Rob Bell commented about the Dali Llama and Bishop Desmond Tutu's ability to transition from the gravity of human suffering to the lightheartedness of our human experience seamlessly.  He said that to endure the suffering of humanity one must have a deep seated sense of humor that bubbles through the pain.  He told of the Dali Llama tickling the Bishop during a hug at a forum.  Rob happened to be seated next to these two iconic figures and when the tickling commenced he snapped a picture of it with his cell phone!  I guess this picture could represent that humor bubbling through the soul of the people of Zimbabwe.  For some reason Jimmy, Andrew, and I were recruited to be in the choir one night in Harare.  Did I mention we can't speak any Shona?  And if you look very closely you can see that my choir robe is on inside out (Jimmy gets credit for that one because he wanted to switch robes with me while we were waiting outside in the dark).  

Well the experience was quite exhilarating - I can now say I crashed an African Choir (and an African Wedding - more on that later).  We got to process in with the choir swaying back and forth singing words to which Jimmy, Andrew, and I simply sang 'I have no idea what I am singing' and tried to hit the right notes, which didn't work out very often.  Then they had us come up front to help do a song with a group of about 7 men, and I got to play the drum on this one.  Now I had been playing the drum all week and received numerous comments about my mad skills (which I am friggin pumped about - a bunch of African people said I had good rhythm).  However on this song the singer turned back and told me that my drum was out of tune and that I should stop playing.  Ouch - ego buster.  So all the while we are doing this song I am up there having one of those internal fights in my head.  You know the kind I am talking about - where you are arguing with yourself over whether he was really saying I was way off beat or that the drum needed to be tightened.  It was kind of a stale mate, so I had to just smile and clap during the song because I had no idea what they were singing.  

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I had an unexpected field trip yesterday to one of the most interesting places in the greater Knoxville region.  Yes folks, Trentville, a little town formed out of the blood, sweat, and tears of the Trent family years ago.  The interesting thing about Trentville is that it straddles the line between ghettos of East Knoxville and the hollers of Strawberry Plains and you get an interesting mix of urban and redneck.  This happens to be the place of the formative years of Roger's ministry, which is why on Thursday afternoon we headed over to a little place called the Tacklebox, where you can get your bait and your burger at the same counter.  Now, I wasn't aware that Tennessee had passed a smoking ban about 7 months ago until we pulled in and Roger pointed out the "Smokers Welcome" sign in the window.  Needless to say, I wasn't surprised when we were greeted by a man coming out the door who, upon seeing the developing snow flurries, held his arms out and said, "What's this $#%!?"

When we walked in there was barely room to move around and white men in camo with mullets were sitting elbow to elbow with black men in work uniforms.  This was definitely a unique place in Eastern Tennessee with a culture all its own.  

However, the purpose of our coming to the Tacklebox wasn't merely to have a Tackleburger, but to meet Roger's former pastor, Steve Evans.  Steve is one of those guys that walks into a room full of strangers and walks out with a room full of friends, all of which are about to pass out from laughter.  And laughter was just what the struggling town of Trentville needed 10 years ago when he was appointed to Trentville United Methodist Church.  

When he first arrived Trentville UMC was struggling for breath with 15 members.  Now it is a thriving cornerstone in the community with upwards of 150 in attendance.  In a town that was riddled with meth labs and hopelessness Steve was a breath of fresh air who offered real people the real hope of a real God in a real way.  As we finished our Tackleburgers Steve and Roger remenisced over a huge outreach event where the church staff dressed up as WWF characters and had a Church Yard Brawl.  In a culture that loves Stone Cold Steve Austin, this event drew about 300 community members into the light heartedness of the love of Christ.  

My time with Steve and Roger left me with something to contemplate.  As our church leadership gets caught up in a hip culture, myself included, who are the leaders who will go to those in the foothills of Appalachia where Starbucks isn't cool and cell phone service isn't guaranteed?  Do we wait for this culture to catch up to our catchy ideas or do we go backup, lose ourselves, and live and breath with people and share the gospel in a real way? 

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One of the things our post-modern generation has to struggle with is the exhaustion of our language. Not only does it seem like everything has already been written, sung, or acted upon, but church names (and movements) have moved beyond mere description into a foggy mixture of profundity and absurdity. And what better way to make light of it all than to have a church name generator:

There was this one episode of David Letterman where he had this pair of dice that had random words pasted to each side. The point was to roll the dice and see what two words faced up - and the result was a new band name. My favorite was 'stomach monkeys'. This kinda reminds me of that.

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"Life and business are about human connections... computers are about trying to murder you in a lake"  - Michael Scott, The Office

 

 

Oh happy day... you can now watch full episodes of the Office online at nbc.com 

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My good encouraging friend, Jason Roe, commented that he was reminded of me as he killed and gutted a deer last night.  He said that he didn't think I would approve since I look like I am a member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).  if dirty hippies were a race I think Jason would be guilty of racism or at least a severe case of prejudice.  And for the record I ate a nice piece of ham tonight.  And to illustrate this point even farther, here is a never-before seen photo of me - with a mullet, substantial proof that I am not a PETA member.

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Sarah and I had our first date in about 2 months tonight.  We had a great time, with only one awkward moment the whole night.  Dinner was great, conversation was great, the movie... not so great.  Due to the limited amount of time in which we had to accomplish our date (approximately 4 hours because it is a weeknight and our babysitter has school in the morning) our movie choices were limited to those that started between 7 and 7:30pm.  This gave us a few options.  Our toss up was between 'Superbad' and 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.  We have been avid Potter fans and were interested in the new movie, but the quality of the last 3 left a bad taste in our mouths.  So, we picked 'Superbad' which Yahoo! Movies describes as:

Two co-dependent high school guys want to hook up with girls before they graduate and go off to different colleges, but, after a calamitous night just trying to buy alcohol for a school party, overcoming their separation anxiety becomes a greater challenge than getting the girls.

This, we found out 5 minutes into the movie, was a very tame and misleading description of the motion picture that made Beavis and Butthead look like Dorah.   However, I cannot totally blame Yahoo! because I failed to read the reviews of the movie, which mostly read something like,

'Superbad' belongs to that family of horny-misfit movies -- outcast boys want to hook up with cool girls but they've been too preoccupied with their obsessions to have learned how. But sex has been Seth's [one of the main characters] nerdy obsession, and he is pathological about every aspect of it. - Wesley Morris (Boston Globe)

So, about 5 minutes into the movie, after the first 2.5 of which was spent discussing which porn site the main character would subscribe to (and why) and the last 2.5 was spent discussing various other things which ranked this movie far beyond R in my opinion, we opted to switch theaters and watch 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.  So - the awkward part isn't that we stumbled into a verbal porn film that we had mistaken for something more along the lines of Napoleon Dynamite.  But the fact that before we bought our tickets I asked the cashier which movie was better, Potter or Superbad - to which I received a resounding affirmation of the qualtity of Superbad.  Here's the rub:  I knew the young man from the funeral I preached earlier in the week.  We had met and talked and I had invited him to come to our new college program - so chalk one up for the Kingdom!

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From time to time I switch off the CD player while riding in the car in the pursuit of hearing live people talking.  For some reason, constantly listening to CD's or 'canned' music makes me feel canned.  I guess that live radio would more on the community end of the spectrum than a detached and nearly limitless (which seems to cheapen it) source of music.  And since there is not really any good talk radio that I would tend to agree with (there is NPR, but that would definitely put me at risk of falling asleep at the wheel, and CCM Christian radio station DJ's seem plastic and boring as well - although WAY FM has a great evening DJ) I tend to turn to Knoxville's own 100.3  

While I may not agree with everything proposed by the personalities of this station, it can often times be humorous.  The other day Neil Bortz (sp?) was saying that we should arrange the voting system so that the more money you make the more votes you should get.  This would presumably limit those 'lazy poor folk' from influencing the political machine.  HA!  What bologna!  We know those lazy poor folk don't vote anyways (spoken sarcastically).  

Anyways, the point of this blog is to compare talk radio with blogging.  I have often thought it would be fun to have my own talk radio show.  However, to have to spend an hour or two every day talking about something new is very risky.  The more I talk, especially spontaneously, the more chance I have of letting utter nonsense roll off my lips.  That is why I think blogging is a much better tool for reasonable dialog.  Most conservative talk radio show personalities I have listened to have a tendency to be absolutely right about everything.  Absolutely.  Any callers that dare disagree with the man on the throne are usually battered into silence or concession by horrendous logic.  Although, Shawn Hannity and O'Reilly are usually logical and I believe i have heard O'Reilly apologize.  

Thus, blogging would seem to rise above talk radio as a better medium for dialog because thought can be put into propositions and responses and the blogger or commenter can be quoted exactly.     

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If you are a Tennessean you probably know that we are having a sever drought this summer.  Temperatures were staying steadily above 90 degrees about a week ago.  It has been very hot and very dry... so dry that:

that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling,
Methodists are giving out wet wipes,
the Presbyterians are giving out rain checks,
and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water! 

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