I Had An Article Published!

Well, it was published on a website. And it was something I submitted more than a year ago. But I was kind of excited when I found this on The Ooze website. I used to go there all the time and read the articles. I have not been there in probably six months, because you only have so much time to spend each week, you know? And I had to eliminate something. Well, I'm preaching this weekend, and I'm trying to finish it up - and I thought perhaps The Ooze website would help me wrap everything up. I looked at the latest articles, and saw my name. Now, my rating right now is only three stars out of five - so if you like the article, rate me higher okay? I will feel better about myself and perhaps it will inspire me to write another one so that it will get published in another year. Yes!

Bored of Christian Music?

It's very hard these days to wade through the muck of Christian music and find decent bands/artists that aren't cookie cutter musicians/lyricists. Thankfully, the Bored Again Christian website is here to help. I'm listening to the Bored Again Christian podcast, which is basically a radio show that gives you an opportunity to hear new Christian music, undiscovered Christian music, and more. Today I listened to Over The Rhine (a great band - from Ohio, no less), Half-Handed Cloud (they tour with Sufjan Stevens), The Myriad, Pushstart Wagon, and more.

If you are tired of trying to listen to Christian radio to find anything good (I stopped years ago), check out Bored Again Christian.

MegaChurch: The Game

If this game isn't in development now, I'm pretty sure that it will be soon. At least in the minds of ministers all over the country.

I Can't Wait For Ocean's Seventeen...

This is a pretty good indication that Hollywood is running out of ideas. The first one was pretty good, I'll admit it. The second one, not so good. But it made a lot of money, which means we now have a third installment.

Creative. Very creative. Original. Very original.

What We All Want To See On A Church Sign

Sell-Outs

For two years, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has courageously traveled where few other reporters have gone to describe the brutal genocide in Darfur.

Through Kristof's reporting - and that of others at the Times - we have read of the tremendous suffering that has befallen the innocent people of Darfur - at the hands of their very own government.

Yet last Sunday, the New York Times accepted nearly one million dollars from the Sudanese government to run a special eight-page advertising section! The insert, placed in New York-area papers, consisted of pretty words about Sudan's "peaceful, prosperous and democratic future." This propaganda was written on behalf of a government the Times reports has sponsored a mass effort to kill, rape, and force people from their homes.

- From the Save Darfur Coalition


The proverbial question "What would you do for a million dollars" seems to have found another answer.

Great Quote

"People who wear Christ on their sleeves and vote against helping are the biggest hypocrites."

- Charlie Melancon, Democratic Congressman from Louisiana, after the house approved $4.2 billion in aid to states affected by Katrina but rejected an amendment he sponsored to boost funding for repairs to New Orleans' levees

Yes! Finally A State That Has The Guts To Do What We Christians All Want! (roll eyes here)

Missouri has just been put on my list of places never to live. Not that I really wanted to live there anyway, but the fact that they are trying to make Christianity the official state religion sealed the deal for me.

If Anthony grew out his hair and didn't wash it for a few days...

this is what he would look like, methinks. :^)

To Own A Dragon

Wow, it's been more than a week since the last blog entry. I guess I just haven't really had anything to say, which happens sometimes I guess.

Anyway, I would like to get back to The Present Future soon, but I also started reading another book. It's entitled To Own A Dragon, and it's by Donald Miller, the same guy who wrote Blue Like Jazz, Searching For God Knows What and Through Painted Deserts. All three of those books are included in my favorites, they all mean something to me in different ways, and I honestly believe that I read each one of them at the exact time in my life and journey that I needed to read them. And To Own A Dragon is no different.

Sometimes I wonder if Miller and I were Siamese twins at birth, and our mother sent him off to Texas to live with someone and kept me. There are times as I'm reading his books where I wonder if I wrote the same sentence I just read from Miller's book before he did, and somehow he found a way to plagiarize me. It's eerie sometimes.

Anyway, this book is basically about Miller growing up without a father. In this way, we are somewhat different. Miller's father left when he was young. I had three dads. My real father left our family when I was five and my brother was one. Then, my mother remarried, had another son and divorced a few years later when I was nine, my one brother was five and my little brother was one. Then she remarried again to someone who already had two kids, so we were a house of seven for awhile, until both my stepsister and stepbrother ran away to go live with their mom in California. Then my mother died of cancer and my second stepdad remarried and basically kicked all of us out of his life. Having three fathers created some strange situations for me and my brothers - at my grandfather's funeral, I remember at one point all three fathers were talking to me at the same time, and I remember thinking that that moment was perhaps the strangest moment I've ever been in.

I don't have a relationship with any of my fathers. I'm very close to my grandmother on my real dad's side, but I've only really talked to him a handful of times since I was five. My first stepdad lives in Colorado and my youngest brother has a relationship with him, but that's about it. And my second stepdad - I have no idea where he's at. The last time I had any communication from him, I sent him an e-mail telling him I had a daughter, as well as a couple of other things involving my brothers, and he wrote back and yelled at me for bringing up those other things when it wasn't my business. I did write an e-mail to him a few months ago telling him I forgave him for the things that happened, but never heard back.

As I was reading through Miller's book (I'm almost done with it now), I found myself agreeing with a lot of what he said. His main point, I believe, was that not having a father meant that he had to learn what it meant to be a man on his own. And that has affected everything that has happened in his life - his actions, his thought processes, his world-view, his view of God, his view of women, his view of sex - everything. I realize now that I had to learn everything on my own as well. My stepdad, when I was a teenager, never talked to me about how a girl should be treated. My parents were marginal churchgoers, so everything I grew up knowing about God, I learned on my own. Rather than having someone there to let me know how to step around the land mines of life, I instead had to step on those land mines and find ways to put my pieces back together and avoid the same kind of land mine.

Today, in our worship services, we had a pretty neat time where we wrote our hurts on broken pieces of pottery and gave them up to God. I wonder how many of those pieces of pottery had a hurt on them that was directly related to fathers. I was doing a special music at the time, so I did not put one in, but I know what I would have written down on my piece of broken pottery. I would have written about the time when I finally realized that my second stepdad was pushing me and my brothers away from him so that he could have a new life with his new wife. I realized this when I discovered I had a brain tumor (I was 23 years old). At the time, the doctors didn't know what it was, if it was benign or malignant, if it could be removed by surgery or if I needed radiationi or chemotherapy. All they told me was that I was going in for surgery in three days. I had three days to tell people I needed to tell, and basically get my life in order because there was a good chance that I would die. I called my stepdad up to tell him, and I asked him if there was any way for him to come out, because I needed him to be there. He told me no, he told me good luck, and that he would be thinking good thoughts about me (he turned his back on God by this time completely). I was crushed. I was rejected.

I can see how that situation along with all the other situations with my fathers have made me who I am. I can see how my personality and how I see things in life are directly related to this reality. I want more than anything else in this world and in this life to be the father that I never had to my daughter. I want her to grow up knowing her daddy loves her and would do anything for her. I want her to know that I will always be there for her.

Thank You, God, for bringing me through all of the pain in my life - I have held on to you like a drowning person would hold onto a life preserver. Although there have been times when I haven't trusted You, I know that You are the only reason I can continue to live this life with some hope and peace. May you reveal in me the parts of my life that have been affected in a negative way by growing up fatherless, may you heal those parts of me, and cause me to overcome them by Your strength. Amen.

What Price Is An Atheist's Soul Worth?

I thought that this was a very interesting article. An atheist bid his soul on eBay. An ex-minister won. He asked this man to help him write a book about his experiences. Interesting article, indeed.

A Band That Certainly Doesn't Suck

Cool Widget #1

I hadn't used a Mac since 8th grade in computer class.

So when Jeff convinced me to go with a Mac, I was a little apprehensive.

The widgets helped.

Widgets are small programs that you install onto your "dashboard" which you can activate by pressing F12. These little programs range from games to quotes of the day to whatever.

Well, I haven't really thought of widgets in a long time. I had a bunch I liked, and I never really used them. Today I decided to look at the Widgets you can download, and I found one I really, really like. This widget helps you find the cheapest gas at the gas stations in your area. I found out that a gas station pretty close to me was 6 cents less than others in the area. Since gasoline prices have skyrocketed, this is a good, good widget.