You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2007.
Click on the pictures to read the CNN article. I’m telling you this is a sign of the end of the age.
Also, reading Jenny Powell’s blog this morning, I saw this…
I realized that I have some “blog roll” people you may or may not know linked to my page. I’m just going to take a minute and and do some introductions.
B to the Second Power – aka Brandon Hammonds
Brandon is a really good friend of mine. We met at FSM a few years ago. He was quiet and introspective and so Katie and I determined one summer to make him our best friend. And so started the trifecta of friendship. I’m really glad we decided to force him into the fold, because he has turned out to be one of the best guy friends I have ever had. He and I used to live in the same apartment complex and this meant that whenever we were having a rough time of things we would pound the pavement between us and dissect our current life issues. Brandon has been a faithful friend and has really stood with me in some tough times.
C-Line and Scottie – aka Caroline and Scott Fairchild
Caroline is one of the most honest, loyal and fun people I know. She has blessed me with great (super honest) advice and she has prayed for me often. I cannot tell you how much that has really changed my life. She’s a person who can really see the true-self in others and she encourages them up into their divine calling. She’s married to great guy named Scott.
Chuck is a new friend so new in fact that I do not know his last name. He serves on the Living Waters Team (ala Desert Stream) with me and this is how we met. He wildly funny and has fabulous taste in music and a real heart for the Lord. He also loves Lip Infusion Lip Balm.
Farmer Fam – aka Josh, Amy, and lovely girls and soon to be boy-child
Josh and Amy Farmer are lovely people. I met them when I first started working at the bookstore. And I met Amy maybe a year earlier when she stayed at my house in Chicago. They have three beautiful daughters and they have a little boy on the way. Josh is a stickler for consistent writing style. Is it end-times or End Times?
Fight Club – uhh I mean Fight Spot – aka Shawn Blanc
I first met Shawn maybe three years ago. My friends Kirk and Ron lived in his basement for a time. Much fun was always had in the Blanc estate. Shawn also worked for ForerunnerMusic, and so he was the ever faithful delivery boy. His blog should be an IHOP (national) treasure. It really is a resource for fellow IHOP bloggers.
I’m actually a lot like my father. I look like him. I talk like him and I think freakishly like him. I realized this on the late night drive back from Omaha where I saw John Mayer in concert.
Growing up in my family was something of a social experiment. Two young kids, from totally opposite backgrounds, marry and have a boy child (dearest David) and a girl child (that’s me). My father lived all his life in Swedish, evangelical, middle-upper class, white collar, Wheaton bred family. My mother grew up on the South side of Chicago in an Italian, lower middle class, blue collar catholic family. My father was a hardcore deadhead (basically a traveling worshipper of the Grateful Dead) and my mother went along with the ride (she’s a huge Cheap Trick fan – double uggg). Needless to say the coming together of these individuals was rocky. But this actually isn’t the topic of today, but the background might be helpful.
All growing up we listened to quality music. From a very early age we were introduced to the delicacies of the fine jam bands. My father taped every Dead concert he went to, he had his very own high quality recording equipment (the Dead was very supportive of this sort of fanatic fan action). Every time the Dead did a song it was different then the last. None of their concerts were cookie cutter; they were spontaneous and had an epic flow. My father also instructed us on the fine art of sound. He would stand by the EQ in our living room and ask us to point out the high ends, the low ends and all the midrange frequencies. He would place us in different parts of the room, have us close our eyes, and ask us about the fullness of sound. To this day, I am very picky about where I sit in a theater, to ensure I am sitting exactly where all the sound will meet and climax (the apex).
My father would describe the live shows as though it was a spiritual experience. He was actually worshipping. The music had such a strong spiritual connection; my father was compelled to “bow down”. My parents got saved when we were 10 or 12 and the Dead stuff waned and eventually stopped. My father couldn’t ever just go as a fan of the music; he knew that it would always be worship for him.
I have felt this feeling maybe twice in my life with secular bands; once at a Medeski, Martin and Wood (a fabulous jazz trio) concert. I saw them at this tiny Chiacgo Theater called the Vic. Medeski does a funk jazz jam thing that is pretty awesome. The music was so amazing and the base line just washed over you and it felt like your body could lift off the ground at any minute. And I realized then that this felt like worship. It felt spiritual, and in fact it probably was, and that was a little scary.
I felt this way again seeing John Mayer. The way he played and sung and the passion behind it caused me to want to raise my hands. As I realized this, I sort of clenched my fists and smiled. It’s funny, because I don’t think of myself prone to worshipping idols. Nor do I consider myself a die hard fan of either of these bands. But there was something “anointed” about the music.
This whole line of thought just reminds me that music/musicians were made for worship. People were made to worship. Just because the music is secular doesn’t make the basic principle less true. What this does mean is that we have to be very careful with our hearts and the types of things that we subject ourselves to. Am I saying I will never listen to Medeski or Mayer again? Ummm no. What I am saying is that for me, with those two bands I need to be careful. I just can’t give myself to it. I won’t see them live every time they are in town, I won’t buy every album they’ve ever had. I will enjoy from a distance and when I find myself in a place of worship I won’t give in to it, I’ll take a breath and have a reality check; knowing that somewhere there is music playing that is for more talented and far more edifying, that is causing living creatures to bow down, many winged beings to cover their eyes, and a sea of people are actually lifting off the ground.
If you guys have any thoughts on the matter I would love to hear them…
but tonight I saw this man or as rolling stone said this month ”a new guitar god.”
In a word; exhilarating.
Some of you know I’ve been dealing with insomnia lately. I’ve been having a really hard time falling asleep. This has given me over to a few late night habits. I exercise, I read books I’ve already read, and I watch lame movies late at night. Today, my friends, I will save you the discovery, I will save you the agony of watching these bad pieces of cinema. Today you will learn the 5 life lessons you could learn from lifetime.
5. When you leave your abusive husband, he will come after you. Expect to see him in your new town as a car mechanic.
4. Never sleep with your gym teacher. He will become a controlling ego-maniac. Also he’s not that cute
3. Never slap your own mother. She will call the cops. You will end up in juvie.
2. Never sleep with any of your teachers. They whole school will find out. Also he’s not that cute.
1. If your boyfriend dives off a pier and their has been a drought, he will break his neck, and become paralyzed. You will leave him, move to the big apple, go to fashion design school, date a mysterious rich guy, go back home for a wedding and end up with your original boyfriend, who looks very good in a tuxedo.
All through middle school and high school I fed my face with books. Fiction was definitely my favorite, but my history teacher turned me onto to some really great books like this one or this one. The latter one I received as a gift for winning the history student of year. I was such a dork.
One book really changed how I viewed my political convictions which were always liberal, but growing up in epicenter of conservatism made it hard for me to describe exactly how it felt about the world around me.
I just read it and he said things I had thought and believed and it was all in one book. It was a mini revolution in my mind. He’s one of my favorite authors.
My junior year of high school I got a job at a publishing house, Tyndale. That’s right, they publish… The Left Behind Series. Dun dun dun dun. And while I never bought into the theology, the boatloads of books sold meant for some very large bi-annual bonuses during the years I worked there and at the age of 17, that was a dream. Some of that money I used as a down payment on my house. I loved working around books.
I quit that job to move to Kansas City, and got a job at the bookstore. Originally the job was a part time thing but through circumstances I became a manager. There are a lot of places to find a community at IHOP. I found mine in that store. It’s not easy, it’s hard and challenging. But I love that prayer room and what I do helps support that. Did I come here thinking that this is what I would do? No, but there is joy in doing it. Sometimes I think people wonder if you can be a “business” person and still love that prayer room? Can you be an administrator and still be an intercessor? Can you love Jesus in the midst of sales reports, scheduling, and cycle counts? It can be done, my friends. I see my friends do it every day and I am certainly challenged in it, but I am blessed to love Jesus this way.
So that’s where the love of the written word has taken me.
I realized the other day that I’ve been working at the bookstore for over three years, which means I’ve done 4 onething conferences. That’s right count them: 4. One as a cashier, one as a conference manager, and two as the gen. manager, or I as prefer “queen b”.
I grew up loving to read books. Oddly I used to cry as a small child thinking I would never be able to read on my own. My mother recalls with some amount of humor my anxiety over the prospect of illiteracy. I wasn’t slow, I was just consumed with needing to read all my own. It was unnatural. I did read all on my own starting in kindergarten. I think that’s pretty normal.
I became obsessed with reading. I would pour through books at a rate that astounded my parents; who to this day hate reading. I would read my favorite books over and over again. I began to read large novels in fifth grade and became obsessed with various historical fiction series that my fifth grade teacher was also reading. My parents would punish me by making me go outside and playing with the neighborhood kids. They couldn’t banish me to my room, because I would read for days without leaving. I hated playing outside. I would cry and cry and cry.
So all throughout my childhood everyone joked that I should work at a bookstore or that one day I would run my own book emporium.
So ends part one. Hold on to your pants kids, this story is “to be continued”.
Or Give me Death.
No really, please.
Obviously a bummer of a night in Chicago. It will be an even bigger bummer on Tuesday morning when I have to head back to work. It’s been a nice weekend away and it will be hard to go back to a conference week on the missions base. First conference since onething; that deserves a woooooohooooo.
Here’s a pic from my Grandma’s 80th… this is the whole fam.
This is a picture of my father and his two brothers.
My Grandmother and her two brothers.
And this is my brother.
