1. For teacher appreciation day, the parents gave me buffalo wings.

2. Can’t get enough of The Wailin’ Jennys.

3. The new Radiohead album is terrible. In other words, the Emperor has no clothes.

4. I am weary of brash, angry, young pastors and I’m thirsty for men with quiet wisdom.

5. Baseball season.

6. I thought about buying one of those cheesy bumper stickers at the local Christian bookstore but then I thought, “Why would I do that when I can say it on Twitter and facebook?!”

7. Not sleeping well. I blame the Republicans for keeping their campaign promises of fiscal responsibility.

8. Birmingham is a great city.

9. Check out this great app for the iPhone from my alma mater, Covenant Seminary.

10. Stop. It is finished.

Update: In an unprecedented and sure to be controversial albeit historic move, I have been compelled by thoughtful critique to add an 11th thought regarding our favorite food group here at SFN.


11. My almost-two-year-old, Dylan will not eat anything…except bacon. ‘atta boy Dylan. ‘atta boy.

Repost from old blog:

I have an idea for a TV show.

It would be about young women; beautiful women. And they will each vie for the affections of one guy. They will lie, cheat, steal and cry to get what they want. Him. The show will regularly feature them in revealing clothing. The guy will also be a liar just to up the drama factor. And there will lots of kissing. Lots of it. He will have to kiss every girl, you know, to try them on for size. In other words he will be test-driving them. But I would have to be careful to make the guy seem at once desirable and also reprehensible. Or he could be mainly one or the other as long as female viewers can see the potential for the opposite.

The show will be a hit mainly because we are taking so many women’s secret desires and giving them a cathartic release. The irony, of course is that if they were treated this way in real life – you know, with no self-respect – they would be furious. Pretty funny, huh? Yep, I will be laughing all the way to bank.

You wanna know the kicker? This show will even illicit the regular patronage of those who espouse traditional values! You want to know why? Because it’s only for a little fun with the girls. And fun is what matters the most. There is no small niche for this kinda thing. It’s gonna be huge. Women will pull for particular girls – imagine this, we will try to put at least one “good girl” on their each season – the ideas are flowing now – and the ‘good girls out there will pull for her. What if she gives in, you ask? All the better, ratings will soar as the women judge her between laughs and looks of incredulity.

I wonder if there would be a market for one with one girl and lots of guys…I’m gonna be filthy rich.

I like Radiohead. Really, I do. But I can’t be the only one who thinks something is amiss in the new album. Critics schmitics. It’s just plain weird. Just because people keep saying ‘genius’ over and over again will not magically make it so. Is the album interesting? Well, yeah. But so is the waterless toilet at the new library. I’ll probably listen to it a few more times just to be sure… but I’m not holding out any hope.

1. THEALBUMTHATMAKESYOUWANTTOLISTENTOOKCOMPUTER

2. Songs That Make You Wish You Were Listening to Justin Bieber

3. For Critics

4. Wait…What?

5. 8 Pseudo-Songs You Paid 9 For

6. And You Thought the Cover Was Weird

7. Melody Schmelody

8. The Emperor Has No Clothes

9. Pulling The Wool Over

10. The New Ivory Tower

Do you have any other suggestions for a title? Leave ’em in the comments.


Do you like it? Why? And ‘because it is Radiohead’ is not a valid answer. 😉

1. I have low expectations for every Radiohead new release. It’s easier that way.

2. I have a number of evangelical blogs in my Google Reader. They all talk about sex way more than any show I watch or ‘secular’ blog I read.

3. I’m astonished at how much I still like watching clips from The Simpsons. I wish there was a blog which posted a clip each day from the show.

4. Velveeta is one those contributions to our culture for which I could never thank its developer enough.

5. Wait, where’s the rest of the album?

6. You know how when you are unlocking a car door while the person outside is trying to open it, the door is unlocked but the person can’t open it? It’s 2011. This should be a problem of the past.

7. I wonder if the guitarist from Radiohead ever thinks, “Man, I really miss the old days when I got to play.”

8. The spreading protests of public school teachers is but the death rattle of a failed way of providing education.

9. A liberal’s desire to compel Americans to pay for public broadcasting is illiberal.

10. I would like the new Radiohead album more if it were OK Computer.

 
When your reading C.S. Lewis and Eugene Peterson, certain ideas and paradigms, once unfamiliar, begin to shape the way you think and feel about…well, everything. One, shared between them is beginning to take root. What will grow is yet to be determined.

Imagination is the kind of thing we want to cultivate in children but find very little active need for as an adult. For children, it is needed. For adults and those preparing to join their ranks, it is an abstraction for those given to distraction. But in the minds of Lewis and Peterson – where I live these days – imagination is part of the Christian life.

It got me thinking. And asking questions I had never asked before – such as, “Do I have a imagination shaped by my faith?” And, “How does my imagination, as a pastor and teacher, help me in my role as a pastor and teacher?” It was difficult thinking about these questions because they were so foreign. A very different paradigm.

I can easily imagine about the future. The future of the church. The future of a struggling saint. The future of a young student moving toward adulthood. The future is an easy dream. My guess is this comes from being conditioned to see people as problems to be fixed. You look at them and see their problem and you imagine the picture of their problem fixed. Imagining the future version of a sanctified church member with problem fixed is really so easy, there is no work involved.

The difficulty is having an imagination of the present. The tendency is to look at people and evaluate them on what you know, what you see and hear from them. And of them. Unlike my children who look at the copse on the edge of property and see a vast forest and can imagine stormtroopers and ‘bad guys’ needing to be fought with plastic guns and light sabers, I only deal with what is seen. The difference being I should know better.

My children imagine a fiction. I should be able to imagine a present reality. A reality of God’s unseen work by the Spirit. And the principalities we ignore. Emotions and facts, dreams and fears should be taken for granted, even though we have no knowledge of them. And the contours of such a life – the life we all lead – should give rise to a pastoral imagination. You could also call it a biblical imagination as Peterson does. One formed by Romans 3 and 7, the polarities expressed in the Psalms and the complex picture of sadness of Ecclesiastes. Did not the gruesomeness of the cross demand an imagination of victory? Simul iustus et peccator demands an imagination.

No one is off the hook in this. But for pastors it must be especially incumbent. It is far too easy to look at a congregation and be discouraged. Every pastor has this temptation. But biblical imaginations formed by grace demand we look at what we cannot see…imaginatively taking in all the information knowing the God of grace is working in places we cannot always diagnose.

1. The Auburn/Alabama rivalry is crazy. It’s like soccer, only no one get’s killed. Yet.

2. In a world of cool, quirky and functional, it is nearly impossible for us understand that what is ‘lovely’ is a means of sanctification.

3. Do any church leaders ever think, “Hey, let’s make this event smaller than last year?”

4. You probably think I talk about bacon too much. That’s just crazy. More than likely you don’t talk about it enough.

5. Relax. It is finished.

6. I most likely preached my worst sermon ever this past week. Glad to get that over with.

7. There is nothing more radical in our day and age than to be still and know God is God.

8. I had very little idea of what a pastor was until about a year ago.

9. We stand on the shoulders of giants, who we probably would not follow.

10. Do you love the silence of Paul on issues that are dear to you?

1. New Radiohead album due out this Saturday.

2. “Reading through the memoirs of Eugene Peterson is like reading in another world.”

3. Wait, so military coups are OK now?

4. Taylor Swift is pretty much Avril Lavigne.

5. The people of my church are incredible.

6. Bacon.

7. I don’t want to be a consumer of religious goods.

8. All these people keep talking about the problem of AT&T dropping calls. In my book, that’s a solution.

9. I don’t want to be a seller of religious goods.

10. There is more of Adrian Monk in me than I care to admit.

 
Other teachers will understand me when I talk of how I’m learning far more than my students. The 9th graders in my Practical Theology are smarter than they think are. But I’ve noticed something.

There are two kinds of students in my class. Those who are familiar with the Scriptures and those who are not as much. Not that one group believes more than another. One group just knows the Bible a little better. The problem? When they open it up, the group most familiar, does not see what is there.

They see what they think is supposed to be there. They see what they think they are supposed to say. But they miss what is really there. Not because it is complex or hidden. They just have not learned to see stop and see what is there. Why? They think they have all the right answers.

I can only assume this is the case for adults too. We listen to lots of sermons and read lots of books. We read furiously through the Bible in a year. But we rarely read the Scriptures in a way that causes us stop and think deeply about a passage.

To see what is there instead of having all the right answers.

In the past week I’ve read articles/blog posts about two people in particular: J.D. Salinger and Thomas Merton. Salinger wrote one of the most controversial books of the twentieth century. Merton was a monk in Kentucky.

This post is in celebration of having 50,000 hits on my little blog. Let’s see…Mom, you’ve probably clicked on here for about half of those.

1. I like the suburbs just fine.

2. I have read all of Jane Austen’s novels at least 5 times. P&P about 12 times.

3. I play with words and numbers in my head almost constantly. I mainly rearrange them. Think of it as grammatical and mathematical fung shei. This could prove I’m insane. Or just brilliant

4. I should have not graduated from HS. I needed a 65 in my 2nd attempt at Algebra 2. I got a 65 only because my teacher was tired of me.

5. I cry easily when watching movies.

6. My skin crawls more easily.

7. I listen to Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney. Loud.

8. Eugene Peterson saved my vocational soul.

9. I want to know why Paul never commands anyone besides pastors to evangelize.

10. I can and will go negative at any time – soli deo gloria.