oh! gravity where are you?

So, I decided to take a look at a Switchfoot song to review. Switchfoot, which is my favorite band, are rooted in rock and deep lyrics. Their latest album came out in December 2006 and was titled Oh! Gravity. The band sits on the fence as a non-Christian or Christian band. Not because the band chooses to: because neither Christians nor non-Christians will take the band for themselves. The band is in the fuzzy grey area and I think they like it that way. A “Christian” band or not, their lyrics lead only to one thing – God.

Or so I thought as I wondered around a review on the title track ‘Oh! Gravity’. On the website Jesus Freak Hideout, a Christian music website, their review of the album and song Oh! Gravity was anything but good. They insult the album for “dwelling too much on materialism and consumerism”, and “ambiguous political leanings”. In the end the album was deemed forgettable.

Forgettable is exactly what has happened: forgetting the poor, the hurting, our enemies, and the ‘sinners’ of this world.

The political left, bent on pointing out the world’s (especially the United States’) problems with materialism and consumerism reminds us that a song like ‘Oh! Gravity’ is exactly what we should not be forgetting. Composer, Jon Foreman points to God’s love and what Christians should be striving for in these lyrics.

“There's a fracture in a corner bar
In the back seat of a parked car
By the liquor store where the streetlights
Keep you company till the next night
In the same town there's the same scar
In the same glow of the liquor store
By the freeway where the headlights
Keep you company till the next night”

You can feel the pain and anguish in the lives that are being forgotten in the lonely and hurting in the bar. You can see the innocence being lost in the back of the car.

“In the back room of the Pentagon
There's a thin man with a line drawn
With a red jaw and the red bite
Watch the headline on the next night”

Politics or love? The review thinks it is politics. Maybe it is just a case of love. A love for one’s enemies, and an idea of life for everyone beyond war, violence, and murder. The album does dwell a little on materialism and consumerism. Is that such a bad thing? Did not the prophets of old warn of false idols? Did not Jesus speak about not being able to love both God and money?

Just look at today’s global economic crisis and see what materialism and consumerism has done to the world, to the poor, to the sick. Although the album and song received some poor reviews the band was right on where both Christians and non-Christians lives and love for God should be.

Full song lyrics here.

cheezburger pleeeze!

I don’t normally endorse chain restaurants. 1) Because they normally don’t induce anything unique. 2) They are usually unhealthy. 3) and, I can get something that tastes better anywhere else.

Jess and I however went out last Friday to Five Guys Burger and Fries. And they serve up a great burger. The actual restaurant has a great atmosphere, unlike some other places. The fries: they actually taste like potatoes. And they give you a ton of them. Five Guys is a smaller chain, much like these guys, and has obtained praise and admiration - unlike these guys. It’s one of the best burgers I’ve had.

earth day: reflections on doubting thomas

Today is Earth Day. It’s the day when Christians and non-Christians can get together, drive down the highway and throw their fast-food bag and leftover fries to the side of the road and no one will care. Wait. What? No, that is the one day when we come together not to do that. Earth Day is a day, or a week in some communities, to clean up the messes we have made in parks and roadsides. Earth Day does seem to bring Christians and non-Christians together. Everyone agrees, at least, that the trash on the side of the road doesn’t look good.

On every other day though it seems that just like with politics, morals, and so on there is a deep divide between Christians and non-Christians on the environment. Just look at global warming. As most non-Christians take global warming to be a fact, still many Christians find it to be a hoax, unimportant, and total boo-hockey.

The gospel lesson from this week was about Doubting Thomas which can be found in John chapter 20. As my pastor pointed out this Sunday, Thomas gets a bad rap. He gets a bad rap because Thomas doubted. His faith was bent on seeing and not just believing. Thomas will forever be seen in a bad light as Doubting Thomas. Thomas has something in common with the majority of Christians today. Just like Thomas had to see and touch to believe, so do Christians have to see and touch to believe that there is global warming. It’s a kind of sad irony. With all the cold weather and snow this winter it seems to make doubting that much easier and believing that much harder.

Yet, Earth Day was not founded because of global warming and neither was this argument. Caring for creation isn’t just about global warming. It’s about caring for earth and all of God’s good creation. What does it say when we destroy something God has created? What does it say about resurrection hope, that like the disciples a week after Jesus rose, when we don’t care about creation?

tilting for worms

Oh my gosh! I just confirmed the coolest thing today.

So at work this week I’ve been watching the robins outside my window. As most people know, robins aren’t like many other birds in that they will not sit at a bird feeder and eat seed. No, they like a challenge each day so they hunt worms on the ground.

As I was watching them I noticed that they kept tilting their heads toward the ground. It looked as if the robins were listening for the worms. Well! After looking it up, indeed the robins are using their hearing to find worms. How cool is that?

Next time you see a robin looking for worms check to see if it tilts its head toward the ground.

those phony green products

When is green not being green any more? The simple answer is if we look at a scale. Is what I am doing helping or hurting creation? Of course life is not this simple. For example, I have to drive to get to work. There is no way around it. It is simply too far away for me to walk or bike to work. And it simply takes too long to take public transportation. If we were to give a simple solution for this, I could just quit my job and find one that is closer where I can be more green. Of course we all know it just is not that simple.

So, there is a lot of grey in being green. There is also a lot of black and white. Recycling, being more conservative with energy, is being more green. Not recycling, throwing trash to the ground is not being green. Being green can also be hard when we add as variable time and money. It is hard to walk to the grocery store and when you drive it saves forty minutes. It is hard to buy consumer products that are less harmful to the earth when they are double the cost.

And then there is Target. With it almost being Earth Day (April 22) Target came out with some “be green” products. Unfortunately, the products aren’t very green. The first is a sign from the dollar bin. It says to recycle and be green. Yet the product is neither made from recycled material nor is it made in an environmentally conscious way. Plus, it was shipped all the way from China. Second, is a note book promoting being green. Although the product had some recycle materials in it, it was still shipped all the way from China.

These products, while they may be promoting “being green” are completely hypocritical, and all for the sake of promotion. They may seem like a green product, but are most certainly not.

you know - that wedding

I told you the blog was going to feel new.

It’s been just over a month now since I got married out in Massachusetts. We still haven’t received the wedding photos from the photographer yet, but we do have plenty from our friends and family who attended. I put together a short slideshow of some of our photos.

The photos are of the wedding chapel, the Inn where the reception was at, and a few photos from the wedding.

It’s doesn’t feel like over a month now, but we are finally getting settled into our new apartment and just in time for a great Easter.

new feel to the blog

After my blog’s existence for almost a year and a half, I’ve decided to refurbish the content of the blog. The blog’s motive was to bring relative content and reflection from me on real world events. I am not going to do away with that completely, but change the attitude of the blog in general. My blog has not received much traffic since its conception, mostly due to my lack of publicity and marketing, so these changes are directed at my daily readers. The blog will become more commonplace - relating to my own life instead of merely an informative blog.

I’ve decided to do this to expand the content of my blog and to continue to add content on a more regular basis. I’ve only got so many original musings about this world and many of them are from my daily life, anyway. I would like to increase the content without crowding the blog with unproductive information and half-thought-out blog posts. The blog will now be more of a convergence of my daily life with my reflections on world events and issues as I encounter them. Hopefully this will enhance the blog instead of subtract from its relativity.

the forgotten cities of columbine

On the brink of the ten year reunion of Columbine, is gun violence in the United States any better? All cases point to no – but does anyone care?

Some of the latest school shootings have happened on college campuses. And some of the latest shootings happened in Pittsburgh, PA and Binghamton, NY. Many of these shooting don’t create chaos or panic in the United States. Many are just talked about for a couple days and then left hanging – others are left to tribute. On college campuses and in schools it has created more hysteria and controversy than any other type of gun murder. Every since Columbine, school shootings seem to get all of the attention. Yet, they are not a bulk of the murders. In the documentary Bowling for Columbine, the movie addresses the ease of accessibility of bullets and guns to kids (as well as people who should be denied a gun). And five years later at Virginia Tech people are blaming again the accessibility of guns.

Gun owners, the NRA, and the like refute that guns are the problem. In a world that is built on the idea of freedom, guns will never be restricted. But as advocates look at the destruction and death that befall the United States (and the world) they can’t help but think that accessibility is a problem. And yet, it is only a tip of the iceberg. Is it not?

In Chicago last year there were 510 murders. Chicago “beat” out both the larger cities of Los Angeles and New York City in murders in 2008. It’s a staggering number, no? The number is indicative of something far beyond guns: it is an issue of poverty, health care, racism, injustice. We’re not talking about the grand suburbs like Columbine. No, when we look at the cities at the top of the murder rate they are cities like Camden, Gary, Detroit, Flint, Compton, etcetera, that have been riddled with injustice. Cities left to fend for themselves, just trying to survive each day.

They are the cities that are forgotten. The cities whose murder rates are so high that people avoid even driving through that city, who avoid driving through that part of town. It is in the forgotten that schools and children are left to fend for themselves. It is the forgotten who are left without jobs not just in a bad economy, but in a thriving economy. It is the kind of place where families, businesses, and companies are there one day and paving a yellow brick road in the ‘burbs the next.

This is what we do though. As Rob Herbert writes in his article in the NYT,

“This is the American way. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country’s attention
understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in
non-terror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it — 120,000
dead. That’s nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and
Afghanistan.”

When does it stop? When do we turn back to the places that were left behind because of the social issues at hand around the United States?

i don’t have a woodshop, but I do have a milk carton

I’ve created a two minute video on a DIY birdfeeder. If you are interested take a look.

Bird feeding diagram from the video
Some other DIY bird feeding ideas
Bird feeding tips from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

jesus camp: the lessons i learned

Wow! Just watched Jesus Camp over the weekend. If you have not seen it, it is a documentary about a fundamental Christian camp and the faith of the kids that are involved. The movie itself looks at a year in the camp and highlights a few of the kids and the youth director that puts on the camp.

So, if you haven’t seen it I don’t want to ruin it by giving up much of the plot from the movie. But I would like to give you a few of the lessons I learned from the movie.

Lessons learned:
Apparently the only way to worship God (in church) is by yelling and shouting for joy. You can’t be quiet or sing serenely.

Be slain or be slain.

Little fundamental Christian kids scare me more than this.

Harry Potter is a warlock.

Warlocks are bad.

Ted Haggard was featured toward the end of the movie. If anyone didn’t see this coming, they should have watched this documentary.

Jesus tracks at a bowling alley is the best way to minister to the lost.

I live in a sick old world.

Mullets are good.

Brain molds can be used for ministering to kids.

Public schools suck for two reasons: 1) because they are public 2) because they teach about evolution.

Brittney Spears sings about girls and boys, not about God.

Children are great for brainwashing!

Science proves nothing – ever!

Sin often looks like a stuffed animal.

Global warming is stupid and way overrated.

God doesn’t like non-Christians - they are yucky.

Public schools went bad when they took prayer out of school.

Did I mention little fundamentalist Christian kids scare me?

Some other conclusions I found out from the movie:
Jesus must have been born in the good ole U.S. of A., because the United States is the only nation God blesses and everyone else is an enemy.

Jesus was definitely about war and not peace. Join the U.S. Army here.

God is not in every church.

Right now I am being judged by a nine year somewhere and being condemned to hell for not jumping up and down and shouting to God.

Ideas that I can apply from the movie:
I should buy some tracks and put them in soda boxes at the grocery store so people can find them when they buy their soda and then be saved when they read it. It is way easier than talking to them at a bowling alley.

Condemn everything that is not like me.

Harry Potter started global warming.

Jesus can’t come back until there is a Republican back in the white house.

And those are the lessons I learned from the movie. Hopefully you can learn your own lessons.

If you didn’t notice the sarcasm throughout this blog please read again.

cubs: team of the century

Cubs rewarded Team of the Century by ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and Major League Baseball.

Despite having the longest drought of any team ever for a World Series championship, the Cubs are awarded the highest, more prestigious award in baseball – Team of the Century. The Cubs who have won their division and made the playoffs for the past two years, and have gone 0-4 in the playoffs. The Cubs avoid winning like penguins avoid flying. In 2003 one win away from the World Series a drop ball causes chaos in Wrigleyville that eventually becomes the demise of the Cubs and lifts the Florida Marlins to the World Series. What was the last time the Cubs were in the World Series?

1945 lost to the Tigers 3-4 games
1938 lost to the Yankees 0-4
1932 lost to the Tigers 2-4
1929 lost to the Athletics 1-4
1918 lost to the Red Sox 1-4
1910 lost to the Athletics 1-4

One hundred years of losing and despite all of that, despite the Yankees winning 26 World Series in the past hundred years, despite having less World Series championships even in their own town, they are voted Team of the Century.



Happy April everyone!

Gotta love those lovable losers!
This will be the year!