question of the night:

do i go to my 5-year high school reunion at a local sportsbar?

or do i stay in and start my paper and presentation for grad class that is due on wednesday?

it's a decision of the lesser of two evils.

happy black friday.

my wife is pretty crazy.

for the third year in a row, she's been more or less in charge of planning a thanksgiving dinner at our church for people who don't have anywhere else to go or who don't have money or food in general. this year, we decided to deliver the meals to people. well, when all was said and done yesterday, with the help of a lot of other people of course, we delivered meals to 240 people in surrounding cities. 240 people!

and as if she wasn't content with feeding only 240 people, she decided we needed to be in charge of another thanksgiving meal at our apartment afterwards.

and, of course, in the end, she proved to me it could all be done. so, it's been a long couple of days, and we slept pretty dang well last night.

when i told erica she was crazy on wednesday, she said, "what do you mean?" i said, "you don't exactly bite off more than you can chew...but your mouth is pretty much as full as it can get...you can chew it, but just barely."

off to see mewithoutyou soon...here's hoping they'll be wearing THIS. HA! wow.


the material world seems to me like a newspaper headline-
it explicitly demands your attention
and it may even contain some truth,
but what's really going on here?
one day the water's gonna wash it away!
one day the water's gonna wash it away!
one day the water's gonna wash it away!
and on that day, nothing clever to say.

My friend Neville has unknowingly been very timely in tying some of my blog posts together....youtube findings and David and Goliath all in one shot...watch the adorable hilarity here.

When Yoder was visiting, we talked briefly about how the majority of Christians base the majority of their theology on what they were taught as a child in Sunday School by Mrs. So-and-so with a paper figure stuck to a piece of felt. Don't get me wrong, God bless these well-intentioned women, but we find any willing woman we can, give her a manual, a feltboard, and a room full of kids, and slowly but surely, what was meant to be a sweet little story about God and his kingdom turns into a dogmatic theological fact that will most times last a lifetime, unable to be erased or even debated or questioned. These women have a lot of power!

But really, what's with all these stories we get in Sunday School? As kids, we hear some of the most obscure stories from the most obscure parts of the Bible, and we hear the same ones year after year, and we recite them to our parents and our brothers and sisters, and the next year when it's taught we raise our hands and fill in the details like good little boys and girls. None of this is a bad thing, but once you get to middle school and high school, most of these stories are never heard ever again!

(And why? I'm guessing it's because with age comes responsibility, and no matter how hard we try, it's just too difficult figuring out what to do from a bunch of crazy narrative stories in the Old Testament.)

So today, when my mind drifted in Sunday School, I thought of the story of David killing a bear and a lion with his bare hands. It had been so long since I had heard it, I began to question whether it was really even true, but I was sure I had heard it year after year after year, and I could almost picture the little paper figurines. (What a violent story to tell kids, anyway! Much like our cute interpretations of Noah's Ark, when God completely destroyed the entire human race! How come no one paints the mural of drowning people in their infant's nursery?)

I spent the better part of Sunday School trying to find this little story, but couldn't. Finally, with the help of my parents, I found those four measly verses in 1 Samuel 17, nestled into the story of David and Goliath. Now, first of all: four verses! Were we that desperate for stories that we had to take this tiny sidebar and stretch it into a full blown story? There was definitely some elaboration and creative interpretation going on with that one. Second of all, have you ever actually read the story of David and Goliath for yourself? It's really quite detailed and vivid and exciting.

So anyway, yes, it's there, David killed both a bear and a lion with his bare hands. But why was I thinking of it? Well, originally, I was assuming this was a separate little story randomly told about David, rather than him just proving to everyone how tough he was. But this morning when we read from John's gospel, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep, so when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep," I guess I was wondering if David protecting his sheep, and really nearly laying down his life for them, was really meant to be a type of Christ who did the same.

The thought really excited me at the moment, but when I found out the story was really just three or four tiny verses of David bragging to the older guys, it lost some of its appeal.

At any rate, John 10 is packed full of stuff to dissect and discuss.

And God bless our dedicated Sunday School teachers.

No, I still haven't replaced my stereo, but I HAVE found a way to to hook my record player up to the TV. As if the quality of vinyl wasn't poor enough, I've degraded it even further by pumping it through the little speakers on my television. But what can you do?

That being said, Damien Jurado's And Now That I'm in Your Shadow is as beautifully mellow as ever, and I can think of no better album with which to relax, read, fall asleep, or welcome winter.

And by regaining my record player, I have regained several great albums, including Why?'s Sandollar EP, which just finished playing, Richard Swift's Walking Without Effort, which will be going on next, Amiina's AminaminA EP, which I've been wanting to listen to for quite some time, selections from Burnt Toast Vinyl's One-Sided LP series, and some older gems, like Simon and Garfunkel and Randy Newman and Bruce Spingsteen. I wish I had a longer afternoon.

youtube findings....

saxon shore, live in taiwan...these guys are apparently pretty big stuff over there, so much so that people break out the glow sticks. but this is pretty intense...they look pretty good up there on the big stage. (if you get bored, skip forward to 2:25.)

sufjan's christmas greeting...yes, those are the same oboe and recorder riffs you hear on every other song he writes, but if you can resist smiling while watching this, i question your emotional well-being.

and have i mentioned this before?

The past few weeks have been extremely busy, leading up to and culminating in a wild and crazy roadtrip this past weekend.

Liz and Chalupa were married in Muncie, and Erica and I decided to attend. So we drove to Pittsburgh Friday night, drove to Muncie Saturday morning, went to the wedding, drove back to Pittsburgh Saturday night, and home on Sunday. Each leg was about 5 or 6 hours. All this crazy road trip talk makes us feel like wild college kids again, but when we're both falling asleep at the wheel because it's after 10:00pm and we're too tuckered out to drive, we realize we're not as young as we used to be.

Regardless, the wedding was beautiful and we're happy for Liz and Chalupa, and we got to see and spend time with Jared, Joe (looking manlier and more engaged than ever), Ben, and each of their nice girlfriends, Robby, Elaine, the Joneses, and Cat, and I also got to finally meet Lana which cleared up some awkwardness. All of these people are incredibly nice and beautiful in their own unique and special way, and it really made me greatly miss Indiana, college, and friends, and made me regret not spending more time getting to know certain people, which we all know happens all too often. We also spent time with Erica's old roommate AnnaKate in Pittsburgh and it was good to see her too. She lives in the beautiful little town of Sewickley, which you should go visit sometime.

Jared supplied me with new music. I'm finally in on the indiehipstercraze that is Jose Gonzalez, and he's pretty good. The new Album Leaf album is good, but it makes you realize "In a Safe Place" was only as good as it was because Sigur Ros helped. I got the new Damien Jurado on vinyl, so I'll have to wait til my stereo is fixed until I can listen to that one.

I've been drained and mellow lately, maybe depressed but not necessarily, and so I've had no motivation to actually sit down and write or update a blog or just plain think in general. All of these feelings continue to be true tonight, so I am going to end this here. Um. Yeah.

In recent weeks, I've felt a little emotionally dead, that is, my brain hasn't been thinking much, and when it does nothing really excites or interests me or triggers any real emotional connection. I haven't identified any real reason for it, other than the obvious possibility of my draining and stressful job.

I expressed all of this to Erica on Wednesday morning, and things have been coming back slowly but surely.

Wednesday night at grad class, God used a lunatic of a thinker named Alfie Kohn to startle me into thought. It's unusual for me to call someone like Alfie a lunatic; I'm usually pretty respectful of thinkers regardless of their thoughts, but this guy is pretty out of touch with the real world. He wrote an article about accepting students unconditionally. I loved the first half of his article and agreed with it whole-heartedly, saying that students won't be receptive to learning unless they feel unconditionally accepted by their teachers. True. But he went on to say that this included never punishing or disciplining a kid in any way, shape or form. He's obviously an extreme humanist, and I have a feeling he would get eaten alive after five minutes in a classroom like mine. I felt sorry for him, believing the things he believes, as I see the only possible way of unconditionally accepting a student is through the help of the Holy Spirit, and I'll be the first to attest that even then it's nearly impossible with some kids. Furthermore, I know that Hebrews tells me God disciplines the ones he loves just as a father disciplines his children lovingly, and poor Alfie doesn't realize you can love someone AND at the same time teach them the vital lesson that certain actions have consequences. Listen up, Alfie! Discipline is part of love!

Boy did that article get me started.

I went for a walk that night, and as I walked past a house, through livingroom windows I saw a girl diligently practicing cello. The moment was beautiful in itself, but it also surprisingly made me miss the work of practicing an instrument. It caused me to fondly recall days of organized music.

The day after, driving home from work, I saw a light and dusty moon in the daytime sky, a white smudge of a thumbprint on a blue pane of glass.

The foliage season is coming to an end all too quickly just as I knew it would. I was sad when October started, knowing that it would pass by all too quickly and underappreciated, and sure enough, November is here, yellow leaves are falling, and orange leaves are turning brown, and we've hardly noticed. As I drove to Coopersburg this morning, I passed several maples who were dropping their bright yellow leaves all at once. It wasn't a windy morning. Instead, it was if these trees received a command to let go and they were letting go indeed, leaves beautifully snowing to the ground.

And the past two nights have been spent in fellowship with adults much older than us, adults who have kids our own age. We've been asking for advice on the possibility of going to France this summer, which is another story all together. I realized Thursday night that while we aren't too fond of this whole adulthood thing just yet, one astounding benefit of adulthood is a new, broad group of friends. Parents of friends are now called just plain friends, despite the twenty or thirty year age difference. (Sometimes, when we're brave, we even call them by their first names! Later, we giggle with delight at the thought.) It's a wise and experienced group of friends, then, and having them as such is kind of just plain weird, but no doubt a high privilege.

I had a dream this morning of playing a long and beautiful song in church with tons of instruments and many participants, so beautiful it can't be described. I woke up with music on my mind, reminding myself I am not complete without an opportunity to play music every now and again. Kyle is coming over shortly and perhaps we'll attempt to recreate the dream.

Speaking of dreams, have you seen the Science of Sleep yet?

And all this to say, I am teaching Bible study tomorrow night, and we're going to start in Matthew 20, hop back to Jonah, then hop back to Matthew 18. The last time I taught Bible study, I struggled to somehow connect with the material. Thankfully, it has been no problem this time around, as I am overjoyed to know a God who dispenses gifts, not wages.

And why am I sharing all of this with you? Who knows, really. If you've read it all, I guess I should either say thanks or I'm sorry. If you haven't, that's ok. This one's more for me than for you.

And one more thing. I found out this morning that my dad, for many years, used a pocket protector.

My students think I'm a nerd.

(Then again, most of the teachers I work with probably do, too. If I don't watch sports, get wasted, and play poker, what else could I be but a nerd?)

Before its novelty had worn off, I had Weird Al's White and Nerdy sung to me just about every period.

Today a girl (one who is delightfully creative and imaginative) had a picture laying on her desk, and when I picked it up to look at it, she shrieked, "Eewww! He geekified it!"

Also today, with my hair continuing to grow, a girl offered to let me use her hair gel. Another girl was talking about my hair in Spanish, and all of the other girls gasped at whatever it was that she said.

I'm telling you, middle schoolers are brutal. But I usually agree with it all. It's my only defense. Not to mention it's just plain true.