Love. Embrace. Live.

To love God is to love people.
Spend some extra time with your family and friends this holiday season.
If you play games, or sing carols, do so in exuberance.
If you cook for your family add a little extra butter or pork fat.
Hug a little longer.........linger, don't be restless.
Enjoy it while you can.

To embrace beauty is to see everything the way that God sees it.
Beauty is truly the measure of a soul.
To see beauty is to be beauty.
A beautiful person is one who loves well.
A beautiful person is one who is well loved.
Beauty can never be reduced to a thing or an it.
True Beauty is derived from The One who was beauty incarnate.

To live life to the full is to never go half-way.
Even anger, rage, and sorrow are necessary once in a while.
For it is in those times that we truly experience the grace and goodness of God.
Living a full life is life without excuses and regrets.
There's always a better option.....so prayerfully consider your steps.
But, if you find yourself down the wrong path, don't let pride get in your way.........
Run, no sprint, back to the place where you belong.

"So this is my prayer:

that your love will flourish and that

you will not only love much but well.

Learn to love appropriately.

You need to use your head and test your feelings

so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.

Live a lover's life, circumspect and expemplary,

a life Jesus will be proud of:

bountiful in fruits from the soul,

making Jeus Christ attractive to all,

getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God."

Philippians 1 (The Message)

baptism

there is a bottom to my grief

i've been there many times

where the only thing i can do

is look up and see the light

i'm not a porcelain china doll

with a smile plastered to my face

i have experienced enough sorrow

to realize the miracle of grace

the rhythmic ache of my guilt

reminds me of what i am not

not worthy, not happy, not finished

not taking note of what i've got

yet the hope that belies all reason

is the thing to which i hold

not because it's what i'm supposed to feel

nor because it's what i've been told

but rather it's the cause of years

of prayers, and protestations too

of questions unanswered and lives unfinished

the mysteries of life to push through

so, finally, i bid farewell

to the old me and the old you

to all the excuses and secondhand curses

only to be made anew.

Because of You I am made anew.

~mse

By the way....

Howdy-ho neighbors, it's me again!
I meant to say something about some of the new features of the site.
Bravenet has some pretty cool stuff that you can play with....

If you have been to the site and don't mind telling me about yourself (but don't want to post), please sign in on the guestbook. I added it really just to see where everyone is from.

The second thing is that I have added and subtracted some links from the last life of the Blog....if you are a Blogger and you would like me to add you to my Friends Blogs section.....just holla and I will. I have a lot of friends that are doing this now and I don't want to leave anybody out.

Lastly, I have included a photo album on the right that you can check out pics of my family and friends and other fun stuff. (NOTE: If you are shown in any of the pics and would rather not be......please tell me. It's no big deal, I have no problem taking pics off......okay?)

This has become something that I hold very dear.....
it's not just a journal, and sometimes I will post stuff that sounds like I am trying to be smarter than I am.......
I am not trying to do this to impress anybody necessarily, but I do want to become a better writer.....so I covet your feedback.

Blessings.....

It's late......

hello friends.......
it's another late night.
I haven't been to bed before 2am in a very long time.
I don't know what my deal is.
Actually tonight I do.......

Kristin and I went to see one of our favorite bands tonight at the Marquee Theater in Tempe.





Nickel Creek was amazing as usual.....this is the third time for us to see them.
Oddly enough.....it was also the third state that we've seen them in.
The first time was in San Juan Capistrano in Southern California....kind of their home turf (Sara and Sean Watkins are from Carlsbad, CA).
The second time was at Stubb's in Austin.....great Barbecue! If you ever get the chance to go there to see anyone play, do it!
So this third time was here in Phoenix......man, we've moved alot!

Anyway the show was amazing!
The opening act was this guy named Andrew Bird. I had never heard him before but he was flippin' fantastic!!
I realize that I use exclamation points a lot!
Should I stop?
Does it water down the intensity of my excitement if I use it too much?! (okay.....that one was superfluous)

So I had never heard him before and he was really goooooood. It was just him and a drummer. He would play the violin/guitar/glockenspiel and he would whistle (amazing whistler!). He would loop and layer the instruments like Dave does in some of the band's songs like the beginning of Rescue is Coming. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Dave.....I don't know if you read this, but you need to check this guy out. You actually probably already know of him.....but if you don't I think you would love him!

I have to admit with some shame that one of my favorite parts of the evening is when NC covered Toxic.
Yeah.....that Toxic.
They toasted Britney after they finished the song....it was hilarious.
Kristin and I commented on the ride home that they are in some serious need of good music on their bus if all they have is Toxic by Britney Spears......we should send them a copy of A Collision.
I think that they would really like it......really.

Totally off topic now......and it's late.....must sleep

For Art's Sake!

Okay. I just recently had a fun exchange with a couple of guys regarding C.S. Lewis' intention for writing The Chronicles of Narnia. You can find it here. The posts are chronological from the bottom up. Check it out if you'd like. In fact bookmark that site if you've never read it. Cory's a friend and has a lot of great things to say. Check it out.

So on to my main point today that has been needling me ever since I got into that particular exchange on Cory's blog.

Is it right to separate the author from his work to objectify it and use it for evangelistic purposes?
Is it right to take the song away from the songwriter when she wrote it explicitly for another purpose?
Can it be unfair to divide the painting from the painter when it could be used to "advance the kingdom"?

We have to be sophisticated readers/listeners/appreciaters (is that even a word?)....enough to take the art and the artist as a whole and find the good in it. Otherwise it becomes a blunt tool of evangelism that only takes meaning from the Gospel and nothing else.

Don't get me wrong.....there are shades of The Story in every story. I don't doubt that.
What I find horribly offensive is when we take the words and deeds of artists that are clearly not communicating a clear representation of the Gospel and "christianizing" them for mass christian consumption.

When is art just art?

On the posts that I alluded to earlier one comment was made about the Evangelical Church co-opting the Matrix movies to evangelize and communicate the gospel.
Some folks did that, I don't disagree.
But since then I have some reservations about that approach.
If I were to sit down with the Wachowski brothers (creators of The Matrix) I would find that multiple world religions and New Age philosophies went into their writing of the Matrix movies. The rare interviews with the siblings illustrate this fact.

So what should our response be if we are to "bring out the God-flavors and God-colors of the world?" (Matthew 5, thanks Cory)

When Kyle would do his yearly installments of God in the Movies or God in the Music he would make it clear what that exercise was meant to accomplish.
We did not extract christian gospel meaning from High Fidelity or U2.
We pulled out the themes of: love, compassion, greed, anger, trust, patience, on-and-on-and-on-and-on.

From there we could always dive into SCRIPTURE! Yes! For those of you out there that thought that we never broke open the Good Book....how wrong you are!
Kyle would bring to the surface a certain passage of scripture that dealt with the same theme the music/movie was dealing with and asked one important question: What is our response?

It was never about making a non-christian movie a tool of evangelism.
Nor was it about making a "secular" song an aria of christian dogma.

It was about finding the God-flavors in every bite and savoring the goodness of our Lord and Savior.
It was about seeing the God-colors in every palette and appreciating the greatness of our God.

I feel like I could go on about this, but I won't.
Any responses out there?
Am I just splitting hairs here?
Is this all just empty rhetoric?
I don't think so, but I could be wrong.
It's been known to happen.

Light and Dark

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
~John Constable
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
~Sir Francis Bacon

There are things that I am convinced become more beautiful with tragedy.

The splashes of black across an otherwise brilliant array of colors can make something brilliant and beautiful.

We only notice the brilliance because of the infusion of this dark matter.

I don’t know the underlying theological issue here, but it is my guess that we only understand good in light of evil. We only understand joy in light of pain.

We only understand friendship in light of loneliness.

We only understand healing in light of brokenness.

And, to be sure, there is no way around experiencing the negative aspects of light in favor of the positive.

You would be cheating yourself if you didn’t break once in a while.

Because it is then, and only then, do we truly understand what it means to experience grace.

In Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Gospel of Mark he writes,

“’Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?’” (Mark 8:37-38 The Message)

This has always been hard for me to understand, because everything that everyone ever told me about being a Christian was all about putting on a happy face regardless of your situation.

Joy was a façade that allowed me to hide the tumult going on inside my gut.

What I’ve come to understand recently is that embracing suffering includes experiencing suffering, and all that it might include.

The kind of sobbing that wracks your body with convulsions.

The kind of grief that leaves you questioning your faith.

The kind of sorrow that leads you to those thoughts of self-loathing that nobody is supposed to share.

With anybody.

Ever.

God is bigger than your despair. That is for sure.

But, rather than clinging onto that truth to escape the despair itself, we should be more like Christ who “because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” (Hebrews 2:18 NIV)

Is this not the lesson of the life of Christ?

Yet we seem to gloss over it every Sunday.

We talk about suffering, but in disaffected tones that seem miles apart from real pain.

Real pain creates a hole in your soul that cannot be filled with a 12 Step Program, or a Bible Study on Wednesday night.

Nor should it.

We embrace our brokenness within a brotherhood of Man that is broken and redeemed at the same time.

True beauty is lived in these shades of dark, weaving in and out of the constant light of Christ, and, surely enough, ends in eternity with the Lord of Everything.

Beautiful

Embrace Beauty


In Kyle's book he references an article by Brian McLaren that I would like to share with you regarding this 1/3 of our modern shema. It goes like this:

I go to a movie. In this movie there are murderers, sex addicts, thieves, and thugs. But even among these desperate and damaged characters, there are moments of tenderness, forgiveness, loyalty, honor, and honesty. As the story unfolds, I look just like everyone else sitting in the theater, eating popcorn and candy, but in my mind I am engaged in a kind of discernment that my movie-watching neighbors are largely oblivious to. Because I have been "set apart" by God's message of truth, I evaluate all I see and hear in the movie by the grid of this understanding. The guy nest to me is thinking, 'Nice body on that woman...cool car...whoa, neat special effect.' But my mind is humming, comparing the action and values pictured in the movie with the message of truth I have come to believe.

While I was in Seminary I took a class on Faith and the Arts. The bulk of the time that was spent in discussion was on this topic of Beauty. You see, to me, it's not as subjective as you may think. You may speak of preference..."I prefer romantic comedy's vs. the next Summer Blockbuster" or "Asian-Fusion cuisine is so 90's....I am more into the authentic Mediterranean spices and sauces" or, more pointedly, "Church Choirs are so OVER!!!! I need a praise band that writes their own music and plays every instrument."

Now.....while I might actually agree with the last sentiment....I would never, NEVER, dismiss an alternative art form to my own preference merely because I don't like it. Do you get where I am going with this?

Like the cheesy songs says, "Everything is beautiful, in it's own way."

The beautifulness (is that even a word?) of something does not depend on our opinion of it. That is merely preference.

Beautiful is God's gift.

Beautiful is everything.

Light and Shadow accentuate and highlight what is beautiful.

Sometimes when everything is illuminated it is difficult to discern the real beauty of something.

It's all so bright and washed with light.

There are nooks and crannies that are in between the dark and the light.

That is where we live.

Craving what is good and beautiful.

Clinging to God's promises.

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I just got to thinking........when Kyle would use this as benediction he would say it like this......

"As we approach this week may we Love God, Embrace Beauty, and Live Life to the Fullest."

He never said "Embrace your version of beauty" or "Embrace your opinion...."

It was merely "Embrace Beauty."

I think that the challenge here is similar to the "Love God" issue.

We need to be about seeing the world through Christ's eyes.

Not our own.

When we do that everyone is worthy of love and everything is beautiful.

Let's try to be the people that love.......