of them. The suffering of the Christian life. That's real. Emergents also value community, not just with the like-minded brothers and sisters of our church in our town in our time, but with the multitude of saints who've gone before us, in generations and cultures past. This is why the emerging church throws around the term "ancient/future." This is why we like old stuff. Old stuff has lasted and will continue to last. Old stuff reminds us we're a part of something bigger than our immediate selves.

Although I’m sure Emergent churches are more than young people in their 20s, many Christian retailers see the 20something generation as a large part of this movement. They also know that this demographic is not one that frequents their retail locations. This issue of Aspiring Retail is dedicated to exploring the Emergent church. What could be a first step for retailers to better understand the kind of art that is involved with the Emergent church movement?I suppose the first step for retailers in marketing to the Emergent Church--and here I feel somewhat like a traitor to Emergents--is that we are suspicious of marketing. Most ads on TV are lies inspired by greed, concealed with humor. Another step for Christian retailers is to understand our desire to make things ourselves. If we have an artist in our own little church who can make that, we're not going to buy that. We don't want knick-knacks or clutter. Though we do want a lot of candles. I have to drive 25 miles to a Catholic bookstore in Wisconsin to find a set of candles or an Easter candle.

A better interview with arts pastor David O. Taylor of Hope Chapel in Austin, TX, is posted at Son of a Beach. His repsonses were a little more inspiring.

An Unsafe Book

As I keep reading God in the Dark, by Guiness, I realize how unsafe it is to read this. And I think I’m going to need a Guiness to toss back while sorting through everything it’s throwing at me.

The subtitle is deceptive: The Assurance of Faith Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. This rings of some kind of fundamentalist apology that might try to convince you with evidences or arguments that disbelieving in God is something for first grade thinkers. But the book is anything but.

Guiness examines doubt itself and all the reasons one would doubt. He also explains doubt as a regular part of faith and shoots down the notion that doubt is a negative part of belief. He then goes through seven ‘families’ of doubt that address various reasons for doubting.

I’ve only gotten through three of those families and my spirituality has already had the rug pulled out from underneath it. I can no longer operate the way I have been for the last three or four years.

I’ve embraced the idea of not trying to make everything work in regards to my faith. I’ve seen the downside to trying to fix everything or the downside of being disciplined enough to be ‘successful’ in my faith. I’ve embraced a sort of nihilistic attitude about achieving anything. I had to give up trying and just be. I had to come to the end of myself and embrace crashing and burning. This might be why I’m come to appreciate Chuck Palahniuk’s books so much. He’s been dubbed America’s favorite nihilist.

Well, I’ve crashed and I’ve burned and my crisis of faith seems to have past. So now what? I’m still alive and I still believe in Christ. Do I have to build some new kind of spirituality? Am I no longer going to be one of those troubled souls whose faith gets them through by the shreds of truth that shine out amongst the darkness? Do I mature in my faith and move on with my life and no longer define myself as one of those who struggle as an occupation?

If I read this book to the end, then I’ll have to.

Remembering

“In keep open lines to the past, the redeemed memory carries encouragement and conveys warnings and lessons to faith as faith is engaged in fighting at the front line of battle that is the present moment.”
-Os Guiness, God in the Dark.

This comes from the third chapter of Guiness’ book, entitled “Forgetting to Remember: Doubt from Ingratitude.” Reading this book has been revolutionary. What’s crazy is that I feel like (and sound like) I did almost eight years ago as I was starting my Bible school education. Every book was mind-shattering and life-altering.

I remember those days and look back fondly on them, though nowadays I’d say I’m very far from them. I don’t long for that pure milk of anything and gasp when some new truth is revealed to me. I more just long to continue on and not be dragged back into a depressed state that finds it’s cure in never-ending entertainment. God is still there and Christ has still saved me; I’m still redeemed and am being regenerated but I don’t quite feel like it. I’m accustoming myself to having feelings again and trying to sort them out after having turned them off.

I realized that my faith somehow keeps going, inspite of everything that I think would shatter it. My struggles with depression, although ongoing, aren’t as crippling as they once were. Five years after I began struggling with it, I see that life has gone on and I’v figured some things out. I’ve become one of those people I knew way back when who inspired me to keep going. I saw them in their darkest times but then later on, I also saw them able to get back to some kind of functioning faith. Somehow, they were able to deal with their depression or whatever other malady and move on. Time and their faith were able to help them grow.

I’ve more than survived the last five years and that’s something I try to remind myself of. I earned a bachelor’s degree and supported myself for going on three years. I was a freakin’ reporter for the Chicago Tribune for a year. Although I didn’t succeed at this and quit after a year, I didn’t let that send running home to Mom and Dad thinking that I couldn’t accomplish anything with my struggles with depression. And now I’ve up and moved to Texas to take a chance on starting a magazine. Who knows what’ll happen next.

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The Next Big Thing in Texas and then some.

Lost and Found

I’ve spent the last week watching the first season of Lost. I don’t remember much of went on during the week except for some mysterious set of numbers that are supposedly bad luck and all the different things the island could mean to the (now) 45 survivors (that’s the tally after the first season).

My roommate says that I spend every waking moment watching DVDs. Now I know that that’s not true; I’ve just spent around 23 or so hours out of the last 143 doing this. I’ve also worked around 40 hours and spent 42 sleeping and maybe 5 eating. That’s about half of the time I spent sleeping and three times the amount that I spend eating (though the eating time would overlap with watching since I usually eat supper or lunch while watching an episode).

Even if one were to consider that I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time watching DVDS this week, some would say that this is a naturally occurring thing, considering the show. Lost is so complex and well written that anyone could lose a week in it’s labyrinthine episodes (and that’s without touching the special features on the disc). It’s a huge hit that everyone loves.

And for that reason, I was wary of admitting that I like it. I have this notion that I’m an artsy kind of guy who likes more complicated and quirky movies. My DVD collection has many films that many people can’t stand or don’t understand. I like to think of myself as a man of refined tastes who may once in a while tolerate some lesser films.

But then reality sets in that it is possible for me to like something so popular as Lost. I look at the movies on my to-see list (Miami Vice, Snakes On A Plane, Prairie Home Companion, Pulse), the movies that I got from Netflix (Carnivale Season 2, Futurama Season 1, The Best of Christopher Walken from SNL) and movies I’ve borrowed from people (The Matrix Revolutions, Superstar) and I can’t keep up that snooty film air. I like popular things and truly enjoy them right alongside more artistic movies.

So when some friends tell me about a Lost Season 2 marathon that will kick off Season 3 (which begins in September), I won’t be sighing. I’ll be saying, “When?” “Where?” and “So what do you think that 3,4, 23,34, and 46 mean?”
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To read about what I should be doing instead of watching movies, read the lastest Son of a Beach.