The Broadway Version of My Life

Today while I was walking home from the library and seriously rocking out on my iPod (think the commercials) I thought what a cool thing it would be to make a musical of my life out of the songs on my computer. The list is incomplete (acts 1 and 5 are kinda hard to set to music.) But here is my life as a musical

Act 1
Superman by Five for Fighting
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Act 2
Rave On by Buddy Holly
Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra
Kiss the Girl from Disney's Little Mermaid
I'm a Believer by The Monkees
Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley

Act 3
Charade by Bobby Darin
Your Mistake by Sister Hazel
She Hates Me by Puddle of Mud
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Johnny Cash
Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own by U2

Act 4
Somebody to Love by Queen
The Date Song by Jamie Hooten and David Graves
Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkel and Johnny Cash (I can't decide which version)

Act 5
O'Sullivan's March by the Chieftans
Into the West from The Return of the King (performed by Annie Lennox)

Let me know who you think should play me in both the stage and movie versions.

PS Thank you for indulging this little bit of narcisim on my part ;-)

Austin City Limited

This past weekend I had the great fortune to travel to Austin, the capital of Texas, to visit my good friends Nathan and Melissa Jerkins. While there I took a much needed break from school life and became, for 2 days, just another 20-something. We ate gigantic chicken fried steaks and fish tacos. We played washers and enjoyed one another's company.

The weekend was more than simply good food and games, however. The weekend was an eye opening experience. I have spent the better part of the past decade living in the theorhetical world of the university. Virtue is a topic of conversation, tolerance a matter of course in a world where everyone operates with similar agenda's toward similar ends. The weekend in Austin opened my eyes to the world outside the academy. In this world, virtue is a lifestyle that must be practiced faithfully if one is be virtuous. In this world, tolerance must be embraced as each new person is encountered. Here, in the real world, the theoretical world of the academy must actually be put into practice. Honestly, it was unsettling. This is not a safe world, and the consequences for our actions are real, the stakes much higher.

God help me as I prepare to enter the real world.

A For Real Update

I have just finished reading the book Farnham's Freehold by Robert Heinlein. It is a science fiction novel which describes a family catapulted 2,000 years into the future by nuclear war. There they discover that the cultural roles have reversed. "Whites" have, by their own self-immolation, become the subservient culture to the dominant "Black" culture. I will not give away any more details because it is a good story which you should probably read.

When it was published in 1964 it was, to be sure, a controversial book. It seems to me to be controversial for both sides of the racial divide. White people would be offended by its portrayal of white people as the property of others, while Black people would possibly be offended by the assertion that, given power, they will be no more humane than white people were.

The question of power is central to the understanding of the author's point. It is not about race, it is about power. Power is the dividing factor in human relationships. It is the thing which makes its posessors strive for more, and those who lack it to fight for it. Once again, it is not about race, but about the attitudes of power. Power corrupts those who posess it as surely as people die and governments levy taxes.

Jesus Christ laid aside his power and priviledge and became the lowest of humanity. He laid aside his divinity to become a slave, and he calls us who claim to follow him to do the same.

An Update

This update is for you Jamie Hooten.

I will be going to Austin to visit Nathan and Melissa Jerkins this weekend.
Comps are still beating me about the head and shoulders.
Changing door locks is a fun diversion from schoolwork.

The Life of the Minister

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." 1 Corinthians 8:1b-3

Perhaps those of us who are called to ministry would be well served, and would well serve God's church if we take these words to heart and enact them in our lives.

Survival of the Fittest??

We now live in the twilight of the human race. Human beings (homo sapiens) have peaked as a species and are now on the way out. Soon we will be joining the dinosaurs in the pre-historic section of the museum.

We get into machines and routinely race around at 3 to 5 times the speed our bodies were designed for. We get into other machines and fly, a feat for which we are not physically equipped. This high level of technology should carry with it a large body count as the poorly equipped and the unadaptable are weeded out of the collective gene-pool, thus making the remaining whole better equipped to deal with the world we have created. Is this the case? No, it is not. We have used our high level of technology to create not only faster modes of transportation and the like, but also safer ones. Now, the unfit are allowed to persist and even procreate through the proliferation of helmet laws and seat-belt legislation thus muddying the gene-pool. I submit that humanity has thus ceased growing and has begun to revert to previous lower levels of intelligence.

It will not be long before the curtain closes on the human act and we go to intermission. Current expenditures of resources and the increasing pollution levels will soon leave us with a world no longer capable of sustaining human life. A fact somehow missed by the law making bodies of the United States especially. The Dinosaurs had a run lasting millions of years, we've been going for several thousand. A meteor ushered their demise, we are bringing about our own.

You Can Never Go Home Again

This post is on location at my parent's house in Grand Prairie, Texas.

This afternoon I drove "home." I say "home" because Home is Abilene, Texas where I have spent the majority of the past decade and "home" is Grand Prairie, Texas where i spent the majority of the previous two decades and where my parents still live.

Everytime I come to visit, something has changed. Except to me, one who visits so infrequently, it seems as though a lot of things have changed. Because this is the place where I grew up though, it seems more than a bunch of new buildings. It appears as though the fundamental nature of the universe has been altered. This town is the place of my memory, and now that memory is disconnected from reality.

I love holidays, and I love spending time with my family at holidays, but I do not enjoy going "home." It reminds me that even the most fundamental things in the universe are changeable and not always for the better.

Supernatural

This one goes out to all those hard science people out there:

I am a historically, literarily, theologically bent fellow. As such I have very little problem accepting/assiging mystery to the world around me. I have been wondering, however, how do my friends in the sciences deal with the supernatural? The aim of the sciences is to measure, categorize, and define the world and thus (it appears to me) erase mystery.

Discuss . . .

And the Winner Is . . .

The winner for my [renamed] Winter Reading Project is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Melissa Jerkins who recommended it has history on her side as she and her husband Nathan are the ones responsible (and probably culpable) for recommending such classics as Steven King's The Gunslinger; Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny; and they are singularly responsible for my acting career.

Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions which I will also attempt to read as well.

Holy Crap, How many of these Things are There?

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, now I know. Don't we all feel better now?

My December Reading Project

To all my diehard fans out there who have been pestering me to post some more of my profound thoughts, I turn the tables. Here is your chance to be profound on MY blog. I'm going to let you my loyal friends and enemies pick out the books (2) which I will read during the December holidays. ACU was so kind to us this year and has given us 5 weeks instead of the usual 4 so I wish to read something good.

Here are the ground rules:

1) The book MUST tell a story (Fiction or Non-Fiction). I am not looking for a philosophical/ethical/theological treatise no matter how profound.

2) You MUST present coherent arguments for me to read it.

I will pick the winner (probably 3) and post their persuasive arguments on the front page of my blog for all to read. Seriously, you can't buy this kind of publicity. But you're welcome to make an offer.

So, Tell me what I should read and why.

A Question

I have spent much time during my TV watching years watching televangelists preaching that God wants me to be Healthy, Wealthy, and Happy. Yet my perspective on the will of God seems to suggest that the mission is more important than the man. I am left with this question: Is my personal happiness and success vital to participation in the mission of God, or is it merely a happy coincidence?

I would really like to hear what the one or two people who read my blog think about this question?

Harry

Back to the Grind

Tomorrow (Monday Aug. 1), I together with the other eight people on staff here at Smith-Adams Hall will be joining the other Residence Hall staffs at Buttman Methodist Encampment for RA camp 2005. In short I am looking at two days of happy fun and glorious tedium. Look for highlights on Wednesday.

Ramen Lite

Recently during a grocery getting excursion to super Wally world (Wal-Mart) I found a twelve (12) pack of ramen noodles for $1.20. That comes out to 12 cents a pack. This evening though I had a hearty meal of ramen noodles, and about an hour later I was once again ravenously hungry. This has led me to believe that Ramen noodles have great taste and are less filling.

The Gambler

(Originally published on my fantasy baseball league message board)

Is anyone else sick of the Kenny Rogers story? I know I am. I wish the media in the metroplex would get the memo and back off and let the man have some space and let the Rangers maybe have a run at the playoffs. Right now it seems that Rogers is target number one for cameramen looking to make a story, or just a quick buck. I hate the media and it's one-sided the player is the devil; the plucky camera guy or obscene audience member an innocent saint. People (especially players) don't just blow up for no reason. What did the cameraman do/say? What line did the fans in Oakland cross that sent a chair headed their way last year. Can we allow / treat our sports stars as human beings first and heroes later.

Acting Lessons - Epilogue

Well, we just finished striking the sets for the Abilene Summer Shakespeare fesitval. After a grueling two and a half hour performance we quickly changed into work clothes and began taking the past two months of our lives down.

It was fun to work that hard with my new closest friends, but boy am I hurting now and boy will I be hurting tomorrow.

Expect an upcoming post to reflect more perfectly upon the experience. For now I'm going to bed.

For A Raving Lunatic . . .

I Found a link to this blog on ESPN.com Page 2's Daily Links section. It's from the blog of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. While he usually puts on a public persona that is far from sane, he does demonstrate that at times he is capable of intelligent thought with this post. It's really good.

Click HERE to read the post.

The World's Largest Bible

I am working this summer at the circulation desk of the ACU library. For the most part this means I sit around checking my e-mail, posting on my blog, and handling the odd patron who needs to check something out or send an international fax or something.

About twice during my morning shift, however, I get to witness something really odd and slightly disturbing. The ACU welcome center gives campus tours to prospective students and their parents and this invariably includes a visit to the library. They take them upstairs and proclaim the academic virtues of the school and then they descend and show them our "claim to fame." The World's Largest Bible. It is enclosed in a glass case that is sealed and protected from damaging elements. Those on the tour come and gawk in amazement over a Bible so large it prevents actual use. They are amazed and even inspired by such a mammoth book.

Maybe it is the cynic in me, but I wonder, What's the point? What is the purpose of so massive a book? Are we so in awe of the scriptures that we must create such massive images of it and fawn over them in near worship? Would we rather idolize a book than embody a way of life?

"I pause for reply"

A Room with A View to A Murder

Last night I, together with about 10-15 of my friends from church, watched the movie "Hotel Rwanda" about the 100 days of Genocide that gripped that country in 1994 and left nearly a million people dead.

Afterward we talked about our reactions to the movie. There was a combined sense of shame, outrage, and powerlessness to do anything about it. In the following discussion prayer was mentioned several times, but I really didn't feel like we had a good grip on what that prayer was for, or even what it was supposed to do.

Why do we pray? Is prayer the cop-out for our inactivity? (Oh, I'll not help you but I will pray for you.) Do we pray just so we'll feel better about a situation? Is prayer ever really about us? These are the questions spawned by our discussion of the movie.

Discuss . . .

Acting Lessons

We just started week two of rehearsals for the Abilene Summer Shakespeare Festival production of Julius Caesar. Let me tell ya, acting is tough. You have to become a whole new person, or in my case two new people, who you most likely have never met. Then you have to take a text and put bones and muscle and flesh to it. It is enacting the encarnation. Words on a page become living breathing people and situations when acted. In this way the Christian is called to become an actor by taking the text of the gospel and putting flesh and bones on it and living it out so that people can see it.