worth it.

Some days, I get exhausted in ministry and wonder why I didn't become an investment banker. Other days, I get to go on sunrise hikes with my small group and it's worth it.

.cheer up, human cannonball.

It's been a while since our last posting. I've been accused of blog abandonment by my very own mother, so in my defense, here we are. Back again...

We are fresh from a conference in NYC this weekend, and if we had a camera, there would be pictures to post. Unfortunately, our camera never made it back from the CD release party in January, thus no pixel pictures, only word pictures.

We stayed at the Hotel 17, located in downtown NYC, right across from Calvary-St. George's Church, where the conference and worship services were held. Hotel 17 self-depicts as a "chic budget hotel" where Madonna has rested, Woody Allen has filmed, and a slew of other New York details *should* make the space more than attractive to "travelers on a budget." We thought Great! We're sort of chic and we're definitely on a budget! Well, church paid for us and a more accurate description might be "creepy-weird hotel" for "travelers on a budget -- a rather LARGE budget, and then a few people who could have been featured as extras on Daria if Daria hadn't been just a cartoon."

Apart from the un-fun-fun-house feel of the rooms ("Hello, Mr. Torrence..."), the community baths and the many hours of high-decibel Oprah viewing in the room next to us made me feel *almost* like I was back in my freshman dorm. This time, however, there was only a skulking bellhop with bleached blond hair to run to for help when the wild-eyed, failed B-movie actor emerged from his top floor room and began his silent but murderous rampage (I was pretty sure that was what this whole set up was meant for...and I mean, I was afraid).

I didn't spend a whole lot of time in our room. The conference was great, though. Here's a link to the blog that will explain more about the vision behind the conference:

Mockingbird


For the past couple of months, I have been wholly and unabashedly obsessed with one Ryan Adams song -- Everybody Knows. One disclaimer: I am wholly against doing a Christian-y, "stick God's name in your favorite love song!" move, but this song is ridiculous. Lyrically, I've come across only a few songs that so directly describe what I understand to be our post-resurrection relationship with God, as one fraught with distraction and hatred in humanity, pursuit and rescue in God. The inability of the speaker to "give back" only makes the desire of the one to whom the song is directed in Adams' poetry even more powerful. Here are the lyrics:

You come for me in the worst of places
You come for me, you come and try to take me home
I'm always in need and it's hard to be reciprocating
The fabric of our life gets torn

And everything's changing so how I am to know
How I'm going to hold on to you when I'm spinning out of control
You and I together
But only one of us in love
And everybody knows

He says your name, it echoes in my head like it was a canyon
He says your name, he says it and I know what's up
You come to me sometimes when I'm thinking like a cannonball shooting out a canyon
And I forget whatever it was I was thinking about

With everything changing how am I to know
How I'm going to hold on to you when I'm spinning out of control
You and I together
But only one of us in love
And everybody knows

And finally, I had to put this blog up and give it notice. As a child, I had one singular goal, and that was to surround myself with Garfield paraphernalia. Now, as an adult, I think I may have been given the address to a blog that explains my obsession.

What's really going on in the Garfield cartoons, sans Garfield. Brilliant.










We have all been Jon Arbuckle, have we not?

Garfield Minus Garfield