How To Be a Poet

Are you "different"?
Do you feel "special"?
Are you "complicated"?
Do you enjoy "poverty"?
Can you face "disdain"?
Can you face "ridicule"?
Can you face "utter indifference"?

If you can answer "yes" to a majority of these questions, you might have the stuff it takes to be a poet.

Here's what you will need to start your career: pencil, paper, black turtle-neck and bitterness.

Below are the first lines of some poems to get you started. Select one and finish the verse.

"I saw a genius in the mirror today..."
"Across the lonely beach I wander..."
"Near the lonely knoll I weep..."
"On the lonely cliff I loiter..."
"Alas, the hornets buzzing in my brain... have the eggs hatched?"

Sharpen your skills with some advanced exercises.

1. Write a poem from the point of view of a creaky old barn.
2. Write a sonnet about your mom. Use the letters of "mother" to begin each line.
3. Write a poem about a fleeting emotion unique to you, using a complex and private system of symbols that no one else can possibly understand.

When you hit it big and publish your first piece... send me a postcard.

Aibohphobia - The fear of palindromes.

Go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog.

A Dan, a clan, a canal – Canada

This coming Friday, Lord willing, we are going to take a trip to Monroe, Louisiana so I can check out the Dabney Center at Auburn Avenue and attend Saturday classes.

Though I graduated from a Baptist seminary, and pastored in a Baptist denomination for four years, I really need some more training before I ever even think about the prospect of pursuing a pastorate in a Reformed church.

Dabney sounds like a perfect fit for me for several reasons. I am excited about the opportunity. I hope it works out.

O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,
Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn,
O Haupt, zu Spott gebunden
Mit einer Dornenkron,
O Haupt, sonst schön gezieret
Mit höchster Her und Zier
Jetzt aber hoch schimpfieret,
Gegrüßet seist du mir!

CLICK HERE for a really nice site designed to allow the reader to simultaneously view a woodcut from Dürer's Large Passion series and to read text and to hear audio from a congruent section of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

Movie Reviews with Mr. Ambiguity

I saw that one movie the other night. It was that movie with that guy. There was also this girl in it, you know, the one who was in that show with that kid? So anyway, this movie had this guy who was like doing all this cool stuff and it turned out that the girl was doing all this other stuff. The most exciting part was the climax. There was a twist at the end where what you didn't expect to happen actually happened and the thing you did expect, well it didn't even happen at all.

The soundtrack was very musical. I may go buy a copy.

I definitely want to own this one on DVD. I heard there were some deleted scenes where that one guy with the mustache has this long monologue. That would have totally made the movie much better.

This movie has my unqualified recommendation. I give it four pointy shaped icons, denoting my immense pleasure resulting in a noticeably increased quality of life. I don't know where I would be today had I not seen this film.

Hey kids, today's palindrome is:

No, sir. Away! A papaya war is on!

Did you know that 72% of all statistics are fabricated right on the spot?

Why does listening to U2 always leave me feeling indescribably morose?

It shouldn’t be news to anyone that the refined and highly specialized ancient skill known as “chewing-with-your-mouth-closed” has fallen out of practice among even the most intelligent and civilized members of our society. Still, however rude it may be for one to exhibit the masticated bits of his dinner, for the most part I can ignore or otherwise overlook the transgressive behavior. That is, unless I’m in a movie theater or a Mexican restaurant.

When someone sits behind me in a movie theater packing their grill with fistfuls of popcorn, so much that they cannot close their lips around the gob of food, smacking and crunching like a starved heifer, the sound of it to me is as if someone is pounding a rusty steel spike into my temple with a sledgehammer. It happens every time. No matter where I sit, some goober with his ten gallon drum of popcorn sits right behind me. If I move, and believe me I have, another one finds me and sits right behind me. It's like I'm wearing a t-shirt that reads, "Munch in my ear."

I don’t even go to Mexican restaurants any more. The hosts there enjoy serving big baskets of crispy corn chips for everyone to chomp on like a pack of crazed beavers who have the rabid urge to gnaw through the basket and into the table. People in Mexican restaurants crunch and smack as if they are the only ones in their little world who can hear themselves eating. What's the problem? You don't get chips at home? You are so starved you have to cram a quarter of the bowl into your mouth at once? “Let me refill that drink for you and oh, you need more chips? I’ll bring you more chips, I’d be glad to, because I think there is yet an old deaf man IN BLINKING BANGOR, MAINE WHO DIDN’T HEAR YOU GRINDING UP THE LAST BATCH!”

All they have to do is close their lips. That’s all I ask. If they close their lips, it dampens the sound of the crunching and no one can hear it at the next table. If you can’t close your lips, you have shoved too much food in your mouth. You need to break it into smaller pieces before you put it in there. Didn't your mother teach you that?

Some of us are trying to have a civilization here.

Hey! If you are younger than 25, it is likely that your thumbs have greater dexterity than the thumbs belonging to rest of us! HERE is the article from CNN.

Both Mr. Capezza's and Rev. Barach's blogs link to an article about the last words of a few famous people.

Here are a few other, more common, final utterances:


It's fireproof.
He's probably just hibernating.
What does this button do?
So, you're a cannibal.
It's probably just a rash.
Are you sure the power is off?
Yeah, I made the deciding vote on the jury, so what of it?
The odds of that happening have to be a million to one!
I wonder where the mother bear is.
I've seen this done on TV.
These are the good kind of mushrooms.
I'll hold it, and you light the fuse.
This doesn't taste right.
I can make this light before it changes.
Nice doggie.
I can do that with my eyes closed.
Pull the pin and count to what?
Well, we've made it this far.
That's odd.
You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses on, would you?
Now watch this.
Duck? What duck?

Of all of J.S. Bach’s compositions, none has a more interesting history than St. Luke’s Passion. It passed through the hands of at least four composers in as many centuries, and in its current form bears the unique marks of each man who shares in its story.

The work as we know it today originated as a handwritten score that can be dated with some certainty to about 1730. Twenty-three of its fifty-seven pages were in Bach's own hand, the rest presumably in his son’s, C.P.E. Bach. The evenness of the handwriting in these twenty-three pages and the lack of scribbles, amendments and revisions suggest to some that this was a copy made by Bach himself of a score that interested him. Since then it has generally been felt by musicologists that the work was not completely Bach's own - Telemann's name has been used as a possible composer. That Bach found something in another's work when his own was supreme is a minor puzzle and a matter of great debate.

In the late twenties, Carl Orff, composer of that obsequious Carmina Burana, felt that the original compostion of St. Luke’s Passion, was too long, too "wordy" and that a more compact version was needed. He worked on this, finishing it in 1932, five years before Carmina brought him to prominence.

Orff's score was burned and destroyed in World War II. In the seventies, Jan Jirasek, a Bohemian composer, was approached by Bavarian Radio to recompose the work based on what remained and his own musical sensibilities. Working mainly from from Orff's hand-written annotations to a piano reduction of Bach's work, he covered the same ground when everything redundant and not vital to the story was stripped out. It left an outline work with a high number of recitatives and a few chorales. The conclusion he came to was the same as Orff's - that these needed to be orchestrated.

When Jirasek was finished he presented a work that strangely bridges the gap between the modern and the baroque. The choral passages open with Bach’s signature fugal harpsichord, but they soon give way to Orff’s own ominous brass and drums. Probably the most un-Bach feature in the piece is the omnipresent percussion, but even this lends some interesting highlights to the presentation.

The Passion as we have it today is presented in two parts made up of fifty-three sections and is a comprehensive re-telling of the last few chapters of Luke’s Gospel. I don’t know whether there is an English recording available, but the German-language chorales can be enjoyed by anyone with even a sparse knowledge of the language.

If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.

I have never been disappointed by a David Mamet film.

I would recommend The Spanish Prisoner and The Winslow Boy to anyone.

Over the weekend we rented, Heist, his latest to hit the video stores. Gene Hackman plays the retiring-jewel-thief-just-about-to-retire-when-something-changes-his-mind-and-he-has-one-last-chance-to-make-the-biggest-hit-of-his-career... the same character you've seen in a dozen gangster movies. But that is the only bit of predictability in a film that takes so many twists and turns that you feel as if you are going to miss something if you allow yourself to blink.

The dialogue, in classic Mamet manner, is clipped, sharp, witty and bright, but replete with profanity. The soundtrack is just plain cool.

This being a movie about folks who repeatedly break the eighth, ninth and tenth commandments, I would have liked to have seen more punishment and restitution as the plot resolved, but each of the characters’ lives is irreversibly changed for the worse by the end of the film. This is a story without good guys, so I didn’t find myself exactly sympathizing with any of the characters, though the executing of some of the criminal plots was pretty exciting. In the end, the film reminded me that:

“Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.”

Did you know that it is illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey and Oregon? All the gas stations are full service! Here is AN ARTICLE from the New Jersey Monthly about the self-service ban.

That is incredible! I thought places like that only existed in fairy tales. I have always dreamed about far-off mystical lands where they bring microwave burritos, Slim Jims and 44 oz. fountain Cokes right to your car window.

You are a Wookiee.

You are tall, hairy, and you often grunt unintelligibly. You can pull a man's arms out of their sockets if you don't get your way. You have a strong dislike for droids.

Take the STAR WARS PERSONALITY QUIZ, and find out what you are!

I guess my "Give in to your hate." comment kinda backfired.

Today is the 317th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birthday.

Descended from a long line of musicians, Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685. His father gave him his first music lessons and taught him the rudiments of various instruments. After his parents died, 10-year-old Johann Sebastian went to live with his older brother Johann Christoph, an organist in the Thuringian town of Ohrdruf. There he learned to master the organ and clavier, undertaking lengthy journeys on foot to learn more about the organ and its construction. He was not yet twenty when he became a member of the court orchestra of the Duke of Weimar. Restless, he left this post after a few months, settling first in Arnstadt, then Mühlhausen, before returning to Weimar, where he was appointed court organist and chamber musician in 1708, and concertmaster in 1714.

But there were problems. Feeling underestimated by his prince, and deeply hurt when he was passed up to succeed the court music director, Bach looked elsewhere for a more rewarding position. He found it as court music director of Prince Leopold von Anhalt in Köthen. With respect to prestige, this was the high point of his career. He had already written his first great works in Weimar (especially cantatas and organ music). Now it was instrumental music that came to occupy more and more of his time. It is here that he wrote the celebrated Brandenburg Concertos, many concertos for solo instrument and orchestra, the sonatas and partitas for violin, the violoncello suites, and the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier (preludes and fugues).

Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara, had borne him seven children. After she passed away in Köthen in 1720, he married Anna Magdalena Wilcke the following year. The musically literate daughter of a trumpet player was immortalized by the famous "Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach", a compilation of keyboard pieces by Bach known to every young pianist. Anna Magdalena was to bear her husband thirteen children.

In 1723 Bach had to take what must have been the most momentous decision of his career: whether to remain at the court of Köthen or accept the post of "Kantor" at Leipzig's Thomaskirche - and the social step backward that this represented. He chose Leipzig, embarking on the last great chapter in his life. As St. Thomas cantor, Bach was expected to supply the music for every Sunday service, which amounted to several complete annual cycles of cantatas, of which only a small percentage is still extant today. Here he wrote the impressive Passions, as well as music for the organ and various keyboard instruments. And for several years, he also conducted an orchestra with which he performed every week. In short, a work load almost unimaginable today.

Yet there were also problems in Leipzig, including disagreements with other musicians and repeated clashes with the Town Council. But one great triumph still awaited Bach: his reception at the court of the young King Frederick - later Frederick the Great - of Prussia. The musically talented king, who fully understood the singularity of Bach's talent, gave Bach the theme upon which the composer based his monumental work A Musical Offering. Finally, afflicted with a severe eye problem, Bach began to focus on his legacy: The Art of Fugue, a compilation of everything that been important to him. Unfortunately, he was not granted the time to finish this work.

Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig on June 28, 1750. By then, his music had long become old-fashioned, and only very few composers of the younger generation - including Mozart and Beethoven - were aware of the true significance and import of his music, which was ignored by the broad public. Nearly a century had to elapse before Bach's greatness was fully recognized.

- Compiled from various sources including work by music historian Roger Clement

I've found that I only need two tools around the house. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape .

So Spielberg has re-released “E.T.” with some extra scenes and some CG’d special effects. I guess this is sort of like what Lucas did with the original Star Wars trilogy a few years ago. It seems like every DVD that comes out has some “deleted scenes” included, and a number of special editions of some films are released with the label “director’s cut”, which means they basically take about twenty minutes longer to tell the same story.

Are we to understand now, that a movie is a living piece of art, subject to the director’s constant tweaking and improving?

Will this eventually change the way we view other pieces of art and literature? Or do we already view all things as being “improvable” by our latest and hottest technology and is this simply a symptom of that attitude?

Since the Enlightenment, many have viewed the Scriptures as “living literature”, subject to the interpretative innovations and nuances of the generation that reads them, rather than depending on much of anything that those who have come before have written. Many of our modern society’s woes, I think, are a result of our viewing our country’s Constitution as a document that must be continually re-interpreted in light of modern sentiments, as opposed to interpreting the document in light of its framers’ original intent.

Pouring the Scriptures into our modern, more highly-evolved mold is sacriligous, dangerous and stupid to say the least. Castrating the Bill of Rights so that it is more comfortable hanging out with our feminized culture is a violation of the fifth commandment.

But Spielberg and Lucas didn’t go back and re-interpret some foundational documents that someone else wrote 200 or 2000 years ago. They went back and added a few 21st century camera tricks to some 20th century camera-trick-movies that they produced themselves only 20 years ago.

It probably isn’t any big deal, but since movies “are” the literature of our day, and because they affect so much of how this culture thinks and acts and lives, I’m wondering where this trend is going.

I don't know about you, but my NCAA tournament bracket has more scratches and scribbles than an obsessive-compulsive's shopping list. Southern Illinois? Southern Illinois.

Not that there's any money involved... ; ^ ).

I'm home.

When I was in Atlanta I saw a Baptist church sign that read, "God loves to dance. You take one step, He'll take two."

I don't even know where to start with that.

Do you think that the people who work in those factories where they make those motivational posters stay really really motivated?

Do they hang some of the posters on the wall, or are they sufficiently motivated by the ones they have to shove in boxes all day?

For eight hours today I listened to tech talk. I'm in Atlanta for training on some new software solutions we have to offer. I don't want to offend any of my technically minded brethren, but when these techies get going it's like they are speaking another language, and they get so condescending when you ask them for the 37th time to define an acronymn.

I think that they ought to get some sales guys to train those of us in sales. If they had, we would have been done by noon, and I might be home by now. Instead I have another half day of this.

It's a livin.

Two of the coolest, albeit under-used, words in the English language are "gazebo" and "zamboni".

When's the last time you've said either word? I'll bet it has been a while.

If I ever have to go into a witness protection program, I think I'll change my name to Gazebo Zamboni.

I'm in Atlanta for the next couple of days doing some training on a new printer description language and printer companion software package that our manufacturer has developed. I hope this is worth my time.

I hate being away from my family. I can't protect and care for them if I'm 500 miles away. I pray that God keeps them safe and that there are no major crises between now and Wednesday.

I made the mistake of picking up Sarah's copy of Ann Douglas' "The Feminization of American Culture" on the way out the door to take my trip to Atlanta. I thought I would take it along in case I ran out of stuff to read.

I flipped through it with the intention of scanning a few pages and then moving on to something else, but I got so caught up in it that I don't think I'll be able to read anything else until I'm done with it.

I just want to go on record and say that I really don't want to know what I taste like.

(Sarah, Rick, Dawn and Jason obviously have a different view.)

Sarah bought us a subscription to a magazine called Family Fun.

That's kind of a neat concept for a magazine. I'm guessing that it way outsells Family Solemnity.

My daughter and I play a game called "Bye bye, Doggie."

I position her favorite stuffed dog along with two or three other small stuffed animals on the blades of the ceiling fan in the living room. We wave "bye-bye" to each of the animals and I flip the switch. After a few rotations of the fan, the animals go flying off in every direction which delights her immensely. Then I pick up the animals and we start it all over again. This is a game that she never gets tired of. When she wants to play it, she gets Doggie, sits under the fan and points up.

This is the sort of thing that used to get me yelled at... but now I'm the daddy!

In the latest Chalcedon Report, P. Andrew Sandlin writes about how he goes about reading a book. I used to feel guilty for scribbling in the margins and folding down the corners of the pages, but Rev. Sandlin remarks that this is the only way to really read a book.

He writes:

My wife Sharon once chided me when she saw how my marking had massacred a page, "Why do you do that? Now, nobody else will be able to read it!"
"Precisely," I responded. "This is my book. It is not meant for other people to read. Let them get their own copy."

Yeah, go buy your own. Do I look like a librarian?

The green background might be a bit gaudy, but I didn't want to run the risk of getting pinched.

I'll change it back on Monday.

UPDATE: I had to change it back. It was just too ugly. You get the point. Happy St. Pat's.

It is impossible to ignore the joyful exuberance in passages such as...

Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion. Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God. Ecclesiastes 5:18_20

And in this mountain The LORD of hosts will make for all people A feast of choice pieces, A feast of wines on the lees, Of fat things full of marrow, Of well-refined wines on the lees. And He will destroy on this mountain The surface of the covering cast over all people, And the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, And the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces; The rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth; For the LORD has spoken. And it will be said in that day: "Behold, this is our God; We have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the LORD; We have waited for Him; We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." Isaiah 25:6_9

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves. Song of Songs 7:11_12

Reading passages like those puts a big thankful grin on my face. But what of all that Jesus had to say about suffering and persecution? Is this joy purely an eschatalogical joy? Are we to feel as if we are not really being Christ-like if we aren’t feeling some sort of present persecution? If we are “eating and drinking and enjoying the good of our labor”, are we somehow being delinquent in our kingdom duties?

Surely that can't be so, because it seems like the apostates in the last days are marked by a sort of perfectionistic asceticism (1 Tim 4:1-5). How can we counter those falshoods except by living in the light of the incarnation; making love, eating good food, drinking wine and joyfully taking dominion over creation?

Which is the greater temptation and danger for the church today - asceticism or bacchanalia?

I am sure that C.S. Lewis wrote something about this somewhere, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

Here's a neat song I made up that I can't wait to teach my daughter. It is kind of like "This Little Light of Mine", and it uses the same hand motions and tune...

"This little finger of mine, I'm gonna stick it in the air
This little finger of mine, I'm gonna stick it in the air, in the air, in the air"

Then...

"Won't blow on my finger like this... I'm gonna stick it in the air..."

And...

"Won't cover up my finger like this... I'm gonna stick it in the air..."

Feel free to use it with your family. No really, go ahead...

I'm glad that I published that post about my Harry Potter apathy. I had been wondering if anyone was actually reading this stuff.

Don’t let Maundy Thursday/Good Friday/Easter slip by without taking the opportunity to listen to Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion” all the way through at least once.

HERE is an enjoyable English recording. You’ll be humming the tune to “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” for days.

It is hard to get good service anymore.

I walked into my bank the other day and asked the teller if she could check my balance… so she shoved me.

This next week I am going on a three-day business trip with an Orthodox Jewish co-worker. His father is a Rabbi in Jerusalem and he personally fought Palestinians in the Israeli army for some period of time.

We've had several exchanges over the past few years, but have never spent a great amount of time together. He loves to talk about his faith and I love to discuss it with him, but work always interrupts our conversations. I'm expecting that the topic will come up more than a few times over the course of the three days.

It seems that most of the teachings he embraces are heavily influenced both by Greek philosophy and Eastern mysticism... so I am supposing that his background is cabalistic. I hope I have the opportunity and the time to demonstrate how his ideas are more Hellenistic than Semitic. That seems to me to be the best place to start. I can't use the Hebrew scriptures effectively if he isn't thinking like a Hebrew to begin with.

I pray that I can be a sharp apologist without being intolerable. I am looking forward to the challenge.

Warning! THIS has been known to cause severe mouth injuries.

It seems like every Christian is supposed to have some sort of opinion on the whole “Harry Potter” phenomenon. On the one hand are those who would be satisfied with nothing short of a national book burning party. Then there are those Christians who sound as if they would be in favor of adding the books to the canon of Scripture, right in there between Jude and Revelation, because of their wonderful depictions of good and evil and sacrifice. I have a problem with both positions, but I don’t even want to waste the ether it takes to explain why.

I am going with the presupposition that anything that is wildly popular among pagan fifth-graders is probably not worth my time. I haven’t read a Harry Potter book and I don’t plan to.

I have too many other things to read. I haven’t read the books for the same reasons that I have never seen Pokemon or read the latest X-Men comic book. These are things that aren’t exactly written with the 20-something white male Southern-sympathizing Reformed Protestant in mind.

When it comes time for me to make these decisions for my daughter, I suppose that after she has read Bronte, Austen, Melville, Defoe, Lewis, Tolkein, Ingalls-Wilder, London, Stevenson, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Hugo, Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Henty, (scriptores ad nauseam) she can waste her time with Rowling… if she has cleaned her room.

My head hurts. I'm sick. I came home early from work and went to bed.

If somebody were to enter the room with a gun intending to shoot me, I would turn on the light so that he could take better aim.

Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?

Find a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Russian Easter Overture" some time in the next few days. You'll find in it a glorious, sweeping tone-painting of the morning of the resurrection.

I did it again. Sarah asked me to pick up a bottle of shampoo at the store and I brought home a bottle of conditioner.

I only have one goal when I enter a store... to leave the store as soon as I possibly can with most of the money I walked in with.

In my haste and thrift I try to grab the absolute cheapest thing that even closely resembles what I'm after. If it is shaped like a bottle of shampoo, and has the brand name of a shampoo maker on it, and has a big yellow tag beneath it that screams 99 cents, while others around it have normal tags bearing higher values, I pick it up. The decision to grab and go takes less than three seconds. Don't waste time reading the label. There are other things to get.

Look, this is the way God made me. I'm impatient and I'm cheap, okay? I'm a "big picture" kind of guy.

I'm sorry, I made a mistake. Yes, I will go back out to the store and get shampoo. No, I'll go right now. Do you want me to pick up anything else while I'm there?

"...those were times when, to forget an evil world, grammarians took pleasure in abstruse questions. I was told that in that period, for fifteen days and fifteen nights, the rhetoricians Gabundus and Terentius argued on the vocative of 'ego', and in the end they attacked each other, with weapons." - Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose"

Wow, it sounds like priests, especially those in St. Louis, Boston and Florida, are in hot water... again. Do you think with this latest wave of accusations and de-frockings, Rome might finally re-visit that whole celibacy thing?

'Tis better to marry than to burn.

I like the word "synecdoche". It keeps appearing in the stuff I've been reading. I can't wait to work it into a conversation.

Sometimes I think that I have multiple personalities.

When I'm out in public around people I can laugh and talk and can carry on a real good conversation.

But when I'm all alone, I just sort of clam up.

There is an independant grocery store near here that has a cooler case of beers from all around the world. The neat part is that you can take single bottles of whatever you want and mix up your own six pack. It is a neat way to try different things without buying a whole pack of something you might not like.

Feeling adventurous, I picked up a bottle of "Czechvar - A Product of the Czech Republic" yesterday along with a few others that I wanted to try. Last night I cracked the gold foil seal and popped the cap to find a watered-down lager worse than the thinnest American light beer I have ever tasted.

It is so bad, I am suprised it isn't sold in a can.

No wonder there is so much political unrest in the Czech Republic. If this is the best beer they have, I don't blame them for acting like madmen.

Every time I see that Time-Life Classic Country Music collection advertised on TV I am very tempted to order it. You know, the one with all of those old hits by Red Sovine, Ernest Tubb, Jim Reeves, Webb Pierce, Roy Acuff... the kind of stuff I was raised on.

I liked country better back when it was ugly.

Bailey received her first big boo-boo this morning. She has been trying to walk for weeks now, and is getting more and more sure of herself as she pulls up on things and explores new areas. She thinks that she can pretty much go anywhere she wants and I knew that sooner or later she was going to bonk herself on something.

So today it happened. She fell and scuffed her mouth on a piece of furniture. Two tiny superficial cuts on her bottom lip and a skinned chin are her souveniers of the event.

What bothered me so bad is that I have never seen her blood. When I picked her up to tend to her, I got it all over my shirt and hands. She cried pretty hard as I tried to comfort her and I held her tight wishing that I could bear her pain for her.

This afternoon we celebrate her first birthday. Things like this seem to always happen just in time to be documented by lots of cameras.

From the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram... one of the most disturbing news stories I've read in a long time.

Two words. Turbo Dog.

"Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time." - Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose"

When I first became a Calvinist, for a long period of time, I was consumed by the desire to peek into every hidden decree of God and my mind was wrapped up with thoughts of eternity past and future.

Lately, however, as I have been studying and growing in my understanding of God's covenant with man, I find myself increasingly pondering questions regarding the present. What is a holy life? How do I raise my daughter (and our other children to come) so that our grandchildren and their children's children will also be faithful to God? How do I take dominion over my little patch of earth? What part do I play in reformation of the Church and culture? These are the questions that are churning in my head.

Psalm 67

God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us;
That thy way may be known upon earth; thy saving health among all nations.
Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.
O let the nations be glad and sing for joy; for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.
Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

Pachelbel’s Canon is not a canon.

It is a passacaglia.

Spread the word.

I wish I knew how to make a song start playing when you open this page.

I think I'd like it to play the Allegro from Bach's Brandenburg Number 2 when you open it.

Either that or "We're not gonna take it" by Twisted Sister.

Last night after supper, I was lingering at the table with Bailey. She was in her high chair eating peas one at a time. I was telling her how God made the peas with seed and dirt and air and water and sunlight so that Bailey could be fed and grow. As I talked about God she responded by jabbering and throwing in the syllable "gah" every so often.

So I asked her, "Bailey, who made you?". After some practice she said, "Gah! Gah! Gah!" whenever I asked the question. We worked on it again tonight, and she will answer "Gah!" about one out of three times.

How's that for a confession of faith? I think she's ready for the Table.

(For those of you who don't know my position, I believe that a child should only be admitted to the Lord's table when, after much discipleship and training, he is finally able to chew.)

Is there some sort of center or program for the aesthetically challenged? I think that I'm too utilitarian.

Are Americans capable of wearing anything that isn't made of denim?

Two new Bailey pictures have been added to the "My Family" link on the left.

I have an existential map. It has, "You are here" written all over it. - Steven Wright

I think that I do a perfect Eddie Vedder impression when I'm all alone in my car singing along with the radio.
But I'd be too embarrassed to do it in front of anyone else.
So you'll never hear it.

Art is an attempt to imitate nature's form and beauty.
Technology is an attempt to imitate nature's function and operation.

The two cannot be combined by men without serious compromise to one or the other's integrity.
If a machine is very beautiful, it ceases to be a practical machine. Think of a beautiful jackhammer. Who would use it?
If art is functional, it ceases to be art. Art is not appreciated because it is practical.

Only God can perfectly combine the beautiful shape of a horse with the mighty function of a horse to make, well, a horse.

This past Lord's Day we began worship by singing Psalm 97 which includes the words...

"Consuming flames deploy before Him, to destroy
His foemen round about Him who vainly seek to flout Him.
His lightning bolts, when hurled, enlighten all the world;
Earth sees and quakes with fear to see His wrath appear
And thunderous clouds unfurled.

The hills, as wax by fire, all melt before His ire,
When God on His creation pours flaming indignation
The heavens in awe express His perfect righteousness.
Let all the nations see His glorious majesty.
His royal power confess."

Unless you make it a habit to sing the Psalms, you will never worship God with words like that.

I think one way you can tell if you have a curse on you is if you open a box of toothpicks and they all fly up and stick in your face.

This afternoon at work I stood at the front of the main conference room in front of the entire company, including some dealer managers from the corporate office in Atlanta, without any pants on.

My face was half-painted in blue and I was wearing a kilt. I delivered an emotional motivational speech as William Wallace, hero of the Scots. When I was finished, we left the conference room and proceeded to rout the English.

Tomorrow we plan to sack York.

--

Postscript. I now have a blue eyebrow. No amount of heavy scrubbing has helped. Can you shampoo an eyebrow?

Illinois governor George Ryan may commute the death sentences of Illinois' 163 death row inmates before he leaves office.

Smart-aleck Duane - While he's at it, do you think he could do something for this parking ticket I haven't paid?

Rabid anti-government-education Duane- Since he has postured himself as a governor big on education and public schools, will he also commute the sentences of the thousands of children serving hard time in Illinois' government compulsory ignorance programs?

Alternate universe Bizarro Duane- Hey, that is like, so cool and loving and stuff. I bet that most of those guys like on death row and stuff were just like innocent anyway, man. They should like put them in mental hospitals, man, where they can like study what makes people that way, you know? Like if we could just study them and stuff, then maybe we could find out why they killed people, you know? Cause, like, nobody's perfect. And don't two wrongs never make a right? Alright then. Cool.

The other day a boy knocked on the door and said, "I'm the new paper boy!"

I said, "I don't care what you are made of."

Pastor Jeff Meyers asked a question in Sunday School this morning that has had me thinking all day. He asked something along the lines of, “What did the early churches posess that instructed them in matters of doctrine and practice?”

Isn't that an important question? By the middle of the first century, the gospels were circulating, but surely a copy couldn’t be found in every church. If you were in Rome, or Corinth or if by chance your name was Philemon, you received a piece of the New Testament in the mail. But not everyone received a letter from Paul. If the canon of scripture wasn’t agreed upon and compiled until the 200’s at the earliest, and complete copies unavailable throughout most of the Christian world for years following, what was the common authoritative written source of knowledge of God?

The answer is simple, it seems. They had the scriptures that we call the Old Testament. Whence came their theology? How did they know how to worship? How did they know whom to baptize? Who was welcome at the Lord’s table? How do you love God and serve Him? How do you raise your family? What do you preach, and study and mediate upon?

You have God’s Word! All 39 books of it! (40 if you live in Ephesus). The first, second and third century Christians didn’t have to wait around until the Epistles and Gospels were compiled and added to the canon before they had anything to study and preach. I am sure the widely available Hebrew Scriptures were more than enough to keep them busy.

This is a bad analogy, but it is the one that leaps into my head. Do you remember when you first saw Return of the Jedi and finally learned the whole back-story of Darth Vader, the Emperor, Luke and Leia? What did you want to do? Well, I remember that I couldn’t wait to get a hold of the first two movies to watch again. And when I did, they made sense in a way that they never had before. And those are just dumb movies written by a pagan.

With the incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures made sense in a way that they could have never been understood before. With the prophecies being fulfilled in Christ, they could now be appreciated in their fullest sense. They could delight in the law of the Lord and in His law meditate day and night with a view to Christ’s perfect fulfillment of it. For them the Old Testament was the Bible, and it was sufficient.

SO WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

I get the sense from a lot of modern evangelicals that the Old Testament is really just a big waste of paper. They look for verbatim commands in the Gospels or Epistles to guide their practices of worship, baptism and general church life. When they find none, which is most often the case, they feel that they are then free to just make it up as they go along, or do whatever seems most reasonable to them.

In Ronald Knox’s closing pages of “Enthusiasm”, (a survey of Christian sects and extremists past and present), he writes:
“The evangelical (illogically, perhaps, but by habit) regards the Bible, not the inner light, as the ultimate source of theological certainty. But, in so far as he is true to type, he will reject the interpretations offered to him by scholars. He prefers to get down ‘his Bible’ and ‘see what it says’; from the plain sense of it there is no appeal.”

To Knox’s words I would add that the evangelical regards the New Testament alone as the ultimate source of theological certainty, and that from his plain understanding of the New Testament there is no appeal to the Old. Moreover, while the evangelical may reject the notion of ‘inner light’ and ‘private interpretation’, this is exactly what he practices when he rejects the interpretations of scholars, even the churchmen of the past 20 centuries. He favors his own special reading of the text over the others’, claiming special insight as if he has found something new that no one in the whole history of the church has ever laid eyes on. This is the natural outcome, because he willingly has less than a third of the Scriptures at his disposal. When they are interpreted outside of the context of the whole of God’s written Word, there is no limit to how many “new” and innovative theologies can thus be fabricated.

If the oldest 39 books of the Bible were sufficient to be used almost exclusively in preaching and instruction for the first couple of centuries after Christ, we are in no way in error when we appeal to them to help us in our understanding of the doctrines of baptism and worship. They were the only Scriptures available to God’s people for many, many years and they were the same scriptures Paul had in mind when he penned 2 Timothy 3:15-17.

I'm done with the Knox book. On to some fiction. So many people have recommended Umberto Eco that I can't wait to get started.

"Crosswalks rule!" - so says a public service announcement I heard on Radio Disney.

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. --Dave Barry

Do you know what you call that thing that reads a card and gives you cash?

It is an Automated Teller Machine Machine.... right?

No? Then why does (almost) everyone call it an ATM machine? It is an ATM. The "m" stands for "machine".

It isn't PIN number. The "n" stands for "number". You've already said "number" when you said "n". You don't have to say it again. We know what you mean.

All day at work I hear people say NIC card... and I say, "Oh, you mean the Network Interface Card Card?"

That's like saying NATO organization
NFL league
NPR radio
USA America
TV vision

My wife and I had plans to go out and do something tonight, but we ended up staying in. We had a couple inches of rain followed by a couple inches of snow followed by below-freezing temperatures. Turned out to be a great day to stay inside and stay warm.

I finished the book I've been laboring through and we enjoyed chasing Bailey all over the apartment. She is really turning into her own little person. It seems like her individual mannerisms and expressions are showing more and more every day. The last couple of days she has been dragging a book off her pile and flipping through it page by page, pointing at the text and jabbering. I would pay anything to know what she is saying. She is 12 days shy of her first birthday. We still don't know what to do for her birthday.

On television the Blues are skating against Edmonton. No score after one.

I hope the roads are clear in the morning. The street out front does not look as if it has been touched and the car is covered in ice.

Funniest movie lines ever (according to me):

"I'm invincible!"

"We've got no jobs, we've got no food, our pets heads are falling off!"

"Head. Pants. Now."

"I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?"

"I know we've only known each other 4 weeks and 3 days, but to me it seems like 9 weeks and 5 days."

Do you know the history behind the "Pledge of Allegiance"?

If you have trouble saying it, as I do, there is a nifty little thing that you can say along with a crowd and it almost sounds like you are saying the same thing that they are.

I plead allignment to the flakes
Of the entitled snakes of a merry cow
And to the Republicans for which they scam
One nacho, underpants, invisible
With licorice and jugs of wine for owls.

Well it looks like Dennis Miller is out of the Monday Night Football booth. No longer will we be subjected to and distracted by obscure literary and socio-political metaphors while we are trying to watch football.

He’s as unemployed as a psalter at a Charismatic convention.

My mother is making me a kilt.

Twice a year my company has a huge sales promotion, and before every sales promotion we have a big kickoff event with a little rah-rah pep rally for the sales team. One of the traditional parts of the kickoff is that the sales managers have to make, um, fools out of themselves in front of the salesmen.

For this coming Monday evening’s event, I was asked to do a little William Wallace-esque motivational speech in my Scottish accent. I was going to rent a costume, but you can only keep it for 24 hours and they run like $100. Too expensive. So my wife and I went to a fabric store last night and bought 8 yards of tartan and some elastic. My mother does a lot of sewing, so she is going to put it together for me.

I have some blue face paint. Now all I need is a wig.

The least funny man in America is in trouble with South Korea.