Foolishness

On Sunday we closed our worship gathering with this benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.


And so, yesterday I became foolishness enough to think I could ride my bicycle some 7 miles to the office. During the course of that 40 minute journey I learned a few truths:

1. My bicycle seat is very, very hard.
2. There are more hills between my house and the church than one might realize.
3. Though one never forgets how to ride a bike, a 15 year hiatus will get you out of bicycle shape.
4. I need to pull the trigger and buy a scooter.
5. Seriously, that seat is really hard.

But, I didn't use any gas that morning.

Not only is gold gas very expensive, but I'm thinking more and more about the environment these days. More on that coming soon...

Victory?

I came across this on Scott Freeman's blog. How could have so many of our leaders been so wrong about the reasons for this war, the resources required for this war, the length of the war, and what victory would look like?

McCain Rejects Hagee

To be fair, I should post this update about McCain's recent rejection of Hagee's endorsement, since a few weeks ago I criticized McCain for accepting Hagee's endorsement.

I'm glad McCain has decided to go without the support of Hagee. I'm also glad to see more Christians are realizing the damaging effects of Hagee's theology and perverted reading of Scripture.

I don't know that McCain's bold step will draw me into his camp, but it's a step in the right direction to reduce the influence of preachers like Hagee in politics.

Kennedy and Letterman

Letterman had a great interview with Robert Kennedy Jr the other night. They discussed the future of our energy and environment.

Pay special attention to the case studies Kennedy offers - Iceland, Sweden, Israel, etc.

No matter what you think about global warming, surely we can all agree that we ought to have some level of concern for our environment. Moreover, ascending energy costs are destroying the dollar and increasing poverty. We need to be forward thinking here. Beyond that, if we weren't so dependent on oil, I believe our international politics would take a turn for the better as well.

The Girls

The girls had their portraits made the other day. Here are a few:


This one is my favorite:

Baseball

Isaac is in his first season of baseball this spring. When we started the season he was a bit behind the curve because he hadn't really picked up a glove or a bat. Yes, I'm a horrible father (although he is already a pretty good basketball player).

Anyway, he has really impressed me with his ability to learn and develop his skills quickly. I can see marked improvement with each game.

On Monday his team suffered its first loss (I think they're 9-1 or so) but here's a video of Isaac getting one of his hits. I think he went 4 for 4 on Monday.

Play Ball!

Where's the Line?

You will be assimilated, resistance is futile.

GoDaddy

You may have noticed that my site had a significant outage this weekend. My host and domain registry, godaddy, decided to go ahead and bill me for a year of hosting, but not for my domain name renewal. I'm not sure what they thought I would do with their hosting space when my domain name was expired.

It's a long story and I've told it so many times to so many different customer service reps today that I don't feel like going through all the details again. Suffice it to say I'm not happy. Basically I ended up having to pay a $62 fee for what I feel is a lack of common sense in their billing department. Some simple logic in their automatic renewal system would have prevented the whole mess.

Anyway the site is back up. I'm $62 lighter in the pocket. And I plan to switch hosts and domain registries as soon as possible. (assuming I can get a prorated refund for the year of services I just bought)

If you're looking for a host and registry, I suggest looking at some other options.


*this post brought to you courtesy of godaddy servers and domain name registration

Expelled

Ben Stein has put out a documentary about the suppression of the Intelligent Design theory of creation. The film is titled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." It's definitely worth your time to go see! My only hesitation in recommending it is that Dr. Dobson recommends it as well. Still, I think it is thought provoking and Stein gets in enough of his dry humor to make it pretty entertaining too.