OK. So waited until the proverbial 11th hour to go and vote, but Veronica & I made it to the polls at around 7:15pm to make sure our vote was cast. For Veronica, this was only her 2nd election since becoming a citizen in March, so she has the mixture of being really nervous and also really fired up.

It has been quite the 8 months of civic growth for Veronica - becoming a citizen after 17 years in the U.S., voting for the first time in her adult life, and receiving her first jury summons!! She has been paying taxes for years, so I don’t know what else she can do to experience her new citizenship.

P.S. Maybe more importantly, we also exercised all of our voting power tonight in voting for Dancing with the Stars. For our household, that means 10 votes from 2 cell phones, 5 votes from the house phone, plus 10 more votes on-line!! Needless to say, it will be Emmitt squaring off versus Mario next week…

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“I don’t think there’s any question we cheat our family and our kids,” said George Karl [coach for NBA Denver Nuggets], who will miss son Kobe’s senior night at Boise State this season because of a Nuggets scheduling conflict. “There’s no way you can give quantity to your kids.”

This quote came from an article about a former 2nd overall pick forgoing this season - and about $5 million - to, of all things, have more time with his family. Good thing that only professional athletes & coaches struggle to spend enough time with their family.

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“The praise has the power to transform the pain. But conversely the present pain also keeps the act of praise honest.”
–Walter Brueggeman

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If we deal with life as a problem, we reduce it to what we can do something about; we are concerned with figuring out and fixing. And, while there is an important place for figuring things out and fixing them, if that is all that we do we become myopic, managers and mechanics of what is immediately before us, with no peripheral vision and no horizons. We miss most of life.
But if we approach life as a mystery, we are forever coming upon meanings that exceed our definitions, energy and resources unguessed in our calculations. Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.”
- Eugene Peterson, author
The Unnecessary Pastor

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My friend Micah Trippe (Oxy alum!!) has entered the blogging world. Micah recently moved back to New York, and when I asked him how he was enjoying New York the second time around, he said,

“New York is (of course) very different the second time around, but I am really glad I’m here. I met a guy the other night from LA- Atwater Village- and I felt no desire to be there.”

I’m not sure if he was referring to Atwater Village in particular - not a place I’ve ever felt a desire to be - or to Los Angeles in general. But either way, check out his blog. As an artist, I anticpate Micah is going to uncover a lense on New York that I would probably not see.

Which reminds me, why is it that New Yorkers love New York soooo much? To be quite honest, of the major US cities that I’ve been to, New York wasn’t really one I’ve ever imagined myself in - whether as a guest or a resident. Now Boston, or Chicago, or Miami, or Atlanta… but just not New York. And I’m not just saying this because their baseball teams suffered disappointing playoff finishes this year, nor because their basketball team is a shame, a sham and in shambles (but did I just write that all out…)

Really, though, what is it about New York?

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“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

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That’s what this verse from Job sounds like to me:

“But a stupid person will get understanding,
when a wild ass is born human.”

-Job 11:12 (NRSV)

Don’t you think so?

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Several highlights from our family retreat this weekend at Campus by the Sea on Catalina:

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“When that happened, I said, I’ve got to get a little closer to the biggest icon in the world. It ain’t Michael Jordan. It ain’t Bob Marley, Che Guevara, even John Lennon. It’s Jesus. Nobody’s got more followers.”

This statement - from today’s LA Times - from Lamar Odom on how he has dealt with a series of personal challenges this summer, including the painful loss of his infant son. When I heard about this back in July, my heart sank for him. For whatever limelight and lofty status professional athletes have, they are just as susceptible to pain as anyone. I feel for a father who has to grieve the loss of his youngest son.

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The most original shape that my sabbatical has maintained is my plan to take a course at Fuller this fall. I enrolled in OT504 - a class on the Old Testament Writings - taught by John Goldingay. The posts series - “Writings, Readings & “Thinkings” - will capture a piece of my weekly reflections from the course. **If you’re interested in more of the raw intellectual or historical data, let me know, since I won’t focus on that here.**

My first reflection comes from the following poem - about Sept. 11th - which I believe has wide-relevancy regarding the experience of those who suffer. The whole poem looks at Sept. 11th from different lenses of the OT Writings, but this section comes from my new biblical mentor Job: (more…)

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My friend Sean just made a big life shift to direct a new college residence life program… in Sweden!!  And to appropriately capture the experience, he’s just officially entered the blogging world. Check his blog out at Linköpinglivin’.

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No, this isn’t a joke, even if it is a creative spin-off of the psuedo popular publishing “…for Dummies” series. Tom Pratt of Servant Partners is writing a 6 part series on practical models for combating poverty, with a biographical sketch of a “Jedi poverty fighters” as he calls them, and an analysis of their impact.

Definately worth the read. In a blog world that majors on criticism & ad hominem attacks, this is a great solution oriented & practical series on poverty. Plus, with words like Cronyocracy it makes for fun reading. The first two parts of the series are linked below.
Read “Fighting Poverty for Dummies I - Ownership”

Read “Fighting Poverty for Dummies II - Microlending“

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Do you know what they say about people with big hands & big feet?

They wear big gloves & big shoes…

Despite my tall frame, I’ve never been a dominant athlete in basketball, volleyball or football. But apparently - with real research to back it up - the advantage of being tall isn’t primarily athletic, but intellectual. Read here and here for more.

P.S.My dad - a purely unbiased, though tall drink of water, found this highly credible research.

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After winning 4 games to advance past the 3rd round (no, that doesn’t add up right, but that’s another story…) we just lost in the championship game by a hair - 52-53 in OT. (Some would argue it was the hair on my teamate Glory’s arm that got hacked at the end of the game with NO call by the refs…)

Not much to say in losing, though. Playing in this league this summer was a lot of fun, mostly because of the team I played on. Right now, I think the sting is more from the dog-cussing, bad-mouthing, trash-talking on the other side of the ball today than from the final score. At least for me. Loved playing with my team, though. A bunch of really good guys.

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It’s sort of like the Elvis tribute shows. We pay tribute to “The King” by imitating some of his moves. People like it. I’m not the King but I try to get people to believe I’m the King. Entertains ‘em and makes ‘em feel good, even if just for a few hours or years.

You said ‘we’ pay tribute to the King.

Oh yeah. A lot of us do Jesus for a living. I get a chance to work with Kansas School Board Jesus quite a bit. And sometimes you get a chance to go old skool with somebody like International Socialist Jesus. And then you’ve got the ancients. Got lunch with Spanish Inquisition Jesus. That was a real thrill.

So you’re a Jesus impersonator?

Well, that’s what some people like to call us (laughs loudly).

But we don’t like to use that term. We’re all professionals. We’ve got a lot of pride in what we do.

Have you ever met, you know, the real Jesus?

No, not really. But I’ve studied some of his movies.

LOL. Read the whole thing “Confessions of a Neo-Conservative Jesus” from Wordcat.  Bitingly sarcastic cultural commentary that is all too relevant for today.

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I have to confess, I’ve been a little giddy this past week.

Winning, apparently, does that. And since this is my “I’ve - never - been - in - or - won - in - any - playoffs” experience, it has been a lot of fun.

Here is how we got here. (more…)

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“I have heard members of the House of Representatives say, ‘Choking off the jobs of illegals will cause them to starve and force them to leave our country,’ I stand with hundreds of thousands of ministerial colleagues who will go to jail if necessary rather than to starve 12 million people and their 3 million American citizen children.”

This from Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr., president of Esperanza USA, at one of the Senate Judiciary Field Hearing on immigration in Philadelphia July 5, 2006, regarding the House Bill H.R. 4437 and the Senate Bill 2611. I’d love to know which members of the House he heard saying that.

*Post title reference

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“This is going to take years to correct because it took years to decay.”

This from Robert Taylor, new L.A. County Probation Chief for the Juvenile Detention Deptartment, talking about the state of California’s rehabilitation system, taken from today’s LA Times.   Read the whole article.

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