things i've been thinking about and up to lately...
:: my bike was stolen. in grandview no less.
:: we bought a new (to us) car. i'm just glad the whole process is behind us. it's great to see charles so happy.
:: if anyone knows anything about other platforms (wordpress/ blogsome in particular)- let me know. i'd be interested in hearing.
:: i've been thinking about how if we move from columbus and come back in five years, there's a good chance that i will not recognize grandview. it makes me sad.
:: i had a near death experience with my palm pilot. the verdict is still out if it is out of commission permanently.
:: i've been listening to my prince trilogy lately. i can't believe how good i am at rocking out and lipscreaming.
:: my sister, who is a freeloader (that is- she apparently reads daily- but NEVER comments); has complained that i am not posting often enough for her liking. i will try to rectify the situation.

:: i haven't posted much lately b/c i don't have much to say.
:: i am considering conducting some interviews and posting them here. maybe a madlib format? or maybe not...

chewable vitamin:
"free me from the evil passions and heal my heart of all disordered love so that once i am interiorly healed and purified i may become more ready to love You, stronger to endure suffering for You, and more steadfast in preserving in You." ~ aquinas

frankie, aids, kingdom, and heaven...

this time last year- i walked with my friend frankie through the final months of his life. there's something so special about being with the dying. it seems almost too special to put on a stupid post. now granted; i've only been with a handful of people who are in serious decline.

but the thing that sticks out in my memory (and has been pestering my conscience lately) about the process of passing from this life to the next; is the zealous tone that folks talk about Jesus. i remember frankie talking about his life and denouncing things he used to embrace in exchange for the beauty of Jesus. i think it's b/c the Lord was near to frankie. same with my dad. he would share with nurses and draw maps to church while he was all doped up. the urgency and insistence was/is convicting to me.

it's convicting to me b/c i share my faith and stuff- but i always get tripped up- worried that i might offend or the message not perceived as relevant or this kind of hooey. i also get sidetracked critiquing other's methods. oye. i tire myself sometimes. i'm actually snobby and intellectually elitist about it. i mean seriously... i think it takes alot of balls to verbalize critiquing of other's evangelistic efforts. I mean- i got my hands full w/ myself. no need to worry and meddle in other's choices and methods.

i like that bumper sticker i'm seeing lately of, 'focus on your own family'. this doesn't make me a communist by the way. i know the background and the spoof- but my point is that i need to do what Jesus has asked of me (which what's sticking out to me lately; is i need to really go for it when it comes to talking about my relationship w/ Jesus). doing what Jesus asks of me would likely keep me pretty challenged if not busy. and if i yield to the things that the Lord asks of me and cooperate instead of dig my heels in; pretty free of judgment and trying to manage the world.

so, thank you frankie for teaching me about what it means to be not ashamed of the Gospel. it truly is the power of God for the salvation of everyone.

today's chewable vitamin:
"God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. it was i who didn't. in this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. He only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down."
~c.s. lewis from a grief observed.

a couple of day to day notables...

first off, i'm disappointed to report that the nytimes has taken some of their best content and made it available for a subscription fee.

second off, i took a nap yesterday and it was most excellent.

third off, i went to julian's bday party which was awesome. we watched some movie about east germany afterwards.

fourth off, anne and gino are back from their honeymoon. i love seeing my friends happy! it does my heart good.

fifthly, i got to see laurel my neicey after a month hiatus. my withdrawl symptoms lessened a bit- but i'm still a bit off.

and lastly, i'm so glad i don't have to re-live the last week at work. it was super stressful. i got to oversee this national promotion and i got a few more gray hairs in exchange.

today's chewable vitamin:

"we can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind
'cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance well they're no friends of mine say,
we can go where we want to, a place that they will never find
and we can act like we come from out of this world leave the real one far behind
and we can dance ..."
> from the men w/o hats 'hit', safety dance

today's chewable vitamin:
"jesus repeatedly identified with the poor and forgotten. it is our heritage to champion the cause of the oppressed, witness to their misery, and call for justice. some of us are even to plead their cause before the powerful. we are to be the voice of the voiceless and the face of the faceless."
~ richard foster

in honor of
the millennium development goals to be discussed this week at a special summit at the UN

• this is an article worth reading... living with "just enough"
  
• kristof's take on the summit. not a sunny outlook- but challenging nonetheless...

Meet the Fakers
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
September 13, 2005

"The biggest gathering of leaders in history unfolds this week at the United Nations, as they preen and boast about how much they're helping the world's poor. In short, it may be the greatest assembly in history - of hypocrites.

The fact is that with just a few exceptions, the presidents and prime ministers coming to the U.N. summit are doing a disgraceful job in helping the poor. That's one reason the world's richest 500 individuals have the same income as the world's poorest 416 million people.
We Americans set a dreadful example as hosts to the summit. President Bush has been trying to wriggle away from his 2002 endorsement of the principle that rich countries should try to provide 70 cents in official development assistance for every $100 in national income. (Mr. Bush has sharply increased foreign aid from the Clinton years, but it still stood at only 16 cents in 2004 for each $100 of national income.)

The Bush administration also tried to change summit documents to downplay references to the millennium development goals of overcoming poverty. Fortunately, the Bush administration backed off and now grudgingly joins the international consensus against infant mortality.
It's common to hear abroad scathing criticisms of U.S. stinginess, much of it deserved. But Japan is also a cheapskate, giving only a hair more than the U.S., and Italy gives even less.
The new Human Development Report 2005, recently issued by the U.N. Development Program, is blessedly undiplomatic in its willingness to point figures - at just about everybody. It notes that the U.S. and other rich countries seem unwilling to provide a total of $7 billion annually for the next decade to provide 2.6 billion people with access to clean drinking water. That investment would save 4,000 lives a day, and the cost is less than Europeans spend on perfume - or than Americans spend on cosmetic surgery.

Meanwhile, the report adds, AIDS kills three million people a year and devastates countries like nothing since the Black Death in the 14th century. Yet annual world spending to fight AIDS amounts to three days of military expenditures.

This U.N. summit is meant to review the millennium development goals, such as cutting child deaths around the world by two-thirds by 2015. All the goals, adopted with great fanfare five years ago, are feasible, and some countries - from Bangladesh to Indonesia, Brazil to Mongolia - are on track to meet them. Hats off to them. But most of the world appears likely to miss the goals.

Two countries that should be the leaders of the developing world, China and India, are both off track and should be ashamed of their records. In India, among children 1 to 5, girls are 50 percent more likely to die than boys, meaning that each year 130,000 Indian girls are discriminated to death.

Bangladesh has now overtaken India in improving child mortality, and Vietnam has overtaken China. If India had matched Bangladesh's rate of reduction in child mortality over the last decade, according to the U.N.D.P., it would have saved 732,000 children's lives this year.
Likewise, China has largely ignored its poor interior, so it still loses 730,000 children each year. China has also taken diplomatic positions that hurt the world's most vulnerable populations, by supporting Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and by implicitly endorsing Sudan's genocide just as it once endorsed Pol Pot's.

And African leaders? Perhaps this is naïve, but it strikes me as racist for them to have complained about brutal white rule in South Africa or Zimbabwe while excusing black rule that is even more brutal.

Readers often ask if I find it depressing to visit African slums or mud-brick villages. On the contrary, it's exhilarating to see how little it takes to make a difference. Ancient scourges like river blindness and leprosy are being controlled, and a clever initiative by Bill Gates and others to promote vaccinations (the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunization) saved more than one million lives just between 2001 and 2004.

That makes it maddening to see leaders posturing for the cameras at the U.N. while, as the U.N.D.P. report notes, "the promise to the world's poor is being broken." The report adds that the gap between the current trendline on child mortality and the one the leaders committed themselves to amounts to 41 million children dying before their fifth birthday over the next decade.

Rather than toasting themselves, these leaders should apologize for this continuing holocaust. "

today's chewable vitamin:

"biblical justice does not mean we should merely help victims cope with oppression; it teaches us to remove it." - ron sider

this is faith. look at those eyes!

happy birthday annette!

the girl who taught me about the tactics of the holy spirit and how to enforce them.

happy birthday kyla!


this is tristan. he's bigger now. and that's kyla's arms and the bottom of her chin too.

to the girl who taught me how to think about nothing.

a shout out hutzpah to boston and indy
(don't ask about this. i have no idea... i just wanted to use some yiddish)

the only problem that i can see with babies is that once your friends start having them- you no longer recieve pictures of your friend; but instead, recieve pictures of their babies. don't get me wrong- i love me some babies- i was, at one time- a baby.

but the point is- it makes it hard to post digitized photos of your friends on their birthday b/c the only photos you have are of their kids. so the kids will have to suffice.

i wrote some meaningful stuff about both of them and our time in albanian here.
it was meaningful to me atleast...

i'm so glad that both of you were born!
both their friendships have taught me lots about love and faith! infact, they taught me in a flesh and blood way what it means to owe one another nothing but the debt of love (rom. 13.8).

katrina, rodman and revival.
first- i was speechless; then- i was sick and now i don’t have much to add. the only thing i can think to say is that being sick and watching a national tragedy unfold is not recommended. i have been sad, angry, confused, antsy then sad again.

the good news is that i have a renewed resolve to pray that the Spirit of God would bring revival to our country. i used to pray fairly regularly that dennis rodman and rosie odonnell would meet Jesus. i think they would be great christians. but somehow, i let pragmatism damped my faith for such things. but i think i’m recommitted now.

that’s all i got.

of note...

i quickly wanted to mention that i have a whole nother genre of art that wins out over the typical masters... tis the art work of the wee one's of nashville. i occassionally get one by mail. they are treasured... here is one:


jungle

in other news:

• 
  annieb's bachlorette was low key and fun. spagio wine bar was wonderful and we got to pray and bless her. i love that kid.
• the fox is sick. broke down on charles in the hood. we waited three hours for aaa. needless to say, i was not a happy camper. charles sang most of the time. in the rain. i was going to kill him. i decided not too. he sang. i cursed. he is seriously really hard to be ongoingly carnal around. we got offered crack too. that brought me around. we're getting cell phones. or atleast one.
• i installed google desktop floating tool bar thingy. it's pretty nifty. but it cycles through other people's photos. so every couple minutes; i pause, stunded b/c there are strangers on my desktop. then i remember that i installed this toolbar that cycles through recently visted pages. it's pretty cool.
• thursday, i'm supposed to meet a eight yr old albanian at my mom's school who speaks no english. should be a hoot. i will make her laugh w/ my albanian that extends to conversation, and snot and other body functions. good times. annette, please give me wisdom on what pleasentries i can exchange (other than un dua melina).
• here's a picture of nora. even xrays of her make me melt. she swallowed a beebee (lower left quadrant of the xray. she's ok now. she wasn't herself last week but now, all is well. we're grateful. sweet girl...

i'm all sauced up on diet coke tonight. later dudes.


today's chewable vitamin:

"
Jesus: son as yet you are neither courageous nor wise lover.

disciple: how is that Lord?

Jesus: b/c, whenever you meet even the slightest opposition you stop what you are doing and anxiously look about you for consolation. a courageous lover remains steadfast in temptation and puts no credence in the devil's warm, persausive word. just as i am he lover's delight in the time of prosperity, i am likewise his delight in the time of adversity.
"
~ aquinas