There's no horse like Patches...

He who answers before listening-
that is his folly and his shame.
Proverbs 18:13

I've realized that I would have benefited a lot more from taking a Listening 101 class rather than a speech class here in college.

It's ironic, but I truly believe that listening well says the most.

It's like in middle school where whenever a kid has their hand up their ears close and the no longer are listening to the teacher. So often I mentally have my hand up, so to say, when someone else is talking to me. What good is it if I ignore what they say in anticipation of sharing my own opinion? And even if I hear, does that mean I'm listening?

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak...
James 1:19a

I recently had some professional pictures taken by my friend Cameron. Check them out by clicking the flickr badge on the sidebar.

What follows is an excerpt from a book about the Salvation Army.

Two things distinguish us, and both are available to anyone: An openness to God's grace and a commitment to demonstrating it through service to others.

Hoard our assets (yearly budget of over $2 billion)? We exhaust them in the effort to reach more and more people.

Lower our expectations? We are out to save the world.

Trust no one? Our best customers - and future partners - are drug addicts, prisoners, the enfeebled, and the desperately poor.

If we are naive in our commitment, then God has blessed us for it, even if we count only the lesser blessings a hard-line business manager would acknowledge. We have survived and thrived for longer than just about any company in America. We are called "the most effective organization in the U.S." by the best-known management theorist in the world. By any material measure, our workers are vastly under-compensated; yet not only do we attract and retain dedicated life-long employees, we also have 3.3 million voluneteers, many of them prominent in their communitites and in the nation, who are eager to donate resources and time we could never afford to acquire or hire. And every year we are priveleged to serve 30 million people, many of whose lives are transformed before our eyes.

Our world, we believe, is the real world. It's as full of hope as it is of hurt. All we have to do is open our eyes and let its reality liberate our hearts.

questions

why is it hard to make time for prayer?

why is it so much easier to keep busy than to stop and rest?

why am i so quick to ignore someone who asks me for money?

why does one negative thing often taint five positives?

why do squirrels have such long tails?

what am i taking for granted today?

what pressures do i feel and where are they coming from?

why am i so selfish?

why, if Jesus is so satisfying, do believers ever look elsewhere for fulfillment?

why are we so short-sighted?

why does it feel like things should be different in the world?

why do i blindly accept so much without trying to understand?

The Rut Perscription

In my short experience I've realized that repetition often precedes rut. I ultimately get to the point where I'm doing a lot, but not really feeling like it's accomplishing much.

People with glasses will probably understand this metaphor...I compare it to when I'm sitting in the chair at the eyedoctor's office and am finally looking through the correct perscription. It's a moment of clarity where only then do you realize that you haven't been seeing as clearly as you could have previously.

Change is gradual. It's like the story of the boiling frog. If you put it in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil it won't recognize the difference and will cook.

I started this academic year with an excitement that has gradually been drained by school, music, etc. Each day's time gets filled with one thing or another and we soon get into a schedule. We all enjoy structure, so a schedule is really comfortable. It's like a nice warm bath...I'm just trying to figure out how to not get cooked.

What happens when my vision goes bad is that I only see the few steps ahead of me (or I only really see me) rather than the whole path ahead. Focus turns from God and others to myself. C.S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters that it is silly for a human being to ever claim ownership over anything, including time.

"They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever happens."

So to me there is a difference of mindset that comes when I decide how to use God's time instead of seeing it as my own. Because God's vision of productivity is drastically different than ours.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer



If you live anywhere near Murfreesboro, please make it out to Bonhoeffer's coffee house (next to MTSU) after the football game tomorrow night.

Rumor: Bonhoeffer's has free coffee.

True. (with suggested donation, of course)

Rumor: Dietrich made a killer vanilla latte during his prime.

Not sure. (but I'll bet the coffee house named after him does)

The "Nun Bun" was stolen from Nashville's Bongo Java just over a year and a half ago (it even made the news in Europe). Thankfully their coffee is good enough to keep people coming back...though it was a joy to look into Mother Teresa's eyes for 30 seconds as I waited for my drink.

I'm calling for a reinstatement of the Nun Bun. We need to find her and return her to the original display case. And I believe that tonight is the night we should do this! Anyone sharing in this Nun Bun passion please meet me in the top floor of Bongo Java at 7:00 sharp. We can do this together, but not alone.

Ok, actually I'm just playing a concert tonight at Bongo with Gentry Morris. Please don't come with pitchforks or torches or anything looking for revenge. That would be bad.

Orange Beard has gone to Philly. Will's going to be living in the inner city for the next year with an organization called Mission Year. We'll be missing him on the bass while he's gone, but please keep up with his adventures on his blog.

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers."

Naturally, one would assume that this person was speaking of America...but that is impossible. In this quote, Aristotle was speaking of the youth of his time. Funny how things haven't changed?

Let me suggest something: it is often easy for "progress" to mask cycle. What I mean is, just because our country (and media) is heading down a path doesn't mean that it's right and good. America (AKA, "The Leader of the Free World") may actually just be experiencing the back end of a cycle that many other world powers have already withgone.

In Harvard Sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman's 1947 book, Family and Civilization, he presented a list of symptoms for a declining nation. (Remember that this was long before the US went through many changes in the following decades.) Zimmerman took a close look at other centuries' world powers like the Roman Empire, Greece, France and Germany. From observing cultural changes, he determined some consistent factors that appeared in all of their declines. Since Zimmerman was purely a historian and an expert in the sociology of a family, I find this list fascinating and unbiased from a religious or political standpoint. It is hard, however, to not see America bleed through this list. Just take a glance at any current entertainment magazine or newspaper and compare it to this:

Marriage lost its sacredness; it was frequently broken by divorce.

Traditional meaning of the marriage ceremony was lost. Alternate forms and definitions of marriage arose, and traditional marriage vows were replaced by individual marriage contracts.

Feminist movements appeared, and women lost interest in child bearing and mothering, preferring to pursue power and influence. (Disclaimer: Understanding that this list was written during the post WWII 1940s, this point may be driven by that particular time period. I interpret this to mean a complete value transfer from child bearing and mothering to pursuit of power and influence. I am not trying to make a statement about gender equality here. Personally I believe that raising children is far more valuable than any career or pursuit of power and influence. Also, please remember that this is a list of symptoms and not causes of a declining nation.)

Public disrespect for parents and authority in general increased.

Juvenile delinquency, promiscuity, and rebellion accelerated.

People with traditional marriages refused to accept family responsibilities.

Desire for and acceptance of adultery grew.

Increased tolerance for sexual perversions of all kinds, particularly homosexuality, with a resultant increase in sex-related crimes.

Cincinnati was the destination for this holiday weekend. "The Queen City," "The Queen of the West," "The Blue Chip City," "The City of Seven Hills" and "Porkopolis", "Cincy," "Cinci," "Cinti", "The 'Nati." or "The Dirty Nati", "Cin-City", "The Nasti Nati." Call it what you will, this place has great ice cream.

I just watched a 60 Minutes clip about Dikembe Mutombo spending $8 million to help build a hospital in his native country, Republic of the Congo. It's really great to hear about people giving back to where they came from, especially if it's someone giving a large sum of money to help those in need.

I do admit, though, that sometimes those encouraging thoughts are accompanied by feelings of frustration. During Mutombo's NBA career he made probably at least ten times that much money. Maybe this is just coming from an ignorant, not-wealthy college student, but why not give another $8 million dollars and build a second hospital? In fact, why not build 8 or 9 more while you're at it? In Shane Claiborne's book, Irresistible Revolution, he mentioned that maybe it's not how much you give, rather how much you're left with. What if that is how God measures true generosity? It's hard for me not to believe that God values generosity with sacrifice on our end somehow attached.

The flip side that I often fall into is that I have so little that it really doesn't matter whether I give my $20 or $30 to the Church. But if I have the mindset that I'm called to give what I can (check out this great story), it changes my whole mindset. I heard Steve Garber recently say that if we focus on impacting just what is in our proximity, it is easier to not get overwhelmed with the big picture. Let that sink in for a second.