Pitching for Prizes

I am bothered by the promotional blitz leading up to Universal’s Middle Eastern action-thriller The Kingdom, for many reasons. Some are tied to hunches I have about the film and deeply held convictions about God and peace and stuff. Another is that it looks like a very promising cast in a big, dumb, pandering movie.*
So, [...]

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Milestones

Today is a special day, as Akismet has protected me from over 1,000 spam comments today. Thank you, Akismet. Thank you to the other six of you who left actual comments. I can only hope that there aren’t hundreds of other real people who desperately wanted to contribute to building authentic community and conversation, but [...]

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More Things I Don’t Have Time to Write About: Pig in the City

1) Happy International Day of Peace. You were wondering what was different about today, weren’t you?
2) The U2charist, and other brilliant ideas.
3) Some of the ACU Lectureship is available through their iTunes U podcasts (click Theological Lectures), but not the Landon Saunders keynote, which is what I mostly hear people buzzing and squirming about. [...]

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Pluralisms

“Come on down to Crazy Don’s Toyota Superstore in Oxnard! We’ve got Camries, we’ve got Carrollae, check out these 2008 Prii, and our entire stock of Matrices!!”
I started wondering today if the Toyota people ever consider the possibilities. “A bunch of Cordobas” is rather graceless, in comparison.
Sometimes all the cars slow down, and you have [...]

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Cross Pollination

I guest blogged over at Gather Round, Children this week, providing a list of fibs Gabe thoughtfully collects in the series “Invented Statistics.” Really, if you have never read everything Gabe ever wrote, let me encourage you to do so over the next several hours.

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Halfway rotation

Is nine half of twelve? I thought about putting this together earlier, but here’s my list of new releases this year getting the most of my attention. I anticipated a lot of great music this year, and am a little surprised that neither Spoon nor Crowded House ended up making the cut, and that I’m [...]

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9/12

A few proverbs for the post 9/11 season (this chapter was very thought [and heart] provoking):

Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? [...]

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More things I don’t have time to hmph hmph hmph (zzzzzz)

1. The new Happy Apple. The old Happy Apple, for that matter. Back on Top.
2. This bumper sticker: “We are making more enemies than we can kill.”
3. This printed across the front windshield of the pick-up behind me in large, capital, ambulance-style reversed stencil print: “SLOW TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT.”
4. Randy Harris often says most of [...]

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“Your builders outdo your destroyers”

On the one hand:
Harris made a great point, and timely given this week, about the possibility that the US is the prophets’ Babylon (rather than their Israel, who do not fare better, just stand under a different kind of judgment).
On the other hand:
We read an excerpt from Billy Collins’ “The Names” at our 9/11 [...]

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Sisyphus stops for coffee

I feel the difference
between dependence and trust
in the weight of my child
carried in my arms
or sleeping against my shoulder.
It may only be ounces,
or just distribution;
but feels like two completely different kinds of mass.
The difference settles with a sudden, heavy sweetness
that my heart will not forget.
I am always straining across the gap
between the Ground-of-all-being and [...]

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