Raquel and I are in Utah right now enjoying a couple relaxing days with my folks, my sister, and her husband. My brother was here last night but he left early this morning to represent the radio station for which he works while doing some schmoozing and all that crap with bands and celebs for a couple weeks.
I could never live up here and frankly, I have no idea how my folks have been able to put up with living here for four years. Never the less, it’s always quite relaxing to retreat here for a few days. Tomorrow I will be skiing all day with my dad and Owen (my brother in law). I truly love skiing. Few things rival how exhilirating that sport is.
This has been a good holiday season. I’ve become a bit of a Scrooge in recent years for some reason. I can’t figure it out. The “magic of Christmas” isn’t very present as of late. The over-sensationalism that American Evangelicalism seems to have attached to Christmas is a bit lost on me and I’ve never been a fan of the rampant consumerism that has defined the secular celebration of Christmas for as long as I can remember. That said, I’ve really been able to sit back this year and take a look at the holiday for what it is and have been able to relax and appreciate this time of year with my wife who celebrates every aspect of this time of year. That’s one of the many things that makes me love her as much as I do. Besides, some of the best music ever recorded was for Christmas and I love getting to put some of that up on the iPod. I had a great Christmas mix this year.
Anyhow…I don’t suppose I’ll blog too much more this week. When I do, it will hopefully be my Best Albums of 2005 list.
I finally came up with something to write about.
Over the past couple weeks, through various blogs and message boards, I’ve linked to this particular blog entry. It’s a tongue-in-cheek “article” about how to tell whether or not you’re Emerging. I find it pretty amusing, actually, and thoroughly creative. But there’s one part of it that I’m a little put off by:
You use these words in a negative way:
Foundationalism, Absolute Truth, Church Growth, D.A. Carson, Calvinism, Modernism, Fundamentalist, Bush, Seeker Sensitive, Preaching, Pulpit, Doctrine, Innerancy, Power, Enlightenment, Rationalism, Meta-narratives, Universal, Judgemental
Again, I realize that the blog is entirely tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken seriously, but as my wife tends to so eloquently remind me, every bit of sarcasm has a hint of truth. Why are Absolute Truth and Innerancy considered negative?
I realize that I’m still fairly ignorant to a lot of the Emerging movement but I was wondering if one of my Emerging friends (or those of you who know anything about this movement) might be able to enlighten me as to the seriousness of that part.
I feel like I should write something today, seeing as I’m sitting around with not a whole lot to do. Problem is, I don’t really have anything to say aside from this need I feel to post something for those of you who complain that I don’t write enough.
A question for you all, though. Maybe we can generate some “comment conversations” as I like to call them.
If you were making a Christmas music compilation, what songs would you put on it? When you answer, be sure to clarify whose performance of whatever song you would pick.
A couple days ago we received the local community college course catalog in the mail. I noticed this. It’s apparently a new program. I think I should look into this.
So, we had a bit of an ice storm yesterday. Not much. In the four years since I’ve lived here we’ve had far worse. Holy hell! You’d think that this city was getting bombed! It was the kind of thing that, sure…of course you should be careful when driving…any idiot would know that. But you don’t need to create an entire day’s worth of local news programming to tell us every 10 minutes that it’s still effing freezing outside and that the freeways have ice on them. Every freeway was frozen. It was that way all day yesterday. But still, news. All. Day. Long. And here’s my favorite part. I got the entire day off work today because of this. Yes, because there were some roads that a little bit of ice on them, they make it sound like you’re going to DIE if you drive them. We can’t have dead people working for us so stay the hell home and don’t do anything. If you have kids, play board games with them. Otherwise, do nothing.
I can’t believe the rest of the snowed-on country takes this state seriously sometimes.
By the way, the title of this particular blog entry comes from one of the best Triumph clips of all time. Google “Triumph,” “weather,” and “Hawaii.” If you can find it, it’s classic.