RootsRain

My wife, Emily, wrote a great post in her blog, Old Testament Insights, about the Amalekites being the Gollums of the Old Testament. Very interesting reading.

Like Your Neighbor is another one of those gems I picked up from the CBA show (in Colorado, last summer). As soon as I saw the book being handed out and signed by the author, I knew I had to get a copy. Basic, one-to-one ministry to one’s neighbors is something I’ve always been interested in and wanted to know better how to do (since I’m a fairly socially awkward person… if I’m not making people laugh, I honestly don’t know how to act besides sitting quietly). This book didn’t disappoint.

Sorensen goes through the common mental hurdles Christians need to get over in ministering to the lost (What if I don’t know what to say? What if they try to mug me? What if they laugh at me? I’ll bet they couldn’t be bothered. I’d probably just alienate them because they seem happy enough. And on and on…) He debunks a lot of Christian myths about non-Christians and talks at length about our need to be human in front of them, rather Read the rest of this entry »

I worked last weekend on the attic but I just never took pictures of it until now. I managed to get all the OSB (plywood) down and the beginnings of the north wall. You can see (in the picture) the area where I’ve swept away most of the cellulose insulation and where there’s no OSB. That’s where the alternating tread stair will be going. That’s going to be a fairly large and tricky project, so I’m trying to get every last thing done around it before I actually take the plunge and cut out the rafters in the study below… (scary music)

View the previous installments of this saga here, here, here, and here.

At work this past week, we had a brief discussion about management problem solving and “the Five Whys.” Japanese management style, apparently, is a bit more Zen than American. The Japanese propose that if you have a problem, simply ask “Why?” five times, each “why” probing more deeply into root causes of the problem. By the time you reach the fifth “why?” you should have found the root cause. (American management usually has different series of 12 questions or 8 steps or whatnot, all different.)

Anyway… I was thinking yesterday morning in my devotions that the technique of simply asking iterative “Why” questions would be a helpful way to uncover my own motivations… uncover the root problems of why I do what I do.

So I tried it on a specific issue I was thinking about. Okay… I’ll ‘fess up. It was Read the rest of this entry »

I heard this in a meeting I was in last week:

I got a phone call where someone was complaining that we’ve moved to softbound books instead of hardbound… and they were adamant that hardbound was the way to go. They said they’d switch to Prentice Hall hardbound books instead of BJU Press softbound books even though that would be a huge price increase. So I asked this man “Let me get this straight: you’d rather have hardback books than Christian content?” I expected him to waffle and hem and haw, but he just shot back “Absolutely.”

This is a problem we face fairly often where I work (not the softbound vs. hardbound issue, but the Christian vs. secular textbook issue). Many people—Christian school administrators, in particular—aren’t terribly concerned that Read the rest of this entry »

So either he has very clean teeth or some professors at USC think he’s ready to go to round three of his doctoral candidacy… barely ready.

Just kidding.

Congrats, Dave!

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3

I worked this evening on beginning the HVAC wall in the study closet. The idea is to build a second wall in there so I can run an HVAC pipe up into the attic (since all HVAC stuff is currently in the crawlspace under the house). I cut the hole in the ceiling and cut out the carpet and molding below. Then I put in the top and bottom plates and studs. Now all I need to do is get some 8″ HVAC tubing and hook it up under the house, cut a hole in the floor, run the tubing into the attic, and viola! I’ll have HVAC up there! Of course, there’s currently no vent to hook it up to, but that’s beside the point. At least I will have done a “dry run” of cutting through the ceiling… which hopefully will prepare me for cutting into the ceiling for the staircase project…

Some incidents and conversations from CBA Advance in January that have been on my mind recently:

1. Several different books and merchandise items which really have me a bit frustrated… I’m trying not to include examples.
2. Talking with someone who had just come from talking with a Nashville musician well-known in Christian circles (he plays in one of the best-known Christian bands around). He talked at length about how when he was 18 he signed a record contract which was almost like selling his soul away for three years at seven cents on the dollar and a $20,000 recording debt to the record company (he only earned 7 cents for every dollar the record company collected, which all went to pay the record company back for the $20,000 it fronted his band to record the album anyway… so you can imagine that, for a fairly new group, making ends meet was pretty much impossible). He wasn’t allowed to play on anyone else’s record to make extra money, produce his own album on the side, or back out of the contract. Talk about a rock and a hard place… And the elders at his church (who happened to be label execs) “helped” him sign this kind of life-stealing contract. He became Read the rest of this entry »

I was playing some of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem last night for my wife (still trying to get her to like it) and I was realizing (while listening and explaining it to her) that the plodding, painful funeral march at the beginning of the second movement (“For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.”) turns into a triumphant entry march into heaven (“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”) and then the two overlay each other. (Whoa! That was one sentence!)

But that layering was a wonderful realization… The funeral march section is punctuated by the kettle drums beating out what sounds like an executioner’s march. The choir is incredibly mournful, at times almost whispering, at times almost yelling out the painful truth that all humanity will die. But then everything explodes at “aber” (but), and, with the realization that “The Word of the Lord endures forever,” the funeral march becomes this huge, aggressive processional into heaven with shouts of joy coming from all over the choir and orchestra (something Brahms uses to good effect again in the 6th movement). But Brahms writes music very reflective of and instructive to the person in the audience. So after the wonderful triumphal procession, the music dies down a bit and it seems like the beginning sorrow and the ending triumph are overlaid atop each other. There are some painful notes, but the whole effect is like “it’s a difficult ride, but this train is definitely going somewhere wonderful.” It’s perfectly illustrative of what life is actually like. Pain now. Joy then. But joy even in the pain now because of the joy then.

Did I mention that I love this requiem?

I’ve been working on the attic in the evenings this week since I’ll be in Atlanta on the weekend (and since I need to have my uncle Mike’s air compressor back to him by Friday afternoon). You’ll have to pardon the hastily cobbled-together “wide angle lens” picture. I just did a quick Photomerge in Photoshop without color correction or anything. The area where I’ve actually made noticeable progress is getting too large for my little digital camera’s lens.

I basically reinforced the center section of the attic floor, which turned out to be the most difficult due to the pipes and electrical work coming out of the bathroom below. But that section should be the last of the floor reinforcing that I need to do. I ran the third (and final) course of OSB down the length of the room and cut around the attic stair hole. Now I need to start working on a serious plan for getting the permanent stairs in place… that’s going to be a very sensitive project. I’ll need to brace the rafters so that when I create the hole (by cutting them in half) I won’t have part of the room below cave in.

I’m having a blast.