Esteban!

I just saw Esteban and his incredibly beautiful daughter live at a very intimate venue, and had the cd and the illustration I did of him signed! And it was completely free! They got a good laugh when I told them I postponed my move back to michigan to go see them. During the hour long show they did some awesome improv of songs. Man that guy is amazing, and his daugther can play some awesome violin. So whats this intimate, free venue I speak of? Cassleberry Walmart, inbetween infants and grocery. It was awesome.

Thoughts from a Subway Shop

I love me some Subway, and if you're wondering the new steak sandwich isn't as good as the old one. Today while I was in there, getting completely ignored by both workers while they and the old customer talked way to loudly about thier church's upcoming christmas play, I noticed something seemed odd. Not the fact that I was being treated as I wasn't standing there by two church-goers, this isn't about quite possibly my biggest pet peave (its not that hard to say "Hi, I'll be with you in just a sec"). This is about christmas pagents.

Try as I may, I literally couldn't help but listen to the lady talking with an outside voice with a thick brittish accent in a very open room, with lots and lots of reverb. It appears she was giving away tickets to her chruch's christmas pagent, well at least to the guy in front of me in line. I could launch into an us versus them thing here, because it feels very applicable, but I'll try to stay on topic. Anyway, christmas pagent. So this pagent will be huge. I'll note a couple of things I gleaned from her talking.

• parts of the Charlie Brown Christmas Story
• The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, including a huge cave placed over the stage with a massive stair case going down to the stage so "people can watch the Grinch walk down from his cave"
• numerous live animals for the nativity story
• carabeans and pullies and high ropes for use somewhere in the play
• broadway quality props
• something about pyrotechnics
  

She talked for a little while about how huge it is going to be, and how expensive and high quality it will be. And it all seemed odd.

We put all sorts of resources into putting on this huge impressive show with stuff flying around. We put out tickets and tell everyone we know so they can come see, and these are some nice tickets. We spend money on ad space to advertise how good our show is so people will come see.

This seems to be starkly opposite (minus the live animals) to the actual birth. If anything, Jesus birth was down-played. If I count correctly, only 10 people on earth were privy to the fact that Jesus had been born, and 7 of them relied on heavenly informants. 10 is even counting Jesus. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph being the 3. The wisemen, shepards, and the roman offical end up numbering 7 (I think). There was no huge horrah about the birth among people other than the emporer. Seems pretty opposite to me.

Let me take you on a journey back in time, not back to Jesus's birth, but back to my junior or senior year of high school to a reenactment of the birth done by a handful of korean highschoolers and one pasty white boy with a gotee and glasses. I was just dropping my best friend off so he could practice and then perform in front of everyone in a couple of hours when he invited me to stay and watch. I had never been to a completely korean baptist church before, where everything is preached in korean and then translated to english, so I stayed.

Ends up there weren't enough baptist-church-going-korean-high schoolers to cast a full crew, so up steps the pasty white boy to play a shepard. My role consisted of some pretty hardcore acting. I kneeled on one side of the small stage huddled around the campfire made of construction paper with the other two sheppards. My trip following the star to get to the new born jesus consisted of standing up from one knee, spinning around on my heels, and then dropping down to the other knee in the manger at the makeshift crib of our plastic baby Jesus.

It was simplicitly beautiful. It was absolutely nothing like broadway, and as far as production value goes, I'd probably put it just a tiny bit below the 1st grade christmas play. But thats what made it so beautiful. There was absolutely no huge productive stuff to get in the way of the downplayed story of God coming to earth, and it was incredibly touching.

Maybe we don't need to add all sorts of stuff, maybe the beautifully downplayed story of how God decided to enter directly into his creation is more than enough.

At the end of the play all us make-shift actors became the church choir and lead everyone in singing a few christmas songs... in korean. Apparently I'm incredibly good at faking korean singing. During practice the "choir" director stopped us all mid-song and said Duby you need to sing louder, I can't hear you. I continued to mouth, but I nailed the glorias.

Whats amazing, with the numerous churches I've been to since that day, I've never felt more welcome and loved, despite being the odd one out. That to me is what Christmas, and Christianity, is about, incredibly amazing love, crossing all boundries.

hey duby, why dont you pack all your books in one large box? Sounds like a good idea to me.

I'm retarded

somethings very very right

this is actually an email I sent to the people on the University Young Life team that I lead with. I'm not posting it to brag about myself (since I can't take any credit for it), or the rest of the team, wait, scratch that, the team does an amazing job. But I'm really posting this to share the beauty of what God has been doing.

In the past few weeks of club, we have had...

• a whole hurting family showing up
• a kid consistently coming to club drunk, and announcing his intentions to continue to do so
• kids sneaking off to smoke
• kids coming to club after getting high (possibly sneaking off to get high)
• a kid choosing to spend his hard earned money to buy his "family" a pizza dinner
  

and that list is so incredibly, divinly, good and right. I'm on the verge of tears with how beautiful all of that is, and I just wanted to point it out to everyone.

Cocoa Beach Pics

The Crane

I can't believe I managed to get that first picture, and managed to have the settings right to not get a butt-load of motion blur on it. In case you didn't know, cranes look kinda stupid when you look at them straight on, I think a couple of the pictures below prove that.

Other Birds and a shell

I personally love the last picture I have on here. Those little ones are so freaking cute when they run like that. Those things seem to have two speeds, stopped and run as fast as you can. Have you ever seen one just kinda strolling along? I sure haven't.

All in all, that short little trip was exactly what I needed. It was like the waves were God whispering "I love you" in my ear.

God, in the voice of Tony Campolo

The scripture says that when one member of the body suffers, all the members suffer. And so it is that each of us took a hit when Ted Haggard was “ousted,” disgraced, and then ridiculed by late-night comedians. But after we get over our initial anger at being betrayed by one of our top leaders, hopefully we will realize that we really need to prayerfully weep for our brother, his family and the members of his congregation.

In the midst of all the turmoil, confusion, and disillusionment, it is all too easy to ignore the suffering of Mike Jones, the male prostitute who blew the whistle on our brother Ted. Mike also will be hurt. His life will never be the same. He will always be scorned and a marked man.

We have to wonder: What drove him into prostitution? From whence did he get that low self-concept which, according to sociologists who study prostitutes, always characterizes these precious children of God?

Do we, the Church, bear any responsibility for how Mike Jones might feel about himself? Might he have heard some of those sermons which define homosexuals as “abominations” in the eyes of God?

Was it the war that so many leading Christians, including Mr. Haggard, have declared on the gay community that made Mike Jones feel that it was his “moral obligation” to expose the hypocrisy in evangelicalism?

Did he feel so oppressed by the way in which we have generated political movements that threaten to deny gays and lesbians their civil rights that he was motivated to strike back in the only way he could?

I have heard so many of my colleagues in ministry express deep concerns over what this scandal will do to the image of the evangelical movement, but I have heard little concern among us for how all of this will impact those Christian gays and lesbians that we know. They are in our churches. They teach in our Sunday schools and sing in our choirs. Most of them are closeted brothers and sisters who suffer in ways that are impossible for the rest of us to even imagine. They are good people who do not take drugs or visit prostitutes. Will the ugliness of this sorry mess feed a diabolical stereotype of them, which is too often circulated in our churches by unkind preachers who have little, if any, understanding of homosexuals?

In the midst of this tragic scandal, we need to be asking what good God wants to bring out of what has happened. Could this tragedy be used by God to draw us back from an arrogant triumphal attitude wherein we, in our self-righteousness, assume the right to take over America and politically recast it in our own image?

Is this a time when we might do some soul searching to see if we have been reduced into the corrupting influence of the power that we have gained in government and in the marketplace?

Finally, are we able to “restore our brother Ted,” who, in the words of scripture, has been “overtaken in a fault?” Are we able to consider ourselves lest we also be tempted? (Galatians 6:1)

Right now, both Ted and Mike are facing the dark side of their humanity. Are we willing to affirm them by declaring loud and clear that there is something of infinite worth in each of them?

We’ve got a lot of questions to ask ourselves in a time like this. Let us pray for the grace not to flee from these questions.

- God, in the voice of Tony Campolo

Things to do when you can't sleep at 5:30am

1. drink some warm milk


2. take some velarian root


3. ocean sound cd


4. Adult Swim just started showing Voltron at 5:30... solid


5. Drive an hour to the Atlantic Ocean, spend 2 hours taking pictures and walking the beach, drive the hour back

Really cool pictures, or possibly links to really cool pictures, coming soon.

ps - is the green person from Voltron a guy or a girl? All suited up in the lion I definetly say guy, but in the normal street clothes it confuses it quite a bit. Nevermind, I just looked it up. Pidge is a guy, and yes, his name is Pidge. And I will punch anyone who makes fun of the name.

Baghdad's morgues so full, bodies being turned away

wow, the numbers of people being burried without being identifed is mind boggling. What struck me was the fact that people are now tattooing their names and phone numbers onto thier thighs so if they are killed, they can be easily identified and the family informed of thier death. Then the family can be spared having to look through books that are just pictures of dead people with identification numbers. Meanwhile we people camping out to get their hands on a PS3.

I'm reminded of a short writing by Czeslaw Milosz entitled "American Ignorance of War". Theres no way I'm gonna type it out here, and I didn't find it in a google search, but head to your library, its probably in an anthology there. Check it out.

I wanted a sticker for my absentee vote, so I made one. Feel free to steal it if your an absentee voter as well. Us absentees should have stickers too!

In the process of trying to write a divinity talk for club on monday (its not going to well right now) I flipped through my journal/bible study notes/sermon notes/whatever notebook. I was amazed at how random my thoughts really are when I just sit down and write, usually late at night. Anyway, I found something I wrote that I'd I like to share. Its much better than a long post about a spaghetti dinner. I'll put the paragraph I'm talking about in bold because I want to show the randomness of the writing abit.

I could sure go for a bar night with Scott right about now. And get together with Cody and Andy and Weenum and Cyphers and Zack. That football game kicked alot ass.

I believe in love. Even though all of my beliefs seem to be up in the air, I believe in love, and God is that love, everything else be damned. Maybe this is right where I should be, I just need to live it out.

I'm freaking hungry.

Tar-tar sauce.

Thats a totally logical progression right? People I miss - a football game, not sure which one now - a kind of statement of believe - I'm freaking hungry - and a simpsons reference, "let the fools have thier tar-tar sauce"

I like that one coherrent paragraph I wrote in there.

mmm... I heart Oberon!

I'm offically back in Orlando now, and have yet another funny story to tell, this one funny ha you're a moron kind of funny.

So I'm running a little late packing, and we leave for the airport a little later than we had wanted, didn't matter though because we go there at 2pm and I was sitting on my butt at the terminal waiting by 2:05. So no worries there.

Long flight back (side note, a 2 hour drive is SOOOOO much nicer than a 2 hour flight), we land, get to the gate, I jump out of my seat and grab my bag from the overhead compartment, and at the exact moment I started to walk to exit the plane to call the shuttle to the parking lot to pick up my car and head back to the apartment it hits me like a ton of bricks that I forgot to grab my keys off of the counter before I left. My keys which not only had the keys for my car, but also the keys to my apartment.

I'll spare you all the details, but a friend got me, my neighbor who has a spare key to my apartment got back from his trip to Miami about the same time I got home. Mom is overnighting the keys to me tomorrow morning, so I'll have to wait till Tuesday at noon for keys. Whats rediculous is I could actually fly back to flight and pick up them in person and fly back here for about 60 dollars less than what the cost is to have them sent same day mail. Also crazy, Monday by 5pm=$163, Tuesday by noon $15.

I already miss Michigan like crazy right now. I have a cool little analogy coming up soon, so stay tuned if you're interested. It should be pretty good.

"And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself"
-Dashboard Confessionals, Vindicated

Isn't it amazing how God knows exactly what we are in Him, even when we're still absolutely clueless to it ourselves?

How Far is Heaven

I'm going to venture a guess that you the reader are thinking that this post will be about one of two things with a title like that. 1.)This will be an end-of-times post calling everyone to repent and turn to the Lord because the apocalypse is near and you don't want to be "Left Below", complete with mathmatical formulas to prove we should be gathering at the Springfield Mesa next week for the rapture. Or possibly 2.)A post devoted to Los Lonely Boys and thier hit song that I stole the title from. Or I guess I could throw out my proper english education, go against what I previously said and add a third option. 3.) some whacked out, crazy mumbo-jumbo about Heaven that probably has the potential to get me labeled a heretic, or a schismatic, in any number of circles.

I'm going to venture another guess that if you picked option #1, you really have no clue who I am and randomly found your way to my blog by some strange quest through the wonderful "tubes" of the internet. So for those who picked this option, hey and welcome. I'm also gonna guess that if you picked #2 you know me in some sort of manner to know enough that I'm not down with the whole predicting the apocolypse thing, and that I dig Los Lonely Boys. So to you I say hey, good to see ya again, hows your momma? And to those of you who picked option #3, you probably know me the best, I do tend to be a little whacked out from time-to-time. So to the friends who picked #3, you get the hetero-hug and an invitation to grab a beer, throw some darts, and shoot the perverbial breeze. Actually that invitational goes to everybody.
Anyway, now that the intro has grown much larger than I had intended, lets get down to business shall we? Or at least I'll get down to business and attempt to hold my ADD-ness at bay long enough to finish this exceedingly long post.

Today while chilling on the couch, reading Time magazine, I caught a beautiful glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven, which I am hoping to share with all of you. First let me start with a picture.

These are kids in rural Africa where clean drinking water is hard to come by and usually involves women walking very long distance with pots to collect water and then return to thier village. Many times the women are injured in the trip, as its a necessary, but not always easy, journey to make.

So whats that have to do with this awesome pic of African kids smiling and having a great time? Pretty much everything. This great time is being had pumping water for the community they live in. If you've managed to look past the smiling faces, which is hard to do, you've noticed the kids are pilled on a Merry-Go-Round, one of the best classic playground toys ever invented. But, as you have guessed, that is no normal Merry-Go-Round, this one functions as a water pump, pumping large amounts of safe drinking water for the community. I'll spare you the numbers here, but check out the link at the bottom if you want to know more.

These amazing creations are called PlayPumps and are being installed in many places in Africa right now. I'm not sure of the technical aspects, but as the merry-go-round turns, it pumps water into a large holding tank nearby. I read a little blip about them in an article called "How the New Philanthropy Works" by Laura Bush and Jean Case. It talks about these amazing creations being an example of how people in the private sector partnering with governments are doing some pretty amazing things.

See the picture on the right? That could very well be the first time in those kids lives that they have been able to "drink straight from the hose." I'm not going to even attempt to take a stab at how many times I have done that growing up, I don't think it would be remotely possible, and these children are getting to experience it for the first time. That picture is just so exciting for me.

Another thing that is so awesome about these new pumps is the fact that they make thier own money to cover the cost of maintence for 10 years, a whole decade of having clean drinking water with no cost of maintence. The holding tank has billboards mounted on 4 sides, and the ad revenue from that covers the cost. It gets even better though. 2 of the 4 billboards a reserved for educational messages in lines of teaching good hygiene and HIV/AIDS prevention.

So we have rural areas of Africa plagued by water issues getting the water they so desperately need. The kids are having an amazingly good time on recess playing on a Marry-Go-Round, and there is great messages being sent to the youth and everyone else who goes to get water. What an amazing invention. If thats not The Kingdom work, Gospel, "Yahweh Ethics", God at work in the world, or any other name once could attribute to God's work of redemption to the whole of creation, I don't think there would be much that would count.


So, in the words of Los Lonely Boys, How Far is Heaven? I say its right there in the picture.

Googled: PlayPump Water System, link 1.5 the pdf file is where I stole the pictures from.

guess who's back... back again

Duby's back, tell a friend...

anyway.

I had totally forgot about this blog, and so sad for y'all, now that more people I know are using blogger, and I've been getting into the habbit of posting things more than a sentence long, figured I'd step up to a blogger acount, and then realized I had one (with a funny picture I forgot about) that has laid dormant for almost a whole year.

I'm gonna (re)start this blog in the way I think any blog should begin, with a good, solid, uplifting refelction of a fart, enjoy.

So I get off the plane in the Smith terminal of wonderful DTW in Detroit, MI. Walking through the terminal to baggage claim and I'm got the soundtrack to Idlewild (a sweet cd by the way) on my rather loud headphones, big headphones that pretty much block out the world. So I've walking to the baggage claim and realize I have to fart, no biggie, I think, I'll just let it out nice and quite in the middle of this crowded terminal. Well, judging by the swinging around of 3 conservatively dressed older woman and the faces of laughter coming from the little kids next to me, its hard to determine the volume of a fart with loud music blaring directly into your ears. It must have been a rather decent volume because the ladies were a good 10-12 feet away. I really wish I had my camera on me at the time, because the look on the old ladies faces were amazing, espically when compared to those of the little kids.