Marc’s Musings

Sometime after our initial conversation, my wife showed my this eGreeting.

This is sorta what we were talking about. =)

For the entire flash animation, click here.

My wife and I were talking about the Homeland Security Advisory System with some friends.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a version for you home so you knew what you were about to walk into after work? If you saw orange, you knew you’d need to be a stronger support for your spouse. Red would mean drive around the block one more time to mentally prepare for coming in.

This in no way is meant to mock the real threats that this system is designed to alert us to.

But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Kingdom of God Napkin Sketch

As promised this is the story I tell in some form every week.

God created everything and it was very good.

Humans chose to disobey God. They sinned. In so doing, satan got the deed to creation. Sickness, disease, etc. came.

Everyone was expecting the cataclysmic end of it all. Judgement day. Armeggedon. A day when this present age radically ends and the Kingdom of God starts. The K of G is so radical, it’s shown on a totally different plane.

But God pulled an incredible coup. In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the Kingdom of God broke through into this present evil age! No one saw this coming!

Now we’re living “between the times.” The Kingdom of God is continuing to break through; this present evil age is continuing to exist too.

That’s the story of the Gospel. Heaven has broken through to our daily lives. We still experience the pain and isolation of the Fall but we also experience the joy and liberation of the Kingdom of God!

Isn’t this a great story?!

Check out this excellent synopsis of Seth Godin’s new book: Brand Autopsy: LIES and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

Click through and read it. Isn’t this what we do in the church? We tell a story, God’s story. Hopefully we’re telling it in a way that changes what the congregants experience about Him.

I love the quote “Stories are shortcuts because we’re too overwhelmed by data to discover all the details.”

In another post, I’ll share with you the story I tell my congregation, in some form, every week.

I was just listening to Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of NJ and former head of the EPA, talking about her book It’s My Party, Too. To this conservative Republican, she makes alot of sense.

I liked her distinctions between conservatives and social fundamentalists. Social fundamentalists are what are controlling the Republican party now. (She repeatedly says they worked hard and earned it.) Here are some of their distinctions:

• Conservatives believe less government is better. Social fundamentalists (SF) seem bent on increasing government intrusion. (I missed her examples but I think of legislating marriage, privacy intrusions, etc.)

• Conservatives believe in lower taxes and controlled spending. SF’s seem to think lower taxes alone will do the trick.
• Conservatives have never been afraid to work together for consensus. As crazy as this is, SF’s seem to prefer a Democrat that will vote against them 100% of the time to a Republican that will vote with them 95% of the time.

An example she kept citing was the federal government’s intrusion in the Terry Schiavo case. SF’s are great at getting people to call their elected officials. Most politicians felt this was an issue all of America wanted them weighing in on. In truth, about 70% of Americans thought the federal government was way out of line.

What does all of this mean? I guess it means that those of us that think things like changing the filibuster rules are wrong, need to speak up. Especially if we’re Republicans. According to Whitman, “You don’t get to be the majority party without working with people on all sides of the issue.”

And you certainly don’t stay the majority party if you aren’t willing to work things out. I think President Bush deserves leaders in Congress that will help pass legislation, not grandstand.

Phew. That’ll fill my political pontificating quota for a few months!

[After thought: I must admit, I was troubled as I watched Revenge of the Sith. The portrayal of a democracy wildly approving facism was frightening. Especially when it's happened in the not so distant past...]

I’ve just had another amazing cup of coffee from Starbucks: Forty Mile Blend.

This blend is made exclusively of peaberrys–the name given to the coffee cherries that only develop one bean. Instead of the normal flat sided beans, peaberrys are rounded on both sides. Some say this adds a different taste profile.

The story behind the blend’s name is that finding these peaberries is as difficult as panning for gold. So they named it after a famous gold panning river.

The taste was bright and palate cleansing. But the most enjoyable, and surprising, elemenet was the way the taste slowly expanded to fill your mouth. The closest I can come to describing it is thinking of listening to a beautiful concerto on a low volume and then slowly increasing the volume. It never got overbearing. But all the complex sensations were never threatened. They just got “bigger” as you savored each swallow.

I know, this sounds corny. But try a cup before you mock me. You’ll have to buy your own; I’ve finished my supply!

[I have utterly failed to find this coffee listed on any websites, Starbucks-owned or not! I really did buy a pound at the Starbucks store in Bangor!]

Check out this link to Jason Clark’s blog.

Part of the way his church celebrated Pentecost last Sunday was with a team of people painting during worship. An exploration of “the Holy Spirit as the sprit of creation and the engeriser of creativity.”

This is so cool! This is what I’d love to see more of.

One of the biggest messages of God becoming incarnate was that “stuff” is good. According to the One that made material stuff, it is “very good.”

Why wouldn’t we celebrate with paint and canvas and pen and paper and everything at our disposal?

(Be sure to click on the smaller images in the blog posting. They’re amazing.)

Last week at the Vineyard USA National Leaders’ Conference in Columbus, I happily stumbled across two incredible blends of Starbucks coffee: Komodo Dragon and Arabian Mocha Timor.

The Komodo Dragon has all the wonderfully spicy tastes of a great Indonesian. It practically reverberates across your taste buds like the clapper in a bell keeps making noise even after the bell stops moving.

The Arabian Mocha Timor has an incredible lively wine-like taste profile. It justs dances over your tongue!

Ah. I really, really like good coffee. *grin*

The conference was awesome. To hear free audio from the conference, go to this page on the Vineyard USA. Be sure to listen to the two sessions by Bert Waggoner. You’ll want to listen to them a few times.

Once again, I’m reminded of the words of Rich Mullins’ song “We’re Not As Strong As We Think We Are.”

I let a two minute conversation yesterday between two other people send me into an incredible tailspin. I instantly believed the worst and jumped to conclusions. What an incredibly negative emotional rollercoaster.

And all it took to clear most of it up was a ten minute conversation with one of the two this morning. All three of us misunderstood what the others of us were talking about. Hopefully this will help us to follow Covey’s 5th habit of highly successful people Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.

Isn’t it amazing that the Almighty Creator of the Universe would choose to use frail, petty people to advance His Kingdom? That’s one of the mysteries that confused people in Jesus’ day. Rather than living an abundant and “victorious” life, Jesus’ followers more often seem to lurch and stagger forward. And the Kingdom of God advances. Wow.

In the meantime, I’ll be singing the chorus to Rich’s song and revelling in my smallness.

CHORUS We are frail We are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens
So few inches apart
We must be awfully small
And not as strong as we think we are

I believe we serve the Supreme story teller.

In that context, check out this blog by Seth Godin, The doily lie.

What little touches can we add in our services (and lives?) to enhance the telling of the story?

Perhaps putting doilies on every seat? *grin*