Great Week

Just a quick update. The won­der­ful folks at Inter­na­tion­al Assem­bly of God up in Burlingame threw a baby show­er for us Sat­ur­day evening. We got some amaz­ing gifts and were tru­ly blessed by their gen­eros­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I had to attend with­out Paula, as she was still on bed rest.

I did my best. I got real­ly excit­ed about the col­or pink and I did­n’t throw away any bows. I think that’s what you’re sup­posed to do at a show­er…

And my in-laws arrived for a month-long vis­it yes­ter­day. They’ve already begun pam­per­ing Paula to death, but I think she likes it.

One more comment–I just learned that Supreme Court Jus­tice San­dra Day O’Con­nor is going to be this year’s com­mence­ment speak­er. Wow.

Side note–I just learned that she was in the same class as Chief Jus­tice William Rhen­quist. I bet the profs who taught that year are feel­ing pret­ty good about them­selves.

Building On Negatives

In Food Porn, Susan Wise Bauer writes about the ten­den­cy of mod­ern authors to cri­tique cul­ture with­out offer­ing a viable alter­na­tive: The cov­er-mod­el ide­al is warped and twist­ed, but they can’t man­age to unwarp it. I’m remind­ed of J. R. R. Tolkien’s orcs, who (accord­ing to the Sil­mar­il­lion) were mod­eled on elves by the dark pow­ers; they were fash­ioned “by slow arts of cru­el­ty … in envy and mock­ery,” because dark pow­ers can only warp and twist, not cre­ate afresh. If you’ve nev­er seen an elf, and you try to work back­wards from an orc to its mod­el, you’re darn well not going to end up with Orlan­do Bloom.

You can’t build on nega­tion alone.

How often is our plan for being good to stop being bad? In the Bib­li­cal per­spec­tive, holi­ness is an addi­tion equa­tion, not a sub­trac­tion equa­tion. We don’t mere­ly seek to erad­i­cate vices such as gos­sip and lying; on the con­trary, we active­ly cul­ti­vate virtues such as love, joy, patience, and self-con­trol.

Just some quick thoughts inspired by an absolute­ly bril­liant Tolkien ref­er­ence in an oth­er­wise unre­lat­ed arti­cle.

Another Tolkien Perspective

I just ran across a great arti­cle that unpacks some of the dif­fer­ences between the movies and the books, and how it affects Tolkien’s mes­sage: The Return of the King: Best Pic­ture, Per­haps, But Not Best Ver­sion.

In case you’re curi­ous, we’ve got two oth­er sig­nif­i­cant entries on Tolkien:
* Splin­tered Light (from Tolkien’s eleven­ty-first birth­day)
* Saint J. R. R. The Evan­ge­list

I’m the Video Blogger

At the Cam­pus Min­is­ters’ Con­fer­ence in Atlanta last week­end, Curt Har­low stuck a video cam­era in my face and told me to be pro­found. You can see my best effort in a two-minute video at chialpha.com.

Before you cast any stones–try being pro­found on the spot. It’s not as easy as you might think. In fact, it’s only due to the edit­ing genius of Curt Har­low that I did­n’t come off look­ing like a rav­ing lunatic.

Any­way, I high­ly rec­om­mend that you poke around the video blog archives. There’s some good stuff there.

If you’re a min­is­ter, know that there are sev­er­al out­stand­ing sermon/sunday school ideas you can *ahem* bor­row.

If you want to use one of these video snip­pets in your meet­ings (as a call to wor­ship or to illus­trate a ser­mon point) here’s how to inte­grate it into Pow­er­Point.

1) Upgrade Quick­Time to Quick­Time Pro. It’ll cost you thir­ty bucks and you can do it online in sec­onds.
2) Open the mov file in Quick­Time Pro and click File/Export to export it as an avi file.
3) You can now either insert it into Pow­er­Point or edit it in Win­dows Movie Mak­er (free with Win­dows XP). Be sure to down­load the lat­est ver­sion.

If you’re using a Mac­in­tosh, you can prob­a­bly just insert it into Pow­er­Point with­out dink­ing around.

I used the one titled “Gross Stuff phone booth dvdrip ” this week to open the meet­ing, and it worked real­ly well.

April, Schmapril

So Paula had anoth­er doc­tor’s appoint­ment today, and the doc­tor has put her on total bed rest. “I’d real­ly pre­fer to wait at least two weeks for the baby to be born,” she explained.

And so Paula asked if the expect­ed date was still April 3rd and the doc­tor replied, “Your baby isn’t com­ing in April.”

Drum roll, please.…

I’m the Video Blogger

Check it out–I’m the guest video blog­ger on ChiAlpha.com in a clip enti­tled “I Doubt It”! We filmed this while I was in Atlanta for the cam­pus min­is­ters’ con­fer­ence this week­end.

Curt (the video blog king) did some major edit­ing to make me sound more intel­li­gent than I was in that section–I was bab­bling like a fool but through the mir­a­cle of iMovie I came out look­ing not total­ly stu­pid.

Also, they have added a video archive so that you can check out all the past video blogs.

Labor Looms Large

Yes­ter­day we went to see the doc­tor for one of those reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled preg­nan­cy check­ups.

It went real­ly well, but it was kind of fun­ny at the end. The doc­tor had fin­ished explain­ing what to watch out for and Paula said, “By the way–what’s this feel­ing on my bel­ly right now?”

The doc­tor felt it and said, “That’s a con­trac­tion.”

“Oh, I’ve had three of those since we’ve been here.”

And the doc­tor gave Paula some med­i­cine to slow the process down. Time to pack the bags and get every­body’s num­ber in my cell phone…

Reassuring Videos to Watch Before Flying

On a com­plete­ly ran­dom note–have any of you seen the video of the pilot eject­ing right before his plane crash­es? (link takes you to a page con­tain­ing info about the crash and a link to the video).

Chi Alpha Video Blogs

In case you haven’t been check­ing it out, the nation­al Chi Alpha web­site has been rockin’ late­ly. If you want to get a feel­ing for what they’re doing, check out their video blogs (the most recent one is a video blog of love, but I think the one on post­mod­ern cook­ie evan­ge­lism is a bet­ter intro).

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s no index to them all. You can sort of see one at http://chialpha.com/video_blogs, but it’s real­ly just a direc­to­ry list­ing. *sigh*

Update: there is an index to the Chi Alpha video blogs!