Monthly Archive for August, 2005

A Memory Trip

Published
by
michael lee
on 31 August 2005
in life and technology
. 3 Comments

This will be much more meaningful for those who went to school with me. Meaningful in a good way. Like, nastalgiastic and such. Click on the thumbnail for the whole experience. Drag your mouse over the photo for popups.


apu

Modular Housing

Published
by
michael lee
on 31 August 2005
in art and culture
. 6 Comments

Love IKEA? Wish they made houses?

Link

ikea house

David Crowder Earns +2,650 Emergent Points

Published
by
michael lee
on 29 August 2005
in art and culture and emerging church
. 3 Comments

So, Sufjan Stevens is an indie artist that you’ve never heard of. He writes a song called “O God, Where Are You Now (In Pickeral Lake? In Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?). David Crowder likes the tune, and decides to do a cover version of it on his upcoming CD.

Sufjan indie fanboys go nuts, seriously upset that some CCM guy is trodding the sacred soil of their guy’s, like, art. They vent their anger, as all good fanboys do, on the Sufjan Fanboy Internet Forum.

The forum vent goes something like this:

Fan 1 “CCM sucks”
Fan 2 “Totally sucks”
Fan 1 “Sufjan Rules”
Fan 2 “Totally Rules”
Fan 1 “Why do Christians jack up everything cool?”
Fan 2 “They suck”
Fan 1 “Totally suck”
Fan 3 “Hey guys. I’ve been a member on the forum here for a while. Look, here’s why I decided to cover this song on my upcoming record. I hope it doesn’t suck, cuz I’m a fan. Love, David Crowder.”

(ht: Joshua Blankenship)

Brian Burkett Resignation

Published
by
michael lee
on 29 August 2005
in life
. 3 Comments

I don’t know Brian Burkett, and I don’t know the details of the situation, but I do know how awful it is to leave a ministry under bad circumstances. Being asked to resign from a pastoral position throws your whole world into an uproar. Not only do you lose your source of income, you lose your local community of worship, your spiritual support network.

It can also be a crushing blow to your identity. Is this what I’m really meant to do? After all of the years of schooling and training, am I heading down the wrong path? After Gretchen and I left our previous ministry, we basically dropped out of church life for a year or so. We were so burned by the whole thing that we wanted no part in ministry, in corporate worship, in anything even resembling a local church.

If you have a minute, maybe pray for Brian and his family during this time. We don’t know him, but we know something of what he’s heading into.

“Letter of Resignation”

Taxonomy

Published
by
aly hawkins
on 26 August 2005
in writing workshop
. 7 Comments

You wouldn’t know that I’m not normally prone to nostalgia, given the number of my posts on this blog dedicated to remembering days gone by. I’m rather future-oriented, in Real Life. When I write, however, I realize I’m not much more than a note-taker, a regurgitator of events or episodes that have actually happened to me or someone I know…most of the time with a bit of embellishment, just to keep it interesting.

Some writers invoke times, places, and people that do not exist. I admire many of them: Lewis, Tolkien, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, David Mitchell. The magic they wield is the power to show us ourselves through a looking glass so warped, so distorted, that we see with more clarity than we ever dreamed. They paint pictures of universes that put legs to our childhood games of Pretend, and remind us those games taught us volumes about the here and now.

Perhaps one day I’ll draw a world that is real only in my imagination, and invite you to join me there. For now, that magic is not mine.

Other writers create characters that simultaneously fascinate and repel me, characters I hope never to meet when next I’m in an airport or getting my hair done. Chuck Palahniuk comes to mind. How he could dream up a violent antihero like Tyler Durden and make him likeable, sexy, and apocalyptically unstable is beyond me. Where did Chuck dig him up? I don’t know.

Perhaps one day a character that bears no resemblance to anyone I know (or hope to know) will spring fully formed from my frontal lobe, like Venus emerging from Zeus’s forehead. For now, I gather up discarded scraps from those around me and knit them together, waiting - like Dr. Frankenstein - for lightening to strike.

I am a taxonomist.

I unearth the fractured shards of ordinary people’s ordinary minutes and hold them up to the light, looking for a clue, looking for the connection between this broken piece and that one. I classify the jagged bits of hilarity and heartache and hum-drum and try to remake a vessel that will startle me with recognition. That’s what I want, in the end: to be surprised by what’s familiar.

So I keep taking notes, cribbing away all the funny things you’ve said, all the naked moments you’ve allowed. Perhaps one day I’ll get out my tape and super glue and the shreds of paper will amaze me because you’re already there, waiting for discovery.