JukeBox Hero

I got the wife’s kruiser all put together tonight…it looks pretty sweet if I do say so myself. She is being good about humoring me with this project. I had her sit on it, and she liked the way the seat felt. I need to go buy a new chain and grind off a couple of screw ends so they don’t flatten the tires, but it is pretty much almost complete. I have to admit, she isn’t nearly as psyched about it as I am, but she let me work on it and spend the money on the parts. So I am happy.

Pics tomorrow when the sun is shining…

here is a pic of madame blooberry

I should have taken a before pic of the bike, it was a mess. I can’t wait to find a bike for me to work on. I’ll have a before pic for that one…promise.

This is a website I have discovered. It is for church planters to share their experiences in church planting and to encourage one another. It’s a great site and a great way for me to lose track of time.

My friend Gayle is working on a movie project in the fall/winter. She is needing songs from 1980. Anyone remember any significant songs from 1980? Anyone remember 1980? Any of you actually a functioning person in 1980?

Music was starting to become a real passion/obsession then. Denver had pretty decent radio at the time and the music was much more varied back then. I had a little portable radio that I could stick under my pillow and still hear it when I put my head on it. I would go to sleep listening to the radio and wake up with a sore head from the lump under my pillow. I also used to have a top-loading cassete recorder (thanks for the memory Gayle) that I was able to hook up to an old stereo speaker through the headphone jack and have a much better sound. I also use to lay on the floor in front of the stereo and turned the speakers till they were straddling my head and listened to music for hours on end. It was the start of my escape/dream world of being a rock star.

I was 14-15 years old in 1980. Jr. High was a suck-fest and I was beginning to realize I didn’t really fit in. I had a couple of friends that were great: Howard Connelly, Randy Shortridge, Jeff Tatro, Steve Heeney, Troy Follett. Okay, Troy wasn’t necessarily a great friend, definitely not a great influence, but he was fun nonetheless. I can’t believe we didn’t get caught/arrested. If he hadn’t have moved, I think a future of petty theft was on my horizon.

The music of my life then…Queen - The Game (Crazy Little Thing Called Love, etc…) Neil Diamond - The Jazz Singer, a couple of others that are slipping my mind. Queen reminds me of Gwen Trapp, my first real crush and unrequited love. Wow…good/bad times. Howard and I were doing cool stuff in his darkroom during that time. I was discovering art and creativity through Howard and he ruined my life… in a good way. How cool to have parents that let you have your own darkroom at 14-15 years old.

I also rode my ten-speed like a madman. That was my other escape. I could ride a bike like nobody’s business and gave me a freedom I had never experienced before. I could ride to Howards or Jeff’s and we could ride down to the Cache La Poudre river, or ride up into the foothills to Horsetooth Resevoir. It was something I could do pretty well, and at the time, I didn’t feel like I could do anything well.

Wow…1980.

I have been reading God Is The Gospel by John Piper. He talks of a radically man-centered view of God permeating our churches and that we don’t think we are loved unless we are made much of. “If you don’t make much of me you are not loving me”. He goes on to say:

But when you apply this definition of love to God, it weakens his worth, undermines his
goodness, and steals our final satisfaction. If the enjoyment of God himself is not the
final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not
the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker,
Christ did not suffer to bring us God, and our souls must look beyond him for
satisfaction.

I shared this with Jonas, and he read to me something he read a day or so earlier from a devotional by Richard Rohr:

The notion of spirituality of subtraction comes from Meister Eckhart, the medieval
Dominican mystic. He said the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than
it does with addition. Yet I think Christians today are involved in great part in a
spirituality of addition.

The capitalist worldview is the only world most of us have ever known. We see reality,
experiences, events, other people, things, - in fact, everything - as objects for
consumption. The nature of the capitalist mind is that things (and often people!) are
there for me. Finally even God becomes an object for our consumption.

Remember the bumper sticker “I found it”? The Holy One becomes “it,” a pronoun, a
thing. Even the Lord becomes a consumer object that I can privately posess. Now that
is surely heresy in any religion.

Those statements really caused me to think hard how the church (and myself at times) do evangelism. We sell a relationship with Jesus as a way to “give you peace…find purpose…be forgiven of all the bad things you’ve ever done…find joy…” Not that a relationship with Jesus doesn’t give you all that, I just think we sell God short. We have commodified Him to convince people of their need for a relationship with Him. As if God in the flesh and bone of Jesus isn’t enough to be worshipped. He gets short shrift in the whole process. I mean, think about it…he’s God, the creator of the universe, the beginning and the end, the always was and always will be. Is He not enough ? Do we have to make the fringe benefits of knowing him more important than…well…knowing Him?

It has caused me a lot of struggle and thought. Is knowing Him enough for me? I am trying to make it so.

wooo, I guess I’ll be dying of prostate cancer then.

the article goes on to say this “- A compound formed when meat is charred at high temperatures — as in barbecue — encourages the growth of prostate cancer in rats, researchers reported on Sunday.”

well, there’s the rub (get it?) right there…good bbq is cooked low and slow. low temperatures for a long time.

save yourself some prostate cancer problems, only eat good bbq.

My brother and his family were out here last week during spring break. I showed him the bike I was working on and showed him some of the websites I go to for cruisers and now he is all OCD about it as well.

He calls a friend of his on the way home and gets a men’s cruiser from the 40’s-50’s hooked up for free. Then he goes to the LBS (local bike shop) and scores a springer fork for $10 and a springer seat for $5. LUCKY!

It’s so nice to pass my OCD tendencies on to my younger brother like an old pair of jeans.

I have been looking for resources for YuthWerx on the web.  My employer *Target* and our church’s other main employer *Starbucks* both offer grants for non-profits if they are 501c3.  We haven’t decided how YuthWerx falls into the whole after-school thing with the Pre-school/daycare deal.  I am hoping that we will be able to ask for funds to help purchase *get donated* hardware and software for the program.

I am also trying to figure out ways besides my obvious giftings i.e. art/music to be able to get kids to get involved.  Basketball is a big one already and Jonas & the boyz do an awesome job connecting with the fella’s after school, but we need something more than just b-ball.

Hey everyone!  I finally started a blog.  We will see if I have anything important to add to the blogosphere.  As the subtitle suggests, most postings will more than likely be completely random.  C-ya!