Yippee.
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My 100th Post…
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Last Dance With Mary Jane
One more time to *feel* the pain….Today was our last day skiing Winter Park. It was awesome. I spent the afternoon on the Mary Jane side of the mountain. She’s 30 years old this year…the gal’s got spunk. Perfect powder and all. I caught some righteous air (for an old guy) while totally diggin’ the scenery Our Creator seemed to create out of pure joy. (cue ‘God of Wonders’ here…)
I absolutely believe God enjoys His children enjoying His Creation…in all of its forms. Pictures cannot adequately capture it. You’ll just have to come back with me next time.
We leave tomorrow to head back to TEXAS! I’ll post more after we get settled. There’s a big winter storm blowing in tomorrow…traffic will be horrible…roads will be a nightmare…and hotels will be scarce….pray for our safety as we travel!
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Training Day
Last night I went on a ride-along with my brother-in-law at the Ft. Collins PD. We got a domestic disturbance call and headed out to the north side of town. The young, Hispanic male, (let’s call him Juan, because, well… that’s his name) was just coming down from a 3-day meth/crack bender and was pretty, um….….uncooperative. He had been beating up his girlfriend and his mother, and had put his head through a plate glass window in the process, so he wasn’t pretty. When we arrived on the scene, he was one hopped-up vato loco.
One of the officers decided, rather than wrestle with Juan and risk us getting injured, it was time to bring in the pepper spray. Crackhead Johnny dropped like a stone.
The officers took him to the ER for examination, a handful of stitches for his forehead, and to test his BAC (blood alcohol content). In Colorado, as in the great state of Texas, the legal limit is .08. Our buddy Juan blew a .339.
So, after lots of swearing and fighting, they were able to hog-tie Juan enough to get him in the squad car and transport him to jail.
Good times.
It was a great night. We had other calls as well (car thefts, traffic accidents, etc.) including a few suicide calls. But I’ll reserve those for another post.
Hats off to the men in blue. Next time you get pulled over because your tail light is out, remember that he’s not necessarily there to ruin your night, but to protect you from someone else who is. Guys like Juan.
Back to the slopes…
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Winter Park = Juniper Tree
Tomorrow, Heather, the boys and I head out for Winter Park, CO. for a week. I’ll be spending my spring break carving through the 70″ base of powder with my board over the next 8 days. Check out the ski conditions here.Although I’m taking my laptop, my email and blogging will be sketchy at best. Nevertheless, I’ll take lots of pictures and post them when I get back.
In the meantime, watch for my face here.
(BTW, God provided a Juniper tree for Elijah here…)
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Zenland (starting at $37)
Although inexplicible to some, I’ve nurtured a healthy affinity for serious guitarists for some time. On April 10, 2004, I witnessed Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani and Phil Keaggy perform together on the same stage at the Dallas Guitar Show.Satch and EJ didn’t sing. Keaggy only sang during one song. The place was, of course, standing room only, …and funeral-home silent as these guys led us in a two-hour instrumental lecture as to why we, as mere mortals, were yet able to ascent Mt. Olympus to sit at their right hand. As we left the auditorium en masse, no one uttered a word. I can’t explain it.
And I didn’t pick up my guitar for nearly a month.
In the words of Michael Stipe, “Music is way beyond rational thinking.” No duh.
Friday, April 28, Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson will be playing the Paramount Theatre in Austin.
If you’re interested in sharing the experience, let me know. I’ll be there. Drooling.
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Walk On
For those of you who read here, thanks for your patience while I’ve been busy with, well,…life. I thought that things would settle down this week, but no. Now it looks like it’ll be another couple of weeks before I can blog regularly again. So pray for me. I’ll be as specific as I can…
#1-Two praise teams, a great student ministry, and a wonderful family. I’m blessed. But I’m also *really* worn out. Pray for wisdom…and relief.
#2-Specific students in our ministry that are devastated spiritually and emotionally. Recent and not-so-recent events that have happened and have rocked their world in every sense. Questioning themselves. Questioning their family. Questioning God. To all of you, I love you dearly and pray for you often. You are in the midst of a battle. The war is for your soul. You are not alone…don’t give up.
#3- I’ve got some friends with really fragile marriages right now. Pray for them. The Enemy is highly upset at the great things going on here and, as a result, temptations and weaknesses seem to be cropping up everywhere.
Great students. Great adults. But the Enemy never sleeps. I remember something about a Roaring Lion roaming the earth looking for someone to devour…One day the King will put a bullet in his head. Until then, we march on.
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God help us all
I recently got my hands on one of the new Hilary Clinton postage stamps. It seems the US Postal Service created a stamp with a picture of Senator Hillary Clinton to honor her achievements as the First Lady of our nation.
In daily use, however, it seemed that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes. Word on the street is that this enraged Senator Clinton, who demanded a full investigation. After a month of investigating, a special commission published the following finding:
1.The stamps are in perfect order.
2. There is nothing wrong with the glue/adhesive.
3. People are spitting on the wrong side.(No, really. It IS funny.)
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At the risk of sounding chauvinist…
“Just because God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, doesn’t mean your music has to suck.”
That was the commerical I heard recently on Revolution, SIRIUS Channel 67. It’s a great station for someone like me who likes loud guitars and Biblically-based lyrics. For those of you not familiar with it, it’s not a typical sanitized, adult-contemporary, Newsboys-kind-of-station. It freakin’ rocks. Everything from Pillar to U2 to old-school Stryper. If James Hetfield followed Christ, he’d play here.
But recently I heard Mark Dristoil, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, say:
“As a heterosexual male, I had a hard time coming to Christ. I’d show up to church and we’d sing worship songs that were almost homo-erotic. Stuff about walking hand-in-hand in the garden while the dew was on the lily. It really freaked me out because I’d go home and read the Scripture and see where God was described as Father, King, Lord, and Warrior and think ‘what kind of Will-and-Grace church is this?’ All I can do to worship is sing these ‘lily’ songs and cry to God? “It seems to be that the feminization of the church is worse than I’d thought. There’s nothing wrong with being feminine… but it seems we’re missing the balance on the testosterone side. Female without the male. Estrogen without testosterone. The Gardener without the Warrior. Yes, we are to cultivate and nurture. But, we are also at war. And it seems that femininity is a problem when you’re at war.
Perhaps there are enough churches in existence that wage enough war for the all of us. There are certainly enough estrogen-laced worship services out there for all of us. At least, for me.
Is it generational? Is it cultural? Am I just a freak who’d love to have some adrenaline-charged worship music in his life? Maybe it’s out there and I just don’t know it. Maybe I’m too jaded. Maybe I wish we had more Real Men who passionately loved God without apology and didn’t relegate ‘worship’ to gentle harmonies. Again, nothing wrong with gentle harmonies…but there’s another side to the coin.
Maybe I’m just in the mood for some P.O.D. After all, their fans are known as Warriors…
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Dick Cheney’s School of Quail Hunting
‘A cheerful heart works well like a medicine…’, even though at times I tend to think laughter is NOT the best medicine, but that the best medicine is…well, medicine. I have a tendency to be wrong at times….
Nevertheless, in the spirit of the Arc of the Penguin, I bring you Dick Cheney’s Quail Hunting School…
Lock and load, people. We’ll get to more weighy matters in a bit…
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When Church Gets In The Way
"You see, I avoided religious people most of my life. Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant and a mother who was Catholic in a [place]where the line between the two was, quite literally, a battle line. Where the line between church and state was… well, a little blurry, and hard to see. "I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. "For me, at least, it got in the way. Seeing what religious people, in the name of God, did to my native land… and in this country, seeing God’s second-hand car salesmen on the cable TV channels, offering indulgences for cash… in fact, all over the world, seeing the self-righteousness roll down like a mighty stream from certain corners of the religious establishment… I must confess, I changed the channel. I wanted my MTV. Even though I was a believer. Perhaps because I was a believer." The above quote is from here. Like it or not, he is the voice of several generations. Mine included. Thoughts?
