I remember the first time I drove through Indiana thinking to myself how big this land really is.

I'm going to Indy tonight to see a great band that no one's ever heard of called The Samples. They wrote a song called Indiana that is quoted in today's title and one of the few songs my sister and I both like. Since I'll be driving through Indiana tonight this song seemed appropriate. Click the title to go to their website and look for me there on their front row cam in coming days!

I'll be out of town tonight, so here's what would be your Friday post.

Let's talk for a few seconds about my favorite radio station in the world.

Keeping in mind I've always lived in Indana, only traveled to about 15 states, and only spent twelve days out of the country. I'm posting a permanent link on my blog to 92.3 WTTS out of Bloomington. They were the station I listened to in high school when I needed a break from Hank Williams and Snoop Dogg (the two extremes of my peers). They play a lot of classic stuff, singer/songwriter stuff, and have some great features like the Cage Match each night at 7:30 or so.

Now they stream live and have a new music channel for VIP's and becoming one is free.

I listen to them a lot when I'm trying to put together the camp CD. They seem to be ahead of the spoonfed stations when picking hits. 92.3 WTTS is where I first heard Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews Band, Jack Johnson, Marc Broussard, and KT Tunstall. Who by the way I'm going to see in concert in March.

If you want a window into the music that motivates me, because I'm sorry Kasey it's not Panic! At The Disco check out WTTS. And if you've got a favorite radio station post it here or email me and I'll link it. In a world of XM, iPod, streaming music, and commercial free satelite radio I for one will take this little rock station in Bloomington!

My favorite music quotes:

“Music is the soul of this generation”-J. Clinton McCann (Professor at Eden Seminary and Author of Face the Music)


“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” -Henry David Thoureau

"Cause you’re killers, you’re the demons and you know that! Your music, rock n’roll is Satanic music! If you make the music go back you hear Satan speaking!" -Unknown preacher, sample by Faith No More and Midfield

"Music will be here now."-John Lennon

"Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wilderness of long grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of human understanding, rendered speechless by emotion!"-Dr. Zhivago

It is good to praise the Lord
And make music to your name, O Most High,
To proclaim your love in the morning
And your faithfulness at night
To the music of ten-stringed lyre
And the melody of the harp
For you make me glad by your deeds O Lord
I sing for joy at the works of your hands
How great your works O Lord, how profound your thoughts
The senseless man does not know, fools do not understand
That though the wicked spring up like grass and the evildoers flourish
They will be forever destroyed
But you, O Lord, are exalted forever

Psalm 92:1-8

“The trouble with real life is that there is no danger music.”-The Cable Guy

“Conflict is simple. You have to face the music or stop dancing.”-Unknown

“It happens so suddenly. We are going about our own mundane tasks when-a phrase of music, a shaft of sunlight on a snowy roof, a handful of yellow butterflies, or the arc of a bird diving to the earth, pierces us. For one brief moment we are lifted out of our daily routine into the untold realms of light and beauty. Then the moment is gone. We are back on Earth-but we are not the same.”-Unkown

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.”-George Carlin

And to quote Neil Young my friends and bid you a fine weekend...
Keep on rocking in the free world!

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer I was taken by a photograph of you.

The title here is a great lyric from a great songwriter I've just discovered though he's been around a while. Check out Jackson Browne's website and listen to some of his music. This line is the opening line from Fountain Of Sorrow. A great version can be heard on his new Solo and Acoustic album.

I literally was looking through some photographs I found in my desk drawer and then spent a couple hours fighting tonight with how to incorporate photos on my blog. My buddy Chase has always had pictures and I've been simultaneously envious and lazy as to how he did it. So in some posts, and I'll try not to go overboard, I'll include a photograph if I can. I think I have this thing figured out. There should be a (kind of) picture of me above my name to the right.

I like to grab a camera, hold it a few feet above my head and take my own picture. Really there are very few other kinds of pictures of me that I enjoy.

At church camp, any stray camera I find gets a self taken portrait of me included on it. I change my look sometimes and take multiple angles and expressions. I'd like to think that a lot of kids get home and wonder why the hell they have my picture and in some cases who the hell I am. Maybe this summer I should sneak into other weeks of camp and get photgraphed this way. That would be hysterical. What I've always wanted to do is photoshop myself into camp scenes I didn't attend and manage to be on every page of the camp brochure!

Here's one that I was 'taken by', in fact a photograph taken by me as well...



I hope everyone has a truly happy Thursday!

I've been a wild rover for many a year and I spent all my money on whiskey and beer.

The title/lyric comes from a traditional Irish drinking song called Wild Rover, covered by the Pubcrawlers if you click on this link.

The grandkids of two Irish men had a conversation about drinking tonight. One was 16 and expressing her quite right views that no one too young should drink, but struggled to communicate it. The other, me, being a bit truer to our heritage in my life and trying to serve the opening of this girl's mind playing the devil's advocate (which is my favorite tactic) suggested that drinking itself wasn't inherently bad, but rather the choices people made while drinking. This suggestion didn't satisfy her nor make my point, or hers for that matter, any clearer.

We stopped the conversation when my dad called from Florida, beer in hand by a pool to brag about the weather.

And then I found this report on Yahoo News.

Hiccups Lead to Two Deaths

Wed Jan 25, 9:44 AM ET

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A Colombian man accidentally shot his nephew to death while trying to cure his hiccups by pointing a revolver at him to scare him, police in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla said on Tuesday.

After shooting 21-year-old university student David Galvan in the neck, his uncle, Rafael Vargas, 35, was so distraught he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide, police said.

The incident took place on Sunday night while the two were having drinks with neighbors.

Galvan started to hiccup and Vargas, who works as a security guard, said he would use the home remedy for hiccups of scaring him. He pulled out his gun, pointed it at Galvan and it accidentally went off, witnesses told local television.

"They were drinking but they were aware of what was going on," one witness said.

I'm not sure whose argument this supports-that alcohol is bad or that people make bad decisions while drinking. But we should at least all be able to agree that drinking with your buddy who likes to point his pistol at your head is always a poor choice.

You've gotta gamble everything for love.

The title today comes form a lyric by Ben Lee from the song Gamble Everything For Love, sure to be a 2006 camp song. Click the title to visit his website.

Love. I suppose more than any other word, more than any other concept, that I hold in high regard I have the most to learn still about love. I had a couple hour conversation with one of my favorite youth Sunday night. She has kind of disappeared the last few months and so we finally got to talk. She expressed that she knew she was pushing people away. She was scared of being hurt and losing people she loved. I reminded her of this quote.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves

Yestreday wasn't a very good day for me emotionally. I was irritable and distracted. I attended a meeting with people whose opinion I don't really value and heard some discouraging news from two or three people I care about-seems life is hard for everybody these days.

Have you ever seen the movie As Good As It Gets? It stars Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear as a man with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a woman with a sick son and a longing to be loved, and a gay man with estranged parents respectively. They are traveling together in a car to meet the gay man's parents (he's been hospitalized and has considerable medical bills) and he's sharing his story with them, much to the woman's interest and Jack's characters annoyance. She says that they should listen because they all have these horrible stories and he quips, "That's not true. Some of us have great stories, with friends at the lake, and noodle salad. That's our story-great times, noodles salad. Just nobody in this car. What makes it bad is not that you have it so bad, but that you're so pissed that some people have it so good."

I don't know if that's true, if some people have lives unjaded by living. I think I probably would be pissed if I knew any of them. I can't change how my life has unfolded or the lives of anyone else. So I'm left trying to learn as much as I can from my own experiences and the accumulated wisdom of others.

In light of the profound wisdom of Mr. Lewis and the common sensical truth of Mr. Nocholson I offer this affirmation to you, to the kid afraid to love, to me on my darker days:

I would rather be a crazy man who loves with reckless abandon, wounded and broken at times but still longing, than be a sane and scarless man alone at the end of the day. (This line I've heard somewhere) Love is the only sane act.

And so in that spirit I approach these days with a new sense of commitment. There are calls I need to make to people I love that are hurting, at least one hospital visit I need to make, and several emails I want to return to people I've missed in recent weeks. It is a slow climb out of darkness. But at the top of this heap awaits a renewed sens of hope and the fulfillment of all that I have come to believe:

LOVE ALWAYS WINS!

Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them!

The title today is a lyric from the classic Bruce Hornsby song The Way It Is and clicking the title will take you to his website.

This is the opening of a sermon I gave a while ago. I reworked it for the post and took out about seven pages of less powerful writing. There is a larger less churchy point to be made with this analogy, but I thought it was a good follow up to my Pat Robertson gripe session. Hope you guys dig it.

A familiar scene in my childhood, Wile E. Coyote unrolls a scrolled blueprint for his latest ACME product, a bulging box of things to assemble into the perfect weapon. Soon we see him construct a wall made of explosives arranged like brick with a tunnel painted on it. Above the wall on a teetering cliff edge sits a massive boulder. The idea is that his nemesis the tricky Road Runner will ‘meep-meep’ his way naively into the trap and burst into charred ash of a once elusive prey, lay in the smoking ash long enough for the Coyote to push the boulder down the lip of the cliff, and be smashed once and for all. For extra measure Wile E. has a rocket strapped to his own back with a long hanging wick, and a single match to light it with. The stage is set for what he is certain is the last time he’ll have to deal with that pest of a bird.

The desert rings forth with a simple joyous utterance, ‘meep-meep’, the sound barrier breaks into a gentle jet engine purr, and a cloud comes rolling in a straight line through the desert canyon.

From his perch on the cliff above the road the Coyote smiles as the Road Runner comes flying toward the wall of rigged explosive and mirage asphalt. The Road Runner, cool smile, head down, eyes focused, speeds toward the barrier and waiting boulder. ‘Meep-meep’, yards from the wall, feet from the wall, inches, and suddenly, the Roadrunner doesn’t hit the wall at all; no crash, no splat. To the Coyote’s dismay the bird keeps right on running on the path painted on the wall by his would be assassin.

So what does the Coyote do? As the Roadrunner speeds out of sight in the wall, he runs toward the wall to follow, the rocket on his back, he lights the match, then the fuse and speeds ahead to catch the bird. And just seconds before he follows the path it occurs to him that he is speeding toward a solid wall of wired explosives. The path is fake. All attempts to blow the fuse out are in vain and with a painful look on his face the Coyote smashes into the wall, his teeth are knocked out, his ears mangled, his eyes swirling but he is okay, but just then a thud can be heard and slowly a giant boulder comes toward the now crippled Coyote. His efforts to run also fail, and in a large cloud of dust and crunches and cries for help, as he holds up a sign that reads “Who Knew?” the Coyote is buried under a heap of his own creation. All he can do is wave a ragged arm and a white flag from beneath the rubble.

This I offer to you as the two fates of the modern Christian. We will either be buried in our own crumbling structures or we will find a path onward where once we thought none existed. We will either race on into an unknown path with a clear vision or we will be buried beneath a toppling set of schemes and shortsighted visions. The Coyote is diligent, and a modern world would tell you that technology is the answer, the more gadgets and gimmicks we can utilize the better, but this is not true. For the Coyote can’t see past the walls he himself has created. All the ACME toys in the world cannot help you see beyond yourself. The Roadrunner isn’t especially in tune to the Coyote’s ploys, his part in the story is quite simple. The Roadrunner has a clear vision, and puts to work his greatest talents to get him there, his speed and vision.

The Coyote fails because all he can see is the wall, and the Roadrunner succeeds because all he can see is the way.

So that we’re clear, let’s talk about the differences between walls and ways.

What does a wall do? It keeps things in or it keeps things out. A wall is meant to separate one space from another. Think of all the famous examples, The Great Wall of China or The Berlin Wall for instance. Walls are structures that divide, in from out, east from west, neighbor from neighbor. Walls are defined by space. A room extends just as far as it need to and then stands a wall. At the same time walls define space. Walls provide clear markers for what constitutes a border between things.

Sometimes these divisions are good. They provide shelter and warmth and safety inside.

But often we get so hung up on who is on what side of our walls, or what side we find ourselves on the walls we create in our hearts that we distance ourselves from people.

We suffer a loss, personal or spiritual, insignificant to the world or catastrophic, and we build a wall that the next person who wants to love us has to chip through to get to the real us. And so we build doors, passageways in that we allow only certain people to open. But this is not really sharing, this is screening. Jesus was a man of wide open spaces, not walls. How can you love your neighbor or your God with all you have if you’ve guarded it? Being a Christian, being a human means hurting and loving and hurting and loving and ultimately understanding that the love received is bountifully more powerful than the hurt endured. So we must live not seeing the walls, but seeing the way.

A way is a continual thing, a journey, something we are always traveling on, until we reach some desired goal.

A way is defined not by space, but time, the very moment determines the way. For what was a logical path 50 years ago is no longer logical. But also the way defines the time. Like disgruntlements nailed to a church door the way is constantly telling the moment what it is. And so we must be travelers on the way, not spectators at the wall. A way consists of stop after stop, that compound themselves. The past and the future both influence the present and the watchful eyes of the travelers learn form both experience and vision. If we see the way, we’ll not have to contend with walls, because they won’t matter.

See if I hit a wall my options are few, go through it or go around it, and if we live life seeing the walls it must seem like one sprint after another, like the Coyote, rockets blazing, faster, faster, faster, SPLAT-Wall-Recovery, start over. And I admire the people who can always relight their rocket, but I do not envy them. Can’t we learn from our mistakes? When we see life as a way, a continual journey, we take the past with us and we never stop looking at the future. It’s a marathon and so each stop is just that, a stop, not catastrophe, not a painful impact, just a tap on the brake, a ‘meep-meep’ perhaps and then back on our way. The mainline Protestant church pulled up to a wall and stopped sixty years ago. And how long ago did we stop honking our horn? Some of the people in the car got out, they left, they walked around the wall and kept going. But here we are parked in front of a wall. So what now?

We must be like the Roadrunner, we must use our talents to make it further on the way.

We must focus on where we are going, not what lies between us and our goals.

The Roadrunner is wise, he has but one talent, speed, and he uses that to it’s fullest. He is simplistic, he says, I want to go there, further down the road, and he goes. Beep-beep and he’s off. We must also find our talents and decide where we’re headed. This is a new world, I’m not saying its better, but it exists. The world I grew up in and many of you grew up in are night and day from each other. That can be a wall that separates us, or the very thing that brings us together to move forward. We have to be able to say to the world, this is where we’ve been, and this is where we’re going.

By the Red Sea, the Israelites must have felt like there present dilemma must be surely leading them to a future much like their past, or worse perhaps. Pharoah and his men were waiting to rush toward them and return them to slavery or kill them or who knows what. I imagine myself there looking at Moses like he was Sgt. Bilko. “Real good, Moses, we’re trapped between a wall of fire and a huge body of water. Thanks a lot!” But Moses did not see the walls, he saw the way, and with God as his focus, head down, staff high, he parted the sea, and the people found a way across. What will get our church across the sea we now stand before is the same kind of faith and talent. For starters, we must all see the way in which we can help. What can you do, what’s your miracle?

The church today must make the church of tomorrow reflect its membership, not its leadership. There are creative people in the church, and talented people, and conservative people, and liberal people, and old people, and young people, white, black, yellow, brown, red cheeked people, big people and little people, loud people and quiet people. But the world looking in can’t see this. We’ve put God in a cookie cutter and every version of Him is politically correct and socially lukewarm.

It is time we started to find a way foward, by looking around and realizing who we want to travel with and what part we're willing to play in getting there.