so i meant to post this short one this morning on the back of 'unaccounted for' which a lot of people have read and some of you have commented on. and it was this thort that i had the other day as i was walking down the street post rugby world cup 'tragedy' - that when we talk about the biblical concept of iron sharpening iron, it is not a pleasant, comfortable process although it [...]
so yesterday we lost a rugby match. like a game. i hear there'll be another one in a few weeks time. in four years time there will even be this kind of one. we won it before. a different team will win it this time. the world will continue to turn. within twenty minutes of us losing the game i was completely bummed. not because we lost the game, but because naturally facebook statusville became [...]
let me start by being perfectly honest here, i am not an artist... not in the drawing, painting, nude sculpture making sense anyways... when i was in high school i somehow managed to end up taking art as one of my choice subjects [i copied a monkey face pretty well back in standard 5/grade 7 and got accepted in art at westerford somehow that way] for grade 8 and 9 but very quickly found out [...]
...continuing with an extract from the 'Why I am Mystical/Poetic' from Brian Mclaren's 'A Generous Orthodoxy' 'This mystical/poetic approach takes special pains to remember that the Bible itself contains precious little expository prose. Rather it is story laced with parable, poem, interwoven with vision, dream and opera (isn't this the best contemporary genre to compare to the book of Job?), personal letter and public song, all thrown together with an undomesticated and unedited artistic passion. [...]
i have been busy reading brian mclaren's 'Generous Orthodoxy' and as a previous not-a-big-fan-of-brian-mclaren am absolutely loving it and highly recommend it - breaks open a lot of different boxes and helps clarify a bunch of christian labels in a very helpful way... here is an extract from the latest chapter which i really enjoyed titled, "Why I am Mystical/Poetic." and the context is using metaphors to understand God: 'So we reach for another metaphor [...]
at this present point in time my wife valerie [aka the beautiful val] and i are living and working and interning and ministering with the simple way community in philadelphia... before this i was a youth slash student pastor [disclaimer: no youth or students were slashed during my time there] at a vineyard church in stellenbosch, outside cape town in south africa for 6 years. i remember the one staff meeting we had in the [...]
Back in the day there was a funny guy called Jack Handey who wrote deep thorts like: 'One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked me if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary one. I had to laugh. Laugh and laugh. Because I didn't know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me.' [Jack Handey] [...]
So today i was on a semi long-distance trip and penned a couple of new brett andy’s – usually i try them out on facebook/twitter first before i see what people really like, but these have never been viewed before and so i would really appreciate it if you would take a minute to mention if any of them make you smile or laugh or silently chortle... “As I finished sewing up the incision, there [...]
so last nite A-Ron and i joined Steve and Kristin and friends for a 10pm showing [what a great time!] of Comedysportz, Philadelphia's longest running [similiar to us, 18 years i think they said] improv show. and had a really good time. Kind of a cross between Whose Line Is It Anyway?, TheatreSports and Stellenbosch's Ad Lib show and with a little more emphasis on the sports than we have the show starts with the [...]
i was busy responding to a hospitality house [part of my job at the simple way] email when i saw this link to a shane claiborne uk tour happening later this year - if you watch the brief video clip you will get an idea of why val and i are hanging out in these parts with these people - it is an exciting dreama nd vision - what if Jesus actually meant the stuff? [...]