My first deep-fried turkey sucked. I followed the instructions, and it came out looking golden brown on the outside, raw on the inside. My best guess is that it wasn't completely thawed. We had pizza.

I was in the middle of assemling my turkey deep fryer when two Mormon guys came to the door to share their faith. One of my neighbors had referred them to me, either as a joke or to get them off their doorstep. I invited them in and we sat down and talked to them for about an hour. We had a great conversation, one where we both talked about our faith, our beliefs and how we live them out. Of the whole conversation, the part that fascinated me the most was the details of their two year mission. These guys take two years out of their life and for two years, just about every day, canvass neighborhoods looking for people to share their faith with. It's got to be a pretty thankless job, and I'm not sure it's the most effective way for them to do it - but it shows a real comittment to what they believe, even if most of it is wrong. We had a great conversation about about the Christian Church, God's revelation of truth and the Bible. They had flip charts, I had no pictures. (Jess suggested that I should have broken out a flannel-graph or taught them the bridge diagram). It was interesting to watch how they responded to questions, and how everytime I asked them a question that fit into their spiel, they were very excited to answer it - sometimes responding with "That fits in really well with what I want to tell you." There was a time where I'd of tried to convince them of how wrong they are and show them the holes in their belief system. I'd of determined how well the conversation went based on how many holes I poked in what they had to say, and how much of "My Stuff" I made them listen to. I'm not not sure that really accomplished much. Instead we had a good conversation where we listened to each other, and I invited them to have a turkey dinner with us. I figure I'll change more people by loving them first and talking second.

I'd read up on LDS (Latter-Day-Saints) a while back, but I'd forgotten some of the wild stuff they believe. They told me the story of God telling Joe Smith that all of the current christian churches were wrong and that he should start his own, and then revealing to him the golden egyptian plates for him to translate The Book of Mormon from. I innocently asked if they'd ever seen these plates, and they explained that the plates had taken back by God at some point. At this point, one of the guys shared with me that if this didn't happen, all of his faith was totally wrong. Interesting. We then started talking about polygamy and why it had been okay at one point, but not now. They shared with me that someone in the church had a revelation at some point that overrode what the Book of Mormon had to say about it, so we talked about that with respect to truth, the bible and Christianity.

Will and i went to see the new Ben Affleck movie Paycheck last night. It was a good movie from the same guy who wrote Minority Report and Blade Runner. Without giving the story away, it had to do with the ability to be able to predict the future. Overall, it was a good story, good action and not overly predictable.

On ride back, Will and I were talking about some of the holes in the movie with respect to Einstein's ideas of relativity and the future. In a nutshell, Eistein believed that you could glimpse into the future, but that there were an infinite number of futures, each permutation defined by every combination of potential outcomes in every given situations. This results in an infinite number of futures. Will shared with me a really interesting idea he'd had tying this idea to understanding God's sovernity and our free-will coexisting - possibly the smartest thing I've heard come out of Will's mouth. God knows the future, every infinite purmutation of the future that can exist, however we decide which path we will take - hence our free-will. God is infinite enough to understand the impact of our actions, their outcomes and the resulting paths. I'm sure Will and I aren't the first to think about this, but it was good food for thought.

Brad turned me on to a really interesting book on community and connectedness that flies in the face of many contemporary small group connection and community philosopies, called The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups. The idea of the book is that we "belong" at multiple levels, and that small groups are not the only way people can belong to a church or experience intimacy with others. I'm only a few chapters into it, but it's got some great stuff although a lot of it is anecdotal evidence.

My kids and I were over visiting my Grandma last week, when Madeline looked up on the wall and said, "Dad, why is Noel's name on Grandma's wall?" I looked up, and there it was - NOEL (No-el). Noel (Noe-l) appeals to the masses apparently.

Are you a Metrosexual??

My brother Jon gave my nephew Matthew (who is in Taekwondo) a belated birthday gift - Karate Jesus:

Once we leave my parents house in Dewitt, things begin to wind down a little bit. I was hurting pretty bad, nursing a sinus infection and sore throat, so about five minutes after I got there, I was crashed out on the couch. Cathie's parents house is a nice change, going from eight grand children to three. The kids love the attention and all of the space to run and play. Cathie's brother and wife were there as well, and we exchanged gifts. One of the gifts I got from them was a LoveSac - a giant foam-filled bean-bag chair, about 5 in diameter and about 3 feet high. It's huge, and comfortable. We had a huge meal and a nice relaxing evening while the kids played with their new toys and we watched the DVD we made Mom and Dad with all of the pictures we'd taken of the kids and other events last year.

Mom and Dad live in a semi-rural area and in the evening Emily started yelling that there were Kangaroos in the back yard. We all stood and watched as ten deer paraded out of the woods into Mom and Dad's yard. Cath's parents is such a contrast to my parents house with all of my siblings, spouses and grandkids, but it's a lot more relaxing.

Take a look at the pictures here.

On Christmas Morning, we wake up. My mom has staretd a freakin wonderful new tradition where she has the kids run around with bells and wake everyone up. The kids were up at 5:30 AM and my mom held them off until 6:30 AM. None of the adults were too jolly, and Emily didn't really appreciate it either.

Remeber the pickle air-freshener that wound up in our home. Well, it surfaced again. It started out with my Dad putting it in the bedroom we were staying at, hidden behind a desk. From there, I put it in Susan's room, who then put it in Jon's room, who eventually put it back in my room. I hate the smell of pickels.

Jon's daschund (not prounounced dash-hound, but dock-sin) stretch is annoying and likes to bite kids. We remind him of this often and poor Beth is caught in the middle of it all. Jon likes to taunt and tease all of his nieces and nephews in the way only an uncle can do it. He has no kids for us to torment, so we torment his dog, which he brings everywhere with him. Jon wants my parents to afford stretch the same status as the grandchildren, per the following picture (jon was hiding behind my dad's chair, propping up the dog so he could be in the grandchildren picture):


Christmas morning at my parent's house is HUGE. My Mom literally starts shopping for Christmas the day after, and puts a ton of thought into what she gets everyone, and for 18 people, that's no small task - I can barely buy for Cathie. After that, we have a huge breakfast, and spend the next two hours trying to pull everything together to get ready to move on to Cathie's parents house.

Take a look at the pictures here.

After opening presents, we loaded up the van with enough gear, presents and food to furnish a small army. We got to my parents where the tradition begins. Christmas eve consists of our family, my parents, my Grandma, my brothers/sister & brother-in-law/sisters-in-laws, and eight kids from age 8 to 6 months. My mom kicks the whole thing off with an amazing meal - with an occasional odd thing or two. When someone asks what's in it, one of the kids responds (with their best Mom impersonation) "Oh, it's made of everything you love".

Willy Brown is considered family, and with that comes the need to make himself look better than the rest of us, to be the favored son. Will came by for dessert and brought my parents a really nice wine and cheese basket from an upscale store in town. While he was scoring points with the 'rents, my brothers and I were rooting through the basket trying to come up with an estimate of the cost of the thing - which we guess to be around $65 - $75. Brown noser.

My dad went out and picked out a tree on his own this year, and even decorated it himself. He's got this fancy tilting tree-stand that allows you to rotate it any way you can imagine. Somehow, it's still crooked:


After eating a huge meal, we all get dressed for church and take family pictures. From there we head out to my Mom's church, St. Luke in Haslett. For as many years as I can remember, part of my Christmas tradition consists of going to a Lutheran Christmas Eve service, singing Christmas Carols and ending it all with a candle light service. I really enjoy the tradition, the hymns, dressing up and being there with my whole family. My best Christmas memories are of me sitting next to my Uncle Bill (My favorite uncle and Godfather) wearing my brown corduroy suit and clip on tie while singing my loudest, as my Grandma passed out her beech-nut candies (What is a beechnut anyways??). If one of us notices that the other is not singing, someone is kind enough hold out a hymnal in front of the and point to the words for them - a tradition my father started when we were young. During the candle light service at the end, my brothers and I attempt to set each other's programs on fire and blow out each other's candles. My siblings and I always have a good time at church and (most of the time) my mom looks on proudly as she shows off her whole family.

Once we get home we immediately change out of our clothes and break out the appetizers and cocktails. Everyone brings their own drink to pass (except my brother Dan and sister Susan apparently) - this year we had martinis, sangria and Bailey's. From there we exchagne gifts - the aunts and uncles give the kids their gifts and we each exchange gifts with the person who's name we drew. Tough to describe, but imagine 19 people in the same room (the oldest of the kids being 8) all excited about opening gifts, simultaneously. The kids then spend the next few hours playing with their toys. One notable gift that Cathie got everyone was soccer-boppers, the big inflatable punching gloves. Imagine 5 boys running around whaling on each other with these. Exactly Cathie's intent. It's extra fun for Dan and Kris's three boys, and for Dan, who will probably pop them all within a day - on purpose.

For both sets of parents, we made them a DVD of pictures using Ulead's DVD PictureShow software. It lets you take your digital photos (in 2003 I took 5,200) and display them to music, with a cool menu driven system to navigate the photo albums. It creates digital videos with slick transitions, annotations and narrations that allow you to do a lot with them, including having music play while they're being shown. We sat around that evening for about an hour watching the pictures and laughing.

It was a fun evening that I always look forward to. My mom works her tail off for months leading up to Christmas - shopping, cooking, cleaning (although I'm not sure how her house really gets dirty, other than when we visit) to make Christmas a really amazing time.

Take a look at the pictures here.

We had our family Christmas this morning, since we're at my parents on Christmas morning. Cathie and I were woken up by Madeline this morning at 8am, which isn't too shabby as far as sleeping in goes around Christmas time. We woke Emily and Nate up and then headed downstairs to see if Santa Claus had come - lo and behold, he had. When it was Emily's turn to open her present, she wanted to play with it immediately, and had no interest in opening anything else. She sat there playing with her Discovery Toys "Little People" Noah's Ark, in her own little world. How's that for contentment? Ten minutes later, after the kids finished opening their gifts, Emily decided she would take a turn. The kids loved their gifts, and it was fun watching them scream with excitement at what they'd gotten. Maddie and Nate were both really excited about what they'd gotten each other, and described in detail to each other how they came to the decision of what to buy for the other.

Cathie always gets me the most thoughtful gifts, which can be tough to buy for someone like me, who picks up what he wants, when he wants it. One of the coolest was a turkey deep fryer - imagine having boiling oil, propane fuel and fire all involved in cooking! It doesn't get more dangerous than that. Selfishly, I got Cathie a new Alarm Clock that sets itself automatically. This means no more AM/PM confusion when setting it and no more setting it ahead by 15 minutes so you can hit the snooze alarm twice; that logic never made sense to me. I also took ten pictures that I'd taken, touched them up, converted them to black and white and framed them as part of a display I made for Cathie. Out of all the gifts I got her, this one probalby meant the most to me as the giver because it was something I'd created instead of bought.

On Sunday, we had some friends over after church for brunch. Cathie made a great meal and we gorged ourselves, and afterwards played reindeer games.

On Saturday, I took the kids to Lansing to get us all out of Cathie's hair as she cleaned and cooked for the brunch we had yesterday. We went to see my Grandma, my parents and then some friends of ours we haven't seen in a while - Mike and Micky and their three kids.

I've known Mike for about fifteen years. When I was 19, I volunteered for Youth for Christ out at Everett High school, where Mike and worked together for three years. While involved in YFC, we had a great time - coming up with some amazing ideas and following through on them (and only having the police involved in a few), because neither of us was overly strong in the area of discernment. Mike I became great friends and our famalies have grown up together even though they're in Lansing and we're out here in South Lyon. Mike had a vision about 8 or 9 years ago to create a place (now called Visions) where high school, college and young adults could come, hang out, hear God's truth and be discipled. To really get the picture of how he took it from this vision to reality, you have to understand Mike's personality. Mike is a passionate guy and he loves to get others excited about what he's excited about. He's also got a really "dumb" faith. At the core of Mike is this belief that God will provide, no matter what. It defies logic, it defies common sense, but it works. God has met Mike's needs, his family's needs, and his ministries needs in an amazing way. Mike has stuck with this through thick and thin. Mike and I sharpen each other, and occasionally piss each other off. In the end, he's one of those guys who you know I'll be friends with to the end.

Madeline came down with the flu last night, Nate this morning. This sucks. I'm sure the rest of us will have it soon. I'm now haunted by visions of Madeline and Emily swapping suckers on Saturday.

It's funny how when you tell another parent that your kids have the flu that their first thoughts go to - "When was my child in contact with their child" and "Crap, now my kids gonna get it.". I'm no differnet.

Very interesting article on XXXChurch.com's visit to a church. Read the comments at the end.

I saw this bumper sticker on the back of a car. What does this mean? Is Sucks an Adjective or a Verb? Any ideas?

WIll, Jason, Brad, Jim and I went to see the Return of the King and was blown away. It was the greatest movie I've ever seen. It was as good as the first two movies combined. The story, the cinematics, special effects pacing were just right. The only akward moment was when Aragorn bust into a solo during his coronation as the King of Gondor. I'm considering trying to take Nate to go see it.

I've been working on migrating my blog over to movabletype. Mike Rays helped me get all of the components installed on my system (Apache, mySQL, PERL, Movabletype) that are required, and from there I'v been trying to migrate my templates and stylesheets. So far, this is what I've got. I still need to migrate my archival sheets, set up some of the RSS blog linking and trackback stuff.

TIME.com: Search And Destroy -- Dec. 22, 2003 Good article on Google's impact on your life.

I went to bed early last night, and woke up around 5:30 AM wide awake. I worked for a while and then I went to the gym. I had a great time of worship working out - I was listening to some music that really spoke to where I'm at in the moment. Between sets, I was able to spend some time praying and meditating on where I'm at with God right now. I had an 8am breakfast meeting with Joe, and then came back to get some work done. While cleaning up some junk on my desktop, I came across Psalm 18. In it, David is talking about how God delivered him from Saul when he says ...He rescued me because he delighted in me. I love the image of God delighting in me, the way I delight in my kids. I can picture God sitting back watching me, with the same smile I have when I go check on my sleeping kids or watching them play or sing. The Psalm continues with talking about how God gives us everything we need in our powerlessness. Then, in true King David style, he finishes with a great line like I beat them as fine as dust borne on the wind - kinda the modern version of Stomp my enemies like a Narc at a biker rally.

I love this picture of the church:
"The power of the church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The church is not made up of whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholness in a Christ who was broken for us." -Mike Yaconelli

Maddie and I sat down last night and read through the Christmas story together. We talked about why Christmas is worth celebrating, and Maddie responded that's it's because we get to go to heaven and have our sins taken away. This got me thinking about something Mark mentioned on Sunday about how much effort the church has put into making sure people are aware that God can save us from our sin, while virtually neglecting the fact that God wants to redeem us completely - to help us live up to the full potential he's given us. What a compelling idea - that Christianity isn't just about "fire insurance", but being redeemed as a whole - every part of who I am - not just my sinfulness! Later that night after Madeline and I read through some more
of the Christmas story, we had a great talk about who God has created her to be and that THAT's part of why baby Jesus was born.

Per Noel's message on Saturday, I turned off the TV last night, made a fire (in the fireplace) and sat down and read through the Christmas Story. If you've never read The Book of God, it does a great job meshing history, the bible and great storytelling to turn parts of the bible into more of a narrative. I think I've read the Luke account so many times, that it's easy for me to gloss over it. In The Book of God, The Christmas story starts way back with Zachariah, Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary and then weaves all of the stories together. It puts a great historical and political framework around the story in terms of what was happening in the Roman government. The book does an amazing job describing some of the Jewish religious rituals, their symbolism and how the story of Christ's birth, life and death tie into them. Enough about the book.
For the first time in a while, I had some quiet to sit and listen to God and try and connect with the larger story of Christmas. I spent some time thinking and listening - something that's tough for me to do - I don't do quiet well.

If you've read The DaVinci Code, this is a fairly balanced article entitled Jesus in America. It deals with where some of the holes in Dale Brown's theories on which he's based his writings, including misinterpretation of the Gnostic gospels.

Check out the trailer and site for Mel Gibson's new movie The Passion of Christ.

Check out this awesome Mike Yaconelli Tribute video from his memorial page. If you're not familiar with Mike, he is one of the father's of radical youth ministry and one of grace's greatest advocates.

We were in a big hurry yesterday afteroon, running late on the way to Crossroad's baptism party in Hamburg. I got out to my van and lo and behold, this message was painted on my rear window. I was in too much of a hurry to clean it off, so I ended up driving around with this on my van the rest of the evening. Don't get me wrong, I love Jesus, I believe that Christ should be at the center of Christmas, but I'm not a big fan of the cliche, or stupid rhyming bumper stickers. What made it worse was that as I drove down the express way, cars were looking over and giving me the "thumbs-up" and some of the older folk at the baptism party were complementing me on the "Bold Message" I put on my van. You may be wondering who actually pulled this off? Jen Niemi, as part of our ongoing practical jokes battle. This was by far her best work yet because it hit me at the core of my hatred of cheesy christian cliche.

Will and I went with Jason, Jess, Meghan, Tim and Jess's parents down to Riverview this past Saturday night to check out their Saturday night service. The theme was Xmas unplugged. I did a lot of reflecting on what Christmas is about for me, and came to the uncomfortable conclusion it's not about Jesus for me this year - but more about Gifts, Tradition, Family, Food and busyness. Not where I want it to be. Cath and I were talking about this yesterday, and as a family we change this. Starting tonight, we're sitting down as a family after dinner each night to read about the Christmas Story, and Cathie and I are setting aside some evenings without the TV to read and reflect on Christ's arrival in the world. I've started reading the latter half of Walter Wangerin's The Book of God which deals with Christ's arrival, starting with Zachariah and Herod, and paints a broad canvas around the Christmas storoy that goes way outside a manger. I have no idea if any of this will help, but it's a start.

On Saturday, we celebrated my nephew Matthew's birthday. Attendance at these is not optional, unless you've got a reeeaaally good reason or severe diahreha. My brother Jon had neither. Instead, Will filled in for him.

At last! Swimwear for my daughters!

Went and worked out with Brad "Blue" Jeffrey today. After deer and pheasant hunting over the past few weeks, Brad grew a beard, and Will coined the name of "Ol' Blue" (From the movie Old School) for Brad.

In the past I've mentioned before the ongoing practical joke battle we've had with the Niemi's. One of the things they did was stick a pickle-smelling (the manufacturer claims it's "Harvest Spice") air freshner in our houre. For a couple of days we couldn't figure out what the horrible smell was until Cathie discovered it and the Niemi's fessed up to it. We thought it would be funny to stash this in my parent's house, so on Thanksgiving, I hid this behind their dresser and we waited. And waited. After only a couple of hours, the upstairs smelled awful. My parents went out of town for about a week, so I called my sister for an update. She said that she walked into their house and it smelled like someone was canning Pickles. She asked my Mom what the smell was and she said she didn't know, but wasn't it wonderful? A nice buttery popcorn smell (?!?). She didn't know where it was coming from, but figured it was her popuri bowl (which happened to be situated right next to the air freshener). My sister eventually removed it, and I think my Mom is blaming my brother.

I sat in a meeting yesterday with a guy who could of been Chris Farley's twin brother. I didn't see it at first until he got really animated, and I had a tough time not laughing.

Monday night Cathie and I went to the Triad for the circuit training program they offer. There are twenty stations setup where you exercise at each station for a minute, rest for thirty seconds, and then move on to the next station. The entire workout consists of cycling through everything twice. It was a killer. There were times going through the workout that I felt like I was going to ralph. I felt good at the end, but wasn't really enjoying it all that much meanwhile.

J turned me on to the new My Immortal video from Evanesence. Slightly different than the album version.

Check out Dan's 12/08/03 Post - good story.

Remember the whole thing I mentioned earlier about the tradition in my family of calling each other on our birthdays? We were ragging on my sister Susan pretty hard about forgetting to call Will, and next thing you know she sent these pictures to Will. Sure this points to the power power of shame, but it also shows just how much my family loves Will.

I had a pretty uneventful weekend. Cathie and I hung around on Friday night, had a nice fire - read for a while and watched Drumline. It wasn't a bad movie, but it's tough to see Orlando Jones as anything but the Seven Up guy. Saturday afternoon Madeline had a dance recital in Brighton and that night we had a kids birthday party at the Niemi's. This was actually a pretty fun time, where the adults hung out while the kids played. Afterwards, Will, Justin, Mark and I all went out to the South Lyon Hotel for a beer. Last night we had a gal we've gotten to know in our neighborhood come over along with her daughter, who's Nate's age. She's a single Mom whose life is pretty hetic. She's pretty young - only 25 or 26 and she doesn't have a lot of friends with kids. We've gotten to know her over the past year as Cathie and I both go to her to get our hair cut (Yes world, I go to a Salon to get my hair cut). We're doing a brunch thing at our house after Crossroad's Christmas Service on December 21st, and she and her daughter are coming to btoh, which is cool. We've also got a couple other friends coming who don't do church unless it's coming with us, which is a good place to start.

Jason turned me on to these dubbed Jesus Videos.... Sacriligious - maybe... Funny. Yep.


Jesus - Part One

Jesus - Part Two


Jesus - Part Three


Jesus - Part Four

Looking to buy me something? Look no further.... Click here to see my wish list.

I am the smartest man alive.


Take the survey here.

My brother Jon nominates this as the best Survivor quote ever:
"Promises are like wicker furniture and fat women - easily broken by Johnny Fairplay"
-Johnny "Fairplay" Dalton

THE RELEVANCY OF RELATIVITY :: RELEVANT magazine :: GOD.LIFE.PROGRESSIVE CULTURE.: "There will always be people who cause you to question your opinions, people that will shatter the rigid rules you prepared and cause you to really explore why you believe what you do. "

For the lady who has everything. You can support the ministry via Betty Bowers site.

Did I mention that I got my new cell phone? It's amazing. I went with the Samsung i600 through Verizon. The phone has complete PDA capabilitiy, full browser, e-mail, contact and calendar functions. I can syncronize everything wirelessly with my laptop so all of my e-mails, meetings and contacts are always completely up-to-date. I'm pretty sure I was this proud of each of my kids when I was born...

I went out to dinner last night in Kansas City with my mentor, Mack McCormick. Mack is the Vice President over the North American Document and Content Imaging group within Xerox. Mack is a really amazing guy and one of the finest leaders I've ever worked for. He was in the Army Special Forces for 22 years and retired as a Colonel - you can imagine that he's got some great stories. He's lived all over the world, and has a very unique and informed perspective from both political and economic standpoints. I get the chance to replay differente scnarious with him and get his feedback on my performance, dig into the thought process that went behind his decisions and those of his superiors. He's the kind of guy you want in the trenches with you when things hit the fan. In the book From Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about people who have Level 5 Leadership:
"Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leadres have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious - but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves." If this level 5 crap interests you, read more about the role of humility and will here.

Unfortunately, like Bill, Mack also created a video, which you can watch here. It's no less akward than Bill Belanger's video.

Will updated his blog! Looks like Jesus must be coming back soon, or else hell has frozen over. This is something Will only does every few months, so it's a special time for all of us.

Noel is famous. He's in the paper. Because the paper is on the internet, you know that what he says is true. Noel uses words like synthesize and hyperindividualism. Noel has a beard like an amish man.

I'm in Kansas City until Thursday. We've got a Christmas Party tonight with both the customer and our project team, which should be a good time. I'm not feeing much like hanging out with people today, though, so we'll see how it goes.

Yesterday was Will’s birthday. Cathie cooked a big dinner, complete with a birthday cheesecakes and we sang happy birthday to him. In my family we have this odd tradition of phone calls on your birthday. There’s all sorts of intricate rules to this, and if you miss out, you’ll never hear the end of it. You get special bonus points for being the first to call on a given day – and for most of the people in our family, Will normally wins that one, and typically reminds me to call my nephews. Will has been pretty much unanimously adopted into our family, and has to abide by all of the rules of the family – including these.
Anyways, we had a small surprise deal for Will up at the South Lyon Hotel (the only drinking establishment in town) where about 20 friends showed up from as far away as Lansing to wish Will a happy birthday. I’m not sure if he was surprised, but it was a good time. Jason Shinn, Jessica Richeid, Noel Heikkinen, Bill Belanger, Mark Freier, Joe & Joann Muzzi, Bill Jarratt, Matt & Anne Calabretta, Sue Rankin, Mike Cornell, Ron Reyhl, Desi Defelice, and Katie Freier all showed up. The party wound down around 11:30 PM.

Last Friday, we went on our annual family Christmas tree expedition. Dan, Kris and the kids couldn’t make it because Andrew was sick, but I’m guessing the cold drizzle probably had something to with it as well. We got to the tree farm, where we rode the tractor out and found the perfect tree to chop down. Even with the crummy weather, it was fun.

We're doing our standard double-whammy Thanksgiving. Today we headed to my Mom and Dad's in Okemos, where my Mom lays out an amazing spread! We had a deep-fried turkey, which was by far the best Turkey I've ever had. We have three complete tables - one for the adults, and two for the kids. My Mom goes way beyond just maknig great food, she sets up the kdis tables complete with cloth napkins, nape-placards and wine glasses. After a couple of hours of watching football and hanging out, my Mom brings out no less than seven desserts. Beth, Jon and Dad's birthdays all fall during November, so we sing the Kurt family Birthday dirge. It's the saddest, most off-key version of happy birthday you've ever heard. Occasionally one of the kids breaks out crynig - no kidding. My mom welcomes everyone at our Thanksgiving, anyone who doesn't have a place to go is welcome - she called to make sure that Jack Bowden (Janet's husband), Jess (our roommate) and Jason all had places to go for Thanksgiving. Speaking of vagabonds, Will stopped by later on for after dinner drinks. Check out the pictures here.

From there we headed over to Cathie's parents in Dewitt, where we spend the night, and do dinner again. The other part of the Kurt tradition is to go Christmas Tree hunting our at the Tannenbaum tree farm in Mason, MI. More detail on this later.

I just got back from seeing the movie Elf with Will. That's two hours of my life and $8.50 that are gone forever. We were going to the movie largely based on Jason's reccomendation. It would have been alright if I had taken my kids, with the expectation that this was a cheezy christmas movie. Just about the only funny part of the whole movie was seeing the character who played "old Blue" in the mailroom. Even that's not so funny. Jason hates the Matrix:Revolutions, loves Elf. Go figure.

Elizabeth Taylor says Michael Jackson's innocent... Enough said. You can read Michael's denial here.

I just read an article in U.S. News and World Report that Herrings communicate out their butt through their flatulence. Much like some people I know. Is that considered a spiritual gift?

Odd links from Noel:

• Dancing Badgers being chased by snakes trying to eat mushrooms - All with a funky beat you can dance to.


• I'm not sure if the guy is serious or not...

Maddie's doing a little better. On Saturday, she'd told Cathie that she'd gotten all the tears out of her and mostly just had happy thoughts about Janet. She saw Jack in church on Sunday and ran up to him and gave him a great big hug, it was cool to see. She'd even worn her special skirt that her and Janet had picked out last time the two of them had gone out together shopping. . On Sunday, she told Cath that her heart was feeling "a little bit sad still". I wish I came out of this whole thing with some great parenting wisdom or advice, but all we did was hold her and love her while we let her cry and we gave her room to be sad. Not sure I could write a parenting book based on that.

Went to the gym this morning, early, and worked out with Kirk. Kirk's got some crazy stuff at his gym, and I made the mistake of asking him what a this crazy gizmo was. He gets this evil grin on his face, and next think I know I'm strapping this wheel on my feel and pulling myself around the gym like a parapalegic dog.

We went out with Mark and Jen last night. We went out to eat in Northville at Border Cantina, which I hadn't been to in about 8 years. I used to eat there 2 or 3 times a week when I lived and worked down teh street from it. Great Mexican food. From there we stopped by to see Jess at Starbucks and then on to the Salvation Army thrift store in Whitmore Lake. It's a great store, and we played the "pick an out for the other person" game (if that really is a game...). Jen and I picked out outfits for each other, and Mark and Cathie did. Cathie found Mark a nice lime green sweater vest and Mark found Cathie a crop top with a Janet Jackson reminescent jacket - complete with epilets. I had a beautiful matching crop top and space-age polymer vest and I found Jen a shirt that looked like a pack of juicy fruit gum. We had a great time with them - lots of laughing. We've known Mark and Jen for about ten years - they were the first people we got to know at Crossraods, and they went out of their way to help us connect in to church.

I spent tonight with the pyros (my junior high guys small group). We watched the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings - Two Towers - all 3 hours and 43 minutes. We ordered pizza and each kid had their own two liter of Mountain Dew. One of them commented how after drinking 2/3rds of the bottle that they'd stopped blinking. We cheered through the battle scenes and had a great time together. Half way through the movie, we went on a candy run. I feel bad for the parents that I sent them home to. About 9:00, the guys figured out what huge amounts of caffine does to the digestive system - as they all lined up for the bathroom. Lots of air freshener used that night.

Cathie and I went to the visitation tonight for Janet. Cathie put together some pictures that we had of Janet and Madeline and we gave them to Jack, Janet's husband. We shared with Jack just how much Janet meant to Madeline, and told him about some of the memories Madeline has of Janet. It was so painful to see Jack break down sobbing, crying out abou thow much it hurt, how it sucked, how it wasn't fair. Cathie just held him in a hug as he cried. Death sucks.

After lots of careful research and bargaining with Verizon, I bought the Samsung i600 phone and sold my Dell Axim Pocket PC to Jon. The phone allows me to receive all of my work e-mail, contacts and calendar information on the fly right to my cell phone, which will be nice - but maybe a little overkill for most. It has a full web browser on it, mp3 player and video player as well - it's amazing how you can actually watch pre-recorded tv shows on such a small screen with such clarity. We'll see how long it takes for me to get bored with this toy and move on to the next thing that will bring me life....

Another rough morning for Madeline.... She spent the first hour this morning with Cathie holding her while she sobbed. This sucks. Cathie and Madeline are going up to have some copies made of the pictures of Maddie and Janet to give to Jack, Janet's husband, at the wake today. I'm on conference calls all morning, and Maddie's sitting down here in my office, on my lap, cuddling with me, occasionally crying.

A friend of mine Bill (who happens to be my boss) made this video for work. Bill will be mocked heavily for this. He's been kind enough to forward these kind of things out to my friends and co-workers, and I'm just returning the favor. I'm trying to get my hands on the outtakes, which should be gold for future blackmail.

When I got home from the airport last night, Cathie and I told Madeline about Janet's death. We didn't know what to expect. Madeline broke down and we held her in our arms for an hour while she sobbed. She would stop for a minute and ask some amazing, insightful questions about when she would see Janet, or why God wouldn't protect her. It broke our hearts and we were crying too. This was one of those times where words just didn't do any good - a lot of holding Maddie and loving her. A little while later I went and told Nate what had happened, and he came in, put his arm around his sister and did an amazing job of comforting her, telling her that it was okay to be sad, and that Janet was in heaven with Jesus. The rest of the evening, she would cry here and there. She talked about Janet a little more throughout the evening, still very sad. This is one of those kind of hurts you want to protect your kids from - to take the pain from them.
I wonder if God feels this way about us when we hurt? I sometimes wonder if in his infinite knowledge is God able to rationalize our pain away because he has the big picture view of life? Does God weep when his kids hurt? When I became a dad, I thought I'd gained a new understanding of how God feels about his kids - and now I'm not so sure.

I just got done reading Psalm 18. It’s a song of David that he sung after God rescued him from his enemies. He paints this clear great of God as our protector using pictures like a rock, fortress and shield. David sings about how God will go to these great lengths to rescue his people, protects them and gives them strength. David uses the picture of God guiding him sure-footedly along a precarious mountain path. I’m trying to reconcile these images with three things. I’m reading Job, and I’m at the part where his buddies are giving him lots of bad advice, and Job is pretty bitter about God – trying to understand how David’s picture of God and Job’s dealings with God line-up. Secondly, I’m trying to understand why I’m so willing in my sin to walk away from a God who takes care of me and wants what’s best for me to the degree that Psalm 18 talks about. Third, I’m trying to understand all this to be able to justify in my mind this same caring God as I have to talk to my five-year about losing her friend in a freak car accident two days ago. I know there are lots of great biblical answers to all this, and my mind can rationalize all of them, but in my gut, they don’t line up right now

I screwed up when I set the time on the alarm clock in my hotel room last night. I meant to set it for Central Standard Time instead of Eastern Standard Time. I woke up at 4:30 AM, wide awake, and figured, no big deal, It's really 5:30 - I'll get up, work out and get some work done. I got to the hotel gym and figured out that it was actually 3:30 AM CST. That blew.

I got a call from Cathie when my plane landed in Kansas City yesterday and I immediately wanted to fly home. She was pretty emotional, and told me that a friend of ours from church, Janet Bowden, had died Monday night in a car accident. Cathie and I were not super close to Janet or her husband Jack, but our five year old daughter Madeline was. Janet was like an Aunt to Madeline. Janet and Madeline connected a couple of years ago – both red-heads, both with fiery personalities. It was the coolest thing at church – most Sundays, Janet and Madeline would see each other from across the hall and run towards each other and Janet would scoop Madeline up in her arms and yell, “How’s my girl!” She made Maddie feel like the most important little girl in the world. When Madeline was having a tough time going into her Promiseland class, Janet could drop her off pick her up no problem. Janet and Madeline would go on their special “dates”. Her and Maddie would go shopping together to lunch, and other fun “girl places”. A month or so ago, Janet took the day off and took Maddie to the Toledo zoo, after which they went out to eat, ran errands and didn’t get home until late that night. Cathie and I haven’t told Madeline yet about Janet’s death. We’re been pretty unsure of how to do it. I called a number of my friends with kids for advice and most of them had no idea what to do. Cathie and I did decide that we should both be there to have the conversation with her. I fly back this afternoon. We have no idea how she’ll respond, and it’s been tough with Cathie and I knowing and Madeline not knowing. Maddie was talking with Cathie last night off-handedly about role models, and mentioned how Janet was her role-model. In the same conversation she was talking with Cathie about death, and how sad it makes her when animals and people die. She’s been raised to understand heaven, and we’ve tried to teach her the happy and sad sides of death for followers of Jesus, but we have no idea how she’ll take this. I remember pretty vividly when I was five and my Grandpa Smith died. I want to be able to protect my little girl from the crap life throws at her, and I feel pretty helpless here. I want to take the pain for her and can’t. Cathie and I are trying to figure out what closure and grieving look like for a five year old – is it drawing pictures to remember Janet or is it attending the visitation or funeral to say goodbye? Most of it, we’re going to play by ear – but with me being away, it makes it harder to have to mull it over and over in our minds instead of being able to sit down and deal with it.

Will and Jason read my blog today where I pointed out Noel's review of 'the Matrix Revolutions' and I surmissed that they would change their tune regarding their own reviews to line up with Noel and myself. I was right. They now think the Matrix Revolutions was amazing and can't wait to see it again. They feel that if this thing doesn't take the Oscars in every category including best costume, screenplay, best foreign film, animated, drama, comedy they would be shocked. They had no idea how wrong they could be. What fools they've been! Sometimes they need insight beyond themsleves and luckily Noel and I are on the same page, and now they are too.

I just about passed out working out today. Kirk, Dan and I worked legs today - and didn't do it in a real typical way. One guy had a large rubber band hooked to him via a harness, and the other end was hooked to the guy behind you. We'd then run 40 yard sprints with the other person acting as an anchor behind you. We did 6 sets of 40 yard sprints in each direction - first 6 forward - and then 6 running backwards. I was hating it while doing it, but felt great afterwards. After the first set of sprints, I started hyperventilating and got dizzy. Dan found out the hard way not to eat cinnamon toast crunch right before working out. Kirk a great trainer - and knows just how far he can push you, and how to get the most out of you. There's enough trash talking going on at the same time to keep everyone competitive, but there's a fair amount of grace cut as long as you're working to the best of your ability.

Check out Noel's Tuesday, November 11, 2003 Post in his blog, reviewing the Matrix: Revolutions movie. After seeing that Noel liked the movie, I'm guessing Jason and Will will change their tunes.

Will's soul has been recently disclosed.
Jason's soul has not been doing much journeying lately.
Mark's mind has been stirring recently.

Noel turned me on to this site dedicated to theologically questionable church signs.

My brother Jon and his wife Beth came to visit on Saturday. The whole time they were with us, Jon kept trying to say intellingent things, and pose for pictures, hoping he'd make it into my blog somehow. Jon and Beth hung out with us during the day, and we went out Saturday night. I know there are a lot of families that aren't this way, but we have a blast getting together with my brothers/sister and their spouses. My brother Jon and I have always been great friends, since we were little. He's a couple years younger than me, and he was the best man in my wedding, and I was the best man in his. Jon is one of the most generous guys I know, and if there was a masters degree in spotting holes in others that are fun to poke at, it'd be him. Somehow growing up, Jon was able to get away with just about anything by sitting around quietly after the fact until people forgot he was there. Jon being in a room completely changes the dynamic - especially in a family situation - typically for the better. Some of Jon's best work is when he's able to say something to my Mom, and I get yelled at for him. Jon is able to tease his nieces and nephews to the point that either they'll chew him out, or their parents will. My sister-in-law Beth is a Doctor - pursuing a fellowship in hematology and oncology. She's brilliant yet humble about it. The kids love her - she's they're "Aunt Bethie". My favorite line from Jon during his visit while talking about Jess (our roommate) was "Do you look through her stuff when she's gone? 'Cause you know she's looking through your stuff when you leave." Classic Jon

Periodically, I like to check and see how people came across my blog. The blogger software will let you see the site that referred someone to mine - whether they typed it in directly or came across it via a search engine. To date, here are some of the oddest search criteria that led people to my site:

• Dave Matthews Wife Pictures


• anne frank's thoughts about margret


• special ops and famous pictures


• guy who looks just like dave matthews


• Bullying Qoute


• where can i find pictures of abused homosexuals


• analyzing margaritaville lyrics


• why did xerox company choose Anne Mulcahy, how is she better


• jessica simpson swimming with dolphins pictures


• "this world has nothing for me" next world everything lyrics

I just finished watching a video of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe - part of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. When I read the books as a kid, I never saw past the story line to any larger story. Each time I read it or watch it, I'm amazed at how C.S. Lewis retold the core elements of the Gospel in these books - especially in this first book. After watching the video with my kids today, I sat down and started reading it again. Reading through the part of the book where Aslan makes a deal with the Witch to die in Edmund's place opens up a part of the gospel I'd never though of before - it really shows the the majesty of the savior and the humilty of his death. I guess it may sound silly that it takes a kids book to point these things out to me. Oh well.

I'm home tonight. I'm back here in beautiful Kansas City next Wednesday night, and home during the entire week of Thanksgiving. After next week's flight, I hit my NorthWest Gold Elite status. It may not sound like a big deal, but the perks are nice - including early boarding, extra luggage and automatic first class upgrades. Working in an industry where most of the people travel heavily, people can recite the various plans and tiers to achieve them for just about every hotel and airline out there, and people weare them as a badge of honor. I've made this flight between Detroit and K.C. so many times that I know the guy who works at the metal detector at the K.C. airport by name.

Interesting Relevant article on Matrix:Revolutions, but it doesn't really touch on the fact that in spite of these flaws, it was still an entertaining movie. Interesting discorse at the end of the article, worth reading. My favorite comment is:
Why do so many people hate the matrix? My top 3 suggestions:
1. They didn't understand it (eg. the writer of this review), and feel the need to vent their frustration.
2. They read a negative review, and then went and saw the movie. Inevitably they noticed all the negative things pointed out by the review, and failed to appreciate the work as a whole.
3. They expected installments 2 and 3 to be exactly the same as the first movie, only different.

"I had mixed reactions to Revolutions in general. I was disappointed to see the “theory” of the Matrix completely drop off in Revolutions. For example, The Architect comes in at the end to become this grandfatherly twin of the Oracle who is necessary to preserve the balance between good and evil. Duh! Come on, where’s The Architect in his masochistic evil glory? The exclusion of The Architect was sourly disappointing, because along with him the theory of the Matrix was nowhere in sight.

I'm in Kansas City and I feel like crap. My head is full of flem and I'm in meeting all day, hooped up on cold medicine. I have a couple of presentations to do tomorrow, but I can barely think straight let alone present before a large group.

Good article on the quality comeback of the Simpsons over the past years. Probably only of interest to true Simpsons aficionados. Plus, it uses the phrase Jump the Shark.

My wife's cousin sent these pictures of the Southern California fire that were taken by one of the guys in her neighborhood. Everyone was safe, and the houses weren't harmed.

My wife likes to forward these things to me because she knows how they annoy me. This e-mail chain is one of the finest examples of shame and manipulation in the name of Jesus that I've seen. Man, these annoy me:
~Jesus Test~

This is an easy test, you score 100 or zero. It's your choice. If you aren't
ashamed to do this, please follow the directions.

Jesus said, "if you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my
Father."
Not ashamed - Pass this on . . . only if you mean it.
Yes, I do Love God.
He is my source of existence and Savior.
He keeps me functioning each and everyday.
Without Him, I will be nothing.
Without Him, I am nothing but with Him I can do all things through Christ
that strengthens me.
Phil 4:13
_____
This is the simplest test . . . ! If you Love God, and are not ashamed of all
the marvelous things he has done for you.
Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you!

What a cool site! Check out the Wake Boarding game. This is a huge potential time-waster.

There's a Mom at my church who is a constant source of encouragement to me. Over the past few years, Cathie and I receive regular notes and e-mails encouraging and thanking me for my time with their boys, and Cathie for supporting me in what I do. Especially with Jr. High youth ministry, you can't rely on the kids themselves to give much back short-term - you've got to look waaaay in the future, so every little bit helps. Here's an excerpt from her e-mail regarding our small group last night:
Just a quick thank you. The boys had such a great time last night. Nick loved it and wants to come every time. Zach was so happy that Nick loved it. We all feel great when we have a place to share our faith experience and it is well received. Thanks for loving kids. Thanks to Cathie for holding down the fort.

Had a great Sanctuary (church for the rest of us - targeted at 6 - 12th grade) last night teaching about Worship. J did an amazing job coordinating the whole experience - starting with some phoneomenal teaching and then some well put together "experiental" time to go off and chew on some of what we'd just talked about. The crux of the message was about worship not being a time, but a lifestyle. J teaches from the heart and with such a great vulternability about him, the kids really connected with what he was saying. I've got a pretty good idea most of the time where he's headed with his talks - but when he was playing clip from dashboard confessional confessional unplugged doing The Best Deceptions. In this clip, there's a group of 50 or so 20-something's sitting around Chris Carrabba (the only guy in the band) singing along to an acoustic version of the song - singing out of key, singing passionately. The kids came to the conclusion that the passion in their singing was because the song probably meant something to them - maybe they'd lived through a breakup and they had a connection to the song. J then took us through a couple of songs and the meanings behind them, and then we sang - like the kids in the video - passionately, fervently. It made for great worship that really struck me. Sanctuary just keeps getting better each time - we're drawing new kids in, and getting the old ones back. J really seems to be getting into his groove on this, and it shows.

Last night in my Pyros (Jr. High Guys) small group, we talked about what it means to be a godly man. After they got done with some of the standard answers (Joe, Jason, nice, good, etc) I asked them if they'd rather be Tony Hawk or a Godly man. None of them chose being a Godly man - and here's where some great truth came out. They said that a Godly men were boring and nice. We then talked about Aragorn, from the Lord of the Rings - across the board - they thought he was cool - because he was dangerous, a leader, he came through, he was loyal, he stood up for the little guy, smoked the bad guy, etc. Most of them didn't see Jesus this way. We then watched the battle of Helm's Deep from the Two Towers where Aragorn prepares and leads the people against Saruman and Lord Saron's forces. We finished it up with a great discussion of what Traits Jesus has in common with Aragorn, both compassion and danger all wrapped into one - that Jesus could be Mother Teresa to the hurting, but Aragorn to the Pharisees. This is such a great group of guys - and the fact that they're bringing their friends to the group tells me a lot about how it's going.

It's about that time for me to begin looking at new cell phones, the Treo 600, Samsung i600 and Motorola MPX200. It's embaressing the amount of time I've put into researching these phones. Because of work, I'm on my cell as much as 3 or 4 hours a day, and because I'm a nerd, I want to have the latest/greatest technology. The thing these three phones have in common is the built in PDA. The Samsung and the Motorola both run the Mobile PocketPC operating system and the Treo runs the Palm OS. I'd prefer PocketPC because it's a little sexier, with a little cleaner syncronization and integration into Microsoft Applications. The cool thing with the Treo is that it has a thumb key-pad that allows you to receive and send e-mails on the fly, as well as Instant Message from your cell fairly easily. The downside to the phone is that it's a little bigger, and Sprint coverage seems to blows in the Metro Detroit area. The Motorola phone is tiny - about the same size as my current T720, but AT&T's plans are pretty expenseive - I'd rather stick with Verizon. The Samsung i600 is a little larger, but I've heard good things about it and I'm hoping to get a chance to play with it this week. I work with a fairly geeky crowd (go figure in the computer industry?) that drool over the latest phones and could give you a pro/con list a mile long for each model phone out there. If you're looking for the latest/greatest information on cell phones, or if you want to see just how consumed people are with them - check out Howard Forums.

I'm easily amused.

Great article in RELEVANT magazine on the Christian Subculture: “What makes the stuff so half-assed, so thin, so weak and cumulatively so demoralizing … has nothing to do with faith. The problem is lack of faith. [The Christian subculture] is a bad Xerox of the mainstream, not a truly distinctive or separate achievement. Without the courage to lead, it numbly follows, picking up the major media’s scraps and gluing them back together with a cross on top.”

It's been great being in town all week. I'm out of town next week - again - back down in Kansas City for a couple of days. I leave Tuesday night and come back Thursday night - in time for the big Survivor bash.

We had performance training day at the gym today. This is where Kirk Vickers, Brad Jeffrey, Dan Reynolds myself and occasionally Joe Muzzi get together and go through workouts that will make you vomit - from the effort involved. We had one exercise that involved laying down with a 25lb medicine ball, sitting up and throwing it in front of a guy sitting about 20 feet away. The ball rolls to you, you pull it up over your head, lay back, sit up with the ball over your head and throw it back. Sounds fun? Not if you have ADD. I lost focus for a second, and had my testicles crushed when Brad threw it and I didn't catch it before it rolled straight between my legs. Painful.

One of the guys working out with us was a pro football player, a quarterback who was out while trying to rehab his shoulder and play again. The guy clearly loves football, everything about it. He talked about how his world is having to find a new center now that football is not at the center of his orbit. What makes it hard is that no matter how hard he works, no matter how much he wants it, he may never get his shoulder back into playing shape, and it's rocking his world. Whether it's a woman, a job, money, your body - whatever - they're all too small of stories to live in. Reminds me of the Switchfoot lyrics from Meant to Live - "We were meant to live for so much more - have we lost ourselves? Somewhere we live inside".

Some wonderfully deep thoughts:

• Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.


• Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff


• Whenever someone asks me to define love, I usually think for a minute, then I spin around and pin the guy's arm behind his back. NOW who's asking the questions?


• Why do the caterpillar and the ant have to be enemies? One eats leaves, and the other eats caterpillars. Oh, I see now.


• It's too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.


• I wish I had a dollar for every time I spent a dollar, because then, yahoo!, I'd have all my money back.


• If I had a mine shaft, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way.


• I saw on this nature show how the male elk douses himself with urine to smell sweeter to the opposite sex. What a coincidence!

Gosh I haven't wanted to read the bible lately.... Haven't really wanted to spend any time with God. Not sure why - nothing major that I'm running from, I'm not sure if it's because it seems dull, because I'm in a rut, or what. Haven't really had much to say here as of late. No deep and dull thoughts.

I saw the Matrix Revolutions yesterday and I'll be one of the few people you'll hear say that they enjoyed it. It was anti climatic, especially after the original movie. It didn't do a good job capitalizing on some of the theories that the architect put forth in the second movie, and there was some major cheese in this in terms of lines and endings. This movie was much less cerebral than the first and second, much more action oriented that thought provoking. What I loved was the climactic battle throughout the movie. There's a battle going on that looks uninvolved - a small group of humans against overwhelming odds, continually getting the crap kicked out of them by the machines. It looks like it's just a matter of time until they're destroyed. While all this is going on, there's a small group that has hope, faith that Neo, the messiah, the One will come through in the end. It's this hope that keeps many of them fighting, and without this hope some trudge through the battle - and despair. Pretty good metaphor for the world we live in, battling evil against an unbeatable enemies - death and sin. Without a messiah, it's hopeless.

Jason turned me on to the latest David Crowder CD - Illuminate. Christianity Today gave it an interesting review that's worth reading, but the album is excellent musically, with very deep, soulful lyrics.

I worked out today with a guy named Adam who's a professional Tennis player. Interesting guy. We were talking about loving what you do for a living, and how much he loves to play Tennis. He was telling me about his traveling around for tournaments, and that pretty much when he's not playing, he's practicing. He said that by the time a lot of guys get to the highest levels, it's no longer their passion, it's a job. Right now, I really love my job. I don't think there's anything else I'd rather be doing. My job's not perfect, but I still love it. A while back, I wrestled with the idea of quitting my job and doing full time youth ministry, but came to the conclusion that it wasn't where God was pulling me. How many people have a job they love, that pays them well, with people they enjoy working with, that gives them some degree of flexability in their lives? I'm thankful.

I've worked with a guy out of Cleveland over the past 4 years or so. We work pretty closely together, and have been on a few projects together. He's doesn't seem like a guy that's overly intersted in spiritual stuff, but we've had some great conversations about the the importance of developing ourselves spiritually as well as professionally, enough so that he went out and read the book Wild At Heart. He and I were talking about our the fact that we both have a tough time cutting people grace either personally or professionally. I talked to him about the book I'd read a while ago called What's so Amazing about Grace, but that I still haven't got this one figured out. We decided that we're going to read the book - a chapter a week, and set up a time each week to talk about it. I'm really excited about this.

We had a big 'ol house full of people this weekend for Holloween. We carved pumpkins and Emliy got to wear her costume for her dance class (I'm not sure whether Miss Tara was dressing up for the dads or the kids).

Susan, Kevin, Gabe and Ali came up on Friday along with Ken and Cathy Buck and Cathie's parents. The guys took the kids trick-or-treating while the girls hung back and passed out candy. Cathy and Jess dressed up as Black Eyed Peas and could easily have passed for 8th graders. The cousins had a blast hanging out, and Saturday morning, Kevin and I took the kids to the Park to play. The guys in my small group got together over at Brad's on Saturday to watch a disappointing loss by State. The highlight was the giant clifford battle that went on. Brad got a set of about 40 small clifford beanie-baby dolls as a vetretnarian promotion. One or two started getting chucked around, trying to hit each other in the crotch. Before you know it a full blown battle was going on with these things being thrown around with no quarter being given.

I POKE BADGERS WITH SPOONS

I'm not sure what this means, but I want a t-shirt with this on it. My brother Jon called me lat night and told me he'd just ordered one. He'd seen it on a bumper sticker, entered it into google, and next thing he knew, he had a t-shirt. Gotta love capitalism when mixed in with a little google.

I've started listening to Worship music in my workouts again, and it's been great. Periodically, a song will strike me and I'll just sit there for a few minutes in between sets and think about the words, pray and worship in the moment. I love the lyrics to Come, Thou Fount. The lyrics are old english (I have no idea what a fetter is), but they really hit me:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bing my wand’ring heart to thee:
Prone to wander , Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for thy courts above.

Early yesterday morning, Thursday, October 30, we lost a friend, a father, an inspiration. Co-founder and owner of Youth Specialties (YS), Mike Yaconelli, was in a fatal car accident in northern California late Wednesday evening. Read more here.

Mike was a huge inspiration to me through the Youth Specialties conferences and his books (Dangerous Wonder, Messy Spirituality). He was the champion of Youth Pastors, encouraging them and standing up for them - still a rebel who hadn't bought into the institution even after 50. He touted a relationship with God that was real, messy and imperfect. My heart is still really sad about this loss, even though he wasn't a close personal friend.

We had our annual Halloween party at the Niemi's last Sunday, where even the adults get dressed up. Cathie was a biker babe (complete with multiple tattoos) and I grew my hair into a nice long mullett. Madeline was a green haired witch, Nate a power ranger and emily a very cute Care Bare. More Pictures Here

I flew in from Lousivlle, KY last night to Kansas City, MO by way of Houston, TX. Since I had about 4 ½ hours on the plane last night, I watched the movie The Outlaw Jose Wales on my laptop. What a movie and what a character! This movie really connected with me – not because of some amazing story of redemption intertwined in the plot, but because of Jose Wales character. Jose Wales was an historical figure, a guerilla fighter against the Union army during the Civil War. It didn’t matter what the situation was or how outnumbered he was – he always came through in a pinch. He never abandoned his friends or the hurting people he came along in his travels, he always did the right thing. I think every guy hopes when he’s in similar situations, he’d respond the same way Jose Wales did - that they have what it takes, and I think that’s why this movie really grabbed me. There’s a part of me that thinks that if I were in similar situation I would blow it, take the easy way out, not come through in a pinch. I know that’s not who I am at the core – but I have my doubts at times.

I was reading Romans 8:30-32 this morning:

After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us?

It’s so easy for me to gloss over what this says. I remember the day it connected with me – I was listening to a youth camp speaker, Brett Ray speak on this verse. It was a very defining moment in my relationship with God, the day I understood that God loves his son as much as I love mine, and that it was just as hard to allow Jesus to be put to death in my place as it would be for me to allow my son Nate to be sacrificed. Maybe I’m the only one who never got that point, but I figured that God being who he is and all didn’t have that tough a time with allow Jesus to die, because he was perfect after all and knew how the sacrifice would redeem us all. God being a trinity, I thought that it wasn’t the same relationship as the one Nate and I have. When all of this clicked, it was like a light bulb going on in my head and I wept.

I'm staying at a beautiful hotel in Louisville, KY called the Seelbach Hilton. It's a beautiful, majestic place that's been around forever. I'm on the concigere level, which all sorts of perks - h'oderves last night included Lox and beef tips with various desserts - who needs dinner. To top it off, my door has a nice little box I can leave my shoes in and have them shined and ready to go first thing in the morning.

Zach Bashista and I lead a small group of 10 junior high guys and we call ourselves the Pyros (Mostly because all boys love to burn stuff) I got a cool note from the Mom of one of them regarding our meeting on Sunday night that really touched me:

Thank you for last night’s small group. It was a perfect topic for XXXX. He has been struggling big time, moving into an environment where it is not “O.K.” to be who he is, i.e. thoughtful, kind, smart, an independent thinker. I have been encouraging him to be defined by Jesus, not by peers. It was great to have him hear that from someone he actually respects. The way he has been defining his feelings for me lately is, “I’ve felt bad about my environment before but I’ve never felt bad about myself.”
Thank you once again for taking a Sunday night away from your family, for pouring your heart into middle school kids. You make a difference.

Our group has been going through pieces of the book Wild At Heart, looking at who Jesus was (not the flannelgraph Jesus, but the dangerous, radical, revolutionary Savior of the world) and looking at who we are to him. We started our group off talking about all of the names we've been called in our lives and how we've responded to them. Jr. High guys have been called everything in the book - and every name hurts - short, fat, stupid, faggit, wimp and worse - each name leaves a wound. We talked about who we are to God, and the stone that Revelations talks about with our name on it, and the importance of knowing that name - knowing who we really are to Him. We watched the clip from Gladitator where Maximus states his entire name to the Emperor, and the clip from the Matrix where Neo begins to believe that he is not just "Mr. Anderson" as the Agent tries to convince him. Here's the miraculous part - eight junior high guys spent 3 minutes quietly listening to God, asking him to tell them who they are to him, and writing down what they heard. 3 Minutes for 9 guys with ADD (I include myself in that) is miraculous! What an amazing group of guys - watching them grow from being these tiny immature 6th graders to where they're at now is a blast!

Wow. This article on the Way of the Cross really struck me.

Had a bunch of people over for Survivor last night, and Jason, Cath, Megan, Tim, Jess and I had an interesting discussion on where to draw the lines with what kind of movies we see. The discussion was prompted by J, Tim and I seeing Kill Bill Tuesday night. We were talking about how to balance Philippians 4:8 with Galatians 5:13-15 and Proverbs 4:23. We really didn't come to any conclusions - find any specific line in the sand. There are easy lines to draw around things such as X rated movies - but what about the gray areas? How do you balance finding redemption and the larger story of movies like Braveheart and Gladiator with the violence that the movies have in them? Is violence okay, but not gore? At what point am I not guarding my heart? I'm not sure.

For $30 you can have the celebrity of your choice call your friend for 30 seconds at Hollywoodiscalling.com. I think I'll have Beetlejuice call my brother Jon for his birthday.... Or else the Barbi Twins.

I just got done reading a great article in relevant about a guy's struggle with self righteousness in terms of sin, specifically in how he views homosexuals - not in terms of right and wrong, but pompusness. I'm there (not gay - self righteous). This really struck me:

I’m certain I’m not the only person who shakes his head at the sight of two men kissing—not out of prudence but out of some pompous belief that I am above them. The only reason one is shocked by sin is because he denies his own. Jesus hated sin more than anybody, but He was never shocked by it.

I've been working out of the office all week, and have been pretty unproductive. I've accomplished a lot of little things, but no real major accomplishments. I've been running pretty hard at work, and have needed a break, but I feel like a slacker when I have these kind of days.

Next week I'm down at the University of Louisville in Kentucky for a few days, then to Park University and the week after that it looks like I'm starting a project at Okaland University - a little closer to home. I see a pattern here.

I've finally made it big-time I guess - I made the Park University web site. Park University is the project I've been working on for the past year or so down in Missouri.

Brad and I went and worked out yesterday with Dan Reynolds and Kirk Vickers. Kirk is an ex-boxer and personal trainer who owns his own gym in Novi. It's a gym much more geared towards athletes than for pumping iron. Many of the exercises are around strength, coordination and reflex training - taking a very different approacht than what I"ve been doing for the past few years. I've gotten into a real rut with my workout, and I'm hoping for something to change it up a little bit. We worked out for two hours - starting with all sorts of funky warm-ups did some crazy super-sets and then some killer ab workouts. The best part of the workout was doing it together with a group of guys. I've been working out without a partner for a while, and it's just not fun for me. I really enjoy hanging out with Dan and Kirk. Dan is the worship leader at Crossroads and is a great guy - he toured in a band for 5 years touring and is the kind of guy who can get along with just about anyone and has a dry and pretty subtle sense of humor. Looking at Kirk, he comes across as a pretty intimidating guy - built like a boxer with the nose to match. He's a great teacher in the gym, and an easy guy to talk to. I'm going to try and do this workout routine all week with them and see where it ends up.

Cath took off this weekend to hang out with my sister Susan and sister-in-law Kris, supposedly to work on their photo album/scrapbooks. Kevin and Gabe came to stay with us, and Dan came over with Andrew, Matthew and Stephen for the day. We had a great time, but I was beat by the end of the day.
They're doing some construction behind our house, so we went back there and played on some of the equipment and huge dirt piles. You can see the pictures here.

I'm in Kansas City this morning. I flew in yesterday to kick off a project down here at Park University again. We've got a large team on this, 8 people total, and a very short time line of 8 weeks. I fly out today through Lansing. Just got an e-mail that I've been upgraded to first class on both legs. Nice. Gotta love the little things in life. I can't wait to be home. Next week - NO TRAVEL.

I spent some time this morning journaling on Galatians 5:13:

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows.

I went through and made of list of those areas that I most like to ignore God - to indulging my sinful nature, and how those prevent me from serving others.

Just read this article while sitting on the can. Interesting perspective on the nature of community and the change to more of a tribal nature in our communities.

Noel did as series called "The Hate People". It deals with the how many people have the perspective that Christianity is a faith of hate - looking at how Christians have contributed to this, and what the bible has to say about these areas. These are some of the Noel best teachings I've heard Noel give. I love hearing him teach. He has such an amazing way of critically analyzing what's going on in the world around us, in the church and in God's word. He takes these three threads and weaves them together to produce very hard hitting messages. Noel is a lot like Neo in the way he can read the code of the Matrix (these three threads) and make amazing sense of it all. He pulls humor and relevance into his messages that make them great to listen to.

There are four teachings (you can download the related mp3 by clicking on the link):
* Culture
* Morality
* Women
* Homosexuality

We went to the Pumpkin Patch today and had a great time. What a beautiful day to do it! There was this huge corn maze, which the kids loved. Only minor casulties resulting from nate accidently dumping his sisters out of the wheelbarrow. I wanted so badly to work on projects around the house - I'm really glad I did this instead.

Monkeys controlling robots! My guess - this is the key plot in the upcoming Matrix movie.

Just checking in online for my flight tomorrow. The world's dumbest question:
Would you like to upgrade to First Class on your flights from Lansing, MI to Kansas City, MO if available?

Sanctuary (our bi-monthly student worship service) hit me hard last night - thinking about my relationship with God from a lot of angles, one being faith and putting it into practice. I sat there during worship and felt so disconnected with God. Worship's always been something that connected my heart to him in a deep way, beyond my head into my heart - yet yesterday, I "felt" nothing, and it seems to have been that way for a while with worship, and it just struck me. I did a lot of dwelling on why - where my walk with God is at. I've spent a lot of time journaling, but not in intimate conversation with him. I feel disconnected with - even though I've spent time reading the bible and praying, coming to him with big and little things. Almost like a long distance friendship that's happened over e-mail - it's just missing the intimacy. Listening to music focused on Christ throughout the day was something that would continually draw me back, and I've really gotten away from that. I've gotten tired of the "worship genre" of music, but I realize that the music was an intimate part of my relationship with God .
Where is my faith right now? How have I been putting it into practice? Jason taught last night on James 2 - knowing the right words and not doing anything with your faith. When's the last time I've been in a situation where my faith has reallly been put to the test God? Am I stretching myself in any area, or just running fast in my life, but not really going anywhere? Traveling so much over the past 10 weeks, I feel like I've been living a compressed life - being responsibel for a multi-million dollar deal at work, trying to fit in my role as a dad, husband, friend, small group leader, and fusion youth pastor are all given so few cycles right now, that I'm not really able to give any of them the time they deserve. I think I'm doing the best I can with what I've got, but I'm not even sure where God is at in all of that. Is this an area I need to let him in more - and stretch myself?
The other part of J's talk focused on the fact the fact that Christ came to give us abundant life. In the midst of everything going on in my life, I am full. Even having to run at a million miles an hour, I'm not drained, and I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel. How do I reconcile putting faith to the test, and living an abundant life? Not sure.

Mack, my mentor within the company is down in Kansas with me, as we're getting ready to present to the board of trustees for our customer down here. We had dinner tonight and we got to talking about famous people that we've met. Mack was in the Army for 22 years, in special forces, as a full-bird Colonel. He has been with Ronald Regan in the White House Situation Room as he has conducted briefings, he's worked with Colin Powell, met Margret Thatcher, been in combat numerous times as part of Special Ops. I'm a big fan of good stories, and he's got some great ones. He's been a great mentor - very humble, sure enough of himself that work doesn't become an ego deal for him. I'm home tomorrow evening around 8PM.

I'm in Missouri again. Flew in yesterday morning, after getting up at 4:30 AM to get to the airport. It was a long day, full of off-site meetings with our customer, followed by a late dinner and drinks. I got to my hotel around 11:30PM and collapsed, only to wake up an hour later wide awake, having to wake up at 6AM for a meeting. I couldn't force myself to sleep until about 3AM - and I'm a little groggy this morning.

I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself this morning - for traveling, being away from my family and whatever else I could find to find. As I'm standing there taking a leak, I started praying - reflecting on all of the things I have to be thankful for:
My Job - it's flexability, my great compensation, working for a great boss, in an excellent company with great freedom to be at home as much as I am, people that I enjoy working with so much.
My Family - Having such amazing kids who are so much fun and so wonderful, A beautiful wife who loves me and supports me unconditionally
My Church - A church that is so loving, so caring and values people of all kinds so much, that gives me the freedom to do youth ministry the way we do it, a church that is so authentic with such amazing leadership, grace and love.
My Friends - A group of people that love me and accept me where I'm at for who I am, who would do anything for me, and are such a blast to hang out with.

I didn't feel quite so sorry for myself after all of that. All of that while taking a leak - impressive, eh?

Interesting article on Anne vs. Carly. At least it's interesting to me. I'm also probably the only one who thinks the two should appear on Celebrity Deathmatch together.

I'm reading The Art of the Steal by Frank Abagnale. This is the guy whose life the movie/book Catch me if you Can is based on. The Art of the Steal deals with how to protect your personal and business assets from con men, but at the core are some amazing stories about cons that occur, and Frank's life and perspective on where's he's at today.

I love this reminder about prayer, and the importance of the minutae of our life to God. I know how often I feel that God's not that concerned with the day to day crap of my life, and blown away when he answers my prayer. The author of the article is new christian - I still struggle with this idea after 20 years.

Jon (my brother) came down last night, and he, Jason and I went to Nate's Karate class. You're thinking yee-ha! Attending a kid's Karate class! Jon drove 2 hours each way to attend this Karate class. It's that amusing. We signed Nate up for this class through Community Ed, not knowing much about it. It's very unique. It's a non-profit organization that teaches a form of Karate that never makes you hit another person and they start the class by hugging each student. I like to think of it as liberal karate. Everyone tries their best, and lreally, isn't that good enough? The instructor is a very nice guy who means well, but tells some hilarious stories, that he doesn't mean to be funny. Jon, Jason and I sat on the sidelines trying not to embaress ourselves by laughing too loudly. There's also a guy who looks just like Dave Matthews (Don't mention this to Jason, it makes him VERY angry). Anyways, the dave-matthews-looking-guy comes there with his son, and between them, know EVERYTHING, or so they think. They ask all the questions, raise their hands to answer all of the questions, and do every move with a little extra uumph. They're actually in another class, and come as "Visitors" to this class. They tuck a dollar in their belts, and loudly ask "Sensei - may I present my visitor dollar?" They bow low, and hand their dollar to the instructor with reverence. Reading all of this doesn't capture the humor in this class. Jason's really the only one who I've heard describe it and truly capture what goes on there. Put it this way, Jon felt like it was worth the drive from Grand Rapids, and Jason hasn't missed a week sitting on the sidelines. This was the icing on the cake yesterday - turns out it was parents day. I had to be in the class and participate, while Jason and Jon watched on the sidelines as I looked like a fool, with dave-matthews-looking-guy grinding his butt into my pelvis on one of the moves. About fourty minutes in, Nate decided that uncle Jon should participate, and Jon got to go through a hilarious sparring exercise with the instructor. Nate thought Jason should have a turn, and Jason got there in just enough time to get a hug from the instructor. Jon and I were rolling on the ground at this point, wetting ourselves laughing. This is the third or fourth week I've shown up there with another man to watch Nate in the class. I'm pretty sure they think that Jason is my life-partner, and that Nate is our adopted son. Go figure.