One Life…

Some of the books I’ll be reading/re-reading this summer

I’ve been sick the last 5 days.

Straining to talk to old friends at a wedding yesterday didn’t help either.

Here are two pictures of Stellar from my talk last sunday.

After speaking for about a combined five hours in church and in workshops this weekend, a few thoughts…

- No matter how many times I’ve done this before, it seems I always need to pee at least times five before speaking.

- Preaching in a church context is an odd thing, because you’re given a mic, the spotlight, the attention of hundreds, and somehow asked to be humble at the same time.

- I think the humility part comes naturally when you realize you have no right being there in the first place.

- The thing with presenting anything in a formal context is that it’s assumed that you’ve put a lot of time thinking and reflecting on the topic and should be at least some form of an ‘expert’. The scary thing is knowing that you can present your very best, and people can walk away thinking, ’so that was all you had’? or even worst, leaving zero impact at on their lives.

- People often tell me I seem extreme laxed and comfortable on stage, and I really am on many levels, but there’s always a part of me that’s a nervous wreck throughout.

- Half of this is I’m probably more self-conscious than I care to admit, the other half is I know people are naturally more judgmental than they would admit to me.

- Someone once said that when you speak, you light yourself on fire, and people come to watch you burn. I think I resonate with that a bit.

- When I begin thinking that what I’m doing is more important than it really is, I can easily get crushed by the weight of not being able to ‘deliver’

- There are very few things that excite me and challenge me more than this; to be able to connect to an audience regarding things that really matter in life is such an extraordinary honor. I would do it regardless of any results, but If I can just connect with one life, and even make one single degree of shift in a person’s heart, I’m blown away every time.

I’ve never owned a bathrobe before so when Yvz and I were in a fancy hotel in whistler for our anniversary I went all out. Most of the shots are just way too embarrassing to post.

There’s something about having a starbucks with a comfy bathrobe. I edited this shot a bit to give it that ‘dark roast’ feel.

IMG_1429-1 Hosted on Zooomr

DJChuang wrote a blog in response to a question of mine regarding having multiple blogs recently.

I figure there are multiple audiences that I’d like to connect with that all don’t necessarily converge on a single community space, hence getting the new site.  I was somewhat concerned with splitting my audience after blogging here for the last year and breaking the 100,000 ranking on technorati.  Anyhow, I feel a lot more freedom to post having multiple sites since I know I have people tuning in from a wide variety of beliefs, values, and backgrounds.  We’ll see where it goes.  Again, http://solarcrash.com for the other site.

Some other blog names I was seriously considering that are still up for grabs include…

yourlifeisbrilliant.com
imagonation.net
fuelforthemovement.com
sosuper.org
sofantastic.org
hymnprints.com
apostolicscribbles.com
holychristbatman.com

Feel free to take’em if for some odd reason you’re interested in them.  Unfortunately lon.com wasn’t going to expire till 2009 and I couldn’t wait that long.  I signed up with a domain via 1and1.com, it took maybe 12 hours to activate.  And I was too cheap to purchase webspace, so I’m currently forwarding to a space by freehostia.com which offers 500GB and no banner ads.

I’m not finding the domain forwarding to another space the most elegant solution, but I really can’t justify spending money on it at the moment.

Learning wordpress took about a day or so for my purposes and I really like the added flexibility of hosting my own site.

Something interesting I recently found out, though I have no interest in pursuing, is Darren Rowse, who runs problogger.net, and makes a living off of strictly blogging, was a former church planter.

After bringing in a massive $35.57 this year from google adsense, I’ve finally caved in and bought a domain name for $6 bucks.

This site (http://onelife.voxtropolis.com) will continue to be the primary blog for all things related to my life, family, photos, rants, and other odd things. I love the community here at Voxtropolis. I love all the voices here and those that continue to emerge as well.

I’ve found that I have many friends who aren’t all that interested in god or church or all that other funky stuff and just want to tune in on my life. And for that I can’t appreciate you enough! This blog continues for you.

For the rest of you, join me at SolaCrash - Where heaven and earth collide.

Please update your links and bookmarks to http://solarcrash.com and feeds to http://feeds.feedburner.com/solarcrash

Join me as we’ll be exploring faith, life, leadership, technology, creativity, church, and culture.

It’s still under construction, and I reserve the right to overlap content plenty and be completely insensitive to my readers as well.

Continuing our Creativity & Spirituality series.

When it comes to creativity quantity quite often must preside over quality, at least initially. Yvz always tells me how the kids that she teaches always struggle with spelling when they are writing stories. She continuously encourages them to just make it up and simply get their ideas down and write their stories, but they still seem to get hung up on spelling.

So often many of us are just like that. We lose incredible and imaginative ideas and fail to truly hear God’s voice because we’re stuck on the details.

Everyone was asked to spend 8-10 minutes brainstorming and jotting down what heaven would be like (This portion was inspired by David Arcos at Humana 2.0).

We took this exercise a step further and did some rapid prototyping. A large banner was laid out and everyone was asked to think of items on their list that they wanted to personally be involved with bringing to earth. Everyone was invited to paint and draw their commitments in this communal artistic exercise.

Maybe when we pray “Thy kingdom come, on earth, as it is in heaven”, we’re actually suppose to be doing something about it? Maybe Maybe the subtle hints of heaven in the Scriptures and our capacity to imagine this heaven might be so that we could make it a reality here on earth? How might you make God’s invisible presence into a physical reality?

Many of my friend’s homes look like Ikea, but my new home actually is Ikea.

For six-days a week, for soon to be four weeks now, I’ve been eating and working at Ikea. It’s the same routine each day. I play with Stellar around 6am-9am. I do a five minute drive down to Ikea right before it opens. I pay exactly $2.11 for my rent, breakfast, and bottomless coffee everytime. I sit at the same place each day because of the electrical outlet. I’m familiar with the staff. I know when the cappuccino machine runs out each morning (10:45am) and have taught many others how to use it properly (press and hold till three quarters full).

For some reason it is such an incredible place of reflection and productivity for me. I come home around noon totally charged up and  completely in love with my wife and daughter.

Or could it be just the food?

Having the same $1 breakfast there every day, I’m starting to have some health concerns. On week three I shot a quick email to Ikea Headquarters asking for a nutritional breakdown of the meal. No answer yet.

Some people say it’s just plan disgusting and I should be filming myself and do another supersize me. I’m feeling okay still… but I think it’s probably a good time to slow down on it now. Sometimes I smell the breakfast in my sleep…

Some recent favorites.

Yvz stocked up big time on baby food. Here’s stellar’s name with jars.

Stellar’s name with baby food

The whole family

A portrait

All smiles

stellar’s vomit

bath time

and a special friday treat. A short video clip of Stellar’s many wacky faces.

If the link doesn’t work you can try it on youtube here.

Have you ever been out walking, noticed a dog, and stopped to play with it, and then realized you never once even looked at the owner in the eye? I did once, and when I looked back I saw look of disgust staring back at my blind eye.

A friend of mine came by a while back and jokingly asked if he could borrow Stellar… “Because chicks dig dudes with babies and dogs”

Lets break it down from a few angles.

Dude’s perspective. Why is it that we feel we need to accessorize ourselves for others to notice us? Could it be that somewhere down below I don’t think another human being would like me, just for me?

Chick’s perspective. Why is it that we have no problems giving direct and caring eye contact to babies and dogs? Could it be because we’ve been hurt by others in the past? Could it be because we know that dogs and babies won’t judge us? Or is it we who’ve judged, and ignored people because we see them as less than that? Less than God’s wonderfully divine creation. Less than the broken image of God longing to be restored. Less than beautiful?

Babies and dogs. When I look at my daughter, she is like neither of the above two. Stellar just is, the way she is. She doesn’t pretend or hold back feelings. She doesn’t judge and calculate whether you’re worth her time. The whole world fascinates her. She naively assumes the best of every person and that as another human being, you must care for her. Connecting and interacting with you, is her greatest joy.

Maybe this is why we’re drawn to babies and dogs. Though they may be raw and unrefined, we resonate with their authenticity. They just are the way they are.

And maybe if we were, the way we really were, we’d be more compelling, unique, and creative.

Imagine a community where people simply came as they are, flaws and all. Where they connected and interacted at the deepest levels of humanity. Where they actively helped one another become the unique person that God created them to be. That to me, is what the church ought to be.

A simple exercise we had in the class was to meaningfully finish the sentence -
“If you really knew me, you would know that…”

This is the closest photo I could find on the theme of today’s post. Ever seen The Neverending Story?