On the Verge

Paula goes in to the hos­pi­tal tonight, and baby should appear some­time tomor­row after­noon (around 5pm is what the doc­tor esti­mat­ed).

Woohoo!

By the way, a few days ago I men­tioned that an alum­na from our Chi Alpha group at Stan­ford is a final­ist in the Miss Sin­ga­pore Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion. Nathaniel Rice (one of our cur­rent stu­dents) found a blog that men­tions Ade­line’s involve­ment twice (on March 12 in a spir­i­tu­al sort of con­text and once on March 21 in a fun friend kind of con­text).

an excerpt from the Fri­day March 12 entry: One of the girls, Ade­line, left the deep­est impres­sion in my heart… [skipped some stuff] i respect her and look up to her.. she got this spark in her eyes when she was shar­ing her expe­ri­ence.. as if she was liv­ing life with such pas­sions~! I told her i was feel­ing pret­ty ner­vous, and she said..“remember i said beau­ty is a qui­et and gen­tle spir­it?” I said “yeah” as her group’s top­ic was about what beau­ty means to them(everyone had to intro them­selves with name and age, and a few words about their top­ic in front of the judges). Then she smiled and said to me, “You have that beau­ty i was talk­ing about — a qui­et and gen­tle spir­it.”. I was pret­ty touched, i smiled and said Thank you and hugged her, and i was close to tears.. it’s just amaz­ing! She was­n’t like most of the oth­er con­tes­tants who could be pret­ty self­ish at times, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal, or bitchy. She is so sin­cere.. and true.. and so pos­i­tive.. and she is just a few years old­er than me and already liv­ing life the way she wants! She just touched my heart in a way.. =)

I’d like for Chi Alpha to take cred­it for Ade­line, but she was already pret­ty mature before we even met her…

Purpose-Driven Profile

Rick War­ren (pas­tor and author) is the sub­ject of a very favor­able arti­cle in Time.

My favorite excerpt: Remark­ably, War­ren has man­aged to spread his approach to the gospel with­out exten­sive nation­al media cov­er­age or a TV min­istry. He turned down an invi­ta­tion from Oprah to be on her show, though he says he’d like to meet her some­day. “Too many min­is­ters start out as ser­vants and end up as celebri­ties,” he says. “I want to use my influ­ence to do some good, and I can get more done out of the lime­light.”

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Tim Smith, leader of Keep Your Eye on the Ball (opens a Quick­time video).

As always, check the video blog archives for more humor­ous and inspi­ra­tional clips.

Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go…

Paula and I went to see the doc­tor today, and we’re going to have labor induced this Thurs­day.

Pret­ty strange to think about, that we can sched­ule that. There is the chance that she’ll come ear­ly, but the doc­tor did­n’t seem to expect it.

Expect some good news and a pho­to soon!

Let’s just hope the poem is wrong…

Mon­day’s Child is fair of face
Tues­day’s Child is full of grace
Wednes­day’s Child is full of woe
Thurs­day’s Child has far to go
Fri­day’s Child is lov­ing and giv­ing
Sat­ur­day’s Child works hard for a liv­ing
But the child that is born on the Sab­bath day
Is bon­ny and blithe and good and gay.

Then again, I’m not sure what that means. Thurs­day’s Child has far to go in order to reach what des­ti­na­tion?

Could be worse, I suppose–we could have induced on Wednes­day.

On a com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed note, I was very dis­ap­point­ed ear­li­er today. John Ort­berg is the teach­ing pas­tor at Men­lo Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church, which is about two blocks from my apart­ment. He’s also con­sid­ered one of the best preach­ers in Amer­i­ca.

Well, I’m always try­ing become a bet­ter preach­er, so I emailed him and asked to inter­view him about the ser­mon prepa­ra­tion and deliv­ery process (which I was plan­ning to encode in MP3 for­mat and upload to a web­site, prob­a­bly Reach The U).

After a few days he emailed me back and declined, cit­ing a busy teach­ing sched­ule. I was pret­ty bummed. I sup­pose I half expect­ed it–for all he knows I’m some whacko–but it’s still dis­ap­point­ing. I con­sid­er him a pro­fes­sion­al role mod­el, and so it would have been nice to meet him and fig­ure out how he does what he does.

Maybe it will work out some­day. I used to have a lot of suc­cess at meet­ing peo­ple I esteemed (or was just curi­ous about), but my last few attempts have bombed (Doug Fields, Dan Bet­zer, Dan Kim­ball, and now John Ort­berg).

Passion Pro-Semitic?

Most of the con­tro­ver­sy about Mel Gib­son’s The Pas­sion of the Christ was pred­i­cat­ed on the assump­tion that at worst it would pro­voke pro­found anti-semi­tism and at the best it would leave peo­ple unswayed (as regards the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of the Jew­ish peo­ple for the death of Jesus).

Looks like every­one was wrong–just ask the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle. The film seems to have nuanced peo­ple’s views and made them less will­ing to assign spe­cif­ic blame.

See a relat­ed arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Times down­load dive bomber movie .

Note: the sur­vey was pret­ty small. Read the Chron­i­cle sto­ry to get the scoop on the method­ol­o­gy.

Wild Parrots Roam San Francisco?

No baby yet.

Onei­da Shen, a Chi Alpha intern in Ari­zona, just spent the last few days with us check­ing out cam­pus­es in Nor Cal and Neva­da. She’s seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing com­ing to work along­side Paula and I here at Stan­ford. Pret­ty cool.

Also, appar­ent­ly one of our alum­ni is cur­rent­ly in the Miss Uni­verse Sin­ga­pore finals (accord­ing to anoth­er Sin­ga­pore­an alum­nus). How wild is that?

And I just learned one more real­ly strange thing about the Bay Area–there are flocks of wild par­rots that roam San Fran­cis­co. Seriously–there’s even a book about it. Appar­ent­ly they just fly around the city. Read the FAQ. It reminds me of a chap­ter in the Life of Pi.

Cardinal Contributions

I present with­out com­men­tary the 2004 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion records for the Stan­ford ZIP codes: 94305 and 94309.

Chi Alpha Got the Giddy

First, no baby yet. You’ll know when baby Davis arrives. Relax.

Sec­ond, I was talk­ing with a church staffer yes­ter­day and he said, “One of the things that drew me to Chi Alpha was that you guys got the gid­dy.”

That’s a cool phrase–we got the gid­dy.

The Wounds of a Friend

What hap­pens when a friend puts your nose out of joint? Find out in the lat­est Chi Alpha video blog — Devi­at­ed Sep­tum (opens Quick­Time movie).

As always, if you like this remem­ber to check the video blog archives for more.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the guy who’s doing this blog was my spir­i­tu­al men­tor when I was a stu­dent. How cool!