I've been re-reading The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. It's about a fictional bus ride from Hell to Heaven, where the passengers are allowed to walk freely around the outskirts of Heaven for a day and decide whether they'd like to "stay on" permanently.

There's a great part of the story that deals with our choices and our addictions. Here's an synopsis of it:

One of the passengers, an oily man who has decided to leave and is headed back to the bus. Sitting on his shoulder is a little red lizard, twitching its tail like a whip and whispering things in his ear. The man turns his head to the reptile and snarls, "Shut up, I tell you!"

Just then one of Heaven's radiant angels sees the man. "Off so soon?" he calls.

"Well, yes," says the man. "I'd stay, you know, if it weren't for him," indicating the lizard. "I told him he'd have to be quiet if he came. His kind of stuff won't do here. But he won't stop. So I'll just have to go home."

"Would you like me to make him quiet?" asks the angel.

"Of course I would", says the man.

"Then I will kill him," says the angel, stepping forward.

The man panics at the thought of permanently losing the lizard and the sweet fantasies the creature whispers in his ear. But he is tired of carrying him around. He dithers back and forth between the two choices. Solemnly, the angel reminds him he cannot kill the lizard without his consent. And yes, it will be painful for the man; the angel refuses to soften the truth. Finally, in anguish, the man gives his consent, then screams in agony as the angel's burning hands close around the lizard and crush it.

"Ow! That's done for me," gasps the man, reeling back.

But then, gradually but unmistakably, the man begins to be transformed. Bright and strong he grows, into the shape of an immense man, not much smaller than the angel. And even more surprisingly, something is happening to the lizard, too. He grows, rippling with swells of flesh and muscle, until standing beside the man is a great white stallion with mane and tail of gold.

The new man turns from the horse, flings himself at the feet of the Burning One, and embraces them. When he rises, his face shines with tears. Then in joyous haste the young man leaps upon the horse's back. Turning in his seat he waves a farewell. And then they are off across the green plain, and soon among the foothills of the mountains. Like a star, they wind up, scaling what seem to be impossible steeps, till near the dim brow of the landscape, they vanish, bright themselves, into the rose brightness of that everlasting morning.

I can think of a lot of areas of my life that follow this story. I've got things that I choose to allow to remain in my life, because I don't really believe I can get along without them. Sometimes I have the strength to choose, other times I don't. A lot for me boils down to how much I believe that that God REALLY wants whats best for me. I believe it in my head, but my actions show a different set of beliefs in my heart.

Jason shared this with me. I couldn't make something this dumb up.....
The Prayer of Jabez; A Contemporary Musical
Makes you wonder why Jason was searching for this....

I'm flying out to Kansas City this afternoon. Cathie's flying in to Kansas City Friday afternoon and I'm going to take her on a tour of Park University where I've been doing a lot of work over the past year and a half. Friday night we've got a black tie banquet to go to and then we're flying home Saturday morning. Should be fun. The customer's that I work with are looking forward to meeting Cathie, and I'm looking forward to giving her a chance to see where I've been spending my time and giving her a chance to put faces to the names. They're really great people out at Park and I've developed some friendships there that go beyond the work side of things.

Probably should strike this from your list of memorization verses
Ezekiel 23:20
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

I'm learning just how expensive daughters can be - Madeline's got a dance recital for her dance class coming up:
* Dance Costume - $75
* Tickets to recital - $10/person
* Copy of video of recital $30 (No video taping allowed)

This in addition to the cost of the dance class. Ok, I'm done whining.

My company (Xerox Global Service,s Inc.) has a commercial.

Apparently, I'm much healthier than I thought. According to this article , picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, says a top Austrian doctor.

Innsbruck-based lung specialist Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers are healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies. He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up. 'With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner. And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system.'"

Jason sent me the preview for the new movie Dodgeball. "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball".

The weather's been great. Nate and I went out today and picked up a hockey net so we could start playing some street hockey. The girls and I went for a long walk outside. Will took Nate up to the Tennis courts to play tennis before he starts his lessons on Monday. They played for over and hour and a half, after which Will took him for slurpees. Just one more reason the kids call him Uncle Will.

I'm back to journaling again in the mornings... It's the quietest time of my day, probably the only time where I don't have some kind of music, phone, television or children coming at me. I'd done it for months on end and all of the sudden stopped, I think when I started blogging more. Blogging's great, but I don't go to a soul level in my blog. I was doing an online private blog for myself, but found that I need to distance myself from technology for a few moments in my day to quiet my soul enough to think and listen to God.

Religious vision that awakens basic values can enable us to transcend narrow self-interest and embrace the common good rather than reducing things to their lowest common denominator and negotiating factional interests.
Jim Wallis, from THE SOUL OF POLITICS http://sojo.net/

Good article:
Jesus loves adulterous people. Jesus also loves His radiant, holy, and blameless bride. We are one and the same.

Sara sent me this list of quality consultant speak:
BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
SITCOMS: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiney.
SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials and Michael Jackson's affairs are examples.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.
GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, etc.
OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing thru a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust.

Jess and I were talking last night about a couple verses (Genesis 6:4, Numbers 13:33 ) in the bible that I'd just skipped over in the past. The verses reference fallen angels (called Nephilim, which means fallen ones) and humans getting it on, and creating a giant race of people. I started looking around and found this article on Giants in the Bible. This is some crazy stuff, I'd of thought someone was nuts if they tried to convince me this was there... Jess brought up the idea that this idea gives credence to the City of Angels movie premise that an angel would leave heaven to be with a woman.

KRT Wire | 03/17/2004 | Stamford, Conn.-Based Xerox Kicks off Office Makeover Contest: "Spaces,' 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' and 'Extreme Makeover.' Now, Stamford-based Xerox is clamoring to join the makeover frenzy.
Xerox, together with Entrepreneur Magazine, kicked off the nationwide 'Help! My Office is Obsolete!' makeover contest yesterday.
You don't have to live in an unstylish home or want a quick botox fix to qualify for this makeover. One only needs to work in an outdated office. The contest winner will receive a complete office makeover, including state-of-the-art technology and a sleek new look, courtesy of Xerox"

Things are starting to smooth out a little in my new job. I'm getting a better handle on the upper and lower boundries of the job and the people I'm working with. It's interesting overseeing engagements and people from the west coast. I ended up on conference calls on Monday evening until 8PM. I was able to turn around and schedule a call at 5:30 AM the following morning with the same team, which evens things out a bit. I've doubled the amount of time I spend on conference calls each day, but I still wake up each morning looking forward to my job and working with the people I work with.

I ended up buying the Plantronics Wireless Headset for $129 on eBay.

Cathie and I had dinner last night with Jeb McGruder. Jeb was part of Nixon's electrion campaign and the "George Stephanopoulos" of the Nixon administration. He went to prison as a part of the Watergate scandal. It was an interesting conversation, talking him about the personalities of the Nixon administratin (especially G. Gordon Liddy), Nixon himself and the current presidential campaigns. Jeb's been in the news recently with his claim that Nixon himself had actually ordered the Watergate break-in.

I stole this from Noel's blog, taken from Protestants for the Common Good:

The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray for
the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the
definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical
principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of
marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by
our government." This is true.

Any good religious person believes prayer should be balanced by
action. So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admirable goals,
is a proposed Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely
on biblical principles:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between
one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in
addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron
11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a
virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut
22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be
forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the
constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be
construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry
the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or
deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one
shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law.
(Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your
town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with
him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men
young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of
course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Small World. With my new job, I now have an assistant who works out of Los Angeles. The amazing thing is that she grew up about two blocks from me as a kid and went to the same elementary school and junior high school, a year ahead of me. She's doing a great job teaching me how to have an assistant and be more productive because of it. I can now say "Have your people call my people".

I'm checking out thsi very cool Plantronics Wireless Headset system. It's a wireless system that would interface in with my office phone so I could answer the phone anywhere in the house, and even remotely lift the handset with the "automatic handset lifter". Since I've taken my new position, I've been on the phone at least 7 hours a day, when I'm in the office. Technology always makes it less painful. I found the handset along with the lifter on eBay for around $150.

I had a good, relatively unproductive weekend. Saturday afternoon Cathie, Jen and Lori went out shopping for a dress for Cathie to wear to a formal event that we're attending for work at the end of the month. On Saturday night, Cathie and I went out with some friends of ours - Ted and Sherry. We had Chinese food and went back to their house to hang out. On Sunday, we didn't accomplish much. I took a much needed nap and we just hung around the house.

The nice thing that came out of last week is that I'm not going to training in Rochester, NY this week. I had some stuff hit the fan on a project I inherited, though I may have to go out to California for a few days to iron stuff out.

Interesting article on Gay Marriage and Christians from Relevantmagazine.com. I've been thinking a lot about this lately (the topic - socially, politically and spiritually, NOT about marrying another man). What's as interesting as the article, is the dialogue aftewards... Some nice, some not so nice.

You can tell I've been on conference calls for about 5 hours today.... Lots of blog entries.

Cathie and I have been going through Night Light, A Devotional for couples over the past couple of months. It's been a great way for us to connect at night, especially when we're both beat after a long day of being everything we are to everyone else. It's got a few paragraphs to read, and then a 4 or 5 questions that are good. Sometimes we talk for an hour, sometimes 10 or 15 minutes. Either way, it's been a good way to connect at the end of al ong day, especially with all of my travel lately.

I'm gone all next week, Sunday - Friday night out in Rochester, NY at training for my Green Belt in Lean Six Sigma. My favorite part about the whole methodology is the terms for the different levels of expertise: Yellow Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt and Master Black Belt. Before I knew much about Six Sigma, I was really suprised when five guys in a meeting introduced themselves as "Black Belts". I thought, what's up with this Karate kid stuff? Anyways, I've been trying to cram 80 hours of online training this week into about 10, in preparation for my training next week.

I was recently promoted to a new position within my company. I found out last Friday and my head's been spinning ever since. The person who was my boss over the past three months is leaving the company and I was offered his position. I now get to work directly for the person who'd been my mentor over the past year and a half, which I'm really excited about. I now have responsibility for the entire U.S. and lead a team of Principals who do the same type of work that I was doing before. My team's located around the US: Indianapolis, Baton Rouge and Los Angeles. I'm in the process of hiring more.

My head's swimming as I'm trying to get up to speed on everything that's going on within our organization, my team, all while doing the job I was doing before. I'm excited about all that I can now do, but a little reluctant. All of the ideas that I've had in the past and fed up the food chain - now flow to me to process and deploy.

It's funny to look at how much of where I'm at today I can tie back to what I've learned through youth ministry. Sounds like Robert Fulgham book. I learned about leading teams (and leading teams of volunteers is by far the toughest type of team to lead), public speaking (if you can speak in front of Jr. Highers, you can speak in front of anyone), strategy (how am I going to design a system around the intangible) and politics (if you can make parents happy, you can make anyone happy).

This is why I've considered homeschooling my kids. This is considered a class project. (I've never really considered it, by the way).

I had a bad parenting moment last week. After school, Nate came into my office and asked me the question, "Dad, is f**k a bad word?". I told him it was, not wanting to make too big a deal about it. He then asked, "What does it mean?" I reiterated that it was a very bad word, and shouldn't be used. He looked and said, "You told me that already. What does it mean?". I blanked. And then something stupid came out of my mouth that I'm sure I will regret later on. "It's a bad word for when a mommy and daddy kiss." Dooooh! This will surely come back to haunt me, I don't even have to explain all the possible scenarios. Dangit.

One of my brother Jon's more significant goal's in life is to teach each of his nephews how to do the "Robot Dance". So far, Matthew is the only one who's had any real success with this mentoring. The kid in this video represents Jon's hopes and dreams for Matthew.

Just posted some new photo albums online:

My Trip to New York City
My Mom's 60th Birthday Party

When Cathie and I were out in Palm Springs, we saw a T-Shirt that really confused us at first. It said:
I am we todd did. I am sofa king we todd did.

I didn't have a clue what it meant, I thought it was a weird movie quote at first. Eventually I bust out laughing when I figured it out.

Great example of why my family makes me laugh and how I grew up to appreciate sarcasm. My dad sent out this very touching story that's a metaphor for Christ's sacrifice for us. My brother's responses:
Jon: I don't get it, did we have a brother that died in the Vietnam War?
Dan: No, but i'll give $10.00 for the Iowa farmhouse painting. (A painting my parents have in the living room.
May not be funny to you, but I love it. E-mail gives my family a whole new way to engage in their gifts of sarcasm and mockery.

This is a wild newspaper story about a friend of my brother's, Chuck Wing, who was in an accident and lost his leg last week.

Check out this story of a kid who googled himself and found out he was kindnapped:
CNN.com - Teen finds his picture on missing children's Web site

We headed over to Ground Zero today to see where the World Trade Center once stood. It was a giant hole with a fence around it. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn't what I expected. From there, we walked over to Battery Park to check out Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. On the way there we walked by The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange buildngs. I'm not an architectural buff, but I'm constantly in awe of the beautiful buildings here in NYC. The old and the new styles just continue to blow me away, and they never stop. They're everywhere.

We're heading over to the AIIM expo to spend the rest of the afternoon there before I fly out tonight. I think I get into Kansas City around midnight and I'm flying out sometime on Thursday.

This morning, I got up and went over to the Today Show studio. I hung around outside for a few minutes and got on TV. Al Roker, Matt, and Ann were out there doing some different segments, and I was standing behind Ann during one of them. The monitor was right in front of me, and I saw my face on the screen as she passed by. All of them were very nice and spent a lot of time talking to the crowd.

Last night we went to a brazillian resturant called Currascaria Plata Forma. I had eaten here 4 years ago when I visited and I couldn't believe I found it again. It started off with this huge buffet of exotic foods and then on to the meat. You have a disc in front of you with red on one side, green on the other. As long as you have the red side, waiters come by with huge skewers and knives and carve off meat for you - from pork loin, to beef tenderloin, I had no idea there were so many kinds of meat. The food was amazing. After that, on the walk back to our hotel, I bought a knock-off watch, a Tag Hauer. The negotiations were the best part, this guy was amazing at how he tried to weasel the price on me. Worse than any used-car salesman.

After hanging out at the AIIM Expo yesterday, we took some time to tour New York. We had lunch at the infamous Stage Deli. Sandwiches the size of my head. From there we went to Radio City Music Hall and then went on a tour of NBC Studios. The NBC tour pretty much blew, with the highlight being seeing the Saturday Night Live studio. At the end, they take you to this huge domed room to show off the future of HDTV. The picture quality was worse than a regular television. Nice waste of $15.

I started listening to some of the messages from Mars Hills church out in Seattle. They have their messages in a downloadable MP3 format, so I can burn them to CD or listen to them while I'm running. So far, I listened to great messages on youth and leadership, drinking and one on habilitual sin.

One thing that always horked me off about Willow Creek and other churches was how they'd sell their messages online. I can understand covering the distribution costs, and I know all about intellectual property rights - but here's a very unique position that Mars Hill has as an Open License Agreement:


Thank God Jesus Didn?t Copyright the GospelWhy We License Our Audio the Way We Do
All the material found at MarsHillChurch.org has been licensed under the Electronic Frontier Foundation Open Audio License. We have chosen to bypass the traditional copyright and publishing structures because they are incompatible with the spirit of the music and other recorded material created within our community. Traditional copyright and publishing systems focus exclusively on seeking profit from all form of duplication and usage and consider any form of trading or sharing illicit. This model is outdated and incompatible with the current technology (mp3, peer-to-peer file sharing, CD duplication). On a basic level we must question what life songs of worship have when disconnected with the local church. More so, we must question the most prominent business models for music distribution (?Christian? or otherwise) ? models where usage is entirely dependant upon an exchange of currency (CCLI, ASCAP, BMI, etc.). The Open Audio License (OAL) basically states that you, the worldwide public, are authorized to use, copy, publicly perform, distribute and create derivative works from all materiel covered under the license -- provided you always credit the original author information. That includes: the symbol (O) for the EFF Open Audio License, the identity of the original author, the title of the work and how the first listed original author can be contacted. The OAL also states that any derivative work produced must also be released under the OAL. The license borrows language from the open source software initiative and the free software movement to create a community of sharing that benefits both the creators and the public while encouraging creativity through relational distribution. We believe that this is a much more current business model for music. It acknowledges that there is no way to control how people use our materiel. It also acknowledges our lack of interest in seeking that control. This is especially appropriate as it relates to songs of worship.

I flew into New York City this afternoon. The inbound flight path took us right over downtown Manhattan on our approach. It was amazing. I'd never seen New York City from this angle. It was breath-taking. I flew into LaGuardia and met up with the customer that I'm out here with and one of my co-workers. We cabbed it over to the hotel and spent some time walking around Time Square before dinner. My hotel is right in Times Square. My window literally looks out over the area. I'm staring at a 300 foot high picture of P.Diddy as I look out my window, and I'm eye-level with that big Wall Street Ticker they show in the movies. Time Square is amazing. At night, it's lit up like it's daytime. Tomorrow we're going to see Anne Mulcahy (President and CEO of Xerox) as the keynote speaker at the AIIM conference, and then I'm showing my customer around the exhibits. Anne came out and visited this customer last August. She's a great woman, and a great leader.

Check out this Webcam right down the street from where I'm at.

Funny enough, The Bone Yard site has the same mission statement as I do:
" . . to glorify our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to provide a gateway to the Poultry Industry which will enhance your ability to perform your mission."

I've been going through the gospels over the past two months, trying to get excited about them, trying to dig into them, and it's been so dry for me. I'm telling the kids in Fusion why they should dig into the word of God while I'm struggling with it myself. I've heard the stories in so many ways, that tend to read them like I do a fiction book at times. I've tried different versions of the bible - the message, study bibles without different results. When others have been in this place, I've always had advice to give like "Pray before hand and ask God to speak to you" or "Try a different version of the bible" or "Journal on what you're reading". Not much help. I started reading the Psalms this morning and it really connected with me.

This is my kind of hotel. I got back to my room, the bed was pulled back, a robe laid out for me, mints on the pillow and the TV on. They knew I woulndn't want to turn the TV on for myself! How 'bout that!

These Smoking Gun letters to the FCC about the Janet Jackson thing are hilarious.

I'm learning more and more about the Creole/Cajun culture every day I'm down here. New sayings "Hows-yer-momanthem?" (How's your momma and them?). You can have open alcohol in the car down here. As long as some one else holds the class while you're driving, you're fine. I knew you could walk the streets with alcohol, but I didn't know it went to that extent.

I had a great creole dinner tonight. Found out that cajun food is more the Lafayette area, creole is a combination of French, Black, Mexican and American food, where cajun is more a southern french food. Tonight for dinner we ate at a dive on Bourbon street in the French Quarter. I had oysters on the half shell, boiled crawfish, fried crawfish and turtle soup. Great stuff. From there, I grabbed a daquari and wandered up and down bourbon street, people watching. What music and culture. The Zydaco music, the blues, the jazz is amazing.

I was running on the treadmill this morning and I was going crazy. There was no TV, no music, I didn't have my MP3 player. I had 30 minutes of quiet - time to think about how much I hate doing cardio.

I watched the movie Glengary Glenross last night on the plane. Great movie about sales. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris. It deals with the leveraged insecurities of people in the field of sales, and what ends they'll go to for success.

I did not win an Oscar.