WE FINALLY FOUND HIM!!!!

FINALLY, WE FOUND HIM

It's a Mystery

Does anybpdy else find it odd that gas prices are down significantly ($2.09/gallon forregular unleaded here in Lincoln Park) almost immediately after summer is over with?

It's a mystery!

My first repost...Awesome!!!!

About a year ago this time, I published this post right here on this blog:

"On the banks of the Red River..."

Well, tomorrow is the Notre Dame/MSU game up in East Lansing and we are going to caravan up there tomorrow morning and Sparty On. Only difference we are departing 10am and not 5am like last year, no tailgating can start until noon....that is a huge bonus.

Anyway....

I felt I should communicate the message I sent then and take inventory of where I am now.

I know I have progressed some in my witness at my job, but not where I want to be. Yet, my "fervor" for Spartan athletics has not diminshed as I have had fun all day at work talking "trash."

Anyway, read the old post and maybe take inventory as well. Someone once said "reminsce sometime."

Oh yeah, my prediction this week.

MSU - 40
Notre Dame - 20

seems like I have done this before....

My Perception: My bad habit

I have a horrible habit of hating what I write. I feel like I do a horrible job transposing my thoughts onto paper or through my fingers onto the keyboard. I can talk to you all day and get my thoughts out, but ask me to write or type them out, yeah right.

My brain races faster than my hand can write or my fingers type and the once great fleeting thought or idea I had is escaped.

It is why public speaking or standing in front any group of people and talking is not a problem for me. I can talk fast, almost faster than I think, which is why I say lots of things I regret but have never written anything I regretted. I may regret how the writing comes out but not that I actually wrote it. Make sense?

This is also why I spend way more time at other people's blogs commenting and posing more questions. This is my 101st post I believe since I started this blog, I would dare say my comments are double that.

It is just one of the bad habits I have. It was also one of the reasons I started this whole blog in the first place. I have improved enough to at least write over 100 entries (which is more voluntary writings than I have done probably in my whole life combined).

I enjoy discussing and conversing, I comment to continue the dialogue with the author's. Sometimes I disagree sometimes I agree, that isn't what is important to me. It is the dialogue that is.

So, I'll keep chugging along at this and posting every 4-6 days, sometimes more frequent as my thoughts lead me. Hopefully one day, I'll write something that blows me away, and it will "click" with me, and I will be on my way.

Why I stay with the church.

It is the bride of Christ.

How can you love a man and not his bride?
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Salvation through Jesus makes me a part of the church (whether I like it or not).

This makes me a part of the bride of Chirst.
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This makes me a part of the bride of Christ.
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This

makes

me

a

part

of

the

bride

of

Christ
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Other inidividuals who have salvation through Jesus have become part of the bride Christ. This puts me and all the other Christians on the same level, equal, and of the same entity.

To dislike any part of that entity is to dislike myself.

How can you hate yourself when Christ, himself, has chosen you his bride and given you a new robe of pure white.
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Ultimately, I do not stay with the church, it stays with me and you and you and that guy and that woman over there and that child over there.
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We are all the church and Christ has chosen us as his bride.
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To not like the church is to look at all the others and Christ and tell all of them that none of them are good enough for you.

Me? Book Club?

Over the last couple of months, a core group of us have been meeting to discuss some of the books we have been reading. There are 4 of us which include our associate pastor and youth minister. It has been a real joy as we have discussed these book and then applied some of our interpretations as it pertains it to our life, politics, religion, aspirations, growing up as kids (we all are between 27-30 years old), our marriages (only one is unmarried), raising children (even though only one actually has children), life visions, our beliefs, etc.

What makes it a little unique though is that we have stayed away from religion or Christianity books and we meet at a bar (McCaffery's Pub in Lincoln Park). It is funny to have a couple pastors and 2 other dudes having these 2 hour long literary discussions about all the subjects I mentioned above. We get some looks, but the location definitely sparks a lot of the discussion. As we can observe people, listen to the music on the juke box (mostly classic rock which we all know), discuss with the waitress sometimes, and apply it to what we are reading. We definitely have different perspectives and ideologies we bring to the table. We remain open even through our disagreements and allow each to speak freely to explain something. And we act like guys, real guys. With guy jokes and comments. It is a real joy and actually, refreshing.

So far we have discussed:

• Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher
• Fidelity by Wendell Berry (a book with 5 short stories, but we talked about the self-titled short story)
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

If you like to read and discuss books and know a couple other dudes that do too, it is definitely something to try out.

Jesus: A Man from the Hollers

This comes courtesy of John Frye over at Jesus, the Radical Pastor:

Jesus was from the hill country, from Nazareth in Galilee.

In Mark 1, Mark contrasts two geographical areas from which people came to John the Baptist for baptism. In verse 5 we read of massive amounts of people coming north to the Jordan River area from Jerusalem and Judea. By contrast, in verse 9 we read of Jesus coming south from "Nazareth of Galilee" to meet and be baptized by his cousin John.

Unless you know the social milieu, you will miss the tension in these seemingly insignificant geographical notations. A mass of people come from "the developed" areas, the closer to God areas, the areas of Zion, the area of the Temple, and the area where there were some very wealthy Jews. Jerusalem was Ivy League, double-shot, mocha latte country. Hummers were not uncommon.

Jesus is from "Hicksville." Can anything good come out of Nazareth? was asked later. Jesus was raised in Appalachian "hollers." He was poor and from a poor family, a country bumpkin. Nazareth was hand-plow and ox country, corn bread and beans country. Jesus was dumb as a stump according to the edgy-cated ones in Jerusalem, dangerously dumb.

Galilee was a region known to be disinterested in and ignorant of Torah. This was a stereotype, of course, but it stuck to Jesus. He was considered a "no name" (see John 9:29) from across the tracks, perhaps, even born out of wedlock. Well, he was conceived out of wedlock, for sure. One rabbi, Johanan ben Zakkai, once lamented, "Galilee, Galilee, you hate the Torah; your end will be seizure by Romans!"

Jerusalem. Judea. Nazareth. Galilee.

But of all the ones that John the Baptist baptized in the Jordan, only one saw the heavens ripped open, saw the Spirit gently floating down on him like a dove, and only one heard a voice from heaven saying, "You are My Son, whom I chose. With you I am outrageously delighted.

"Yep. It was the hick...from Nazareth...of Galilee.

So much for God favoring smart, cool, "white" people who live in gated communities and suburbs and who drive Hummers and other SUVs to latte-making cafes, read New Yorker and discuss Mozart.

God seems to dig mule-and-wagon types with missing teeth and tobacco breath and who read the Sears catalogue and drink black Folgers from cracked cups and say things like "Jeat yet," which being interpreted means, "Did you eat, yet?" and who like country music that laments the loss of all that is precious...like my dog, my trailer, my pick 'em up truck and my boot-scootin' woman.

Don't you just love God?

Amen, and absolutely.

It is America's greatest weapon

To qoute our President last night:

"In the first days after the 9/11 attacks, I promised to use every element of national power to fight the terrorists wherever we find them. One of the strongest weapons in our arsenal is the power of freedom. The terrorists fear freedom as much as they do our firepower. They are thrown into panic at the sight of an old man pulling the election lever, of girls enrolling in school or families worshipping God in their own traditions. They know that given a choice, people will choose freedom over their extremist ideology. So their answer is to deny people this choice by raging against the forces of freedom and moderation. "

As I have said earlier, I would vote for George W. Bush again, in a heartbeat (unless McCain ran against him).

These terrorists have their whole life set on destroying us. So much so, that they would kill themselves to know tha they would kill thousands of others.

It is sick,

and it is their life's goal.

5 Years

Lest we forget.

5 years ago last night, I left LaSenioritas having watched Monday Night football with a bunch of my fraternity brothers. Less than 8 hours later, my wife to be called my dorm room waking me up to ask me to turn on the TV. She is at work and heard that a plane crashed into a building in New York. Turn on the TV and see what I can find out. Turning on the TV I saw a building billowing black smoke and no one had any answers except some kind of plane flew into the building.

Wow, I told her, how could that happen. Very weird she said. I have to get back to work keep me posted, she followed up with. Ok, love you, love you too. We hung up.

Minutes later I thought I was watching a replay as a plane flashed from the right side of the screen and a huge ball of orange flame, until the news anchor (Charlie Gibson, I believe...the TV was on ABC from the night before, plus I always preferred ABC News because of Peter Jennings) stumbled over his words and everyone gasped in horror and I realized something was wrong. I held my hand over my opened mouth and yelled out in my dorm waking one of my roommates. I couldn't even tell him what happen. He looked at the TV and neither one of us moved for 15 minutes. Through all the replays. Even the slo-mo ones. The horror unfolded before us.

I immediately tried to call Michele back, the phone lines were "full." My mom and sister were living in Italy at the time and my brother was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas.

Then the Pentagon and then a field in Pennsylvania somewhere and then more and more reports of "more hijackings" as no one had a clue what was going on or where as pandemonium set in.

The TV did not go off all day and I fell asleep for many nights in a row with the TV on.

I still have not forgotten and everytime I watch the video or see pictures I get emotional to some extent.

We really should never forget what happen, who did it, and that this is there life endeavor.

What a year!

I've been at this blogging thing for one year now. 94 posts, which is one post every 3.9 days! WOW!! That is amazing.

Ok maybe not.

Hopefully I can pick up the pace this upcoming year.

I may, just may, look back at some of my early posts and critique them or show how I have changed in one year's time.

For you regulars out there, thanks!

For you newbies out there, thanks!

For those who have yet to descend upon My Perception, but will one day, thanks!

Thanks!

Apologizes to Toby

I just commented to one of Sojourners post with a complete and total rant. Probably uncalled for.

I should do something like that here on my blog.

So my apologies Sojourner if the rant was uncalled for. It was just something brewing inside of me, that that post triggered.

It wasn't against Sojourner but just a rant in general of certain things.

If you would like to, you can access Sojourner's site here.

Here is the entry he made into his blog that I was ranting on.

And here is the rant.
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Then where we do we draw the line?

When does the discussion end?

When is their a final say to the conversation?

Is that all life is, just sitting around talking and discussing possible interpretations and meaning?

When does something become dogma?

Why does everybody jump on the "dogma" bandwagon but never classify it?

Is dogma wrong?

How could there be any absolutes if not for dogma?

Isn't the fact that someone classifies something as Dogma, make them guilty
of the exact thing they are talking against?

It is like an atheist making a claim there is no God. They actually,
admit there is a God by making a claim there is no God. They had to
contemplate God's existence before coming thei own conclusion. So there
dogma is there is no God.

When does the madness end?

Sometimes you just have no answer

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139: 13-14)

Sometimes you are just reading the book along and you come across a verse that stops you in your tracks. You've heard it before and read it before but for whatever reason it stops you this time.

Wow

fearfully and wonderfully made.

fear and wonder

being used to describe me, and you, and that guy, and that person.

describing all of humanity.

Usually every other time fear and wonder go to God. Are used to explain him, the Creator and Father.

Yet, he makes sure that his holy word tells us the same about ourselves.

Wow

Baby Update

Today was Michele's 16 week checkup and as such we were able to hear the baby's heartbeat.

Freakin' awesome

In a couple months we will find out the sex of the baby (yes we want to find out).

We have a lot to be thankful for.