CREEations

We Have MOVED!!

2006-06-14T06:15:00.000-05:00

Please Note:

CREEations has move to our new home:

www.ChrisCree.net

Please update your bookmarks and favorites.

Enjoy!

Moving is Stressful!

2006-06-10T06:04:00.000-05:00

OK. So last night I spent several hours working on moving the blog over to my new home. I get things situated well enough that I thought I could just bite the bullet, make a grand announcement and send everyone over there.

I had about an hour to fiddle this morning before I go to a church leadership meeting then down to Jacksonville for about 12 hours of work.

And I can’t even access my new web site!!!

It’s like it doesn’t even exist. I can’t bring up the hosting control panel, log into WordPress, or even see the blog from the outside.

I must have done something wrong last night. I put a support request ticket in with the help desk but I don’t know if they will get it back up at all today.

This just in…

Oh, I just got a response from the help desk (less than 30 minute response time!). They said, “The server has been experiencing some kernal errors.”

Don’t have a clue what kernel errors are (sounds crunchy!). But they assure me they are working on it and the site should be back up soon.

At lest I didn’t mess things up on my end!

So enjoy the new site (when they get it back up…)

www.ChrisCree.net

P.S. I still have a whole lot of unpacking to do over there at my new home!

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Just passing through after my meeting on my way out of town for work and they've updated my trouble ticket to tell me they had a hardware failure. They are waiting on a part and expect to have the server, and my new blog, back up sometime today.

Don't know what a RAID controller is, but it sounds serious. (My guess is it has something to do with the war on terror somehow!)

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We Are MOVING

2006-06-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

{ahem.}

LADIEEEES and GENTLEMENNNNN!

We are moving this blog to our NEW LOCATION.

www.ChrisCree.net

Please update your bookmarks, favorites and bring along any links you may have as you come and visit the new location of our home. You can enjoy the same great ponderings in a fresh new format.

If you are subscribed to our feed, do not fret. With a little bit of skill we should be able to continue feeding your reader with no difficulty via Feedburner. You shouldn’t have to change anything on your end and you won’t miss a beat. Hopefully! :)

Please be patient with me as I unpack all my boxes in our new home. It is going to take a bit of doing to get organized in our new surroundings. Things will most likely change from day to day as I learn and figure out what I am doing.

But I promise you this move will allow for a much more feature rich blog reading experience on your end.

Thank you for your patience.

Enjoy!

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A Time for Everything

2006-06-09T06:53:00.000-05:00

Most of you who are 40-ish and up, or maybe even if you are a child of a Baby Boomer and heard their 8-tracks growing up, have probably heard the song by the Byrds “Turn! Turn! Turn!”.

But did you know they took their lyrics straight out of the Bible?

See for yourself what Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 has to say:

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven--
A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to weep and a time to laugh;A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.

I guess my version today would be there is a time for using the free Blogger service and a time to move up and pay for your own blog.

Last night I stayed up late and got a hosting account set up with A Small Orange. For some reason I had the urge to keep my site in state and everything I’ve been able to find out about these guys says their customer service is second to none.

That means I’ll be moving the blog over to a new domain this weekend, and learning a new blogging platform with WordPress with all the challenges that entails.

Oh, and did I mention that I’m first on call this weekend at work? So it’s going to be Sleep Deprivation City for me, baby!

All I can say is Bring it ON!

Where’s my coffee?

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Interesting Coincidence

2006-06-08T18:37:00.000-05:00

I find it very curious that Blogger has been running painfully slowly the day after the Official Google Blog has a post urging folks to lobby Congress to Support Net Neutrality.

Is this an untimely coincidence, or shades of things to come? Are the big phone and cable companies putting the squeeze on Google for speaking up on the "wrong" side of the issue?

Here is what the Blogger Status Blog says, "For many users, Blogger will have been extremely slow or down for most of the morning. We continue to work on fixes for this problem and hope to have it resolved as quickly as possible."

Of course I'm also told by some who are more exprienced than I am that Blogger is notorious for having outages, so maybe I'm just being cynical.

But I've never had a big problem with them in the 6+ moths I've been with the service. And I'm not one to complain about a free service that has as much to offer and is as easy for a beginner to use as Blogger has been for me! As far as my (limited perhaps) experience goes, Blogger is a great platform that I'd recommend for anyone starting out. It is an exceptional low cost way to try blogging out and see if it is a good fit.

Just the same, perhaps it is now officially time to move CREEations to a more reliable and robust (and yes, more expensive) host.

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Time to Get Preachy About the Internet

2006-06-08T06:08:00.000-05:00

OK guys. It’s time for me to get a little preachy. If you are in the US, and most of you stopping here at this point are, you need to know there is something big happening in Congress in the next week.

It will affect everyone. Globally.

Do you support any non-profit charities? How would you like it if their information could no longer be accessed?

Congress will be voting on the issue that has been labeled “Net Neutrality”. The outcome of this vote will have lasting repercussions that affect your access to information on the internet and ultimately how everyone in the world can access information flowing from the US.

Congress may decide to keep things the way they have been for years by passing a new law. Or they may vote to give the giant phone and cable companies complete control of the internet so they can convert it to their own private network.

If Congress gives control to these corporate giants, these companies say they will choose what information their customers can and cannot access.

And it is already happening.

For example Craigslist is being blocked by Cox Interactive.

What can you do?

First – Get Informed.

You can read my previous posts on the issue here and here.

Go to the advocacy sites It’s Our Net and Save The Internet.

Read what Google says about the issue in today’s entry at the Official Google Blog.

Liz over at Successful-Blog has a whole page of links devoted to Net Neutrality. She’s been tracking this issue for a long time.

And you can read what Mark has to say at R-Web Designs. He was targeted with a comment spam attack because of his advocacy.

Then – Contact Congress.

Make your voice heard. Send an email. Make a phone call. If you don’t speak up now then you are allowing Congress to be swayed by the multi-million dollar marketing campaign that the corporate giants are using to tell their side of the story.

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We Are Passionate People

2006-06-07T07:20:00.000-05:00

We are incredibly passionate creatures. We are hardwired to care about things. Passion is the fuel that drives us forward. Without it we stagnate and can get depressed.

Did you ever wonder why one person excels in a given area while at the same time someone else, who might even seem more qualified, never seems to gain any ground?

A difference in passion between the two might be part of the answer.

Everyone has passion. There are no passionless people out there. Some folks have chosen to numb their passion and may have a hard time remembering that they ever had them. But they did.

Need proof? Look at any child between two and five years old. There is so much passion and energy and enthusiasm that some of us wish we could bottle so we could tap into it as we get older. Of course then after that age, kids get shoved into school and their passions are “redirected” which can be a fancy way of saying they are suppressed in the interest of conformity.

Did you know that God cares about your passions?

A lot of folks know that He does. But they think He only cares because He wants to squash all passion out of his followers and make people into uncaring zombies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible tells us

Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

You see, not only does God know about your passions, the desires of your heart, but He wants to see you get them. God knows what your passions are because He wired them into you before you were born.

The danger comes in when we lose sight of those passions we were given. Gorgeous is reading a book, Pathway to Purpose by Katie Brazelton, and I want to share a paragraph from it.

A lack of passion can quickly turn into a serious problem, especially if we attempt to fill that void with unhealthy passions. There is no denying that the compelling attractive force of passions for gambling, alcohol, pornography, overspending, overeating, adultery, or drugs. Even innocent-sounding intoxicators like television talk shows all day long, constant shopping, perpetual telephone conversations or obsessive-compulsive house cleaning can be destructive ways of feeding an unmet need for real passion. If we want to truly experience the desires of our heart and discover God’s purpose, we must guard against the seductive power of these unhealthy passions. (page 157)

What’s the best way to fight against these unhealthy passions?

Fill your time with healthy passions! It is so much easier to not do something if we are doing something else in stead.

The military has a saying, you’re better doing than thinking. And there’s some truth to it. Just simply stopping a destructive passion is nearly impossible unless the void is filled and that time and energy is filled with something constructive. Otherwise we’ll find ourselves right back where we started.

Have you lost sight of your passions? Is it holding you back?

Find them again and excel like the overcomer you were made to be.

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Persecution is Alive and Kicking

2006-06-06T06:29:00.000-05:00

Most of us have head the stories about how the early followers of Jesus were persecuted. Tradition holds that all sorts of nasty things were done to believers throughout the first few hundred years after Jesus walked the earth.

The Bible even records how the Apostle Paul, before he changed his name from Saul and converted to follow Jesus, went around arresting believers in an attempt to destroy the church.

But did you know that followers of Jesus are still being systematically persecuted in all kinds of different places throughout the globe today?

Let me take you on a little tour around the world to give you a taste of what can happen to you today in some places simply because of a choice to follow Jesus. The tour is compliments PersecutionBlog, which is the blog of The Voice of the Martyrs.

Just last week a house church was brutally attacked in Vietnam. Imagine getting together for a work day to do some much needed repairs on your church and having a mob show up and attack you. The police stood by for a while before arresting 11 of the believers and hauling them off for a few more hours of beatings and interrogations. Oh, yes. Then the mob partially tore down the house that the believers were trying to repair in the first place.

Last month a mob stormed a church in India, beating believers and breaking furniture. Then they hauled off the pastor to the police station where he was immediately arrested.

Then there’s Somalia where believers are beaten and killed by people who are taught that killing a follower of Jesus is a sure ticket into heaven. Believers can’t even register in refugee camps because of their religion. Or you could be a western relief worker and get murdered in front of your family by a mob that then burns your house and forces themselves on your wife after you’re dead.

Be glad you are not in a Pakistani prison where you might get tortured simply for holding a Bible study with your fellow prisoners and then locked in solitary confinement.

Or maybe you buy into the Myth of Chinese Religious Freedom. Apparently it doesn’t matter if you register your church with the government or not. The Chinese Public Security Bureau surrounded and raided a church that was registered with the government, and arrested several of the leaders on the grounds that theirs was an “illegal evil cult” meeting.

Have there been horrible things done by people claiming to operate in the name of Jesus Christ? Unfortunately the answer is yes, and way too many.

But I thought you should know that in many parts of the world today the cost of following Jesus is much more than simply getting dressed up for an hour a week while you try to stay awake during some preaching.

Think about that.

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What is Peace?

2006-06-05T05:52:00.000-05:00

I’m having an interesting discussion over on Reddit with someone who objects to my previous post on the grounds that the only reason I could have experienced a peaceful moment is because I am not living in abject poverty.

People make that mistake a lot. We often think that peacefulness comes from an accumulation of wealth and things and if we could just get that raise or be able to buy those new things then our problems would be over.

If that were the case then there would be a whole lot fewer celebrity suicides. We’d also find that psychiatrists and counselors would be out of work. Wealthy people would not need their services and poor people who would need them wouldn’t be able to afford them.

The truth is that personal peace is not at all related to the amount of wealth a person has. Wealthy people can be peaceful or tormented. People living in abject poverty can also be peaceful or tormented.

I did an 8 part series on Peacemakers a couple months back. Part 6 looked at the source of spiritual peace.

Here’s what it boils down to:

Peace comes from a closeness to God. It has nothing to do with how much stuff we have or don’t have.

Am I always close to God? Nope. I often go wandering off on my own because I can be stubborn, willful, and feel I need to be in control. That’s why moments like last night are so precious and get my attention.

But here’s the best part. In spite of how screwed up I am, God still makes the effort to get close to me just like He makes the effort with you. God took concrete steps to make a close relationship with us possible. He cared so much about you and I that He traded His most precious possession for us.

He willingly gave up the life of the one closest to Him, His own son Jesus, so that we could experience that peace.

There is nothing I can do to either add to or subtract from that. No matter how much wealth I accumulate or even if I gave it all away and became dirt poor I would still not find peace unless I got close to God. Because it’s not about me, it’s about Him.

Peace!

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All is Right in the World

2006-06-04T20:48:00.000-05:00

There are occasional moments when I have this overwhelming feeling that all is right in the world.

Now before you get all hot and bothered, I know there is still war, murder, starvation and all kinds of evil and suffering happening. I don’t live in la-la land.

But every once in a great while I just know that it is going to be OK.

This evening Gorgeous had a conference call so I went out to the store to get some milk, eggs, and other needful things. As I walked out the door to the car there was a surprising absence of gnats. I could hear the chuk-chuk-chuk of sprinklers in the neighborhood as the sun was starting to go down. A lawn mower was running a few blocks away.

It was peaceful.

It was like God was telling me, “Everything’s under control. Enjoy your evening. Have a good night’s rest tonight. I’ll keep an eye on things. In the morning we’ll talk.”

Gorgeous and I still have the same stresses in our lives. We still tons of problems and gobs of unknowns.

But it’s like God told the prophet Jeremiah

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Life is messy. Jesus himself said that we will always have problems. I like the way The Message puts it

I've told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I've conquered the world.

It is reassuring to know that God has a plan. And if He’s the planner then I bet it’s a pretty stinking good one! Couple that with the fact that Jesus conquered the biggest problem I can ever face when he came up out of that tomb that first Easter morning and you begin to see why I can say it.

All is right in the world.

Enjoy!

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A Mission Makes A Difference

2006-06-03T13:26:00.000-05:00

I was given a tour of the Old Savannah City Mission this morning. Talk about and educational experience!

Walking in I sort of figured it was simply a homeless shelter. While it is that, the shelter is only a part of what they do there.

The Mission serves daily hot meals to inner city children. They help families in crisis with food and clothing distributions. They operate a thrift store.

But the thing that got my attention is their Urban Training Institute which is a year long residential recovery program. The program teaches life skills to men and gives them an opportunity to build a life as well as helping them get free of their addictions.

Their approach uses High Standards, Strong Boundaries, and Clear Direction. They call it Discipline with Grace. Students who are further along in the program help and mentor those who are in the earlier stages.

The really cool thing is that what they are doing is working. Lives are being changed. Men are learning how to be men and families are being healed. We heard some powerful stories from people such as Curtis and Randy about where they came from and how they’ve changed since they arrived at the Mission.

Here are some things I learned today:

75% of all men who are released from prison end up back there

For women it’s 85%

Americans would rather build more prisons than actually do the messy work required to see these folks able to re-integrate into society

God is still in the life changing business

A little bit of help can go a long way.

There is probably a mission organization doing something similar in your city. You can check some on this interactive map. And here’s a partial list.

Make a difference in someone’s life. Get involved.

You will likely find you are the biggest winner if you do.

Enjoy!

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Evidence I'm Getting Older #458

2006-06-02T06:05:00.000-05:00

Summer is no longer my favorite time of the year.

When I was growing up I couldn’t wait for summer every year. Since I was an only child and we lived in the country outside a (very) small town, my childhood was a very Calvinistic experience. Well, without the intellectual stuffed tiger sidekick, but I was allowed to run amok on my own. Yes, it was a different world then. We often didn’t lock our doors at night either.

But I digress.

I would endure the final few sweltering days of the school year with as much patience as I could muster. Our school building had been dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt and didn’t have air conditioning. But I could deal with it because I knew it meant summer with all its adventure was right around the corner. I’m sure it didn’t help my grade point average at all to be taking finals with my brain frying from the heat but somehow I muddled through.

These days it seems I have to endure much more than a few sweltering days. There are vast stretches of the year of what I call Summer. I broaden the scope out a bit beyond the calendar season.

My definition of Summer is any day the temperature gets above 75F (24C). I figure my definition on the fact that we keep our air conditioner set at 74 in the summer and if it gets above that we have to close the windows. I know it’s not at all scientific. But it works for me.

Down here in the Southeast we not only have the heat, we get the humidity smothering us like a wet wool blanket. There’s nothing quite like breaking a sweat just walking the 35 feet across the parking lot to your car. I suppose that part’s not so bad though because you know when you get there you are going to climb into a blast furnace. And it will take approximately 18 minutes before there is any noticeable temperature difference in the flow coming out of the a/c vents.

If you’re trip happens to be over 45 minutes long the interior might actually get cool enough for you to stop sweating. But the a/c probably won’t be able to dry out your shirt until after the sun goes down. By that time you’re bound to notice some interesting smells are following you around.

It must be a sign of aging. Something I so looked forward to when I was a kid now fills me with a sense of dismay.

Thank God for air conditioning!

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Attention Fellow Bloggers

2006-06-02T04:49:00.000-05:00

Dr. Nora Barnes of U-Mass Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research is conducting a study about bloggers and is doing something smart – asking for input directly from authors of blogs.

Are you tired of the misconceptions that persist out there about blogging? Now you have an opportunity to help set the record straight. Take a couple of minutes to fill out the survey and return it to Dr. Barnes.

This study was brought to my attention by Liz Strauss over at Successful Blog who first heard about it from Diane Ensey at A List Review.

(We now return you back to your regular blogging program…)

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Inside Out

2006-06-01T06:37:00.000-05:00

In my business I am on and off a lot of ships. It can be interesting because you never really know what you are walking into when you board a ship. A really rough looking, poorly maintained ship may have a very competent crew. But maybe their owners won’t pay for proper maintenance. At the same time a really good looking vessel may have an inexperienced crew.

Of course sometimes when the ship looks rough the crew also doesn’t know their business.

The point is you just can’t tell until you get on board what you are walking into.

The same is true when I have to inspect individual containers. There is no way to tell the condition of the cargo inside until the seal is broken and the doors are opened. The nastiest looking rusty container may be full of high dollar cargo. And a pristine brand new box may be mostly empty.

People can be like that too. Some folks are really good at putting up good fronts so that the outside doesn’t match what is really on the inside.

Those people can fool us for a while, but ultimately they will let us down.

The Bible tells us that God is not fooled by appearances

The LORD doesn't make decisions the way you do! People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at a person's thoughts and intentions.

It’s a good thing that God isn’t fooled. And maybe you’re thinking, “Duh! He’s God. Of course He wouldn’t be fooled.”

But I appreciate that He came right out and said it so that I don’t have to guess. And He made point right in the middle of a story to drive it home.

Take a look at that story and you’ll see that character counts. Who we really are on the inside, our driving thoughts and intensions, matters a whole lot more in the end than whatever image we present to everyone else.

Image is not everything!

Being real with folks can be scary. But ultimately it is better in the end because we don’t have to worry about the “what ifs.” What if the image cracks? What if they find out who I really am?

I try to be genuine, a Popeye person. You know, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am and I ain’t no more.” What you see is what you get. It works for me.

How’s keeping that image in place working for you?

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Immigration vs. Outsourcing

2006-05-31T06:12:00.000-05:00

Everyone with a pulse in the US is probably aware of the whole immigration debate going on here right now. (If not, the link is the Googled “immigration debate”. There’s only about 60 million sites that can fill you in.)

And for years we’ve been hearing complaints about jobs going overseas due to outsourcing. Dilbert is dealing with that in his usual humorous way today. Apparently even some Christian prayer lines have been outsourced to India.

So what’s your opinion? Are the two issues related in any way?

Speak up and leave a comment.

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You're Just Passing Through

2006-05-30T06:09:00.000-05:00

Last night we had a going away party for some friends of ours who are moving up to Boston. There was a ton of good food. We had a lot of laughs and bunches of great conversation. And now we have a really good reason to visit that wonderful city.

The whole evening was a solid reminder of the reality that life is a very transient thing. For an increasing number of us here in America it is becoming normal to move around quite a bit. Gorgeous and I have been married a little over 8 years and we are on our fifth home and third state.

Yet some folks live in the same place their entire lives. Do you suppose folks who do ever lose site of how short life is? I know it would be tempting for me to believe that this life was a more permanent thing if I stayed in one place for a long time.

But the reality life is fleeting. The Bible says

Your life is like the morning fog--it's here a little while, then it's gone.

Not one of us knows how long we have here. I don’t see anywhere that it’s written we are promised to be on this world tomorrow. Keeping that in mind can help us make the most of today.

The other life lesson that was reinforced by our friends leaving was that we shouldn’t hold our possessions too dearly. They had to lighten the load considerably to make their move due to the tremendous disparity in housing costs between Savannah and Boston. They de-ballasted by giving away a ton of stuff. The chair I’m sitting in while I type this was one of their gifts.

We have the capacity to put way too much importance on our stuff. Voice in the Wilderness says you can learn a lot about folks and their stuff just by looking in the church parking lot. When you move around you have an incentive to lighten the load that isn’t there when you stay put for a long time.

Right before He told a story to illustrate how short life is Jesus pointed out that

Real life is not measured by how much we own.

It goes back to what I said about life a while back. The meat (the real substance) of life is the sum of our relationships. Everything else is just flavoring.

Enjoy!

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A Day to Remember

2006-05-29T07:26:00.000-05:00

Today is Memorial Day here in the States. The holiday’s roots go back over 130 years to shortly after the Civil War when the federal government set aside a day to honor the fallen from that war.

And then after World War I the significance of the day was officially expanded to honor the dead from all our nation’s wars.

This holiday is personal for me, and not only because I am a Navy veteran. It is a day for me to remember some of the incredible people who have given their lives in support of the liberty we so easily take for granted.

Today is a day to remember Sonny Bubeck who was engaged to the best friend of a girl I was dating at the time. I watched Sonny die when his F/A-18 Hornet did a lateral hard-over right off the catapult on the USS Saratoga and crashed into the Adriatic Sea. His plane was loaded with war shots because we were flying over Bosnia at the time trying to keep the various factions on the ground there from massacring each other.

Today is also a day to remember one of my flight school roommates, Rich Calderone.

Rich was a monster on the ping-pong table. He was the inventor of our constantly changing ruled “room-ball” where the ball could hit on any surface in the room after it hit your paddle as long as it hit once on your opponent’s side of the table. His specialties were the ceiling fan rocket shot and two-walling it off the wall behind his opponent so that it hit their side heading in the wrong direction and was impossible to play.

Rich died when his helicopter crashed one night off the USS America.

If you would, in honor of Sonny, Rich, and the thousands of others who have given their lives defending the liberty that we all enjoy today, please take a moment to watch this video clip, We Support U. And remember their sacrifice.

There is another reason why this particular holiday has special meaning to me. Because Memorial Day is a time set aside to remember the fallen, it is a day when Taps is traditionally played.

And it’s not just that the music is particularly gripping for anyone who’s been in uniform. (Here you can listen to Taps and hear for yourself.) But there is a family connection, as well.

I am actually related to General Daniel Butterfield, the one usually credited with helping create the song and bringing it popularity. My grandmother’s maiden name is Butterfield.

Last year, my cousin, Hannah Sollecito was invited to participate in the Echo Taps project. Echo Taps was done to highlight the shortage of buglers to perform Taps at military funerals. 866 musicians spaced along 41 miles of rural New York between Elmira and Bath echoed the funeral dirge for nearly three hours, one to the next along the entire distance.

As a descendent of General Butterfield, Hannah was asked to be the first to play and started the chain. Here’s the Washington Post article from last year.

Take a moment today to remember our fallen heroes.

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Famous Privacy

2006-05-27T06:33:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you see someone famous?

Gorgeous and I are up in Charleston this weekend staying with some friends. We all went out to a pizza place to grab some dinner because, well, eating is fun.

Now the pizza place happens to be located right down the road from our church. And it just so happened that I looked over and noticed our senior pastor, Greg Surratt, sitting a couple tables away having dinner with another couple.

Now I’m pretty sure Greg would dispute that he is actually famous. But he does lead a church of 10,000+ people. And something tells me that probably a lot of them stop him to say, “Hi” when they see him out and about.

We ended up having a little discussion at our table about the whole thing. Do we go up and say hello, being part of the church he leads, and from an out of state campus” The friends we were eating with happen to go to one of the Seacoast campuses up here too.

Or do we skip the introduction because he deserves his privacy and may not get much of that when he’s trying to have an evening of his own out with friends?

In the end we decided that going over to them would really be about us, not him. So we didn’t disturb them.

Was that the right answer?

Have you ever encountered anyone famous? What did you do?

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Privacy, Famous People, Seacoast Church, CREEations, Chris Cree

Who Wants to Be Rich and Happy?

2006-05-26T05:42:00.000-05:00

Gorgeous and I are having a bit of a rough week. I guess you could say we’re on a passion search.

Don’t get me wrong. We got no problem with our passion, if you know what I mean. But that’s not what I’m talking about. (Besides, this is not that kind of blog. Sheesh!)

We’ve been asking ourselves lots of questions.

If money were no object what do you want to do?
If you could set aside all the things you have to do and had all the time in the world, what would you want to do?
What do you find yourself thinking about when your mind wanders?

Asking those sorts of questions helps refine what your passion really is.

Liz Strauss over at Successful-Blog some advice for folks who are searching to figure out what their passion really is

If you’re after an answer to that question, here’s how to spot something that’s your passion.

You have a passion, if what you are thinking about is
a pastime or idea you’ve been interested in from the minute you encountered it.
a pastime or idea you talk about, read about, and write about even when you don’t have to.
a pastime or idea other people know that you know a lot about.
a pastime or idea you would miss sorely if you had to give it up.
a pastime or idea that energizes you when you get to share it with others.

What does it matter what your passion is? Why bother answering these tough questions?

Well it turns out you are likely to be more successful throughout life if you allow yourself to work at something you are passionate about. Curt Rosengren says passion will fuel your success and he tells us why.

Passion is a renewable resource. Doing work that comes from the heart of who you are and what you're drawn to energizes you. And that is energy you can put into doing the hard work of success.

Success in your career doesn't come with a snap of the fingers. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes commitment. Above all, it takes the energy and inspiration to make it all happen.

Curt feels so strongly about the subject that he calls himself a Passion Catalyst and has made his own career out of helping others figure out their passions.

But here’s the best part about finding your passion and letting yourself focus there. Not only are you likely to make more money because passion pays, but you will be happier too.

Again Curt tells us that to Focus on Money, Prestige, Success is a Recipe for Unhappiness.

So there you have it. Finding your passion can make you rich and happy. And now you’ve even got some pointers on how to get started working out what your passion really is.

All and all a good day.

Enjoy!

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Exercise is a Pain

2006-05-25T06:52:00.000-05:00

Exercise is such a pain. Why is that?

I mean the best part of working out is finishing, at least in my book. I’ve never been one of those guys who loves spending hours each day at the gym.

My idea of a work out involves not getting a good parking place.

Am I alone in this? Looking around America, I don’t think so. We seem to be getting heftier, don’t we?

We had a friend visit from Australia a while back who said, “I’ve never seen so many obese children as you have here in America.”

And she’s not wrong.

My challenge here is one of priority, I think. I’d rather sit in front of this computer than go down to the YMCA and get on a machine. I know part of that is convenience. If the Y was in my back bedroom I might be more inclined to actually get on a machine.

I stress “might” because I also know the reality is the lack of convenience is just an excuse. And when I’m looking for an excuse, any excuse will do. I could just as easily say I don’t go to the Y much because it is near the airport. Or the TV’s are too loud. Or the A/C is too high (or too low). Or they don’t serve coffee.

The truth is I could pick any excuse because it doesn’t even matter. What I claim, my excuse, is not really why I don’t work out. I don’t work out because I don’t want to work out. I mean I want all the benefits of consistent exercise, health, stamina, looking good, and all that. But I don’t want it enough to actually pay the price, which involves an investment of time and effort. I prioritize it so low that it rarely actually happens.

Our nation is so wealthy that we seem to be able to afford to not do a whole bunch of things these days, exercise included. So many of us are unwilling to put in the work required to excel that we end up living lives of quietly despairing mediocrity.

I remember a quote from Finian’s Rainbow when Sharon asks Finian if there are any poor people in America. He answers something like, “Yes, but they are the richest poor people in the world.”

And how true that is.

I can see a good side to this trend, though. With so few people actually exerting the effort required to excel these days, it means that we really don’t have to do all that much extra to stand out. As the saying goes, it only takes a little extra to change ordinary to extraordinary.

Even so, I still canceled my Y membership yesterday. I just wasn’t getting a good return on my investment.

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What is Life?

2006-05-24T06:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in my talk about heroes I mentioned that Jesus told us we have an enemy whose only purpose is to “steal and kill and destroy.” Did you click on the link to the verse where Jesus told us that? If not, take a look.

The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.

Jesus said everything He did – the teaching, miracles, healing people, his horrific execution, and world changing resurrection – was for one reason only: to give people life.

That statement begs a question.

What is Life?

Only three little one syllable words, yet the question is huge. So big in fact that I’m not going to pretend to give a definitive answer to it. And I want to hear what you have to say about it. Go ahead and leave a comment at the end of this post with your thoughts.

At the same time, if this is really a blog of “practical life philosophy,” then we ought to look at the question of Life, eh?

Is life simply the sum of our biological function? I mean Jesus did heal a whole bunch of physical maladies. Even so, that seems like a pretty small view of the term. I’m sure the theologians would holler, “Wait! Wait! There’s more to life than that.”

The thing is we humans seem to somehow be “aware”. We know we exist, and yet we question that existence. What other living thing on this planet does that? Why are we different that way, then?

Why is it all of us deep down have a similar craving to be healthy, happy and rich? Is that what it means to be fully alive?

I recently had a conversation where I said that I believe communication is one of the fundamental keys to life. Because without communication there are no relationships. Without relationships life is pretty pointless.

But is Life simply the sum of our relationships? That may not be the whole enchilada, but I really think we are on to something now.

It makes sense in terms of what Jesus said about His motivations. Did he come to help us with our relationships? Was He kind of like a cosmic, all knowing version of Dr. Phil?

While that question is a bit simplistic, and may even be seen as blasphemous by some, I don’t think it is all that wide of the mark.

Read through the things that Jesus has to say. He is consistently beating the same drum. He talks almost exclusively about our relationships, both with God and with each other.

Jesus summed up what was most important to us this way:

Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."

Jesus said the Life He came to give was all about relationships.

That’s my take. Share yours. Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

Enjoy!

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We Need More Heroes

2006-05-23T06:09:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine just got out of the military this week after serving our country {i.e. you and me} for something over 11 years. When I asked him how long he’d been active duty, he rattled off the exact years, months, weeks, days and hours.

Do you think wearing the uniform was a big deal to him?

I think he’s a hero. But he probably doesn’t look at it that way. He feels he was just doing his job. Of course doing that job meant spending years in Iraq over multiple deployments during both a war and an “insurrection” which is just as deadly dangerous as a war.

Here’s the thing that blows me away, especially when I read all the junk the news media pumps out about Iraq day after day: One of the options he is seriously considering is going back over there as a civilian contractor for a while.

Now I know the money is pretty good. But quite frankly it would have to be pretty stinking outrageous to tempt most folks to go over there. Um, people have a tendency to blow up and stuff. I’m not sure how much money is worth the risk of getting blown up.

So I don’t think it is just the money that would get him back there if that’s what he decides. I think he truly is a hero. And that’s a good thing in my book.

We need more heroes. We need more folks to make the difficult choices, and be willing to actually sacrifice something to help make this world a better place.

Does that mean you have to fight a war? No, not necessarily. But it does mean that you have to stand for something worthwhile, good and supporting of your fellow man. And whenever you actually take a stand for something, it most likely will involve a fight.

Because there is an enemy out there that doesn’t want you or anyone else to stand for anything remotely good. Jesus said that enemy’s sole purpose was to “steal and kill and destroy.” Paul told believers to

Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil.

There’s a real war going on all around us right now as you read this. All that hurt and heartache that you see around you and in the news is simply mass casualties from that war.

What this world needs is a whole bunch of heroes who are armored-up and standing firm against the enemy. We need more warriors who are willing to put it all on the line, pay whatever sacrifice is needed, to take a stand for truth and for justice for those who can’t fight for themselves.

There has been a fun Superhero Quiz going around lately. I’ve had a good time with it.

But my question is this: are we going to be content to just be pretend heroes? Or are we going to actually strap on the armor and get in the fight for real?

Oh, and Aaron – no matter which way you decide to go career-wise at this point, you are already a hero in my eyes.

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Sleep Deprivation Experiment #748 Complete

2006-05-22T05:38:00.000-05:00

Well we successfully made it through this week’s sleep deprivation experiment. I managed to get through it without driving off the road, making any technical blunders, or getting short with anyone. (Although I did have one minor issue with my camera at 3 AM on Sunday morning…)

This time we added a twist to the experiment. I really didn’t have to work all that many hours this weekend. They just all happened to be at night. And I learned something.

I must be getting older. (Oh, there’s a shocker!)

It used to be my motto was “Anytime – Anywhere.”

Now obviously that motto wasn’t original with me. Google the two words and you get nearly 50 million hits. Some of them I’m sure you don’t want to click, if you know what I mean.

But when I was younger that pretty much summed up where I could sleep if I decided to. Sleep was never a challenge for me. My dad would probably tell you that I acquired that skill at an early age. I remember a little friction many of my teenaged mornings when he insisted I get up before I was awake.

My time in the Navy only reinforced that special ability. Spend 6 months with your bed about 10 feet directly underneath JBD number 4 and you’ll be able to sleep through a hurricane. (Check out How Aircraft Carriers Work if you want to know what a JBD is.) Heck, I even slept strapped in an ejection seat. More than once! (Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it, knowing folks on the pointy end of the spear might be asleep on the job!)

Of course I still remember the noise sequence of a typical launch.

First there is the relatively quite jet engine noise of the plane taxiing into place. Then there’s the whine of the hydraulic motors lifting the JBD behind the plane which ends in two dull thuds followed by four loud clicks of the locking pins being driven home. Next you have a rush of the seawater surging through the cooling pipes. Shortly after that the whole room will start to shake as the plane runs up to full power, but can’t yet go anywhere. Then after a few seconds, the shooter will fire the catapult and the engine noise rushes away forward. The sea water stops. The four pins click and unlock. The hydraulics whine as they lower the JBD. Finally there’s the two dull thuds as the JBD comes back to rest on the deck.

The whole process takes about 2 minutes and then starts again.

I remember all that from 1992!

But my point is that I never had any trouble sleeping through that insane racket. Yet this weekend, in a very quiet house, with the boys not bothering me at all (they were very good), I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours during the day. And this even though I was totally exhausted!

Why does getting older have to mean having trouble sleeping? I’m not digging this aging process!!

Hope you have a great day and sleep well tonight.

Enjoy!

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On Planting and Harvesting

2006-05-20T15:39:00.000-05:00

I had a conversation with a friend of mine a couple of days back. My friend was getting discouraged about doing some good things that involved being especially nice to folks and not really seeing much back in return.

It prompted me to go on a bit of a rant.

Planting and Harvesting

I'm sure most you have heard of the principle of planting and harvesting (sometimes called sowing and reaping by the old schoolers out there). It seems to be a universal principle that you will always harvest what you plant in time.

The principle obviously works in agriculture. You can’t plant corn seed in a field and harvest wheat after those seeds mature. To get wheat, you have to plat wheat.

The Bible says it this way:

“Don't be misled. Remember that you can't ignore God and get away with it. You will always reap what you sow!”

And the principle holds true in other realms too. Down in Jacksonville last night (actually I guess it was this morning) one of the guys in the office had John Tesh on the radio. John was talking about some study or other that showed people who were generally nice and had senses of humor tended to be healthier overall than people who worried and were selfish.

Sure the results of the study may seem obvious. But this is another example of the planting/harvesting principle. If you are friendly, then most people will be friendly back to you. Doing nice things for others lowers your stress levels and helps you stay healthier.

And while it’s true that you will harvest what you plant in time, the challenges of the principle are twofold.

First, people tend to want to leave of the "in time" part of the equation. They forget that the farmer has to wait along time after he plants his crop, time spent working like a dog tending his fields, before he finally gets to the harvest. They think the principle is invalid if they don't harvest as soon as they get the seed covered with dirt. How silly!

Here’s a Bible’s take on that one:

So don't get tired of doing what is good. Don't get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time.

Another thing that is true about the life principle of planting and harvesting, and this is much less obvious, is that you often don't harvest from the same fields that you planted in.

For example, I have helped bunches of my friends move. And, as a result of the planting/harvesting principle, whenever I've moved I have always had plenty of help lifting furniture. But it is rarely the same people helping as I helped, mostly because one of us isn't in the same spot because we've moved!

I shouldn't be frustrated with Jim-Bob because he didn't personally return the favor to me. The help will still come, just from another quarter.

It’ll come because the planting/harvesting principle still holds. What goes around comes around, eventually.

The last thing I want to point out about the planting/harvesting principle is that the size of your harvest is directly related to how much seed you plant.

Once again I go back to what the Bible says on the subject:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

A Recap

What do we know about the principle of planting and harvesting?

The principle is universal (even if you don’t believe it!)

The harvest takes time to appear

The harvest often comes from a different field than the seed was planted in

The size of the harvest is directly related to the amount of seed planted.

That about sums it up.

Choose your seed well. Plant lots of it. Be patient. And expect the harvest because it is coming!

Enjoy!

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Superhero Round-up

2006-05-20T12:49:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems I'm not the only Superhero out there. A few of the guys have taken the quiz. (And why is it just guys? Hmm...)

Here's what we've got so far:

Kevin Bowman is Green Lantern (and where I first saw the quiz.)

David Turner is Superman

Tadd Grandstaff is The Flash

And as we all know, it appears Spiderman is my alter ego.

So it would appear that folks can rest easy because we have the Superhero spectrum covered.

Enjoy!

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Highway at Night

2006-05-19T22:25:00.000-05:00

It's time for another sleep deprivation experiement.

The time is now slightly after 2300 hours, or slightly before departure for work in Jacksonville, FL (approximatley 2.0 Hours driving time).

I'll check in somtime in the morning. Gotta love being first on call when wierd stuff happens.

If you are going to be on I-95 in the next several hours, don't forget to wave. I'll be the one with the coffee IV drip...

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Who'da Thunk It?

2006-05-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

Goof off online during my lunch break and I find out I shoulda been Spiderman. Who'da thunk it?

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		80%
Hulk		75%
Green Lantern		70%
Superman		65%
Iron Man		45%
Supergirl		40%
The Flash		40%
Batman		40%
Wonder Woman		35%
Robin		30%
Catwoman		30%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

With great power comes
great responsibility.

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A Bit of a Discussion

2006-05-19T05:10:00.000-05:00

We’re having a bit of a discussion over at the Da Vinci Code post from the other day.

Voice in the Wilderness says that the only winners in the whole hubbub are going to be the publishers and movie studios. (Check out his blog. He’s got a refreshing perspective on church and Christianity in general.)

Tania from Germany and I have been discussing the source of guidance we look to. She’s got a lot to add that stimulates conversation. (I wish she had a blog I could link to for you. I bet it would be a good read!)

Here’s your assignment for today: Go read the comments, then come back here. I can hang out for a minute or two until you get back. (Oh, and you can re-read the post too if you want a refresher on how the conversation started.)

When you come back here, join the conversation by sharing how you figure out when you are on the right course or not by posting a comment below.

Or just share your thoughts on the whole Da Vinci Code Hubbub. Are there winners in the whole thing? If so, then who is loosing?

I’ll go get another cup of coffee and wait here.

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The Wall Street Journal Blows it Big Time

2006-05-18T06:34:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article up today The Web’s Worst New Idea that totally misses the mark on the issue of Net Neutrality.

They say that the current fight for Net Neutrality is a bad idea basically because making laws to preserve neutral data flow by the internet providers would open the door to lawsuits. They claim the government shouldn’t “regulate what isn’t broken.”

The one sentence that sums up their apparent complete failure to grasp the reality of this issue is this:

Given the impulse on the left to regulate anything that moves, perhaps the real surprise here is that it's taken this long for someone to seriously suggest the Net will wither in the absence of a federal regulatory apparatus.

They seem to think those supporting Net Neutrality are only on the left side of the political spectrum. Um, read my profile. I’m sure not in the MoveOn.org crowd. Although I pretty much agree with them on this one issue.

But, hey, my own political credentials aren’t all that substantial (which is A-OK with me). Regardless, the WSJ should take a look at the Charter Members on the SaveTheInternet.com site. They’d see that the fourth one on the list is Gun Owners of America.

That’s not exactly the type of organization characterized by the WSJ as supporting this issue. Check out what their Executive Director wrote to Congress about the issue. The question is will us little guys be able to make our voices heard in the future?

The other flaw in the WSJ reasoning is that they seem to think that because every thing’s going well now, there is no problem. The issue is not what has happened to the internet, but what the providers say they intend to do with it.

Here’s what’s at stake in simple language, so that even I can understand it:

The high speed internet providers want to be able to start charging for data flowing over their network regardless of where the content originated in addition to charging for each computer that connects to their network.

As it stands right now everyone pays based on how much data flows to the internet at the connection point. That data volume is called bandwidth. The result of the current system is that Google pays a whole lot more for their internet access than I do because they are shoving way more data through their connection than I am.

The current system is fair to everyone because as a company grows, and needs more bandwidth, it is reasonable to expect them to be able to afford to pay more for their access. Suffice it to say that Google has much deeper pockets than I do.

The change the providers want to make is hard to describe because the double charging concept is so foreign to us. Basically it’s without precedent. But I’m going to try.

It would be like setting up a toll interstate highway system. As it stands now, everyone getting on that highway system would have to pay a toll to each state where you get on the highway. How much you currently pay determines whether you can get into the fast lane, or if you have to stay in the slow lane.

Now imagine a different, additional, toll structure. Say a truck was going from Florida to Wisconsin. Under the new system (what the internet providers want to do), the truck would pay his toll to Florida like he always did and get into which ever lane he paid for. But now he would also have to pay an additional toll to Wisconsin the moment he got on the highway or he wouldn’t be allowed to get off the highway there.

It might almost sound reasonable except where the analogy falls apart when you translate it to the internet. Be cause with the internet, you put your data on in one place, but it doesn’t get off in one place, but many. And under the new system you would have to pay an additional toll everyplace you wanted your data to be able to get off the highway.

It would be like the trucker having to pay a toll to every one of the 50 states the moment he got on the highway or he wouldn’t be able to get off wherever he didn’t pay. If you are a big trucking company, like say Schneider, you could probably swing the extra new fees. But what if you were an independent trucker with only one truck?

You end up only being able to work on back water routes and you no longer can make a living because you can’t compete with the big boys any longer. In the end you go out of business.

The same thing will happen to all of us little internet users if the providers have their way. We’re the ones who will be affected most, not the big guys like Google, even though they have an interest in this too. If the providers get their way, check out how it will affect you personally.

If you’re involved in a non-profit this will affect you big time. Hello! Church crowd! Are you even listening?! How much more can your budget afford to pay? Or are you willing to let the providers keep people from hearing your message?

Net Neutrality is a big deal. The WSJ totally missed what the fight is about. If you do any business on the internet and don’t want to be shut out, get active. Contact Congress now, before it’s too late.

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About CREEations

2006-05-17T15:40:00.000-05:00

CREEations is a blog of practical life philosophy based on my sleep deprived life juggling a marriage, maritime industry career, volunteer commitments, cat ownership, writing, yard work, and massive coffee consumption.

My goal is to challenge the way you look at your world. Sometimes I’m profound, other times just plain silly, but I’m sure you’ll find I spend most of my time somewhere in between.

Here’s what Liz Strauss over at the Successful Blog has to say about CREEations:

“SOB Chris Cree’s blog is upbeat a nice place to go when the world has been a little too much and you want to have a space to breathe. His posts shed a little light on humanity and how to face the world with a positive outlook. They’re easy to read and rest easy on the mind. I think of Chris’ blog as a great place to unwind.”

If that sounds good to you, go ahead and subscribe to my feed.

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Da Vinci Code Hubbub

2006-05-17T06:46:00.000-05:00

The Da Vinci Code Movie is coming out this week. I get the feeling that there are some Christians who are afraid Dan Brown’s story will somehow usher in some kind of evil darkness devoid of Christian thought.

Google “da vinci code Christian” and you find that the Da Vinci Code needs debunking, breaking, deciphering, dismantling, and cracking. You can find out the truth about it, whether it’s fact or fiction, and why it has appeal. And every one of those links is on the opening search page. I didn’t have to hunt for them. Sheesh!

I got an email Jerry Falwell this morning with the subject line “The Da Vinci Code Deception.” My first instinct was to delete it. I do that a lot with his stuff because I’ve grown tired of his combative approach to every issue and what I perceive as his need to be right about everything.

But as I started thinking about writing this, I went back into my deleted items because his stuff is usually pretty well thought out, even if it is belligerent. I was hugely disappointed to find it was just an advertisement hawking a book of his own on the subject!

Our church has even had a few weekend messages devoted to the subject. I think they were a good idea because the approach was to try to give folks an idea of what all the hubbub is about.

Now here’s my thing: Are Christian leaders really afraid that the Scriptures that have withstood assaults for millennia are suddenly going to collapse because some guy writes a novel? Come on!

If I based my world view on something that flimsy, I would want it shaken up a bit!

I want to base my life on capital ‘T’ Truth. If some new mystery/thriller was all it took to shake my belief system then how true could it be?

The author even claims it as fiction. Does he stir the pot and muddy the waters? Of course he does. I bet he thinks the more controversy, the better since it equals free publicity. Publicity sells books and lines his pockets. If you read Dan Brown’s faqs you’ll see what I mean.

So we are in a rather ironic situation where Christians, in their effort to stand for truth and confront evil, are doing all the heavy lifting to make sure that the offending book gets as wide an audience as possible.

I think they’ve missed the point. God is big enough to manage His own reputation. He doesn’t need my help. (Sure I try to do little things to make Him look good. But that’s really more for my benefit than His. It’s not like His reputation is dependant on me!)

The problem is most people have never put any real effort into figuring out what they actually believe so they end up chasing what ever new idea comes along. It’s as futile as chasing the wind.

Sailors know you don’t chase the wind. You certainly can’t control it. The wind is going to blow where it will. All a good sailor can do is set his sails to the best of his ability so he can harness the wind to get where he wants to go.

When folks chase each new idea that comes along they are like a sailor steering all over the compass trying to chase the wind.

If they actually invested some time getting familiar with the source documentation, they might actually come to understand the things they believe and not be so prone to wander off after the next big thing. They could set their sails based on that truth and steer a straight course through life.

It’s high time Christians got a little passionate about the things they are for and stopped worrying so much about all the things they are against!

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Not So Mr. Fix-it

2006-05-16T06:28:00.000-05:00

Tony Morgan wrote about Walking on Water this morning. He had me roaring, nearly got coffee out the nose first thing this morning. What a good way to wake up! You should check it out.

I appreciate his feeling less than proficient at fixing things. Here’s how he describes it:

I never really learned how to fix anything. Instead, I learned how to pay the fix-it people to fix things.

I feel his pain.

Gorgeous will tell you I’m not much of a fixer-upper either. I have a few skills in that arena, but I hid them well. Fixing things, unless it involves electronics, really doesn’t interest me much.

In fact Gorgeous and I have remarkably similar approaches when it comes to repairing broken stuff. I’ll usually go at the broken item with a roll of duct tape, because after all duct tape is a man’s best friend, the universal repair tool. Gorgeous has a tendency to get out her hot glue gun. You’d be amazed what she can stick together with a little dab of hot glue.

Between my duct tape and her hot glue gun I think we could conquer the world.

One advantage I get by not being such a handy guy is that on those rare occasions that I actually do fix something (and it ends up actually working right and looking neat and tidy, those two things are key for some reason) I completely blow Gorgeous away. The look she gives me on those rare occasions is worth all the aggravation of the fixing. It’s kind of a “who are you and what did you do with my husband” look. Well worth the price of admission.

I got one of those looks after working on a ceiling fan last year. (Like I said, it doesn’t happen often.)

Our guest room had a ceiling fan that worked just fine. However the people who built our house had a big four poster bed in that room with a veil covering thingy on it so they left the light kit off the fan. We didn’t have an extra lamp to put in the room and really didn’t have the extra cash to go buy one before we had some company coming.

Fortunately for us the previous owners had left the light kit for the fan in the closet. All it needed was installation. According to the instructions it should have been fairly easy. Take the cover off, connect a wire and screw the light kit in place. Besides, I figured lights use electricity, that makes it almost electronic. Right?

Except the original installers didn’t connect the power to the light wire since they weren’t installing the lights. And that meant I had to basically disassemble the entire ceiling fan to get at the wire connection to make the whole thing actually work.

I could tell by her pacing around outside the guest room and the occasional nervous “how’s it going?” questions that Gorgeous had this impending doom feeling thing going on. Of course in her defense seeing ceiling fan parts strewn about the guest room with a gaping hole where the decorative fan used to be probably didn’t help much.

The steady grumbling coming out of the room wouldn’t have instilled confidence either, I guess. “Razzel, frazzle... Gaaah!... Heeeeehhhsh!... Grrrrrrr… Tchaaaahhh!” But hey, the ten minute job had turned into an ordeal.

Keep in mind we had company coming the next day. And the actual job time was being measured in hours, not the ten minutes I predicted.

Fortunately for us in the end I got everything back together. It all looked good and there weren’t even that many pieces left over. And now I have an idea what I’m doing if I ever have to tear apart another ceiling fan.

But on the whole I’d rather have the money to hire it done.

Enjoy!

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Another Rainy Day

2006-05-15T05:54:00.000-05:00

Last night Gorgeous and I went to sleep with the lightning flashing and thunder rumbling. I don’t know if it rained all night, but it is raining as I get up and get moving this morning. And while the thunder isn’t as loud right now I can still hear some rumbling in the distance.

As we were settling in Gorgeous said, “I like it when it rains.” And I do too. I love stormy weather.

There’s something thrilling about seeing the sky darken and the trees start swaying as the wind picks up. And then as the rain picks up, the lightning starts crashing. There’s always a feeling that you could be in danger. I love being out in it if I can find a way to stay dry. I always want to be able to smell the storm as it blows through.

I always feel a little disappointed when we run from a hurricane. I know it is the wise thing to do, get out of the way. But I can’t help feeling a little envious of the silly folks on TV trying to stand and be heard in the wind where the storm comes ashore.

When we lived in the condo in Florida we had a screen porch. I would go out there and sit sometimes for hours and enjoy the thunder storms. I remember a particularly strong storm one night. Gorgeous slid the door back and suggested that it was getting pretty bad and I might want to come back inside. I gave her some manly bluster about there being no danger.

Within five minutes there was a lightning strike that must have been really close because the thunder was shattering and practically preceded the flash. I made an equally manly retreat back inside, giggling some nervous chatter about how I’d seen enough. That adrenalin rush lasted me for quite a while.

I think we found Fat Boy under the bed.

Rainy weather is the best for sleeping. Why is that?

The truth is I would much rather crawl back under the covers this morning than head off to meet with the guys at Starbuck’s. Really there is nothing better than a snooze during a storm. Maybe that’s another reason why I like the rain. It goes hand and glove with my love of sleepy time.

The only time in my life when I didn’t really like the nasty weather was when I was flying with the Navy. Airplanes and thunderstorms don’t mix. Especially when you are trying to land. At the carrier.

I can give myself shivers thinking about it. Some of the most scared I’ve ever been in my life involved night traps with the lightning destroying my vision and the plane bouncing around on final from the turbulence.

Fortunately I was never splattered into the fantail at the back of the ship, what we called the spud locker. I don’t know why we called it that. The Navy’s got some weird traditions.

Anyway I’m off to hang with the guys over coffee, then head into work. It looks to keep the rain up most of the day. Our lawn will appreciate the drink. But here’s to hoping that there is nothing but desk work for us today!

Stay dry.

Enjoy!

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Dinner and a Show

2006-05-14T06:08:00.000-05:00

Gorgeous and I went to dinner with some friends last night. The weather was perfect for eating on the porch. Which, here in Savannah, is a special treat. Most of the year it is too hot to even think straight, even as the sun is going down, and you can forget about enjoying an evening outside.

Of course we were on a screen porch to fend off the gnats.

The steaks were grilled to perfection. The conversation was lively and wide ranging. All in all it was a wonderful evening.

Their two cats provided the entertainment.

Actually the entertainment was provided by the ones that were abusing the cats.

Now before you get all upset, let me give you my disclaimer: No cats were harmed in the course of research for this post.

But they were pretty much abused.

And no, it wasn’t by the pair of dogs the hosting family had either.

The cats stayed in the back yard and on the patio beyond the gnat filtering screen the whole evening. They appeared to like the smells coming off the grill. And the whole time they were out there, a pair of mocking birds thought it would be good sport to harass the cats.

I never saw them hassle the dogs. Or the grill chef. Just the cats.

The show started even before the cat’s arrived on the scene. A bowl of dry cat food was set out about 4 feet beyond the screen. One of the birds landed on the patio, hopped up to the dish, grabbed a kibble and flew off with it.

I thought that was a pretty brave maneuver on his part. And you could tell by the way that he would stop to look around as he was hopping up to the bowl that he was probably thinking, “This is stupid. Where’re the cats? Oh man, is this dumb.” But he did it anyway.

When the cats came on the scene I figured we’d seen the last of the birds. But I was so wrong. For the rest of the time we were out there, until after it got too dark to see, the birds made continual slashing attacks on the cats.

It was pretty amusing. You could tell the cats were a bit peeved by the whole thing. They had their ears back and the tails would go flick, flick, flick. But for some strange reason they never stuck a paw up or pounced when the birds would hit them.

It got so bad that I almost began to whish they would. I started to picture a bird making a low pass over a cat and disappearing in a cloud of feathers, forever cured of feline harassment syndrome.

I’m guessing that the birds didn’t start out so rashly annoying. I bet they were much more careful when they started harassing the cats. But over time, with no reaction from the cats, they just got bolder and more troublesome.

The cats would have been better off if they had been a little aggressive at the beginning to get the birds to back off. In the long run, the birds would be better off too, I think. As it stands now, the only way the birds are going to stop aggravating the cats probably will be by dying.

How much does that carry over into our lives? How often do we let bullies badger us until we explode because we didn’t deal with them early on? How many people do we hurt far more by being “nice” than if we dealt with the conflict in a healthy way early on?

The Bible has a bunch to say on the subject. Here’s one from Proverbs:

Physical punishment cleanses away evil; such discipline purifies the heart.

Edmund Burke said it this way:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

How often do I look the other way when bullies are hurting others?

I need to think about that for a bit.

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I Love My Stuff

2006-05-13T05:34:00.000-05:00

There are some mornings like today, when I’m heading down to Jacksonville for work, that I wake up and have Steppenwolf’s song Born to Be Wild bouncing around in my head. I guess it’s my brain’s way of waking up and getting ready to hit the highway.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror first thing after I woke up, which is a pretty scary thing, actually, hair going every which way and all. Gorgeous reminds me that any day I still have hair is one I should consider a good hair day.

But I also saw the old ratty t-shirt that I slept in. I’ve had it for over 20 years now. Gorgeous has tried to get rid of it, more than once I think. But I won’t let her even though it all stretched out, has more than a few holes, and the places where there are no holes are threadbare.

My grandmother gave it to me and it has this Far Side cartoon on it. Grandma was into Far Side when Gary Larson was drawing the cartoon. She gave me the coffee mug too. I still have it along with a few others. Good stuff.

Grandma’s a cool lady.

But it got me to thinking. Why are we often so attached to stuff?

I mean I won’t let my wife throw out a very worn out old t-shirt. I say its because my grandmother gave it to me. But I haven’t seen her in years. Why is it I haven’t prioritized her enough to make the trek to New York to see her more often?

Why do we have a tendency to value stuff more than people?

Talk about having messed up priorities! We have this natural bent to treasure our things and treat people around us like trash. Do I really love my t-shirt more than my Grandma?

Sheesh!

The Bible has a bunch to say to folks like me who may fixate on stuff. Paul said this:

I do want to point out, friends, that time is of the essence. There is no time to waste, so don't complicate your lives unnecessarily. Keep it simple--in marriage, grief, joy, whatever. Even in ordinary things--your daily routines of shopping, and so on. Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way out.

Peter also points out that our stuff is temporary:

But when the Day of God's Judgment does come, it will be unannounced, like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a huge conflagration, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment.

Don’t get too attached to your stuff. Life is too short and you’ll enjoy it more if you hold your stuff in an open hand.

Gotta hit the road.

Enjoy!

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What Everyone Else is Doing

2006-05-12T06:46:00.000-05:00

What Everyone Else is Doing

I’ve been reading a bit about Google Trends this morning. It is an interesting tool that charts out for you how often things have been searched for in Google. It kind of gives you a read on what everyone on the internet is interested in.

Since I consider my blog here to be mostly about practical life philosophy, I thought I’d look run “blog, life, philosophy” through and see what came out. The results actually surprised me with life having a much higher consistent search than blog and philosophy in the gutter. It is also interesting to note that blog seems to be on a steady upward trend. Of course there is no scale shown on the graph so all we get is relative comparisons.

But the most interesting part of it to me is when I clicked on the “Regions” tab of the lower graph. There we see that Peru is far more interested in blog than life. Singapore is looking for life just about as often as for a blog. And the US & Canada both appear to be desperately searching for life while hardly caring about the blog.

I have no idea what the take-away from that is.

After I poked around with Google Trends, I went looking at my propaganda sites like Drudge and Fox News and it appears that folks are all up in arms over the government data basing masses of phone records. Although by the time you read this they may have moved on.

It does make me think when I see that many of the same companies that are involved with shady goings-on regarding phone records are among the same companies that are spending millions to lobby Congress for changes to the laws that would pretty much give them control over what you can and cannot access over the internet.

If that gives you pause, check out my post that explains why Your Internet is in Danger. Then go spend some time looking at SaveTheInternet.com.

You can make a difference in the future of communication by contacting Congress.

But all this talk about trends and headlines got me thinking. Does it really matter what everyone else is doing or worried about? I suppose to some degree it does. We are all part of the same human race so there is a certain level of interconnectedness and other people will probably always influence us to some degree.

But if we try to plot our life’s course based strictly on the opinions and actions of others, we will never really be fulfilled. Leaders who have the biggest impact follow a specific vision, even when it is unpopular. For example Lincoln comes to mind as a leader who was lambasted by public opinion while he led, but whom history and hindsight has shown to be perhaps our nation’s greatest leader.

In the Bible, Paul said it this way:

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:13-14)

Each of us has our own path to walk. Those who make the most of it, march to their own unique drummer. Don’t be so concerned about what everyone else is doing. Life is too short.

Enjoy!

Conference Lessons

2006-05-11T06:26:00.000-05:00

Well I’m home from the Multi-Site Conference and I thought I’d share a few things I learned along the way. But I’m not going to get into what the speakers had to say even though it was really good stuff. Since I knew I was going to be up there for the conference, I offered to help out with some of the behind the scenes stuff. I figured that as long as I’m part of the host church, why not offer to help?

I was glad I did. Usually at these conferences I can get a little bored. Not while the speakers are talking, mind you. I mean at a conference this size the speakers usually are good enough to keep my attention. But rather in the between times. I like having something to do. And there was plenty that needed doing.

So here’s just a few of the things I learned from all that this weekend:

Just dive in and help where you can. Coming from a small campus of 150-ish staffed almost entirely with volunteers into a huge campus with 5,000+ attending every week and gobs of paid staff running things, I wasn’t sure what I could possibly be able to contribute to their team. But I had offered to help and I ended up helping coordinate what was going on in the main auditorium, making sure that the details were covered so that things ran smoothly for the speakers, worship teams, and most importantly, the conference attendees.

The staff member for Seacoast who does that up there only wears about 12 hats, not to mention that he was speaking at a number of the break out sessions. And I’ve been doing the same sort of thing for our campus in Savannah since we launched a couple years back. It’s a little like cat herding trying to get everyone heading in the same direction sometimes, and I seem to have some cat herding skills. They needed them up there just like we need them down here. And it was pretty cool when Greg asked during the final tech meeting a few minutes before we got started and we saw that there were folks from at least 4 different campuses helping out with the tech stuff (not to mention the 100 or so other volunteers involved with other parts of the conference).

Bigger does not have to mean different. Sure their big campus has their tech team connected by headsets and they have a separate video room. We’ve got a folding table at the back of the theater. And we whisper a lot. They have a planning meeting days ahead of time and produce a cue sheet on a computer. We spend about 30 seconds during our set up time telling the key people what to expect and have a handwritten order of service.

But the bottom line is we pretty much have the same processes and have to be sure the same functions are covered. And that made fairly it easy to integrate into their team. It was a real eye opener to me to see how similar we really are to each other. Especially since so many of the conference speakers kept saying how important it was to be sure that new multi-site campuses keep the starting church’s “DNA”.

Feed your volunteers. Oh, my gosh! This is HUGE. I was starting to stress a little the first day trying to figure out how I was going to break away for a few minutes to go down the road and grab a bite to eat and still get back in time after trying to find a new place to park. I told one of the guys on the team that I might be a schootch late getting back. His reply was, “You know we’ve got food back there.”

He said it like, “Duh! Blondie wake up! You don’t need to go anywhere because of course we’ll feed you. It’s the least we can do for everyone who helps out.”

My first thought was that it must be expensive to feed everyone. But as I thought about it, I realized it is probably a really inexpensive way to dramatically increase productivity. When folks are trying to be sure that thousands of details are taken care of, even right up to the last minute, the last thing you want is for everyone to disappear for an hour or more while they go off site and wait in line somewhere for something to eat. Most people will only take 10-15 minutes to eat and then they get back to it. Besides, it is one less thing to have to think about so folks can stay focused better on what needs doing. Not to mention it is a time when folks can chat with each other, building team cohesion, rather going out separate directions on their own.

You never know who you’re going to meet. I stayed late after the weekend worship service Saturday night and went to the Newcomers meeting, not because I was new, but because I was giving the speaker a ride home. Since I was staying at his house, it was the least I could do.

There was a guy there that looked very familiar. The whole time the meeting was going on, I was trying to figure out where I knew him from. Afterwards I went up and chatted with him for a few minutes and we figured out that we both used to work for the same company a while back, but in different departments. We’d seen each other’s faces often enough, but didn’t really ever have any dealings. He’s got a friend in Savannah that he’s been meaning to tell about Seacoast down here. And now he’s got a connection. How cool is that?

Good to be Home

2006-05-10T07:04:00.000-05:00

I got back from the Coast to Coast Multi-Site Conference last night. I had a great time helping out and met some really interesting folks.

But man is it good to be home!

Today will be a catch up day for me so I won’t post much.

We’ll be back to our regular schedule tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Great News!

2006-05-06T11:03:00.000-05:00

This is so cool. I was just able to finalize a way to keep the blog rolling along while I’m gone, just in case I can’t get on a computer over the next couple of days.

So please don’t be too hard on our guest blogger in my absence.

Enjoy!

P.S. I’m not responsible for any retina burns that may have occurred from clicking on the above link. Just take a deep breath, close your eyes and say three times, “Chris will be back soon.” ;)

Enjoy!

Road Trip!

2006-05-06T08:55:00.000-05:00

I’m heading out of town for a couple of days. The bummer is I’ll miss Gorgeous by a few hours since she won’t be home until tonight. {Sigh…}

Anyway, I’m heading out to Charleston for the Coast to Coast Multi-Site Conference. The conference is Monday and Tuesday but I’m going up early for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I’ll get a little extra time to hang out with some of our friends. Gorgeous and I lived up there for a while. If I just drove up Monday it would be all conference and very little hang out time. And I just find it hard to actually consume mass quantities of coffee when I don’t get a little hang out time!

The second reason for going up early is that I’ve offered to help out with the tech team supporting the conference. I’ll be doing basically the same thing up there that I do most weeks down here at our Seacoast campus in Savannah.

But the Long Point campus generally has about 5,000 folks or so on a weekend. We run 175-ish in Savannah. The gear they use up there is just a little different. (Ya think?) And I’d rather not try to work out those differences on the fly during the conference on Monday.

Since I’ll be away for a while and don’t know what kind of computer access I’ll have to post new entries, I thought you might appreciate checking out some folks that I try to keep up with.

Interested in business, blogging, writing, networking, or the internet? Check out Successful Blog. I was a fan of Liz even before she called me an SOB.

Or maybe you’d like a little humor from a stay at home mom with way too much on her plate. If so, be sure to check out HolyMoma! I don’t have kids, but Kelsey’s descriptions of the various ways her kids manage to get messy usually generates a chuckle.

If you are into sci-fi or writing, check out the Writer’s Blog. I just discovered this one, but Jim brings an interesting perspective to the table. And his blog design is killer.

And finally, be sure to check out my buddy David Turner at TURNED OUT. Speaking of great blog design, and I don’t usually go for the black backgrounds! David’s a deep thinker and his words are worth mulling over for a bit before you move on. Be sure to check out his Jump Start posts on Mondays.

That should keep you going until I get back. And who knows, I might even be able to get something out from up there.

Enjoy!

Stuff On My Cat

2006-05-05T18:52:00.000-05:00

Didn’t know it but I needed a good laugh.

I went poking around the Technorati top 100 blogs and I stumbled on a real prize.

Now before you get to the good stuff, we need to make sure you’ve all met Fat Boy & Low Rider. And they seem to be aiming better these days, by the way. Gorgeous (a.k.a. the Cat Whisperer) was right about that one. Thanks for the prayers.

Early on I also made a Case for Cats as more manly pets than dogs. Now I realize the whole thing is debatable, and I might even be a touch insecure about the stereotypical image often associated with male cat owners. But I’m secure enough to write about it here, which says something, doesn’t it?

Anyway I like our cats mostly because they chronically make me laugh. Which brings me back to tonight’s treat.

Stuff On My Cat is a hoot. Mario Garza created this blog in a flash of true brilliance. Cat lovers and cat haters should both love the humiliations these cats endure.

And if these cat’s don’t put a smile on your face, you’ve been dipped in pickle juice!

Now back to work! (At least for me…)

Enjoy!

Did Ya See the Swicki?

2006-05-05T06:23:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed some of the different features around the blog here. Today let’s highlight a few.

If you are looking for a particular post or wondering if I’ve ever written about a topic, the best place thing to do is use the Google search box under my profile in the right column. Just click the CREEations button before you hit search and you will find everything written here on that.

I posted a while back about how to subscribe to the feed. Or you can enter your email address into the box below the feed count chicklett and get CREEations sent to your email box every day.

Did you notice the customized CREEations swicki near the bottom of the right column? The swicki is customized search engine designed to give more focused searches about things you find written about here at the blog. The best part about the swicki is that it will learn and give more relevant search results over time the more it is used.

You may also be wondering what’s the deal with the Google Ads. I am seriously contemplating upgrading the blog considerably. That means moving from blogspot.com to my own domain name. (Unfortunately ChrisCree.com is already taken. How weird is that to have another guy out there sharing your name?) But moving the blog also means paying for things like hosting (blogspot.com is free).

Since Gorgeous helps keep my spending on track, I put up a few ads to help offset these costs. Google will pay me a few cents anytime someone clicks on an ad on CREEations. Of course that someone can’t be me or Gorgeous or Google would shut us out of their ad program. Permanently. I’ve tried to keep the ads as un-obnoxious as possible so you can ignore them if you want.

But if you ever see anything in the ads that is remotely interesting, click on it and check it out. You will learn about something new. Google will pay me a few cents for the click. And if you find that what you clicked on isn’t really as interesting as you thought, just hit the back button and forget about it. No harm. No foul.

That about covers it. Thanks for reading.

Enjoy!

Time is Relentless

2006-05-04T05:55:00.000-05:00

Why did God set up the day with only 24 hours in it?

As if that would be anywhere near enough time to get done all the things I want to do on top of all the things I have to do.

No matter what we do, the clock keeps ticking. Time is one of the places where everyone is equal. And while we may each be allotted a different number of days on this planet, every one of us is given the same 24 hours each day.

Right now my schedule has gotten a bit nuts. This past weekend I did nearly a month’s worth of work in three days. I am still digging out from under the paper work. I have a meeting in less than an hour with a guy and I am not completely prepared for it. Gorgeous is heading out of town this morning and won’t be back until after I leave on Saturday for a few days.

I want to keep my blog here up to date. The neighbors would appreciate it if I cut the grass before I leave. My car needs washing and Gorgeous’ needs some maintenance. I want to do some computer work to support a couple of projects Gorgeous has going.

And somewhere along the way I should actually go to the Y. (Apparently I can’t get into shape just by cutting them my membership check each month. I have to physically go there and exercise. I don’t remember reading that in the fine print!)

Oh, yes. And my body still won’t let me skip the whole sleep thing.

And we don’t even have kids! I truly can’t imagine what life would be like if that dynamic was added in.

So we are all restricted to 24 hours in any given day. It doesn’t seem right.

But maybe God knew that we needed limitations. Maybe if he gave us even more hours, we’d keep going until we exploded. Perhaps the whole sleep thing was built in to force us to take some down time to recharge so that we could keep going through an entire life.

All I know is I am late for a meeting (again) and I have to get moving. I am looking forward to the day that I step into eternity and have all the time I need to do the things I want.

Not that I want to get there today, mind you.

Enjoy!

Naming our Fears

2006-05-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

I was poking around the net this morning and I came across a really good article by Curt Rosengren about dealing with fear appropriately titled The F-Word. Check out his opening paragraph:

FEAR IS A DREAM KILLER. It’s the biggest and most common obstacle I see in my work helping people create passion-filled careers. Fear paralyzes, and it magnifies failures. Worst of all, it brings an acceptance of the status quo, however unpalatable that might be.

Bam! Right in the kisser.

Curt lays it out there for us. Our fears could very well be the single biggest thing that keeps us from actually moving forward and accomplishing great things in our lives.

There are so many take-away’s from his article you really need to read the whole thing.

He talks about “shining a light on our fears.” He says that if we don’t name our fears then

Without realizing it, you make that fear your de facto reality.

That is so true! I grew up with this vague fear that I was never going to amount to anything. As a result, for the vast majority of my nearly 40 years on this planet I have pretty much hung out in the middle of the pack. I rarely ever attempted anything big and then when I did actually take something on I’d be prone to give it up earlier than I really should have. That fear was becoming a reality in my life!

Fear feeds on the belief that we can’t handle what might happen, and then we unknowingly reinforce that belief.

Again Curt is spot on. Gorgeous and I have worked hard over the years to get debt free. And at one time in our marriage we actually were. But we share a fear of never really having any kind of savings to speak of. Because of that financial fear, we tend to be a little too risk adverse with our money. We have turned down opportunities to invest because we tend to “what if” them to death. As a result, our savings is not what we’d like it to be. Go figure.

Taking action, any action, is one of the most effective tools for success I know.

The good news is Curt offers up some things we can do to get past our fears. And as far as I can see he is not at all wrong.

Fear is a big reality in the everyday lives of us mortals. The Bible mentions the word fear over 250 times. And when you add in the word afraid and other variations the number more than doubles to nearly 550 references. Apparently God knows about our fear issues.

Here’s my favorite passage about fear:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

Since the first step in dealing with fear is to name it, here are some of the things, silly or not, that I am afraid of:

Snakes
Talking to people I don’t know
Cold calling on the phone in a sales situation
Failure
Mediocrity
Dropping the ball
Being irresponsible with my money

That should get me started.

What are you afraid of?

Finding Truth (Why I'm not God)

2006-05-02T06:31:00.000-05:00

Last night a group of us had a little discussion about truth, weighty stuff to be sure. But having a frame of reference, a fixed star to guide your life, a core truth to filter our understanding of the world around us makes this journey of ours simpler and more fun by helping us make good choices.

We talked a little last night about the analogy of a compass. It is only a useful tool for navigation as long as the needle is pointing north. Imagine trying to get somewhere following a compass that is constantly swinging all over the place. How do you know which way to go? How would you ever get to your destination?

Obviously you wouldn’t. You’d just wander aimlessly.

It’s really the same with truth. Unless we hold to a core truth, a steady reference outside ourselves to regularly compare where we are going, we’ll wander aimlessly all over the map through life.

Me, I use the Bible as my standard of truth. I know it isn’t the only source out there. But I’ve asked my tough questions, looked at the other options, and I’m content that it’s a good choice.

No. To be honest, I feel it is the best choice. But hey, I leave open the possibility that I may find one day that there is a better option. Until that time, though, (if it ever comes) I’m running with what I’ve got.

But what if I decided to look inward instead of outward for my core guiding truth? What would that look like?

Here’re some of the things you would have to deal with if I were the source of truth:

Coffee and chocolate would both be their own food groups.

Sleep would be a pleasant option instead of a hard requirement.

Computers would naturally do what you wanted them to, not what you told them to.

My driving techniques would be only right way to operate your car.

Lawns would be self manicuring.

Gnats would cease to exist.

Every guy could afford to shop here.

The internet wouldn’t be in danger of being hijacked by the high speed providers.

Stupid people would have no rights (by my constantly changing definition of stupid, that is).

Exercise really would be for the birds.

Scaring cats would be a national sport.

And I’d be just getting started.

But I think you get the point. If I didn’t look to some external source to filter my choices through, I might very well believe that I’d be right to work toward some of the things on that list.

And that’s why truth is so important.

Jesus said, "And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Obviously he thought truth was pretty stinking powerful.

So I'll agree with him on this one. And I'll be glad I’m not God!

Enjoy!

Art

2006-05-01T08:40:00.000-05:00

There are some things in this world that I just don’t get.

For example, I don’t get a lot of what Gorgeous does on the interior decorating front. She has baskets and trinkets all around the house. I mean the stuff looks nice and I’m glad she decorates. She is much better at it than I am.

For the holidays she’ll take glass Christmas ornaments and arrange them on the shelf on a swatch of cloth with a couple strings of glass beads. It’s nice, helps make the house festive and I even like it.

But I don’t get it. And I never would have thought to do that. Left to me the ornaments would have simply would have just ended up on the tree, not the shelf.

It is an ongoing joke in our family. Gorgeous will see something, or be talking with one of her girlfriends about decorating or some such when I’m nearby. She’ll turn to me and say, “You don’t get that, do you Chris?”

Nope. I’ll have to fess up. I’m not sure if that makes me defective in some small way. Maybe I’m lacking a decorating gene or something.

Another thing I often don’t get is art.

My friend Jeremias was teasing me about bragging on Emily the other day, but not mentioning his gallery show that I went to a couple of weeks ago. (Of course now he’s going to harass me about appearing to cave, but I’ll get over it.) And it got me to thinking. Why would I brag on one friend, but not another.

Thinking about it, I realized that to be totally honest, I don’t really get much of his work. Although I do rather like the shot with the cows because, well, it has cows. And he had a really cool piece in the gallery that looked a little like someone from Star Trek beaming in which I liked because I’m into sci-fi. I bugged him until he told me how he made that effect. So now I know, which is cool too.

The rest of it looks good and all and I understand the theme behind what he had in the gallery. But I feel like I’m missing out on something.

And trying to have him explain it was frustrating for both of us. The whole effect of art is pretty much lost when it hast to be explained to some dolt like me. I imagine he feels awkward as though me not getting it somehow devalues his work. Nope. I just don’t have the art-appreciation gene either.

As long as I’m highlighting my artist friends, take a look at Josh’s work. I like his panoramas, I guess because that’s pretty much the way my eyes see the world. His photos from Iraq give a feel of what it must be like over there.

Then check out Peter’s movie. I have to confess I get movies a little more easily than painting or photography. Besides I helped Peter out on the set a couple days. If you look at photo #20, that’s me holding the reflector.

There actually is a take-away from all this.

Just because we don’t value something doesn’t mean the thing has no value.

Forgetting that gets us in trouble. On both sides of the coin. On the one side we can end up looking down on others who value different things than we do.

The other side of the coin is just as damaging. Because we may feel like we’re defective if we look for others to confirm our values. Just because they don’t share the same passions, doesn’t mean ours are necessarily misplaced.

Find some art. Enjoy it. You don’t even have to get it.

Attitude Makes the Difference

2006-04-30T15:53:00.000-05:00

I had to laugh.

I got up a little early this morning to take care of a couple things before I went in to help out with church set up. At 0630 the phone rang calling me in to work. Yesterday they assured me they wouldn’t need me until after 1200 at the earliest. Go figure.

So it was a quick shower, coffee-up the travel mug, grab a snack, and off to the port. On the way I activated my contingency plan.

Now I’m a big fan of contingency plans. It bugs me when I get left hanging because someone else didn’t think ahead a little so I try not to do that to other folks. And since I knew I was first on call this weekend, I’d made arrangements to cover my church commitments, “just in case.”

Well it all worked out because I only had to make a couple of phone calls, and there was one slightly out of the way stop to drop off some stuff, and I still got to the ship before they were even ready for me. The whole thing went fairly smoothly.

The most stressful part was when the phone first rang. I forgot that the phones at work had been forwarded to my cell phone when I crawled out of bed. Normally I try to take my cell out of the bedroom in the mornings that the phones are on me so that, if it rings, it won’t wake Gorgeous up. I ran back to the other end of the house as soon as I heard it. But there is no way she was going to be able to sleep through that racket! Oops.

Anyway I got my work done and made it back to church about 20 minutes after service started, which was pretty good overall. At least I was able to help tear down and put some things away after service.

Then at lunch one of my friends said, “Man, it stinks that you had to go to work today.”

That’s when I laughed.

I told him he had it all wrong. “I never have to go to work. I get to go to work.”

You see I’ve been unemployed before and I remember what it was like to not be able to go to work. No one holds a gun to my head and says you must do this job now. It’s completely my choice.

I get a little frustrated with folks who chronically complain about their jobs. No I know that everyone has an off day from time to time. I’m not talking about that.

But the folks who seem to never have anything good to say about their job and who go on and on (and on and on and on) covering every detail of how absolutely horrible everything about their work place is, those people drive me nuts.

More often than not I’ll cut someone off in the middle of a rant like that and remind them that they live in America. If they don’t like their job, go out and find another one. No one is making them work where they are. They are free to leave and go somewhere else where they could maybe be happy.

Since I have been unemployed I understand what it takes to get a job. And, yes, I’ve done some things that weren’t so fun simply because I had bills to pay. You do what you have to do. But even then I didn’t complain (too loudly) about it. I knew that I was free to move on whenever I chose.

The truth is that the chronic complainers would probably still find something to complain about even if they switched jobs to one that had none of the problems they are whining about now. They really want to complain more than they want to do the hard work required to improve their situation.

Life’s too short to get sucked into that kind of thinking. Besides, no one wants to hear it.

Deal with it. Fix it. Or move on.

Your attitude makes the difference.

Of course I fully expect Gorgeous to remind me that I wrote this the next time I start feeling sorry for myself and go off on a rant. And she’ll be right, too.

Enjoy!

Its Official - I'm an S.O.B.

2006-04-29T21:27:00.000-05:00

Well, I had a ship last night and didn’t get in very early. Since Friday is supposed to be date night with Gorgeous, we took in our weekly dose of Doctor Who compliments of TIVO and then turned in because I had to get up and head into work for a full day today.

This morning I got up a little early for a Saturday because I was off to work, fed the boys, and fired up the computer to check a couple things out before I headed in to the port. Checking my stats real quick on my way to perusing through my morning bloggage and I saw that Liz Strauss over at the Successful Blog not only linked back to me here (which is a treat in itself because we like links) but she actually had the audacity to call me out as an S.O.B.

I nearly spit my coffee on the keyboard.

But it’s not what you may be thinking. Liz highlights folks that she feels are Successful and Outstanding Bloggers (or SOB’s). Here’s her definition of an SOB:

They take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.
I thank every one of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on. Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

So I’m celebrating my nice little honor by posting this official SOB logo here at CREEations. And thanks Liz for appreciating what I have to say here.

Although I have to admit, I feel a little like the Dad from A Christmas Story with my major award. Fortunately my major award is much better!

Enjoy!

Imagination Power

2006-04-28T06:34:00.000-05:00

You ever walk into something and have your expectations overwhelmingly exceeded by the experience? I did just last night.

Gorgeous and I went to the Savannah Arts Academy for their first student film festival to support Emily who is a student there and one of the key members of our tech team at church. Now Gorgeous and I don’t have any kids, but I remember school plays and band concerts from when I was in high school. I remember them being the kinds of things that, if you didn’t have a connection with someone directly involved, you’d rather be somewhere else, anywhere else, maybe even the dentist.

Boy was I wrong. My first clue could have been that the school has its own Wikipedia entry. Or maybe I should have noticed when I walked up that I was a tad underdressed with my khaki’s and a polo shirt. The school did a great job making the kids feel honored and important, giving them the whole red-carpet treatment. It was nice, and fun, but I’m not about the hype. I go for substance, baby.

Well when the thing got started, the school had arranged the evening to be emceed by pairs of local news anchors from no less than three different stations. Cool. Then again, I’m not about the hype.

But when they started showing the film clips these kids put together I was completely blown away. The categories were commercials, public service announcements (PSA’s), and music videos. With the commercials and PSA’s the kids only had 30 second of film time to get a message across. And man did they deliver.

Some of the best work was in the PSA category. The imagination poured into the creative ways the kids told stories to get their message across was incredible. You could tell they were passionate about the causes they chose to represent. And the best of them had a hook at the end that either wrenched your heart or made you burst out laughing.

These kids may not have put together something as technically polished as what you see on TV (it was real close though), but I’m telling you the stories they told in those 30 second spots were more powerful than anything you see put together by the Ad Council. Someone there should get a copy of the DVD and take some lessons from these kids. Or maybe hire some of them.

What made their work so good?

Gorgeous and I were talking about that on the drive home last night. I think that the best ones were where the kids took a really ambitious idea and went for it. The higher they reached the better the results.

And then this morning I stumbled across an article this morning by Curt Rosengren called Finding your Infinity where he says

So many of us are obsessed with our limitations. It's almost as though we can see nothing but the reasons we can't do, or be, or achieve what we aspire to.
What if we flipped that on its head? What if, instead of our limitations, we focused on the amazing potential and possibility that stretches far beyond what we can see from where we stand in the moment?

Man, those are great questions. It is something Gorgeous and I both struggle with. It is so much easier for us to look at all the reasons why something can’t work rather than putting our energies into reasons and ways that it could work and work big.

It ties in with a question J.R.R. Tolkein, once asked C.S. Lewis (thanks to Mark Batterson)

Maybe lack of faith is really a failure of imagination?

Ooch!

Jesus put a high value on belief. He said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

What’s the take-away? Learn from the kids at Savannah Arts Academy.

Ask “How can I make that happen?” and stop worrying about why an idea might not work.

Use your imagination.

Exercise your flabby faith.

Change the world.

Enjoy!

Warning: Your Internet is in Danger

2006-04-27T05:41:00.000-05:00

What if BellSouth (or Comcast, or Verizon, or AT&T) decided to block your access to internet sites based on whether or not the owners of those sites were willing (or able) to pay each of them an access fee?

How would that change your access to information?

Do you maintain a web presence? A blog?

How much are you willing (or able) to pay so that everyone has access to your site?

Right now these companies make their money largely from subscribers like you and me tapping into their networks to access content. They don’t also charge people who provide content via other “connections” to get their contact through to you from the other side. Because the law says they can’t.

But that is in danger of changing. Soon.

If you use the internet at all you need to learn about this before it’s too late and you get locked out of content, or if you’re a blogger, you get locked out of potential readers.

Take another hypothetical: What if you live, say in Savannah like me, and you run a blog that is hosted on a computer somewhere on the West Coast. And what if neither you nor the company that owns the computers that host your blog are willing (or able) to pay your internet provider at your home for access through them.

You could find yourself in a position where you can’t even access your own web site!

If you think this doesn’t really matter to you because you don’t really use the internet all that much you are exactly wrong. Us little guys will be impacted the most if we loose Net Neutrality. The big companies like Amazon.com will simply ante up and pay the fees. The little people will be left out in the cold.

Get educated. Holler at Congress before it is too late!

Start with Randall Bowman’s great (non-technical) post Threat to the Net.

I first read about Net Neutrality on Liz Strauss’ Successful Blog post Net Neutrality is in Jepardy. Also see Do you trust Congress & AT&T to run the internet?

These posts have links to others where you can see all about this.

If we do nothing we will be the poorer for it in more ways than one.

Update: Visit SaveTheInternet.com for the complete round-up on this issue.

Important Visitor

2006-04-26T06:08:00.000-05:00

We were told at the very end of the day yesterday that the President of our company will be at our office first thing today. Hello! It sure would have been nice to get a little advanced notice to spruce the place up a bit.

Oh, there are so many lessons in this situation. Here’s just a few:

Keep your space tidy. You never know who might be popping in for a visit. Having your desk (house, car, etc.) cluttered or dirty doesn’t put your best foot forward when you host the unexpected guest.

Communicate with your team. I’m sure the president’s flight wasn’t booked yesterday afternoon. Someone must have known he was coming but the information didn’t trickle down to the trenches until the last minute. People appreciate being in the loop, especially about unusual circumstances.

Be flexible. There are times when you just plain have to rearrange your day to accommodate the goings-on around you.

It is amazing the extra effort we often go through to accommodate an “important person”. In truth we should treat everyone as though they were important. Because the reality is people are very important.

Jesus gave us some great examples of this principle in action. He was chronically criticized by the cultural establishment for hanging out with the wrong crowd. “He’s a friend of sinners” was one of the slanders they used. Reading through the gospel accounts I see that even His disciples didn’t get it right away.

Over and over we see the disciples trying to “protect” Jesus so that He wouldn’t be “bothered” by some kids, or a sick person, or (gasp!) someone who was not Jewish. Jesus responded each time by making time for the culturally little people.

I think we could easily miss the take-away here. We could easily think that the “important people” don’t rate special treatment and we should just treat them just like everyone else. But that misses the point.

The real lesson is this: We should treat everyone just like we would treat the important people. Don’t lower your standards of treatment for the VIP’s in your effort to be “no respecter of persons”.

Rather raise your standards for how you value everyone else.

Jesus summed it up this way:

"Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them.” (Matt. 12:7)

Enjoy!

Starting Conversations

2006-04-25T05:47:00.000-05:00

Liz Strauss posted some great advice last night on her Successful Blog about Conversation Starters.

It’s a topic that is especially important in the business world where the ability to make new contacts can really make a difference. Gorgeous and I have been learning tons about conversing with folks and getting to know strangers better because of her business.

Gorgeous has always been a great conversationalist. Over the years we’ve been married I’ve come to call her my master interrogator because she finds out all kinds of obscure stuff about people she’s just met. And the best part is people love her because they never feel like their privacy was violated. (She could work for the CIA or something. I’m serious. She’s that good.)

Why don’t people feel Gorgeous is invading their privacy? Because she is genuinely interested in learning about people around her. In her case it’s not something she has to muster up. She just likes meeting new people.

But, outside the business world, why should we bother improving our conversation starting skills?

Well for starters it makes life more interesting. I am naturally an introvert. Until I get to know you, that is. After that you can’t shut me up. But very little freaks me out more than walking into a room of complete strangers. The way I’d cope with that was to become a wall flower, which only added to the freak-out factor the next time.

But when you choose to work at learning how to start conversations without being awkward it comes easier and gets less scary. Gorgeous and I make a game out of it now. “Guess what I learned about the new guy?”

The other thing is that you never know how you might connect with someone new unless you talk with them. Just last week I found a connection with a guy. But it only happened because I was genuinely interested in learning about him. Who knows what might come of that one day?

One last example of someone who is a master connector: Our pastor is one of the best conversation starters I know. You might think that that should come with the job. But most of the pastors I know tend to be at least a little introverted or, if they are outgoing, don’t really connect with folks.

But not so with our pastor. We have more folks coming to our campus because they had a conversation with him, which he started, than because of any other person. I’ve watched him “work his magic” and I am continually amazed. For him it just flows naturally. He mixes it up and doesn’t rely on any one technique to get a conversation started. But it flows out of his sincere interest in other people.

What’s the take away?

Get interested in other people.

Go out and start conversations. You never know who you might meet.

Enjoy!

Train Tracks

2006-04-24T05:43:00.000-05:00

We’ve got some train tracks near our house. There’s two sets actually. They are far enough away that you can ignore them pretty easily, but close enough that there is no problem hearing when a train comes by. They cross a road around the corner so the whistle is a give away. Sometimes when I’m outside and its quiet I can hear the bells on the crossing gate even before any train noise. If Gorgeous is around, I’ll try to impress her by saying, “Trains coming.”

I’m not sure she’s impressed. But its got me thinking. How often do I do things that really bring no other value to the table other than my attempt to impress someone?

There’s a passage in Proverbs that one translation says this way:

Pride first, then the crash, but humility is precursor to honor.

Ooch!

How many of us are approval addicts? Looking to find our value in the opinions of others?

How many times are we thinking of some impressive fact to throw into the conversation rather than listing to what the other person is saying?

Here’s another interesting thing about trying to impress others.

It can actually hurt our performance and hold us back.

How so? Well if we are comparing ourselves to others and what they are doing as our standard, simply doing better than them in order to impress someone may in fact be less than our best effort.

The bottom line is that we can only really find any kind of fulfilling significance from God, not in impressing other people. It kind of takes the pressure off. Can you imagine God ever being impressed by anything we were to do? So we don’t have to try.

And the good thing is God values us already. We don’t have to impress Him. He’s done the heavy lifting for us already.

God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He's set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much (Colossians 1:13)

Enjoy!

Encouragement

2006-04-23T16:33:00.000-05:00

Dad called yesterday. We had a long talk. He’s my go-to guy on all things computer. I suppose I may put high expectations on him, but he sure does know a lot. He started programming computers back in the days of punch cards. I’m pushing 40 and I grew up with computers in the house since elementary school. By rights I should have gone into the industry somewhere.

But I was a rebellious child. I wanted to do my own thing, which is pretty much how I ended in the maritime industry.

So I pretty much pick Dad’s brain when I have any kind of computer related question. Although I may start tapping into my little brother soon. He’s studying computer science at R.I.T. I use the term little purely in reference to our age difference. We’re within a couple months of being 20 years apart, which is a bit weird I suppose, but the kid is way taller than I am. He’s in that small segment of the human race that actually can make me feel short.

I floated an idea for a new topic oriented blog that I have been kicking around to get Dad's take on it. I nearly didn’t mention it to him. We don’t see eye to eye on the whole religion topic and I’m thinking of writing about a Christian oriented theme.

But I’m glad I did. By the time I finished describing what I had in mind, Dad was telling me that I should get started writing it down because it sounded interesting and that way I could get started gathering material even before I was ready to launch the blog.

Talk about encouraging!

All I can say is Thanks for the thumbs up DAD!

It really means a lot.

Enjoy!

Food Frenzy

2006-04-22T19:56:00.000-05:00

I had to run by the grocery store this evening. It’s not something I really like to do. My shopping skill level is very amateurish, especially compared to Gorgeous. Good thing for me she’ll be back tomorrow.
But it wasn’t soon enough to avert a grocery crisis big enough to force me out into the shopping night.

I was out of creamer.

First of all, let me be clear. When I say creamer I really mean half-and-half. It absolutely must be liquid at the very least. Gorgeous is, after all, from Wisconsin which we all know is the dairy state. (State Motto: Come smell our dairy-air!) Use of powdered creamer-like substances is considered blasphemy in our household.

Not that we had any of that on hand either.

Tomorrow, being Sunday, I’ll have to hit the ground running. There’s a lot of volunteering to be done to get our Savannah Campus up and running on Sundays. (God thing for us we’ve got a great team of people committed to make it happen.)

And that means coffee will need to be consumed. (mmm… coffee…) I can’t seem to get started most mornings without mass quantities of the warm stimulating beverage.

Anyway I had to go to the store. (Focus, Chris!)

The trouble is that I have a hang up with the name of the closest grocery store to our house. Piggly Wiggly is just too weird for me. Fortunately for us the one in our neighborhood is very nice. Besides the choice was them or Wal-mart, which should have been a no-brainer.

Except that the Wal-mart is right across the street from our local Backyard Burgers. And I was having a craving, don’t you know. With Gorgeous not around, I knew I could get the onions on it. I mean I could get them when she’s around, I suppose. But then she wouldn’t get within 10 feet of me. Not that I blame her even. So I figure what’s the point of having Gorgeous around if she isn’t around, if you know what I mean. I usually skip the onions.

I went to the Pig anyway. Then to BYB.

I was glad I did. As I was poking around, looking for something to go with the left over Reddi Wip in the fridge from last Sunday, I found that Breyers Ice Cream was 2 for 1. How cool is that?

Of course now I feel like a bloated tick. But it was mmm… oh, so good.

Enjoy!

Friday Free-For-All Change is in the Air

2006-04-21T19:35:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed some changes around here. We’ll work on going through what’s been updated here after a while.

Gorgeous is out in St. Luis with her companies national for the latter part of this week and into the weekend, which has given me an opportunity to stay up waaay too late and do some research on various things.

I am looking at taking the blogging thing to the next level. It would mean moving away from a (free) Blogger platform to something which would have to be paid for. Since Gorgeous keeps us honest with the budget, I will have to come up with a way to pay for my hobby. Wise woman, that Gorgeous.

That is why I’ve put some ads on the site. I’ll experiment some and see how it goes. I checked my account and I’ve made exactly one penny since last night. :o) At that rate, I’ll be able to afford to upgrade in about, oh, 10-15 years!

That’s OK. I’m learning a bunch about this whole blogging thing and it seems to be a good fit for me. Tomorrow after I get a good night’s sleep, We’ll get back to our regular postings.

The boys are getting a bit obnoxious because I’ve let myself get sucked into the computer screen here basically since Gorgeous got on that plane. I get the feeling that they may be anxious for her to get home. What do you think?

Tag: Sleep Deprivation, Ads, Cats

Connections

2006-04-20T19:21:00.000-05:00

I met an interesting guy the other day. The conversation was strictly business until we happened to make a connection. It turns out we both went to the same college back in New York. Of course I graduated 15 years ahead of him… OK so it was a bit more than that even.

But that’s not my point.

You might think that, seeing as how our college is oriented toward the same fairly specialized industry that we work in, we’d both run into fellow alumni fairly regularly.

Trust me, we don’t.

For one thing our school is fairly small. And Savannah is a long ways from New York City, in more ways than one, if you know what I mean. There simply aren’t very many of us in town. In fact, I only know of two at the moment, which is one more than I knew about last week.

But that’s not my point either.

It often amazes me how one little passing comment can lead to a bond with someone that you don’t get most of the time. In this case I had previously dealt with someone else at his company so I naturally asked where the other person was (answer: promoted and relocated). A little more polite conversation with a fellow Yankee in the Deep South and up pops a bond out of nowhere.

Go figure.

Gorgeous is reading a book right now called, interestingly enough, Connecting by Larry Crabb. It must be good because she’s read big chunks of it to me. According to Amazon.com, Crabb wants us to

“adopt a groundbreaking, but biblical, approach to healing the deep wounds of the soul - an approach that centers around building intimate, healing mini-communities in our lives and churches.”

Now I’m all about healing the deep wounds of the soul and all that. But I don't see myself as that ambitious. Maybe its just that I would feel somewhat pretentious working toward something that monumental.

But I do know that I like it when I feel connected. Our church has a strong emphasis on small groups as well as our Sunday services. It is good to build those friendships, especially for folks like us who don’t live near their families. Connecting seems to make folks feel better and enjoy life more.

I’ve assured Gorgeous that I’ll read the book when she’s done.

In the mean time I’ll just appreciate connections that I find in unexpected places.

Enjoy!

Tag: Connecting, Books

Avoiding Politics

2006-04-19T03:59:00.000-05:00

The Slacker Manager has some good advice about avoiding office politics today. His condensed short version is “my plan basically boils down to being consistently authentic.”

I’ve got to say I pretty much agree with what he has to say on that score. I’ve never really been one much to bother with the whole office politics thing myself.

Which I suppose could be a little weird considering that I have been known to be a bit opinionated on the whole politics front. But having weighty discussions about who might be best to lead our country is really not the same thing, is it? Besides, I’m even throttling back on my political interests these days.

For me the whole national politics thing grew out of a need I had to be “right” and to “win” the debate. I guess you could say I’m changing on that score. I’m less concerned with being right than I am with getting to know folks anymore. I guess I am growing more interested in what other people have to say and less worried about making myself heard.

But as far as the whole office politics thing goes, I never really got sucked into that whole scene although I do know how to windge when I see the corporate office making decisions that seem out of touch with the field.

My approach to the whole office politics thing is similar in that I use what I call the Popeye approach to life. You know, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am and I ain’t no more!” (Sometimes it helps if you follow up the statement with a hearty “Ya-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-kah.”)

The Popeye approach has worked for me as a leadership principle too. Although it has created some conflict with from time to time with folks above me who wanted me to keep distant and maintain the dignity of my office, blah, blah, blah. I just take my beating from those kinds of bosses and keep on being me.

Like the Genie told Aladdin, “Beeee yourself.” It’s good advice. And not just where politics are concerned.

Enjoy!

Hospitality

2006-04-18T06:02:00.000-05:00

Gorgeous and I had over 20 folks to the house for dinner Sunday afternoon. Now our house is not nearly big enough for that kind of affair, which made it a very cozy, casual shindig. Just the way we like it. I didn’t realize we could fit quite so many people around the coffee table!

The idea, according to Gorgeous was to let folks sit outside on the patio if they wanted. But something about it being nearly 90 degrees put the kibosh on that whole plan. Or maybe it was the gnats, I don’t know. Everyone stayed inside.

But the food was great. Josh brought his famous banana pudding (mmm…. pudding). And the highlight of the meal was Allison’s potato salad casserole dish stuff. I never did find out what she calls it, but we all agreed it was killer.

The whole thing got Gorgeous and I talking yesterday morning about how we are going to plan to have a bunch of folks over like that at least once a month. Maybe not on that scale, mind you, but we really like hanging out with folks. Unless you are intentional about stuff like that, it never seems to happen.

Then yesterday I read this great article by David Fitch about how the reality of life in our American suburbs is making the lost art of hospitality more difficult. In it he says,

Inviting someone over for dinner in the hostile suburbs is regularly considered pathological. Suburban people are either too busy, too self-protected, or too worried what your agenda might be to ever come over.

Gorgeous and I fully intended to get to know our neighbors when we moved into this house. Two years ago. The bottom line is it is kind of hard. And it is not because our neighbors are not great people. Its just that the tyranny of the urgent seems to always get in the way.

I think the rummage sale Gorgeous had last month may have turned the corner for us. Nothing like parading your junk out in the drive way to get the neighbors to stop by!

The bottom line is hospitality in our day and age seems to be pretty tough. The challenges Fitch points out in his article make sense as to the causes. But that doesn’t mean we can just roll over and forget about it.

Greg pointed out in our Easter message Sunday morning that Jesus was known for the value He placed on hospitality. Greg talked about the story from Luke 24 about the two guys who were dejected after seeing Jesus executed. They were walking along and didn’t realize that they were talking to that same Jesus who had come out of the grave. It wasn’t until they sat down to eat that they recognized Jesus for who He was.

If hospitality was such a high value for Jesus, I think it might be worth the effort for us too.

Besides, Gorgeous and I like to eat!

Enjoy!

Tag: Life, Christian, Hospitality

Everyone's a Critic

2006-04-17T13:18:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a friend of mine last week and I explained to him that loyalty is a core value of mine. Perhaps it is left over from my time in the military, I don’t know.

But I noticed that someone came to my site after Googling our church with our pastor’s name and the word “criticism”. Makes me wonder what the Googler was looking for, eh?

Now I know Pastor Greg has a visible position as the leader of a large and growing unconventional church. He’s going to take some shots because of his visibility. I don’t know, he may even be used to it.

But it still corks me a little that some malcontent would be so hungry to find dirt and think I might provide it. And on Easter, no less!

But just in case that particular Googler comes back, let me say that I think Pastor Greg is a great guy and I’m glad he’s leading our church. I suspect that anyone looking for dirt on him is barking up the wrong tree.

Oh, yeah and I’d like to refer any other “Pharirazzi” who might stop by to this post here.

Enjoy!

Tag: Critics, Loyalty

Yard Work

2006-04-15T21:41:00.000-05:00

Nothing like waiting until it get up to 90 degrees to start working in the yard. What was I thinking?

Part of my problem is that I get some of the same feelings toward yard work that some folks feel about going to the dentist. In fact, I think I’d almost rather go to the dentist. At least their offices are usually air conditioned. With fewer gnats. And they usually numb you up a little before the unpleasantries start. Where else can you go and be expected to drool? And spitting is actually encouraged?

What should have taken me a couple of hours yesterday took pretty much all day. I’m sure my attitude had something to do with it. The mower needed gas. So did the gas can. I left them that way at the end of last season thinking it would be safer with fewer inflammables [now there’s a dumb word. Inflammable = flammable. Why have two words that mean the same thing? Shouldn’t inflammable mean not flammable? Dumb.] stored in the garage. But yesterday I was thinking I’d have to make a trip to Wal-mart to get some gas, and an air filter for the mower. And as long as I was going…

I did find a use for the self check-out lane, though. It is nice when you have a personal care item that might be awkward to have a checker scan.

So an hour and a half after I went outside I got to mowing. But since Gorgeous and I are having 20+ folks over for dinner tomorrow, it being Easter and all, I had to do the full monte, complete with the weed-eater & edger.

Which is where I encountered another challenge.

Since I’m not a big fan of yard work, I don’t have much interest in spending money on quality yard tools. I haven’t upgraded anything in years. They aren’t in the greatest shape. So it didn’t rock my harmony when the weed-eater didn’t work. A few seasons ago the extension cord pretty much melted to the handle of the thing. I scrapped the melted plastic off the contacts and put another end on the cord. And it worked great.

But not yesterday. The contacts must have corroded over the off season. (I can’t bring myself to call what we get here “winter”.) I scraped them off. Nothing.

No problem, I just thought that meant I was getting a by-week on the weed-eating but the edger didn’t work either. Nor did the blower. Hmm… Bad cord, right?

Nope. I took it apart and all the connections in the cord were still solid. Hmmm… Dead outlet? Quick check of the circuit breakers showed them all on. So what. I’ll just move the cord from the porch to the garage.

Nothing. Hmmmm… Let’s flip a bunch of the breakers and reset them just to be sure. I got the one’s marked “garage” as well as a few others that looked interesting.

Still nothing. Next I went into the office to get a lamp and started testing outlets all over the place. Everything worked except the ones outside and the ones in the garage. Just the ones I needed were dead and no breakers were tripped.

I was starting to get frustrated. Did I mention it was 90 degrees?

I found an outlet on the far side of the garage and took the lamp over to it. Dead.

BUT that one single outlet had a little breaker in it that was tripped. Who knew?

That whole thing only added about an hour and a half to my yard working pleasure. Good thing for me Gorgeous had a rummage sale a couple of weeks ago. That whole side of the garage had been piled high with junk she was unloading and I never would have found the problem.

I was eventually able to get it all done, much to the delight of my neighbors, I’m sure.

Today was spent designing and ordering some new business cards for Gorgeous and finishing a home improvement project that had dragged on way too long.

And tomorrow is Easter. Looking forward to having a house full.

Enjoy!

Tag: Yard Work, Life

Stringing Along

2006-04-14T10:26:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across a quote this morning that got me thinking.

“The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.” – Patrick Young

It’s true, isn’t it? Weather guessers get paid, sometimes handsomely, with the expectation that they will be wrong a bunch of the time. Then add in the intentionally confusing code they use. I mean does a 30% chance of showers mean that there is a 30% chance that 100% of the area will get wet? Or are they saying that there is a 100% chance that 30% of the town is due for a soaking?

I think it means, “I can’t really tell you what is going to happen because I don’t really know. I mean come on, we’re talking about the weather, here. But since I’m getting paid to tell you something, I’ve gotta say that I’m guessing there might be some rain. But I’m not sure. So let’s call it 30% chance of showers.”

Really the weather guys just string us along because the weather happens to everyone. And since it happens to all of us, enough of us are wanting to plan our lives and possibly make contingencies for the weather that we’re willing tune in and hear their guess.

I don’t even bother tuning in. Gorgeous would dispute that, I know. When we had cable, I had this habit of putting on the Weather Channel with the volume down and cranking the stereo when she wasn’t around. She might even tell you it was my favorite channel. But in my case, what I’m doing is checking out the raw data. That’s why I like the Navy’s hurricane tracking site, lots of raw data. Between my maritime and aviation backgrounds, I know enough about weather to guess as well as the guys on TV.

Which isn’t saying much.

It makes you think, though. What other things string people along like that?

The lottery does. It pays out just enough to keep people buying tickets. And the grand lottery irony is that the bigger the promised payout, the more people rush in, even though their odds of winning go way down. The truth is you a higher chance of getting struck by lightning than you do winning the lottery. And the odds go way up if you happen to live in Florida!

Of getting hit by lightning, that is.

I can prove it. I know two people who have been struck by lightning, but I don’t know anyone who ever won the lottery. OK, so that’s not very scientific. But it works for me. (I also know someone who was bit by a shark, but hey, I lived in Florida for a big chunk of my life.)

But the big question is do I string people along like that? Are there areas in my life where I deliver the goods just often enough so that people can’t dismiss me outright, but not consistently enough to actually be trustworthy?

That is a hard question.

I think I’ll ponder it while I go out and cut the grass, finally. Oops. Speaking of not delivering the goods consistently, it sure didn’t take long to find one place in my life.

How many others do you suppose there are?

Tag: Life, Weather

The Peacemakers - Part 8

2006-04-13T06:42:00.000-05:00

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
– Matthew 5:9 (NIV)

I’ve spent some time digging in to see what all is behind the above verse so that I could better understand what Jesus meant by peacemakers and sons of God. I think it is time to wrap this up and come to some conclusions. But first a review:

Part 1 was an introduction. How did I get on this topic anyway?
Part 2 started looking at definitions of the word peace.
Part 3 talked about the Social aspects of peace and peacemaking
Part 4 looked at the Spiritual side of peace
Part 5 discussed what Spiritual peace actually looks like
Part 6 we found the source of Spiritual peace
Part 7 addressed the sons of God. Who are they?

We have been in a series about the beatitudes at our church and this past Sunday’s message was about this verse. And since we usually talk about the message in our small group, I’ve had some extra focus on the verse this week.

As I was reviewing the passage during our small group I noticed the order that Jesus put the beatitudes when he was speaking:

Those who realize their need for him
Those who morn
Those who are gentle and lowly
Those who are hungry and thirsty for justice
Those who are merciful
Those whose hearts are pure
Those who work for peace (i.e. the peacemakers)
Those who are persecuted because they live for God

To me it suddenly seemed like the natural progression of spiritual growth of the believer. No one comes to Christ unless they first realize their need for Him (listed first). And the only thing listed after peacemaking is persecution.

Perhaps the stereotypical judgmental Christian somehow gets hung up at the point where they are hungry and thirsty for justice. You know, the ones who rail against all the evils of the world and tend to stomp on people along the way. In their thirst for justice often there is a serious lack of mercy.

It also makes sense when we look at peacemaking more from the spiritual side than the social side. What is the source of spiritual peace? How do people become children of God? The answer to both questions is the same, through the person of Jesus Christ. So then peacemakers are people who introduce others to Jesus, plain and simple. We cheapen peacemaking and sell it short when we think of it exclusively in terms of our social relationships.

And here’s the most beautiful thing about it: When people are accept Jesus for who he is and come to see spiritual peace, there will be a natural improvement in the social peace around them because they will change from the inside as they take on the attributes that Jesus talked about in the beatitudes. It is not an either/or thing. But if we focus only on the social side of peace we may very well miss out on the opportunities around us to introduce people to Christ, and ultimately offering them true and lasting peace.

The John Piper article referred to in Part 1 points out that Jesus consistently avoided commentary on political issues and continually redirected those kind of questions back to the core personal issues of the people asking the questions. Piper addresses the question aren’t these personal issues insignificant compared to all the international issues that affect millions of people around the globe? Here’s his answer:

The answer is no, because the point of these personal issues in the Sermon on the Mount is to make crystal clear that every individual within the hearing of my voice must become a new creature if you are to have eternal life. You must have a new heart. Without a merciful, pure, peacemaking heart you cannot be called a son of God at the judgment day. And that is the truly weighty matter in the world today.

The episode with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq recently got me looking at this in the first place. Based on what I’ve discovered through looking at all this, I’d say that they seem to be more merciful than peacemakers. They don’t want the enemies of the US and her allies to be hurt. That certainly doesn’t make them wrong by any means. Mercy is a tremendously good thing.

But their efforts seem to be more about stopping US & western military action than about bringing spiritual peace to people. And that seems to miss the mark what I’ve learned that working for peace to be all about.

Peace!

Takeaways from a Long Day's Work

2006-04-12T20:01:00.000-05:00

Well I did the math after I woke up this afternoon. In a little over 50 hours I managed to get exactly 2 hours of sleep plus two cat-naps in the car of about a half our each. On paper going in it didn’t look like it would be that bad. But then, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, as they say…

Of course by the time I got home this morning, Gorgeous was getting ready to head off to Atlanta for some meetings and an overnight. I tried to stay up and chat with her but apparently I was babbling a little incoherently because she eventually stopped me with, “Chris. You really need to get some sleep now.” Ah, the wisdom of the fairer sex.

I did learn some good lessons from the whole experience, though

It is amazing what the human body can put up with

I’m a sucker for survival stories. Get caught in a blizzard on Mt. Everest? Lost in the Sahara desert? Find yourself behind enemy lines? Or maybe you got trapped out in the wilderness by yourself and had to cut off your own arm to survive? I could sit and listen for hours. It is fascinating what people do to survive. What is the difference that causes to someone who makes it through when others don’t?

My little work induces exercise on staying away is incredibly tiny compared to those stories. But going through things like that, even on a smaller scale, helps give you a measure of what you can do. It helps build your belief so that when you face the next challenge in your life, you have some perspective and are more able to conquer it.

One difficult person can really complicate things

Where to begin on this one? Well, on merchant ships, the Chief Officer is normally responsible for the cargo. Since most of my work involves issues with cargo, he’s the guy I usually have to deal with. And we see all kinds. They come from all over the world. The overwhelming majority are highly competent professionals who have a heavy responsibility and are used to getting things done.

But not last night. Last night I had to work with what a pastor friend of mine calls an “EGR” for “Extra Grace Required.” One of the fist things I noticed when I met him was that he absolutely stank of alcohol. Now I was willing to cut him some slack on that account because alcohol and seafaring has a long tradition behind it and the ship had been at anchor for a couple days before it came in. It is not uncommon for mariners to hit the bottle from time to time.

But it sure added to my frustration as he continued to make a sting of decisions that made all of our jobs harder. He was belligerent too, pretty much yelling and screaming at most of the crew, including the captain. At one point he even started in on me as if I was responsible for things taking so long. The bottom line is this guy basically single handedly turned a 24 hour job into a 36 hour job.

Then finally at the end of the operation he created a situation where I couldn’t realistically even do what we were hired to do.

I was not happy.

But it made me think. How many times do I complicate things for the people around me? Hopefully I’m never as bad as that guy was! But it is amazing how just one person who’s not pulling in the same direction of the rest of the team can wreak absolute havoc and keep the objectives from being met.

Pets are good value

I get the feeling that the boys knew I was zonked because Low Rider curled up beside me on the bed while I slept today and didn’t bug me at all. That’s unusual for him. Big cuteness points. Then, after I got up, Fat Boy came in for some lap time. Since it’s spring time, he’ shedding like crazy so I started brushing him. He started purring really loud and I could tell he was loving it. But I actually laughed out loud when he started drooling all over my shorts.

Somehow a good bout of uncontrollable drool seems to always signify contentment.

I think I’m going to take a nap, maybe even drool on my pillow…

Tag: Sleep Deprivation, Life, Cats

Sleep Deprived Again

2006-04-11T07:33:00.000-05:00

We had a great small group last night, mostly talking about the message a church which was about that verse in Matthew that I’ve been going on and on (and on and on and on) about.

Of course just when the discussion was getting the most interesting I had to leave to go to work. Nothing like being out on a marine terminal on the Savannah river until 2 in the morning to make you appreciate sleeping at night!

But that’s OK because I got called back out a little after 4. And this job is going to go like that straight through ‘til tomorrow morning sometime. Life in the maritime industry. Lovely.

So no heavy thinking for me today. And once again I apologize to the neighbors about the grass. (sorry!)

I’ll check in when I get some sleep.

Enjoy!

Tag: Sleep Deprivation

Chazown is Here!

2006-04-10T17:33:00.000-05:00

When I got home from work today there was a nice little box from Amazon.com waiting for me. Now you gotta understand, I’m a bit of a compulsive reader. I tend to read several books simultaneously. I think I drive Gorgeous a bit nuts with all the different books I leave scattered throughout the house. And I haven’t bought a new book for myself in a while. So indulge me as I savor the moment.

The first thing I noticed was that it definitely gets an A+ on the packaging, baby! The book is a soft cover book. But it comes in a semi-clear rigid plastic sleeve kind of like you might see a CD set come in. When I pulled the book out of the sleeve, I noticed that it seemed a little stiff for a soft cover. Turns out that’s because it came with a Limited Edition DVD which “contains 12 inspirational life clips.” That was a nice unexpected bonus, for sure.

The first four pages are packed with recommendations. Of course I read every one, couldn’t help myself. On the second page, I see a paragraph from my own pastor, Greg Surratt.

“Craig Groeschel and Life Church are on the ‘bleeding edge’ of what the church may look like in the not-too-distant future. I love their vision, passion, creativity, and willingness to share what they are learning. Craig is the kind of leader who creates enthusiastic followers of Christ who believe that the only limits are those of vision.”

That sounds like a pretty good endorsement to me.

The subtitle of the book is “A Different Way to See Your Life”. And inside the front cover is the question, “Are you living someone else’s dream for your life, or no dream at all?” Good question.

Now I’m not about the hype. I want substance, especially where books are concerned. I’ll let you if Chazown delivers.

But it may take a while. Flipping through I see there is a ton of questions to answer to get to the root of the unique personal vision for your life. I think I have some work to do.

Enjoy!

Tag: Books

Odds Ends

2006-04-10T06:08:00.000-05:00

Had a conversation with a lady yesterday who’s fairly new to town. Said they came here from Fellowship Bible Church and first heard about our church here in Savannah online with a web search. Our campus is still pretty small so I think it is pretty cool that someone found us first online.

Our house is about ½ mile from not one, but two sets of railroad tracks. It is far enough away that it doesn’t shake things in the house (much). But it is close enough that there is no doubt when trains are going through. And we get a fair number of them too because both sets of tracks are fairly active. When we first moved in I was concerned that the passing trains might get annoying after a while. But after being here a couple of years they have become sort of a comfort sound that makes me feel at home. Funny, that.

Mark Batterson said they had a bit of a challenge this weekend. The theaters that they have church in Sunday mornings flooded with sewage Saturday night. That kind of makes some of the challenges we’ve had seem like small potatoes! Theater knee deep in popcorn because the cleaning crew didn’t show over night? Have to have church somewhere else because they are showing Narnia? The guys broke in because we were locked out? (“really officer, we’re a church. Honest.”) Well at least there isn’t sewage flowing through the theater!!!

Dilbert's Boss is up to his usual tricks today.

Tony Morgan was up to manly things this weekend.

Lastly, I want to formally apologize to my neighbors for not cutting the grass before it started to rain on Saturday. I promise I will level out the weeds tomorrow…

The Peacemakers - Part 7

2006-04-09T06:48:00.000-05:00

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
– Matthew 5:9 (NIV)

In Part 6 I looked at where the peacemaker’s peace comes from. (Here are Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5)

Today I’m going to take a look at the sons of God. Who was Jesus talking about and what does that mean to me?

The term sons of God (or son of God) is found through out the Bible. It is the title Satan used when he tempted Jesus, “If you are the Son of God…” It is the very phrase that got the religious leaders in Jesus’ day in such a tizzy. At Jesus’ trial they said, “By our laws he ought to die because he called himself the Son of God.”

My point is that when Jesus uses the phrase to talk about the peacemakers, it is not a throw away line. It is important to know what He means by it.

Someone with the title of son is in the family. It brings with it certain rights and responsibilities. Children have a unique relationship with their parents. And they can normally expect some sort of inheritance from their parents. There is really only two ways to become a member of the family. You are either born into the family or you can be adopted into the family.

By using the term sons of God (sometimes translated children of God) Jesus is saying that the peacemakers are part of Gods family. They have certain rights (and responsibilities) and can expect an inheritance from God.

So. Is peacemaking the way to become a son of God?

I think the answer is not so much. Let me explain.

When John is introducing Jesus in his account, he says the following:

“But to all who believed in him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn! This is not a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan – this rebirth comes from God.” – John 1:12-13 (NLT)

Paul said it this way: “So you are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.”

The doorway to joining the family is through Jesus Christ. We have to believe in Jesus. We have to be careful not to gloss over what it means to have faith in Jesus. We saw earlier that Satan saw Jesus’ identity clearly but obviously the enemy didn’t accept Jesus for who he was. And he doesn’t want us to accept Jesus either. He’ll use whatever methods he can to keep us from accepting Jesus.

A small example: when I typed in that quote from John just now I mistakenly didn’t type in the phrase, “and accepted him”. I read the words in my Bible. I knew they were in the verse. Then I typed the passage in without the phrase. And I read it a couple times to check my typing. My mind saw the words correctly even though they weren’t there. Some might call that a coincidental blunder on my part.

They’d be wrong. The enemy will do everything he can to keep people from accepting Jesus for who he really is. He doesn’t want people to hear Jesus when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.”

There is only one way to become a son of God. Both the privileges and the responsibilities of being a part of God’s family are outrageous. And the way into His family is both incredibly easy and a very hard thing at the same time.

The easy part is that the only thing we have to do is believe in and accept Jesus for who he is. There’s no heavy lifting required on our part. Anyone can do it. There is no elitism or favoritism on this end.

The hard part of the equation is this: Believing and accepting Jesus is the only way into the family. Jesus said it is an extremely exclusive path. There are no alternate routes. No side tracks, shortcuts, or long ways. We can’t make our selves be good enough to make it. We can’t earn our place in the family. Even though we trick ourselves into believing we’re really OK, in the end everything we do, all our heavy lifting and sacrifice, will fall short. We still won’t be “in the family” short of believing in and accepting who Jesus is.

Jesus wasn’t saying that being a peacemaker doesn’t make you a son of God. Peacemaking results from sonship. One of the characteristics of the people in God’s family is that they should make “peace” in the world around them. This includes both Social and Spiritual peace.

Heavy stuff, I know. But hey, it’s Sunday. And today is the day we’ll hear the peacemaker message from the Be Attitude series we’re in at church. How cool is that?

Peace!

Shearing Day

2006-04-08T07:48:00.000-05:00

Gorgeous is out of town. She and the other girls from our small group went down to Fernandina Beach, FL to overnight at a friend’s place. Our friends were out of town so Gorgeous got permission to have a slumber party at their place. It’s a little weird, I know, but our friends tend to be a trusting lot.

Well us guys got talking about the girl’s road trip and decided we should do something manly while they were gone. So we decided congregate at the biggest TV in the group, order pizzas and watch a manly flick. So after we gorged ourselves on Domino’s finest, extra meat, we had the “I don’t know, what do you want to watch” conversation. We eventually narrowed the field to Master and Commander and Serenity. We finally settled on Serenity because more of us had already seen the other flick. It didn’t much matter to me. I brought both finalists.

There’s just something about watching a good manly movie on a big screen with the surround sound really LOUD! The girls just don’t quite seem to appreciate the finer points of actually feeling the explosions rumble in your chest cavity as the sonic pressure squeezes your head until you try to go a little cross-eyed in an attempt to relieve the pressure. Oh, yeah!

I have to remind Gorgeous from time to time of the guy’s perspective: Things that go whoosh and boom are cool. Speed is good. Faster is better. She just shakes her head. Sometimes I get the feeling that her take on that whole thing is that I should just grow up. Can’t really argue much with that.

Anyway she’s out of town so I’m a little short on sleep because I have this tendency to stay up too late when she’s not around. Somehow there’s just not the same incentive to get in bed when she’s gone. Go figure.

And it’s shearing day.

I am way overdue for a hair cut. It’s not so much that my hair’s too long. But the (remarkably few, if I do say so myself) grey ones on the side start to get a little cocky if I don’t keep them in check. It wouldn’t do if I started to look “older.” Then people might actually start to get the idea that maybe I should grow up.

Oh, and I’m starting to get some sideways glances from my neighbors about the lawn. I think I may be the only one on the cul-de-sac that hasn’t cut it yet this season. So I guess I’ll have to brave the gnats and get that chore done today.

And while I’m out for shearing I’m going to swing by and join the Y. Since I’ve been married my shoulders have effectively fallen to my gut. Something must be done! Gotta hang on to my youth as long as possible you know.

Am I a little vain? Perhaps. But life’s too short to get on the express train to the old dirt nap, as my brother in law would say.

Tag: Movies, Guys

Why Men Hate Going to Church

2006-04-07T17:22:00.000-05:00

Christianity Today just posted a great article about that David Murrow book in my Book Recommendations. The bottom line is most men feel the same way about church as these guys feel about most Church Marketing.

And here's the grand irony: When our churches finally get a clue and change to become someplace where guys can know it's OK to be a guy, the women will dig it too. Murrow has the stats to back it up.

Get the book. Read it. Change your church.

tag: Books

Going... Going... GONE!

2006-04-07T11:05:00.000-05:00

Mark Batterson smaks another home run deeeeep over the center field wall in his post today Thou Shalt Offend Pharisees. A highlight:

Let's stop critcizing our differences and start celebrating originality and creativity. We must be orthodox in doctrine. But we ought to be unorthodox in practice. No one was more unorthodox than Jesus.

Keep the message, but get creative with the delivery and style. Mark coins a new phrase which is sure to catch on when he calls the church folks who attack different styles: "Pharirazzi". That word's a keeper for sure.

Here's another good point:

For the record, people tend to criticize when they feel convicted. It is the alternative to change. Nine times out of ten, criticism is a way of justifying our own issues and problems because criticism is a lot easier than change!

We were talking about that very topic on our way back from First Thursday last night. Criticism is soooo easy. Allowing other people to be different and finding solutions takes much, much more effort.

Anyway, lunch is almost over and I have to get back to work. Read the whole thing. The quote from Teddy Roosevelt alone is worth the mouse click!

Enjoy!

Tag: Evotional, Jesus

The Peacemakers - Part 6

2006-04-07T06:26:00.000-05:00

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
– Matthew 5:9 (NIV)

I’m exploring the verse above to work out what who Jesus was talking about that He described as “peacemakers” so that I can be more like them. So far I’ve looked a little at the term “peace” where I find it in the Bible to try to get a feel for what it really means.

(Here are Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5)

I discovered that peace has a Social aspect and a Spiritual aspect. But where does real peace come from?

You want the short answer? It comes from God. (I know. That’s a “Duh!” statement.)

Fortunately for us Paul explains it pretty well. Go figure. Here’s what he has to say:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus. – Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)

We access real peace by being real with God. It amazes me that the creator of the universe actually cares about little old me enough that He’s willing to bribe me to hang out with Him. You’d think it would be enough for me just to experience the awe and wonder of getting in the presence of the creator of all things, just to be in the presence of the ultimate power of space, time, and eternity.

But it’s not. I’m really more interested in being in hanging out with all my hassles and problems. To me they are more in my face, they seem more real, than something (or more correctly someone) as far off and mystical as God. I’d rather worry and stress about all the junk in my life than hang out with God. How pathetic!

It's a good thing for me that God knows all this so He has offered me a bribe. It basically boils down to this, “Hang out with Me, tell Me about all the icky painful and petty stuff going on in your life, and I will give you peace. I know staying peaceful during all that junk that’s going on won’t make much sense, but I promise it will be real.”

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Fortunately Paul goes on in the next couple of verses to explain how to access peace even more.

Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about thingsthat are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you have learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you. (NLT)

In my Bible next to that passage I wrote, “What we put in determines what comes out!” In my study notes it says, “Paul tells us to program our minds with thoughts that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise.”

I’ve spent too much of my life believing that I have no control over my thoughts. Yet here is Paul telling me that I can and should control what I’m thinking about. I am to “Fix my thoughts” on positive helpful things. It is something I have control over. Why then don't I believe I can control my thoughts?

The first section we looked at shows us that God basically offers us a bribe to get us to hang out with him. In this piece of scripture Paul tells us that if we get a grip on our thoughts, if we program our minds with better programs than God will naturally want to hang out with us. The structure is: Do these things and the result is God will be with you.

Holy Smokes! This whole thing explains a lot.

In our country we’ve got whole churches that are filled with people who spend the vast majority of their mental energy thinking about how messed up things are and what is wrong with everything around them. They complain and try to fix things rather than bringing their concerns to God. Paul effectively says that God doesn’t even want to hang out with these churches.

No wonder our world is such a mess!

Now hear me on this: I’m not saying that our churches are all going to Hell because they don’t think right. That’s not my point at all.

Look at it like this: Do you have any relatives that really annoy you and you don’t like to spend time with? They are not first on your list of people to hang with. Maybe they aren’t on the list at all! Just because you don’t want to hang out with those challenging relatives doesn’t mean they are not part of your family.

I get the feeling the same principle applies here. God recognizes that Christian who spend their mental energy thinking about trash are still part of His family. But he mostly only hangs out with them only at family reunions, if you know what I mean.

Well I sure want to hang out more with God. I’m making a change starting now. It’s time for a garage sale! I’m going to take all the junk in my life and move it out to the drive way. I’m selling it to God. No, better yet I’ll give it to Him, no charge.

Then I’m going to get a grip on all the junk I’m used to thinking about. I am going to re-program my mind to think about good positive helpful stuff so that God will want to hang out with me.

Wanna join me? Give away all your junk too!

Peace!

Book Recommendations

2006-04-06T06:13:00.000-05:00

Derek Brown put up a few book recommendations the other day. He’s got some good stuff there. I put together a few of my own that I’d recommend today. I wouldn’t necessarily call them all “must reads”. They’re just some that challenged me. (Some would argue that doesn’t take much!) So here they are in no particular order.

Epic by John Eldredge. Now I am a fan of most of his stuff. I have to admit that one of his most popular, Wild at Heart, didn’t speak to me as much as some others. But that’s only because I’m not much of an outdoorsy guy. My idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. In Epic, John helps us see that each of us were specially created to be the principle character in the epic story that is our lives. Unfortunately we’ve forgotten (or we were never told) how big the story is that we are a part of. We each have an important part to fulfill in the greatest story ever. It’s a pocket book so it is a good one for people who are not big readers. And it help you see a much bigger view of your own life.

Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow was first recommended to me by a buddy of mine that I often don’t agree with. I love him, in part, because he makes me think. So when he recommended this one, I though, “Sounds like another church bashing book to me.” Finally I think my buddy gave me a copy of it to get me to read it. Man am I glad he did! I kept saying to myself, “That’s exactly how I feel!” Murrow points out that in the typical church in America there are far more women than men. He’s right. Men are staying away from the church in droves. (As an aside, this is one area where I think our church, Seacoast excels. One of the first things I noticed about the church when I walked in was that there seemed to be a much higher percentage of men than I was used to in church.) But the best part is that Murrow doesn’t just point out a problem, even though he has tons of research and figures to back up his points. He goes on to give bunches of things that churches can do to help attract more men again. And the changes he suggests are pretty much all simple, real world things well in the reach of the smaller budget traditional churches. They aren’t gimmicky or trendy. This book really resonated with me. Everyone in leadership should read it. If we are going to reach our nation, we’ve got to get better at reaching our men.

I consider Desiring God by John Piper to be one of the modern classics of our faith. I can’t seem to find my copy at the moment. I might have loaned it to someone. But I remember that his thesis is this: The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him for ever. We were made, and we feel our most fulfilled, when we are enjoying God. Some of you out there may think, “Duh!” But for me it was a pretty profound statement. And then the way Piper goes on to plumb the depths of what that all means really changed my walk with God for the better. “You mean life a Christian can be fun? Full of enjoyment?” Radical stuff considering most of our churches are filled with folks who look like they’ve been dipped in pickle juice!

Based on recommendations from Mark Batterson (Is that a cool name or what?) over at Evotional.com I went ahead and ordered Chazown by Graig Groeschel. If this bit from the book description doesn’t get your juices flowing, I don’t know what can. ”Vision and Purpose: Dream It, Live It, Attain It Do you wake up each day motivated by knowing exactly why you were created? Guided by intention in every step? Enter: chazown.” I’m excited to get it and I’ll let you know what I think of it after I’m done with it.

Tag: Books

Check One More Off the List

2006-04-06T05:20:00.000-05:00

I finally got the new portrait for Gorgeous’ site uploaded yesterday. (Scroll to the bottom of her "Home" page.) The old one was atrocious! It was taken by yours truly and was additional evidence that I am no photographer. We both hated it. Now everyone can see how truly gorgeous she is. Man did I marry up or what?

Changing Times

2006-04-05T06:10:00.000-05:00

The time change seems to have sent our house a little off kilter. Yesterday Gorgeous missed an appointment, which I bear some of the responsibility for. I am the official clock changer in our family and I missed the clock in her car. Oops.

On the good side of the equation, the boys are out of the Dog House since the time change. For now. Low Rider must just be a daylight savings cat. Weird.

Gorgeous determined that it was Fat Boy who was having the aiming issues, which is a good thing too because Low Rider had nearly overdrawn his cuteness account. She calculates Fat Boy’s indiscretion was not accidental, which causes me some concern. But she doesn’t seem very worried about it.

Since Gorgeous is our resident cat whisperer, I’m all for going along with her take on things feline. Me, I just sort of notice the boys. Gorgeous trains them. I kid you not. I’ve seen it.

She started soon after we got Fat Boy. He had this tendency to spaz out when it was feeding time. He’s a bit food fixated, which pretty much explains his portly physique. One day after he knocked the food bowl out of her hand and broke it as she was feeding him, she decided to teach him to sit before he got fed.

I thought it was a futile, if admirable, project. I always figured cats were too dumb to be trained. Or was that too smart? I get confused. Anyway she did it and now Fat Boy is very patient and calm at feeding time. She’s done some other things with them, but you get the idea. She’s good. I’ll take her word on the whole Fat Boy aiming thing.

So the boys are out of the penalty box, but I seem to be part of a little sleep deprivation experiment this week. For some reason I keep waking up somewhere in the 0330 – 0400 range and having trouble getting back to sleep. Yesterday I gave up and got up at 0430 so that I wouldn’t wake Gorgeous up.

This morning I woke up and my newly accustomed time and I knew I had to get back to sleep. For one thing, my boss isn’t paying for a zombie, he expects me to actually work. Plus a couple of us are driving up to Charleston for their First Thursday service. We’ll be getting back a little late. Our campus here in Savannah is still a little small to logistically support a midweek evening service. (We’re getting close, though.)

It took me a while to get back to sleep. Every time I rolled over or adjusted, Low Rider would jump off the bed. I guess the idea of being crushed by an oversized man-person doesn’t much appeal to him. Every time he jumped off I expected him to start playing his favorite oh-dark-thirty game of wake-the-humans. But each time after I stopped moving he’d jump back on the bed and curl up by my knee and settle down.

I got the distinct impression that, if Low Rider had thumbs, he would have locked me in the back bedroom so that he could sleep the rest of the night undisturbed.

Tag: Sleep Deprivation, Cats, Seacoast, Time Change

What's This?

2006-04-04T14:43:00.000-05:00

OK. You may be wondering what that little thingy with the number is all about. I'll try to lay it out real easy-like for some of the less technical members of the class. (Hi Doug!)

Feeds

The link above is to my site “feed”. {We’re not talking food here, put down the cookie.}

A site feed is nothing more than a broadcast or notification that the site has been updated and what the new stuff is on it. I’m sure there is some amazing technology behind it, but I don’t care all that much. All I need to know to use the technology is that it works.

What do you do with a feed? {I said put the cookie down!} You subscribe to it.

But before you can subscribe to a feed you have to have a place to stick it. Computers are such structured little things. Unlike newspapers, you can’t just toss your feed anywhere (the driveway, the porch, under the sprinkler). You could think of it like needing a cable box to get TV reception. The signal (feed) is out there, but unless you have some place to stick it, it is kinda hard to enjoy.

So where do you stick it? This part is going to sound a little technical, but don’t be scared. What you need is something called a feed “aggregator.” That’s just a fancy word that I’m going to replace with the term “reader.”

There are several good feed readers out there with all kinds of different features. Me, I use Bloglines because it is on the web and I can go to the same place to get my feeds no matter what computer I am sitting at. Signing up with them is very easy. Even you can do it! Go ahead. Try.

If you are feeling frisky, you can check out what Wikipedia has to say about aggregators (I’m sorry I promised to call them readers). Also here is their aggregator list for more options if simple isn’t quite your cup of tea.

Once you have your feed reader set up then you can click on the feed links like the one I have above on web sites that you want to keep up with. {Would you believe those little icon graphic link thingies are called “chicklets”? I think there is a serious food fixation issue in the computer industry!} Then, every time a site you are interested in updates your reader will be notified right away.

Whenever it is convenient you can go to one place and read to your heart’s content without having to look through all those favorite bookmarks and stuff. It’s sort of like strapping on a feed bag, but with fewer cookies. And you don't have to waste all that time clicking through your favorites looking to see if they've gotten around to updating or not. Now you can get back to work, spend less time slacking on the internet and still not miss anything!

There you have it. So go ahead, subscribe to my feed. You know you want to. Besides, that way I won’t have to keep staring at that frustrating grammar irritant “1 Readers”. No, I'm not vain. Honest.

UPDATE: If you're still not sure about the whole RSS feed idea but want to get updates from me every day, you can subscribe via email by entering your address here:

Link Exchange

2006-04-04T12:39:00.000-05:00

Feel free to link to my blog. Just copy the code above and paste it into your links.

I’d be glad to a link to your place on my site too. Just drop me an email and I’ll add you to my list.

The Peacemakers - Part 5

2006-04-04T06:07:00.000-05:00

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
– Matthew 5:9 (NIV)

Part 4 (here are Parts 1, 2, & 3) dealt with the Spiritual aspect of the Biblical term “peace”. It is an absence of conflict with God that comes over a soul in a comforting way that can defy description. It is very much a vertical thing, God to man.

But what does that look like in the real world? Is it just some fluffy far off feel good dream? Or can it be real in our messy world?

Have you ever met anyone who seemed to always maintain their equilibrium no matter what mess the world threw at them? No matter what kind of chaos or nasty crap happened around them or to them, nothing seemed to rock their harmony? Or maybe when life shakes their foundation and knocks them down, they seem to get back up amazingly quickly?

That ability to maintain your harmony is what spiritual peace will look like. It can only come from God.

But let’s take it out of the hypothetical and look at an actual example of it in the Bible to see what it looks like. In Luke chapter 8 Jesus had had an exhausting day healing and teaching people. We’ll pick up the story in verse 22:

One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and started out. On the way across, Jesus lay down for a nap, and while he was sleeping the wind began to rise. A fierce storm developed that threatened to swamp them, and they were in real danger.
The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”
So Jesus rebuked the wind and the raging waves. The storm stopped and all was calm!
Then he asked them, “Where is your faith?”
And they were filled with awe and amazement. They said to one another, “Who is this man, that even the winds and waves obey him?” (NLT)

Now a couple things stand out to me in this story. First, it was totally reasonable for the disciples to panic, after all “they were in real danger.” Yet Jesus was so full of peace and calm during the situation that he kept on sleeping.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a storm at sea, but I have a maritime background and have. There are a couple things you’ve got to keep in mind during a storm on the water. The wind is pretty stinking loud. A boat, especially a small fishing boat of the era, tends to violently pitch and roll to point where it is hard to stand up. Oh, yeah. And it often rains. And even if it isn’t raining, there is usually enough spray blowing up that it might as well be raining.

It’s not exactly the best environment for your Sunday afternoon snooze.

Yet Jesus isn’t even ruffled by the chaos around him. He’s full of peace and sleeps on.

I find it interesting that the Bible doesn’t record what Jesus said when he “rebuked the wind and the raging waves.” Every time I’ve heard some one talk about this story and they get to that point they will yell out a big booming, “SILENCE!” at that point because after all it is God speaking and He’d be speaking with authority to be heard over the wind.

I imagine it might have been a bit different. Jesus was obviously sleeping pretty soundly. I mean you’ve got to be in a pretty stinking deep REM cycle to sleep in those conditions. I imagine when the disciples woke Jesus up what He said sounded a little more like what I might say as I reach for the snooze alarm. I think it was more of a moaning, half awake and I-really-want-to-sleep-a-little-more, “Uhhhh, be quiet.”

Think about it. It is God speaking. He doesn’t have to yell to be heard. Hello? He’s full of peace.

It’s kind of like when you pass a Corvette on the highway. That car can easily go 200+ MPH. Everyone knows it. Yet the driver is calmly driving at or slightly below the speed limit. He doesn’t have to prove himself. It is obvious what his car can do. You could say that the driver has sort of a “speed peace” about him.

Maybe not the best analogy, but I think this gives us a better understanding of how spiritual peace plays out in our day to day lives.

Enjoy!

PLEASE NOTE!

2006-04-03T15:40:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be
01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again.

You may now return to your life.

(Thanks to Johnny M. for bringing this to my attention)

Tag: Silliness

Fall in Love with O-R

2006-04-02T20:24:00.000-05:00

Gorgeous and I were in the car for a while this weekend on my favorite section of tourist pilgrimage corridor. On the way down to Jacksonville on Saturday I made a mental note that the sheer masses of humanity abandoning the Sunshine State northward were having a parking lot effect in the construction zones of I-95. Since we had nothing pressing this afternoon, on our way back we decided to dodge the migrating hoards by taking the scenic route up US-17.

We had no idea this weekend was the Blessing of the Fleet in Darien. Trust me. It’s big times in a small town. (woo. hoo.)

We ended up arriving on the outskirts of town this afternoon, and came to a complete stop for a half hour, just as the priest was blessing the shrimp boats. The best laid plans…

But the whole trip gave Gorgeous and I time to talk.

She shared with me about some business training she had recently. The trainer was talking about falling in love with reality. Basically the trainer was saying that what maters is not what you think about what is happening. Nor is it necessarily important what others say or think about what is going on. The critical thing actually is what is really taking place, what she called reality. We would do better to “fall in love” with reality.

Some times we get fixated on our feelings which can lead to all kinds of twisted thought patterns, often producing less than desirable results. If we focus on reality rather than feelings, we will have a clearer thought pattern leading to more desirable results.

It makes sense.

In Gorgeous' business this principle is fairly easy to apply. She may feel like things are going well, or poorly. She may have people on her team that say all kinds of weird and wacky things. But the reality of her business is actually measured by her stats: her sales volume, her numbers of presentations, leads, contacts, the size of her check, etc.

As we talked about it, we decided to modify our terminology to “Objective Reality.” Sure there are intangibles out there. And they are real too. But I think it would be helpful if I spent more time focusing on my Objective Reality.

In a moment of traffic induced giddiness we shortened it to O-R. (It wasn’t pretty there for a while.)

I may feel out of shape or a little overweight. But the O-R is that I am a little soft around the middle. I get winded more easily than I’d like. And I lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle (clackity-clack goes the computer keyboard). But until I fall in love with that O-R, my condition is not likely to change.

The other thing to note is that my O-R is really pretty stinking good in some areas of my life. If I don’t fall in love with it in those instances, I’ll never be contented.

What is your O-R?

Maybe you should fall in love with it.

The Peacemakers – Part 4

2006-04-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
– Matthew 5:9 (NIV)

In Part 3 (here are Parts 1 & 2) I talked about the Social aspects of the Biblical term peace. Now I’m diving into the Spiritual side of the term.

From a spiritual understanding of peace, we are talking about peace between people and God. It is an absence of conflict with God that comes over a soul in a comforting way that can defy description. It is very much a vertical thing, God to man.

Here are some verses in the Bible that address this facet of peace:

Or else let them come to me for refuge; let them make peace with me, yes, let them make peace with me. (Isaiah 27:5)

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1)

It seems obvious then that when the Bible talks about peace the meaning for us should transcend far more than a reduction of interpersonal conflict. The Apostle Paul said the peace of God is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. I figure that if a great theologian like Paul couldn’t find the right words to describe Biblical peace, than I should get cut a little slack if I fall short in my explanation!

Regardless of my inability to nail it down, it obviously is about something well beyond an absence of interpersonal conflict!

Next time I’ll take a look at what Biblical peace might look like in the real world.

Peace!

That's Just Plain Wrong

2006-04-01T11:44:00.000-05:00

I forgot today was April Fool's day, what with a church leadership team meeting this morning and all.

Fortunately I don’t live anywhere near Sarah. Being a card carrying chocohaulic I would have been completely fished in if I’d been there. This is proof positive that evil lurks in Provo, UT.

Note to self: Not everything that looks like chocolate is yummy.

Images of the Immigration Debate

2006-04-01T06:03:00.000-05:00

This photo has stuck in my craw since I saw it earlier in the week:

Apparently some high-schoolers in California did it to make a statement to Congress about proposed immigration reform legislation. I suspect this photo will do more to convince Americans the answer is to go hard on illegal immigrants than to give them a pass. The details of the story are over on Michelle Malkin's site.

Now I don’t think I am guilty of guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry here, although I know I do have that capacity in me. Gregory Boyd has some interesting insights about Christians in politics regarding that whole topic. My thinking was along those lines when I decided to steer away from politics in my ramblings here.

I realize there are flaws with my country. However I also know we live in a fallen world and I believe that our national system mitigates the flaws better than any others so far this side of eternity. A whole lot of people in the world agree with me because so many of them go to such extreme lengths to get here. Perhaps because I spent a few years in uniform I am a little sensitive toward our national symbols, especially our flag.

Nor am I anti-immigration. Gorgeous and I have an affinity toward foreigners. I suspect part of that may be a result of our being Yankees down here in the South.

Literally half of the guys in my office are foreign nationals. However they go through extraordinary lengths to work within our immigration system. And it is a painful process. For example they take days off work to overnight in Atlanta so they can be at the INS office first thing in the morning only to sit around all day waiting on the bureaucrats to take their finger prints every six months. I think they have a legitimate beef when they point out that their fingerprints don’t often change, so why take them so many multiple times?

Going through all the bureaucratic gyrations required to work within the system is especially galling for them when they see others flaunting their disregard for the law and getting away with it.

They, like me, don’t see that we have an immigration problem. We have an illegal immigration problem. Apparently there are somewhere between 10-15 million illegal aliens living in the US. That means they are pretty interwoven through the fabric of our society. We can’t simply round up all the illegals and ship them home without it adversely affecting our economy, perhaps significantly.

At the same token, we shouldn’t just pass a law that makes all the illegals here suddenly legal. The arguments for that run along the same lines as the ones for legalizing drugs. They pretty much boil down to something like this: Since law enforcement can’t seem to get a grip on the problem, therefore we should make it legal. I don’t agree with that. Just because something is hard sure doesn’t mean it is still the right thing to do.

The right answer to our current immigration issues is somewhere in between the two extremes. And I don’t have a clue what that right answer is.

Which brings me back to the photo above. To me the folks protesting about proposed immigration reforms are striking a rather persuasive tone. However I suspect they are pushing public opinion in the opposite direction from their apparent goals.

Degrading the primary symbol of the country you reside in illegally is not really the best way to persuade the citizens of that country to give you equal rights and status.

In case you might feel the flag thing was just the act of some impulsive immature high-school kids, take a look at these photos taken at the L.A protests:

Then again, maybe the goal of the protestors is not for equal status. Maybe they want to annex the Southwest and make it as impoverished as the country they left…

Stock Tip

2006-03-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

I want to buy stock in the company that invented this – "Device warns you if you're boring or irritating"!

Think of the other markets this could be used for. People need this device! Think about the uses…

We could start by issuing one to every telemarketer out there. I remember more than a few teachers who could have benefited greatly from this technology. There are preachers I’ve heard that I’d be more than happy to give one to! The market opportunities might be endless!

Oh, yeah. Perhaps I should get one for myself while I’m at it…

Resident Evil

2006-03-31T07:05:00.000-05:00

Today’s Friday Free-For-All deserves a special title.

You see its Spring Time, the time of year the Old Testament says when the Kings would traditionally go to war. Here in Savannah it the time of year we have a different battle on our hands – against the sand gnats.

Sand gnats are tiny biting flies that swarm down here in the spring. They are small enough to get through all but the finest screening, hang out especially in the mornings and evenings, and are attracted to CO2 and sweat.

Which means that they own the cooler parts of the day, but just in case, the hotter you get the more likely they will be attracted to you because you are sweating more and breathing more heavily. Oh, and you can’t really get away from them because they will swarm into your car as you open the door. And you better have good screens on your house!

Did I mention they bite?

There's nothing quite like the feeling of getting your scalp gnawed on from a dozen different angles at once. Especially in the morning.

I checked Wikipedia and Wikispecies and neither have entries for our special kind of gnat. The best web entry I could find is here.

I’m convinced these things are beyond nasty. They are pure evil. I think I can back that up Biblically.

They’re bad enough that they are the mascot of our minor league baseball team. I bet folks who come out of season think it is a cute choice for a mascot. But if they come down here now, they’d realize how annoying the gnats can be.

Apparently they breed in the marshes of the Low Country. I’ve lived on Amelia Island, FL (just over the border) and in Charleston, SC and I promise you the gnats were nothing like they are here.

Do you get the feeling that I don’t like gnats? Gorgeous will tell you I’m not so much of an outdoorsy kind of guy anyway. My idea of roughing it is a hotel that doesn’t have room service.

And I don’t need much of an excuse not to do yard work. Of course the time I have available to do it is in the gnat owned evening. So if you happen to drive by and see my yard is knee deep, please be patient. I have to combat Evil before I can even get to the grass.

People here talk about moving above the “gnat line” like it is some mystical far off place. I’m not sure where the line actually is on the map, somewhere between here and Atlanta, for sure. Near Macon, perhaps?

I don’t think the kings of the Old Testament were really so keen on fighting. Maybe they were just trying to get away from the gnats!

The Peacemakers - Part 3

2006-03-30T07:23:00.000-05:00

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
– Matthew 5:9 (NIV)

I’ve taken on a study of the above verse to determine what Jesus really meant. I decided to start by focusing on the Biblical term “peace” to get a firm understanding of how Jesus would have understood that word.

Reading through the hundreds of verses that refer to peace in the Bible, it seems to me that they can be roughly divided into two general categories, Social and Spiritual.

On the Social side of the ledger we are talking about peace between people. It involves a reduction of, or better yet, a complete absence of interpersonal conflict. It is a horizontal thing, man to man.

Some examples of verses that deal with the Social side of peace include:

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:18)

Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. (Jeremiah 29:7)

Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

People who have focused intensely on addressing the Social side fight to correct injustice, and often do so in particularly non-violent ways. Two examples of great men who were champions of non-violent confrontation of this sort would be Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Their willingness to stand up to governments without violence ultimately helped bring about peace in a social sense to millions of people. People who take a stand here and understand this facet of peace should be honored and can obviously accomplish great good by touching many lives in a positive way. But that’s not all there is.

Unfortunately I’m out of time for this morning. I’ll address the Spiritual side another time.

Enjoy!

Hmmm...

2006-03-29T12:55:00.000-05:00

Chris Surratt has some freaky people checking out his blog.

A Bad Thing

2006-03-29T06:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I did a bad thing. Not bad as in evil, certainly. More like bad as in perhaps a little unwise. You see a good friend of mine started working in a bike shop down in Jacksonville recently. I figured that since I was down there for a job anyway, why not stop in and catch up. Seems like a reasonable plan, doesn’t it?

Now I like motorcycles. I’ve owned a few in my day. My two favorites were an early model one of these and the older one of these that I had back in my Navy days. I am definitely more of a cruiser guy than a sport bike guy. I always figured my dream bike would be something along these lines. But I never really let myself look at them because purchasing one would create a cash flow issue in our household. I am not willing to finance that much of a toy. Besides Gorgeous and I have an agreement. I’m not getting a bike until we can afford to get two because she’s even had a bike back in her day and she has no interest in riding on the back of one. (Hers was more like this one she says.)

Now here’s the link for my buddy’s bike shop:

I figured I was safe going in there because, along with not being much into sport bikes, choppers don’t do much for me either.

I may have miscalculated somewhat.

I didn’t realize that a couple of the models were much more cruiser-like than chopper-ish. And boy were they just enough to bring back those memories of being out on the open road. And apparently these guys down at Big Bike Motorcycles are perfectly able to modify nearly anything about a particular bike to make it into exactly the dream machine you envision. And they are eager to do it too.

The whole experience with these guys was very impressive. And more than a little tempting.

Fortunately I remembered that the cost of buying a motorcycle yesterday would have been far more than a monthly payment that we can’t afford right now. Gorgeous would not have been, shall we say, happy if I had done something that foolish. And she would be totally right to feel that way about it. The knowledge of the potential conflict I would have brought on my self for doing something as silly as buying a motorcycle on impulse kept me in check. That knowledge was good accountability.

But did I mention it was tempting?

Do Not Be Alarmed

2006-03-28T06:08:00.000-05:00

I’m on the road quite a bit with my job (hence the company car). There is a good chance one of you might see me on the road if you are out and about along the I-95 corridor here in the Southeast. For example I’m heading down to Jacksonville for a job today. Because there are such good odds that you might see me out there in your journeys at some point I wanted to give you a caution:

Do Not Be Alarmed.

If you happen upon me, say, waiting at an intersection for the light to change color, and you look over to see that I appear to be convulsing uncontrollably, shaking my head, flailing my arms around the car and screaming, maybe even to the point of tiny bit of spittle spraying about – Do Not Be Alarmed. I am neither demon possessed nor suffering from a medical condition. What is going on in my car is a little ritual I refer to as “singing.” Everything is really OK in the lane next to you. Just consider yourself blessed that my windows are rolled up.

If you see me approaching and you happen to notice that I am talking on my cell phone while eating a biscuit, drinking a cup of hot coffee, changing the CD in the dash as I merge into rush hour traffic from the 25 MPH entry ramp without taking my cruise control off of 65 – Do Not Be Alarmed. I know you are there and I promise that I will miss your car by at least 12” as I slide past you to merge directly into the left lane. You see I have undergone extensive training years ago by the US Navy during flight school to hone my skills at multitasking. Basically you could say I’m a trained professional. (Of course this skill doesn’t seem to apply to listening. I can only hear one thing at a time. Sorry Gorgeous. You are either going to have to turn that good song down or wait until it is over if you want me to hear what you are saying.)

If you happen to look in your rearview mirror and notice that you can’t see the hood of my car below your back window because I appear to be attempting to land my car inside your trunk – Do Not Be Alarmed. My eyes are fixated alternately on your brake lights an the traffic up ahead that I can see through your windshield while my brain is computing an improbably complex series of equations that involve such diverse and comprehensive variables as your vehicle’s velocity and acceleration, my foot position in relation to my accelerator/brake pedals, the current road surface moisture content, the proximity to the nearest rest stop, and the quantity of coffee remaining in my travel mug. Keep in mind that you could ease your own frustration significantly by simply sliding over into the right hand lane to let me pass. I assure you I’d get completely by you before you were even firmly established in the right lane. Besides, I’ve only ever rear-ended one person on I-95 and I wasn’t tailgating him.

That about sums it up for this morning. I’ve got to hit the road!