I just found a very cool plugin for Wordpress called the Structured Blogging plugin. It lets you do quick and easy events or reviews of items and it displays them in a microformat. You can expect some book reviews coming soon.
Update: Okay, it’s not as cool as I thought. It doesn’t put things in hreview and hcalendar format like I thought, it uses it’s own format. Maybe I can hack something like that together quick.
So Alicia and I decided to spend the day in Richmond, our future home. We left at like 10:30 this morning and got back about a half hour ago. It was quite a bit of driving, but it was a very nice day. We got to spend more time around Cary Town and spent a little time down on the James River, which is awesome. It was a nice little trip.
Life is hard. There is so much pain and suffering. How do we deal with the pain? What do we do when a loved one dies? What do we do when we are ultimately betrayed? How do we survive that, let alone understand it? I’ve had some painful experiences in my life, but nothing compared to a lot of people I know. Questions abound. Where is God? What part does he play in it? What are we supposed to do now? Go on with life as usual? Self-medicate? Many people turn to alcohol or drugs or sex… anything to make themselves feel better for at least a little while. You just want to feel relief from the pain, even though you know it’s only temporary. Welcome to real life.
I really feel like I was never equipped with any framework to understand real pain and suffering. When those I love suffer, I suffer with them. It effects me. In infects me. The best I can do is let out a scream, “this is not the way it is supposed to be!!!!” I don’t want to hear that it’s part of God’s plan, I completely reject that idea. This may be something that some people need to think to be able to go on with life, but it is not an acceptable answer to me. It leaves the situation unchanged and gives a blessing to what I can only see as the work of something evil. Something or someone is trying to destroy people, and often succeeding. Whatever or whoever this is, I want to oppose it. That is my adversary.
I have realized something about myself over the years… I really hate structure. I can adjust to it, as I’ve demonstrated some with work changes, but I still really dislike it… nope, that’s not strong enough, I hate it. I always feel like it’s an attempt to include people who really shouldn’t be there, or acheive something that really isn’t the point of things.
As those in the emerging church know, Emergent has named a National Coordinator. Now, given what I just said about structure, you can predict my response. I cringe. I’ve just read a bunch of comments about it, and it’s about 50/50 on the pro/con thing. There are plenty of other people like me out there who cringed when reading the announcement. Now, what has become obvious it that this is what the leadership feels is necessary for the group to go where it feels is God’s leading. Because of that I want to encourage them in this. I don’t want to be a complainer… but I do realize that I don’t think it is the direction I personally want to go. So if Emergent isn’t going to be what I feel I need to be a part of, then I’ll be a part of starting a missional network elsewhere. One size does not fit all.
Anyways, just my thoughts on things, in case anyone cares.
I’ve gotten a couple of new books recently. Alicia and I have decided to read StormFront together:
It is a fairly recent book from The Gospel and Our Culture Network. It has been really great so far. It examines the gospel and so far spends a lot of time on the parts of it our culture ignores. Quality. A very good followup to Missional Church.
I also picked up The Shaping of Things to Come:
This one has been much more focused on pragmatic church stuff… I think it’s a bit churchy for me so far, but it has been getting better. I’ll let you know if it improves dramatically.
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