The Emerging Church

Somehow I think the clue to the emerging church is found by watching 2 different versions of "Numb" by Linkin Park. The first version shows a girl who has become numb because she can't meet all the expectations placed on her to succeed and be popular and a great daughter.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_5Oi4R-jSoA
and the second version is the same message but when it is sung to the world, it can be imagined as something that could be sung by the church to the world - a world that can't find a good news message in anything we say or do.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WIaXYIEQivk

Women and Rock Stars

Peter decided when he was 4 years old that my type wasn't a priest. Having respect for the wisdom of a 4 year old mind, I said, "What exactly is my type?" And I was told, "You're type is a rock star with purple spiked hair." So I explained, "Rock stars live in buses and hotels and take drugs and drink a lot and have lots of people wanting a piece of them and as exciting as all that might be, I didn't think it was good daddy material."
Here's a link that tries to explain scientifically why rock stars draw girls like magnets.
http://living.scotsman.com/features/Sexy-science-Why-music-really.4319072.jp

Feel Good Songs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdblcuWtB9I&feature=related James Brown, I feel gooooood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhZ59cCP-uI&feature=related Ben Folds, The Luckiest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKzgrpw13Kw&feature=related Boys II Men, Song for Mama - John and I danced to this song at his wedding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp2Jmtob_SQ Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World

Sacred Destinations

On my igoogle homepage, each day there is a picture of a different sacred destination. When I decided to check out today's picture, I found this beautiful website
http://sacred-destinations.blogspot.com
If I were inclined to vacation, I'd be more interested in exploring sacred destinations than going to a resort or on a cruise. But then again, I know if I were actually there rather than travelling by internet, I wouldn't be able to focus on what a marvellous experience I was having. I get incredibly distracted by weather and whether or not my feet are comfortable and how much everything costs and any violation of safety standards.
I'm the ultimate Dorothy - "There's no place like home, there's no place like home".

Lambeth Conference

I'm trying to decide how much time to devote to Lambeth Conference stuff. Rather than doing the Bible Study on John, I think I'll just watch the Gospel of John DVD. I have the blogging Bishops on my Google Reader. The first time I read all the blog messages, my eyes felt strained but since then there have been only a few posts. The initial catching up gave a pretty good overview of both who is blogging and the position and strategy of each Bishop. Combine the blogs with the values tribe information in Sex in the Snow and you get the Coles Notes of Lambeth. Thank goodness rules have been laid down about what can and cannot be blogged about. It gives us a window by which to judge the degree of fair play and civility happening behind closed doors.

Youtube Suggestions

http://www.oculture.com/2008/07/70_signs_of_intelligent_life_at_youtube.html
This above link connects you to links to things intellectual on youtube.
Personally I mainly go to youtube for the music. Today I read a wedding blog that referenced "The Right Man" by Christina Aguilera. I love being able to hear the music video while still having the blog post on screen. I have to admit that I find this song disturbing because marriage has a hard time living up to traditional expectations as expressed in the marriage vows. There's no promise that walking down the aisle is walking away from past trauma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Ol741FNF8&feature=related

Writers' Rooms

http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersrooms
The Guardian is doing a series on writers' room. This is eye candy for me. Always, always, always this woman finds a space in the rectory for myself. It's just taken for granted that Stephen needs an office but I'm telling you a momma needs a place of her own too. Thank God for Virginia Woolf and my momma and grandma. They all knew: "A woman must have money and a room of her own." My grandma was born in 1880, taught until she was 27 and then picked out a 19 year old stud of a husband to share the remaining 59 years of her life.

Wedding Blogs

At the moment, I'm hooked on wedding blogs. I have several wedding design blogs on my google reader feed. Weddings are all so perfect and looking through all the beautiful things designed around the occasion ends the day on a much more positive note than watching the news. I haven't been a shopper since living in the Yukon in the 1980s. When we move, it seems to be my stuff that gets weeded out, lost, destroyed which is a mini practice for the day we make the final journey and separate ourselves from all our possessions. This love of design is a totally visual candy thing - a way of discovering what appeals to me on an aesthetic level.

The Demitroff Family Photo

This is our first family wedding. Our youngest son was the first of our children to wed. This has got to be the best time of life.

Home Open

For my entire married life, I won the world's worst housekeeper award. I'd do a gazillion hours of trying to get everything together and it always looked either like it just had been ransacked or someone had toss in a grenade. Well a week and a half ago I bought a digital camera and the whole thing came together in about a day. I didn't post anything because I didn't know if it would last but it has. I'm the kind of person who looks in the mirror and whatever size I am, my mind sees a circus-size fat lady. It's the same with household clutter - no matter how much is or isn't out of place, my mind sees the world's worst space. When I took pictures of the rooms, I could isolate the hot spots and realized that not that much needed doing. I suppose the clearest way to describe is that I thought of myself like Drew Carey's fat lady protagonist Mimi - took a picture and said with a slight change of attitude I could pull off a Queen Latifah. Both women have presence, power, wit and even high self-esteem but Queen Latifah has way more fun than Mimi because she has an undefeatable attitude.