What I've Been Working On

If you would like to know what I've been working on, here is one thing. I recently finished a project for my class on Ministering to Street Children, and I got the wild idea to submit it as a blog-article, rather than just a boring paper (with an extra-large title...) "Listening to the Marginalized Voices of the Church to Awaken Faith: A Proposal for a Ministry of Love and Power to Street Children in Italy."

It features Heidi and Rolland Baker, yelling-at-Satan-Carlos Annacondia, Bill Johnson, the infamous John Wimber, Chuck Kraft, and my ideas for a new ministry in Naples, Italy. I hope it'll be a work-in-progress. Feel free to skim your favorite sections, and leave any comments if you desire to disagree, or to shout a sweaty, "amen." (I think my professora in Costa Rica would get a kick out of the conversation.)

Lost in Translation

I found something zany on Sugar frosted goodness dot com. Here: Tommy Kane's Blowfish sketch. The story of his piece is priceless. It begins: I hopped off the train near the Sumo stadium in Tokyo. I wanted to draw something that was very typical looking of Japanese cities. I noticed this little restaurant. I set up shop and began to sketch. (My favorite bit of the story is the coffee part, incidentally.)

I got a kick out of this because I've been lost in translation oh so many times in Europe. Enjoy the link-n-log to the arty stuff.

Cellophane-Wrapped Tongues

I want to be more honest. Not just on this blog, but in real-time, too. I like to think I'm awfully honest. But, lately I feel like I've put bars in front of my words. Maybe it's because I'm living in such transition. Or maybe because I'm an approval-suck. It's both/and, I'm sure.

A few years ago, I started scribbling about the lack of bare naked honesty I've experienced in Christian-circles. Like most of the songs I write, I never finished it. It is an indictment of my own laziness as well as the sub-culture of sugar-coated words that we tend to welcome in the Church. I'd like to break the bars of both.

In a dream last night, my tongue was wrapped (delicately) in cellophane. Very strange, it was. I was in a room of thousands, but they all thought me fine. Through numerous conversations, no one seem to notice that there were layers upon layers of thin clear plastic jacketing my tongue. Under their quick glancing inspections, it seemed red and fleshy. It was visible, at least.

"Oh now, your tongue looks just like our's, dear."

I too quickly believed them. In the eternity-seconds of dreams, I instantly learned how to talk through layers of thinned plastic.

They patted me on the back. Someone quickly handed me a sugary-drink as we held our glasses high, and (all too awkwardly) toasted, "God bless us, every one."

Musing in Bawlmer

Greetings from Baltimore. A.K.A. “The Greatest City in America,” and, even more hysterical (considering the literacy rate), “The City that Reads.” I love Baltimore. She is the rough, sassy, audacious younger sister to Washington, D.C, just forty minutes up highway 95. I always loved inventing the rivalry between these two close cities. I’m still a little bitter that I’ve lived so close to D.C. all my life, and yet, without fail, get lost every time I drive there. (How can you have four different addresses for the same street, in the same city? For the love.)

I've just started my first week of classes this quarter with Fuller’s M.A. - Global Leadership program. The class is on Mentoring. I’m halfway through the program and I’m doing my best to get ahead of this reading for the first time in my life. To those of you sweet souls who were cheering me on in that last Bobby Clinton class, I just got my 47-page paper back, and passed, quite miraculously. Next time I’m doing a cross-continental move/major life-transition, someone please yell at me to put on hold any classes demanding 50 page papers. That baby required two all-nighters to finish on time. Oh me.

As I’m drinking coffee in a very-not-European café, my current thoughts are swirling around two things:

1. How to resurrect the combined total of over 300 pages of academic writing I’ve done over the last decade into something that might give life to my friends. And strangers.
2. How to live out the Psalms more. I always like to think the Psalmists were absolute emotional wrecks. So, at least I'm living myself into that part of the song.