Book: The Myth of Religious Violence

I just heard a great talk on the myth of religious violence by William Cavanaugh. In his talk, Cavanaugh had intriguing and fresh takedowns of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, both of whom have written extensively on the maddening numbers of people killed in the name of religion and for their own personal disgust at the idea of believing in a God or following a religion. 

Cavanaugh's argument is that religion means many different things to many different people and Hitchens and Harris choose selectively between what they deem a religious movement and what they label a secular movement. Essentially, their use of the terms boils down to what they truly like and don't like. Both of the authors, and many who have written in the same vein, like to reference the millions of people who have been killed throughout human history in the name of religion. In response to this, Cavanaugh rightly points out that until the modern era there was no separation of religion and politics. The thought of religion separate from politics was as foreign as the idea of religious freedom and free speech to the crowds rioting in the Middle East over the past two weeks. Every war prior to the modern era could be said to be a form or religious violence, because even following your Caesar (who was considered a god) into war was a religious action. Then, even fighting for the atheistic Lenin regime was, in this sense, a religio-political action. 

Cavanaugh shared a number of great quotes, but I wrote one down from St. Augustine on the idea of religion, "We have no right to affirm with confidence that religion (religio) is confined to the worship of God, since it seems that this word has been detached from its normal meaning, in which it refers to an attitude of respect in relations between a man and his neighbor."

Cavanaugh's talk was based on his book of the same name, The Myth of Religious Violence. Check it out at the library or buy it. As a believer in and follower of Christ, it was extremely refreshing to hear an articulate, academic rebuttal of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris that is appreciative of religion and doesn't speak of it as the underlying motivator for all conflicts from the present day to the beginning of human history. Thank you, Professor Cavanaugh. 

Free December

Although my next quarter doesn’t start until January 3^rd, I just finished ordering the last of its required 28 books. The idea is to get a good chunk of the reading done before week one. That may not happen, but as the books continue to arrive, I’m expecting them to either motivate me or smother me and I’m hoping for the latter.

Having time off has been great so far. I have more energy to devote to swimming (I’m swimming with the masters team at DU), to outdoor pursuits (although not today because it’s 9 degrees outside), and leisure reading (I’m in the middle of the second book of the Millennium series, The Girl Who Played With Fire). However, I have been a little bored from time to time. Urgency is a great motivator.

Last Christmas season, having worked right up to Christmas Eve in a crazy storm of frenzied Apple customers and red shirts, I had a hard time getting into the season because each and every day I saw its very, very ugly side. This season, I’m trying to be more intentional by meditating on the peace that can be found in God and the real meaning of the season (I know that’s cliché, but I don’t care). That also means savoring family traditions of food, gift giving, and making December last as long as possible. I'm looking forward to it.

Poem for an empty church

I've seen seven pastors
And my fair share of weddings
Funerals too

Packed houses on Christmas Eve
The hardened, creaky pews overflowing
On Easter too

There were strangers
Among the lions of the congregation
New members too

Laughter echoed through the halls
Mingled with sobs
And whispers too

Somewhere the Message has been lost
Muddled with humanity
And lies too

The pews are glad to have a rest this morning
But the halls mourn the thinning of the crowd
Me too

Encounter

Yo, Peeps. This is a plug for a new service that Jarrod is a part of. It is called Encounter and you can visit the blog here for more information. This is very short notice if you want to make it to the first service which is tonight at 6pm. The service is at 702 17th Avenue in Longmont.

If you don't go tonight, try it out some other night. I don't know that much about it, but I know Jarrod played a role in its foundation, so it has got to be cool. If I was in Longmont, I'd check it out.

The Church Search

Kate and I have almost been here nine months and we still haven’t struck gold in the search for a church. Should we even be looking for gold? That’s tough to argue. One could say it takes a while to establish a healthy connection to a church and not one out there is perfect. This is true, but over the last nine months I have developed much more appreciation for those moments in my life that I have met or heard of others looking for the right church.

It has not been easy to find a church we can call home. This is troubling. I don’t think it should be difficult, but it is. I don’t know if this search is difficult because of the qualities we are searching for in a church. Are we being too stringent? I don’t know if the search is difficult because of the selection available to us.

I do know that I have worried more than once that we (Kate and I) will not find the kind of church we are looking for. We have visited about eight at this point. Many of them have been too charismatic and Pentecostal for us. While I was at work a few Sundays ago Kate went to a church very close to us. She came back with a negative review. The pastor had reported from the pulpit that global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the liberal agenda in this country. The pastor then proceeded to heal members of the church by slamming his hand down on their foreheads. Luckily, there were some elders behind these members to catch them after the fall. We won’t be going back.

About a week ago we received a mailing from another nearby church. It looked promising. I checked their website and read their “essential beliefs” section. It was going well for a while until I ran across some rough patches. One of the rough patches was on leadership. This church, like many others, doesn’t allow women to be in leadership positions. Women can volunteer and work for the church, but when it comes to speaking and leadership roles, women are excluded. The site offered 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35 to justify this stance. We won’t be checking that place out.

The first church we went to out here was downright frightening, not to mention it was so huge that I think we could go there for a whole year and not be recognized once. This is the same for the church we went to on Sunday. There seemed to be 5,000 people in attendance. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest church in Wisconsin and, on average, 6,000 people attend services there every weekend. The senior pastor is an English Major. Hmm.

I don’t have a solution. I just wrote this to express a little bit of my frustration and sympathy for others in the same boat.

Quiet Rooms

There was in this household, as in countless others, a great time of celebration and relaxation during this last week, but just a few minutes ago everybody left. The Bradleys drove on to a different part of Wisconsin and Kate went back to work for a day.

I am left with an empty, big, quiet apartment that is scattered with traces of feasting, giving, receiving, and a little bit of everything.

Pine needles litter our white carpet.

An air mattress leans up against the study closet waiting to be deflated.

The fridge is stuffed with ham, leftover Chinese, desserts, and champagne. It is so full that the Jones Soda Kate and I put in each other’s stockings can’t be slid in anywhere.

Boxes line the wall at the top of the stairs. They are waiting for me to take them downstairs to the recycling bin.

Pieces of our new grill lay inside, still unassembled, while most of the virgin grill stands at the ready on our freezing deck.

The tree has been stripped bare of its underlying fruit, but it still glows this morning.

Bags of unwrapped trinkets still aren’t put in their rightful places; a corner of the kitchen, on a hanger, or in a drawer.

This is a house crying out to be cleaned, but all I can do right now is sit down and think about how it got this way and be thankful for the reasons, and the Reason.

Merry Christmas.

A Medical History - The Last Two Weeks

This is a long post. Bare with it. It is important and something I need to share with you about the last couple weeks of my life.

On October 7^th, just over two weeks ago I had one major headache. As I went to bed that Sunday night I was uncomfortable with the amount of pain the headache was giving me. I thought it a bit odd, but brushed it off as my first migraine. I didn’t know what to think, but that sounded okay.

The next day my headache hadn’t really subsided even with a lot of Ibuprofen. Again, I thought it was just a random occurrence migraine because of its strength, duration, and the pain bright lights gave me. That was, until, I sat down for lunch that day. I was having a frozen pizza that Kate and I had mistakenly decided to buy several weeks before. I knew it wasn’t going to be that great, but I did expect it to at least taste like pizza. It didn’t. In fact, it didn’t taste. I could smell pizza, but my taste buds clearly weren’t working.

I threw the rest of the pizza away. I scavenged around the kitchen trying to taste anything with little success. It was as if all the joy I got from eating had been muted by my tongue. I didn’t like this at all and hashed it up to maybe just my mind playing tricks on me. Or maybe it was just the pizza? It could have been so bad that it destroyed my ability to taste for a while. How sad?

Kate got home that night and I told her about my loss of taste and continuing headache. We didn’t discuss it that much, and again, passed it off as an anomaly.

The next day, Tuesday now, my headache had subsided a little, but it felt like it could rush back any second, brought on by God knows what. I got on the internet and did some research about the symptoms I was experiencing. The WebMD page I found with long painful headaches and loss of taste on it was the same page devoted to Brain Cancer and Brain Tumors. Seeing my two symptoms on those pages was immediately worrisome to me. I tried not to get too carried away. I wasn’t experiencing any other symptoms, and decided I needed to get away from the computer and self-diagnosing.

I went down to the lake. It was the most peaceful and beautiful day on the water I had seen. I didn’t really think of it as a coincidence that the world was so beautiful to me that morning. I walked through the crunchy orange, red, and yellow leaves of fall. I took deep breaths. My mind started racing. I knew the chance of me having a brain tumor/cancer was very slim, but what I had seen so far was enough to get my mind jumping ahead to extraordinary scenarios.

Enter the questions. What if I have six months to live? What if I am going to be diagnosed with a crazy disease and have a long, drawn out battle with an illness that will most likely kill me? What if I have to have brain surgery and Kate and I get buried under a $200,000 hospital bill right before I am scheduled to go back to work, right before we are about to get on our feet? What if I went through this battle and didn’t make it and Kate was left without me? That question led to the most despairing outcomes. It was like, okay, if it’s my time to go, then fine, but what about Kate? We just got married. We are so damn young. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen, but I have heard of them happening. No, not to Kate. Not to me. What would she do? How would she get on? I forgot myself and worried about those I would leave behind like my friends, parents, but especially Kate. The power of these imaginings is extremely impressive. As I strolled along the beach I thought about how each situation could pan out and before I left I was resolved to not let whatever the heck was wrong with me to take me down like this. If, in fact, it was to take me, I was resolved right then and there to put up the fight of my life.

It was a very powerful couple of hours there on the beach by myself. I thought more about the wake of my dip in this human ocean than I had ever before. Yes, my mind was racing, and it may sound absolutely ridiculous to you, but this was real. This was really happening to me and I had to think about all the possibilities. I may have spent most of the time by the lake worrying about worst case scenarios, but I still hoped for good news and healing.

Later that day, I spoke with my mom who had spoken with my uncle, an anesthesiologist, and she said he recommended talking with a neurologist right away. I told Kate and she happened to be working that night with the wife of a neurosurgeon. She spoke to her husband and called that night suggesting that I get a CT scan to rule out the possibility of a brain tumor.

The thought of paying for a CT scan was a little frustrating, but we decided it was worth paying that much for peace of mind. We went in on that Wednesday and spent six hours at the hospital for a CT scan that took all of two minutes and a consultation with the neurosurgeon about the results. Meanwhile, my dad was home with my mom sitting around and praying. It was a long afternoon, but worth the wait. The CT scan was clear. I don’t have a brain tumor, at least not one bigger than a pea. Any other issue with the brain would have to be found by doing an MRI, a longer and costlier test.

So…I still had a little headache and I could still take ladles of chili oil and it wouldn’t taste spicy. True story. I really did that on the second day my taste was gone. I also put soap in my mouth, hoping it would taste as awful as last time I had soap in my mouth (probably when I was 8). It didn’t, but it still made me gag. The flavor was like everything else, very muted or non-existent. So what did the Doctor have to say? He really didn’t have a good explanation. It could be a side effect from a severe headache. It could be something viral. It could be a number of things. I really didn’t care what he said, just as long as he said it wasn’t a brain tumor and that it wasn’t something to be very worried about. He said both, and Kate and I took a deep sigh, and my parents took a deep sigh as I called them while we were leaving the hospital.

That Thursday at home I wasn’t worrying nearly as much as I had been two days before, but I did feel something new changing with my body. I was playing with my lip movement and it felt inexplicably inaccurate and handicapped. In a matter of hours it was hard for me to bite my upper lip without feeling like all my facial movements were being dominated by the right side of my face. I started having a hard time blinking my left eye. I couldn’t squish my face up equally on both sides. My smile was lopsided. In a few hours I had lost fine motor movement in the left side of my face and neck.

Why couldn’t it have just stopped with a headache and loss of taste? I sat around worrying some more and praying every ten minutes. I heard Kate walking up the stairs and I didn’t want to face her. I didn’t want to put the burden of this on her as well, but that is tough love. I wished I could just not tell her, but she is my wife. I told her how I was feeling. She was immediately scared. So was I. We held each other right there in the kitchen, fearing what symptom might be next, what really was wrong with me.

We recouped in a little bit and Kate decided to call her mom, a nurse practitioner (a very good one at that), and tell her about my symptoms. Kate’s mom quickly mentioned Bell’s palsy and told us to look it up in Kate’s disease book. I was suddenly so happy with the huge medical books that any medical professional has on hand. Kate has several of them and a list of every disease known to man on her PDA that is the size of my wallet.

Bell’s Palsy (p.1054 2007 Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment…big book) - Bell’s palsy is an idiopathic facial paresis of lower motor neuron type that has been attributed to an inflammatory reaction involving the facial nerve near the stylomastoid foramen or in the bony facial canal. … The facial paresis generally comes on abruptly, but it may worsen over the following day or so. The face itself feels still and pulled to one side. There may be ipsilateral restriction of eye closure and difficulty with eating and fine facial movements. A disturbance of taste is common, owing to involvement of chorda tympani fibers, and hyperacusis due to involvement of fibers to the stapedius occurs occasionally.

Reading that gave me a great sense of relief. All my symptoms were linked to a relatively common problem that, as far as I could tell, was commonly resolved by steroids and would go away even without drugs in as soon as two weeks.

We took the next two days to see if some other symptoms might come about. Nothing new happened, so we rang the Doctor and got a prescription for steroids that are supposed to help ease the swelling on the nerve and speed up the recovery process. I started those eight days ago and have three more days on them. Things have improved slightly, or not at all. I can blink my left eye more easily. I can still only smile out of one side of my mouth. And my taste, which is quickly becoming the most painful reminder of this paresis, has not returned yet. Eating is just absolutely anti-climactic. There is no better way to explain it. Food smells great. Going out to eat sounds exciting, too, but all the excitement fizzles away after you take the first bite.

Bell’s palsy can take as little as two weeks to six months to go away. Today is the two-week mark for me and my patience with it has definitely grown thin at times. It is impossible to know exactly when my normal facial movement and taste will return. The steroids also have been making me a little moody too. And, for the first time in my life, I am experiencing a little insomnia brought on by the drugs. I have been up since 4 am.

Kate and I are still pretty hopeful about me making a complete recovery. Among other things, we pray about it constantly and we would very much appreciate your prayers, support, or questions about it. It has been a trying time for us. Many of our conversations in the past couple of weeks, especially in the early days of this ordeal were ones that I never thought I would have with Kate at this age, but we had them, and the gravity of them hasn’t completely begun to settle in. We are extremely grateful that we think I have Bell’s palsy and not some wicked disease. Extremely grateful.

I am sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell every one of you about this personally, but that is the way of things. I couldn’t think of a better way to let everyone know about this than putting it on my blog, and it was a good writing exercise too, although one I hope not to repeat anytime soon.

Yours Truly,

Bryce

Osteen and the King

Confession: I was ready to be outraged by Joel Osteen last night. I almost wanted to be outraged, but instead I didn’t feel that saddened or disappointed by what I heard.

I can’t tell you I agree with him. I don’t know what kind of stuff he personally does with his money; like that $13 million advance.

I do know that he comes across as a genuine believer. Yes, I have only seen him on TV, but he most definitely has a passion for God and what God can do in someone’s life. His theology does seem light, there is no doubt.

He unabashedly knows what part of the Gospel he is good at teaching. He believes that is his niche. Someone else’s niche may be talking about sin and redemption. Someone else might find there niche in exclusively helping the poor.

I guess what I am saying is that I do believe he is doing a lot of good for God. And, I guess, what I struggle with a bit, is realizing that God is at work through something like Osteen’s ministry, but I don’t really agree or enjoy his (Osteen’s) type of message or ministry.

I didn’t come away from the interview outraged. I simply came away unaffected. There will always be believers out there that are doing a lot more polarizing and dividing than Osteen is doing. I didn’t hear any judgment out of the man’s mouth last night.

He reminded me of a really excited kid in a Sunday school class that is just so happy about what God is doing in his life, and that is where Osteen is stuck. I guess I am all too human to hold that against him.

A $13 Million Advance...

I have never seen Joel Osteen in the media before the 60 Minutes interview that aired last night. I recommend that you take ten minutes to go to the 60 Minutes page to watch the interview. It was eye-opening and demands reaction, not necessarily criticism of Osteen, but we need to be aware of giant trends within Christianity like the one Mr. Osteen is such a huge part of.

It is astonishing how so many people buy into Osteen's message of prosperity, and it is scary that his message seems to encompass a very small portion of the real Message. He draws 16,000 people every Sunday to an old sports arena that he has spent $100 million on to renovate into a state-of-the-art mega church. According to 60 Minutes, there aren't explicitly religious symbols anywhere near the front of the church like, I don't know, a cross, but the arena's ceiling does change color to the music. Ooh. Ah.

Just a few standout facts:

The annual in-house offering is $43 million.

Mr. Osteen's ministry receives another $30 million by mail or online donations.

Mr. Osteen received a $13 million advance...ADVANCE...for his new book that comes out this week I believe.

During the interview, not one word was mentioned about helping the poor with all that money, or what the heck Mr. Osteen does with it. The message: come to God and you will prosper is enticing to say the least, but it eclipses this message, that I think might be a little more rewarding: come to God so that others may prosper.

The Quarter Life : Career

It is time, time for the next installment of The Quarter Life. If you aren't familiar with The Quarter Life, visit the first installment here on my blog, and here on Aaron's blog. The second installments can be found here and here. Aaron's new blog on career should be up shortly. Read that here. Caught up? Read on.

Aaron said this would be challenging. Of course it will be. What am I supposed to do here, offer up advice on a career decision? I don’t know if I can do that.

I can tell you I love writing. By deciding that I would like to write for a career I made a logical decision by connecting my love to a potential career. I think I picked an illogical career though. I say this because, like many things one can become, you don’t become a writer, in terms of a career, just by going to a university and receiving a BA, an MFA, or a Ph.D. Instead of initials after a name, a writer seems to be forged by years of living in poverty, being broke, overcoming a drug addiction or defeating alcoholism, and spending years of his or her life in solitary confinement, mentally speaking. And then there is the nagging question: am I any good at this, or am I completely wasting my time?

I was just watching Chariots of Fire (1981), a true story, and there is a great scene in which Harold Abrahams is talking to his trainer (played by Ian Holm, as made very famous by his role as Bilbo Baggins) about wanting to be a faster runner. Ian reluctantly agrees to do his best, but adds “We can’t put in what God left out.”

I guess what Ian Holm says strikes a cord in me because I don’t know what God left out in terms of writing talent. I like to think that he didn’t leave much out, but to be honest, I don’t know. And, since I don’t know, and still love writing, I keep on doing it, hoping that years of practice will eventually help me find out if God has put in anything at all.

This thinking ushers in a search for validation, which I try not to seek in my career, but I realize validation is important for me. It helps motivate me. Thinking I am okay or good at something isn’t enough to convince me that I should spend my days reading and writing. Here is some validation I have experienced in the past: an “A” on a paper, a high hit-count on my blog, a community newspaper’s decision to publish my words, and friends and family complimenting me on something I wrote. These are all great forms of confirmation, but I have become hungrier for a different kind of validation.

A regular writing gig. A paycheck directly related to my words. Appealing to strangers, perhaps even acquiring a fan base beyond my intimate circle of friends. These are all lofty achievements that, at my age, would be extremely rare for me to have. Nonetheless, these are some examples of validation that a successful writing career might bring about.

When I think of a career as a writer I usually arrive swiftly at contemplating my validation. Am I any good? Yeah, my mom says she enjoys my writing, but I am her son. Am I pursuing something that is going to bring me to my 60s without one feature length article or book to show for it?

These are the kinds of questions I fend off everyday. Sometimes my doubt runs rampant. I’ll have a whole week to produce something and I don’t. I can’t even seem to write anything worth showing to the public. I flirt with the idea of abandoning the pursuit altogether.

It is during waves of doubt, dryness, and my lust for validation that I realize my love for writing isn’t going to take me to that many places if it remains about me. I become even hungrier for a different kind of validation, but something clicks this time. There needs to be something living and breathing inside my words, something universal. To produce writing like this there needs to be a major harvest on my soul, experiences, and my life. When I sit down with a notepad or a computer and really try to hash it out this way I usually come up with something that at least one of you might relate to. If there is a connection, then I feel like I have done my job.

It is hard to think of writing right now as a career because I am not getting paid for it and I don’t do it forty hours a week. In fact, it probably sounds a lot like a hobby. You could call it that. I guess I won’t take offense. If my hobby turns into my career I would be pretty blessed, and even more fortunate if my readers can relate on a spiritual level to my material, forging a connection we share in a relationship with Jesus or questions of faith, truth, and life.

If I were a Presbyterian missionary people would connect my work to a God that I serve and glorify (hopefully) with the work that I do. I have grown up valuing this connection between my faith and work. So, I would love for people to see in my career something that suggests a higher calling. Don’t get this confused for self affirmation. I want the validation to be directed toward God, hopefully, if I am that lucky, through a little part of my work.

That is the ideal scenario, but what if I end up doing humor writing for a career, how are people going to get some God out of that? And what if I end up reviewing books for a living? Am I going to feel like I should be doing something else to promote the true love I know? No, because regardless of how successful I ever become as a writer, I will know that God made me passionate about words. I believe I am honoring Him by using them.

However, I shouldn’t completely ignore the questions that arise. By answering them I can find a better path or clearer thinking. However, most of that doubt and questioning is going to keep me from the one thing that I want to develop into a career. I once said, on this blog actually, that a man can’t hear much of the world if he spends all his time on it looking for affirmation of himself. I don’t want to waste my time here doing that, but I still really want to write, and if I didn’t write, it would be to deny one of the greatest passions God has put in me.

During a conversation in Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell is trying to convince a friend that he must run in the Olympics (Paris, 1924) first before he goes on to missionary work in China. He says this:

I believe that God made me for a purpose, for China, but he also made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure. To give that up would be to hold him in contempt. You were right. It’s not just fun. To win, is to honor him.

I can’t say that I am a fabulous writer with as much confidence as Liddell says he is fast, but I do know that to give up now would be to deny what I know for sure God has put in me, a voice.

*After refusing to run the 200m on the Sabbath, a race Eric Liddell could have easily won, he took first in the 400m. He died as a missionary in occupied China following WWII.

Sundays in College

I was almost always the first one to wake up. I rose quietly, showered, dressed, and ate breakfast by myself in the typically cold main room of our apartment. My roommates were sleeping in from a late night of sex, drinking, doing nothing, watching movies, or playing video games.

I would usually get a call from Kate when she was five minutes from picking me up. We went to a great church every Sunday called Emmaus Road. It still meets. I am sure it still rocks too.

Depending on how much work I had to do that Sunday, and there was always work, I had a hard time relaxing at church. Often I was so exhausted and dreadful of the long day of studying or writing ahead of me that I couldn’t bring anything to worship. I had very high expectations of this church to give me something, to feed me some thought, God, or something else. I came empty handed every Sunday with a just as exhausted Kate. We loved it.

Kate would drop me off at the apartment. We would say our goodbyes and wish each other good luck with our work. We preferred to get it done and have some time to relax later that night. We usually split at 12:30. I would walk in to find my roommates having a very late breakfast, or for them, an early lunch. The TV would always be on and it was always football. I didn’t mind. I like football.

I would wolf my lunch down and reluctantly take to my room to tackle whatever paper was waiting to be written. Sometimes it was a paper that needed to be finished. Sometimes it was studying. Most of the time it was a paper not even started that was due the next day. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be in my room from 1 to 7:30 working the whole time on a paper.

I would usually come out of the room twice to relieve myself or grab something from the kitchen. Curiously, the TV in the main room would still be on, but my roommates had long retired to their respective corners of the apartment. I would switch the TV off. I sometimes peeked into my roommates’ rooms. On occasion they were studying. More often than not though, they were IM-ing, watching TV, or doing both.

Returning to my room I often was full of rage. I had eight more pages to write and from the looks of it my roommates don’t go to college because they study as much as I did in high school and I didn’t even challenge myself in high school. I really never understood it. I did my best to hide my frustration from them, to refrain from saying something like, “Go study”, “Go read something”, “Are you going to graduate?”, and so on. I had to vent to someone, so Kate got the brunt of my frustration.

Hours later I would emerge victorious, having found a huge string of BS running through “The Cask of Amontillado”. I had woven 15 pages of arguments, persuasion, theory, and reference into an A paper. In these years, my last two at UW, I pretty much left the room every Sunday knowing that I had just written an A paper. After a few weeks of this it was automatic. Breakfast. Church. Lunch. Write. Rage. A lot more writing. Read. Edit. Re-read. Print. Staple. Put paper nicely into a folder for delivery the next morning. Triumphant exit from the room. A quick dinner. A nod to the roomies at their desks or on the couch and out the door to Kate’s apartment. I was a robot, a slightly tormented but efficient, robot.

*My roommates got their degrees and are both very successful in their respective fields. One of my roommates during my last year was much younger than me. He is now a stand out swimmer and will graduate next year.

IF YOU HAVEN'T, VOTE IN THE POLL.

100 Things - The First 25

I have always liked lists, numbered lists specifically. In my brief past I have also enjoyed filling out surveys with questions like “What is your favorite book?” “Do you believe in God?” “Do you smoke after sex?” I find enjoyment in reading surveys filled out by acquaintances and friends, although, admittedly, not as much as I enjoy filling them out.

1. People tell me I look like Nicholas Cage or Clive Owen. I don’t see it. I think I look like Bryce Perica.
2. The first place I drove after getting my license was Taco Bell. Trey and I hopped in the Man Van and put some tunes on. We were in heaven.
3. Excluding living in a dorm room, I have inhabited eight houses or apartments. Six with my family. One in college. One with Kate. One in L.A. and New Jersey. Three in Fort Collins. One in Longmont and Laramie. One in Wisconsin.
4. I love New Belgium products. They cannot be found in Wisconsin.
5. I didn’t kiss that many girls growing up.
6. I can’t remember the name of my first kiss. I know it was sometime in Junior High.
   
7. California used to be my top choice for places I wanted to live.
8. I have puked only once from working out.
9. I am good at saying “No.”
10. Star Wars movies will always be my favorites.
11. I prefer the original trilogy to the prequels, but I still enjoy the prequels.
12. My favorite childhood toy was my trampoline.
13. It wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I went to school with someone as tall as me.
14. I constantly check myself for arrogance. I guess this means I have never wanted to carry with me an air of superiority for any reason, including my parents’ background, the size of my house, the cars we drive, the clothes I wear, the gadgets I have, the college I went to, the initials after my name, or the God I worship.
15. Although I constantly check myself for arrogance, that doesn’t mean I never am that way. I know I have been arrogant before, but I try to keep those moments at bay.
16. I know when I am not being cocky. When those moments coincide with other people being cocky my blood boils.
17. With respect to guns and the murder rate, I want the US to be more like Canada.
18. Even better, in that same respect, I want the US to be more like the UK.
19. I first thought I was going to be a computer science major in college.
20. I think we’ll move right back to Colorado next summer.
21. It is also too early to say.
22. My family won Family Feud. I wasn’t born yet.
23. As often as I could when growing up I sneaked glances at the pages of Victoria’s Secret catalogs.
24. I once swam 75 yards without breathing.
25. I pulled an unconscious swimmer off the bottom of a pool after he tried going for 100 yards.

It is 7:39pm in Colorado

I am into brevity right now. Let’s get to it.

I am still unemployed.

I have been offered a part-time assistant swim coach position at UW-Milwaukee. It sounds great. I would need another job though and that is why I haven’t taken the position…yet.

Kate works a lot. Tomorrow is her 12^th straight day of work. She gets this weekend off. We are excited. I am excited. I love her.

I still don’t know anyone in Milwaukee. I spend an extremely large amount of time alone.

I run and bike for exercise. That hasn’t changed much. It hasn’t been too hot lately.

I am used to loud trains. They don’t bother me. They might bother you when you come to visit.

Wisconsin drivers are annoying. Maybe it is just Milwaukee drivers?

Mullets seem a little more common out here. One day I saw three.

There is a full liquor store in every grocery store. It is so hick. I sort of love it.

My desktop picture is of Manhattan Beach and the Manhattan Beach Pier at Sunset. I was there. The picture brings back the breeze. Cold sand between my toes. Crashing of waves.

I have never had cable internet before. It is fast.

The Daily Show is on at 10 around here. No more staying up until midnight to wait for it.

Our study is a mess. Everything that doesn’t have a place and isn’t unpacked is behind me.

This is my 364^th posting on Six Hours on Sunday.

I won’t ever be able to see that pier into Lake Michigan and not think about the trip I had out here with my wife and two fine gentlemen. I see them leap from it. Sounds of that trip come to me when the apartment is dark and empty. They make me smile.

Our vacuum is a beast.

We haven’t found a church yet. The first one we tried was awful. I can’t be polite about it. I have never been to anything like it before. I think if there was ever a church that could scare someone away from Christianity and convince them followers of Jesus are crazy it might be that one. Sad to say.

Redbox hasn’t made it to Milwaukee. Chipotle has.

I keep a map of London on my desk. I look at it at least once a week.

Wedding Day

When I look at pictures of the wedding day I feel like it was years ago or a big dream I had. Kate feels the same way. It was surreal. For four years we knew we were going to marry each other. Our eleven-month engagement was full of work, school, and crazy wedding planning especially in the last couple of months. Before long the week was upon us and Kate and I were struggling to slow things down and relax. I really started to worry that I would get caught up in the stress with Kate and then come out of it only to find that what was supposed to be the “best day of our lives”, according to everyone else, had passed us by while we were at the Marriott choosing the napkin color and fold.

Luckily, that didn’t happen. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were three amazing days—the best of my life. I was humbled again and again by this amazing group of friends that treat me so well. I was humbled by seeing so many people come together to celebrate the union of Kate and I. I was humbled by toasts. I was humbled by amazing parents on both sides of the aisle that I owe so much to. Lastly, I was brought to my knees before God when Kate rounded that corner in the atrium of the church so I could see her. From that point until Tim handed me the arm of his firstborn were the most humbling moments of my life. I was overcome with emotion and, as many of you could see, pretty much cried during the whole ceremony.

I felt out of place at times because during the week of your wedding all eyes are on you. And, well, all eyes were on us. It felt weird, but I was constantly reminding myself that they aren’t staring at me because I am 6’9” or because my fly is down, rather they stare because that was our day, our week, and a leap of love and faith that you just don’t want to miss. So you stare, hoping you can read the person’s feelings or record the moment with a smile, an image, or sound bite.

The attention, no matter how unusual, could not take my eyes off Kate for more than a few seconds that day. She was beautiful before, but I was taken aback by how stunning she looked that day. It was like seeing her for the very first time. He makes all things new. I felt that on the wedding day. I still do. That is a part of love at its best.

From the Reverend Doctor's Desk

This is a first, posting something my dad wrote. The following is a excerpt from the message last Sunday. My dad addressed big issues: the poor and injustice. This is not an easy thing to do in many church settings. And frankly, a lot of people don't like hearing these answers. Love to be comfortable with them.

What are we individually and collectively to do in regards to the poor and injustice? Here are my top ten answers to that question:

· Our first act must be to repent of our distain and disgust toward the poor. We must acknowledge our self-righteousness that views all poor as welfare cheats and lazy indigents. We must confess that our prejudice toward different classes of the poor, such as illegal immigrants, is a selfish disguise for not wanting to have our standard of living disturbed.

· Second, we are called to identify with and stand for the poor because Jesus did so himself.

· Third, our response to the poor should cause us to examine how we can lead a compassionate lifestyle and constrain our greed and materialism.

· Fourth, we must share the gospel with the poor. Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (Lk. 4:18). Along with this, we are to prayer for the poor and oppressed of the world in our daily prayers.

· Fifth, I would suggest including the poor and oppressed in your household budget. Dedicate some of your personal giving to economic aid organizations like OXFAM, Compassion Intl., Bread For The World, or World Vision that provide food and care for children, refugees and the poor.

· Sixth, pay close attention to economic and political conditions in other nations. We can’t help if we don’t know what’s really going on.

· Seventh, get to know organizations that are working for justice locally. Ex. OUR Center, Boulder County Justice, Boulder County Safehouse, Boulder County AIDS Project

· Eighth, make working for justice part of your weekly or monthly routine. Devote some time to a specific activity that personally connects you to people who are poor or disenfranchised.

· Ninth, vote your conscience. Remember that nations will be judged by the way they treat people who are disadvantaged.

· Lastly, advocate and work for a person, people or cause that you believe, one that has meaning for you personally.

London - 12 Feb 06

12 Feb, Sunday

I wrote the following before and during the organ recital at St. Paul’s tonight:

Quiet. Echoes of footsteps. The red glow of the choir stall lamps. Black and white marble floors. Ornate. Holy. Peaceful. The glow of the gold leaf. The inability to tell when the dome above me stops rising toward the heavens it was built to reach. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel: the men that are depicted in mosaics around the bottom of the dome. They are angled toward the floor. There are so many statues and busts of children and babies in this place. I would like to see a list of the people who have worshipped here. You look or walk in a direction of a corner of the church and you never quite reach it because it is too vast, or you are simply stopped in your tracks by an elaborate anything that has evaded your gaze until now. To think that the previous cathedral that stood here before the Great Fire of London was bigger is baffling.

Later on...I did attend the service after the organ recital. It was a little different because it was informal. There was no choir to lead the hymns. I have to go to an evensong service next week for a choir. That will be more worshipful. I also found Holy Trinity at Brompton, but they didn’t have any evening services, which I was surprised by. I will have to make it there by 11:15 on a Sunday to worship there. I will definitely make it soon I think. Maybe a service there in the morning and an evensong at St. Paul’s later that day.

This next week is a busy one with the Globe visit, the London Eye, and a trip to Cambridge. Just like this last week I will find myself in awe again of all that I am getting to do here. I am being spoiled. I love it.

I need to clarify that the Holy Trinity church I found was not the one I was looking for. I was looking for Holy Trinity Brompton in Knightsbridge, London. I found Holy Trinity Church in Chelsea. When I got there and it was all locked up I was a bit confused. I didn’t know what to expect, but to find out they didn’t have an evening service was surprising. Eventually I found HTB and went to a service there. I thought the service was going to be geared more toward the young adult, but it was more family based. I made note of the evening service, but never got around to going to it. I regret that.

By the way, HTB has an amazing website. Click on the link I included and take a look. They podcast messages too. HTB is the home church of the Alpha course that you may, or may not be familiar with. Alpha is sort of big.