In July and August, I’m going to lead a study on film and theology in our home. As I’m thinking through how this will look, the purpose of the study is not going to be to use a few movie clips here and there to illustrate some points or Bible verses I want to reinforce.

Rather, each week, participants will be asked to watch a film ahead of time with an understanding that all truth is God’s truth. They will be asked to bring that perspective to our discussion and share how they experienced truth in each film. We will then grapple with how those truths might be congruent, or incongruent, with the understandings we have of the Christian faith and Scriptures.

So, I am asking for help from you, my loyal (or very bored!) readers who have stuck with me through my inconsistent posting of late. What films come to mind that you think might be good for us to experience in this study?

How many seminaries are there where you can look out a classroom window to see Puget Sound, a cruise ship in port across the street, and a faculty member smoking a pipe down by the train tracks?

Some random thoughts that went through my head while watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End late last night:

• “I wish Captain Jack would get some kind of ointment to put on that sore on his cheek. It hasn’t healed for three movies now.”
• “Was I supposed to take LSD before watching this scene?”
• “I want more Chow Yun-Fat!”
• “I can’t keep all of these guys in the white wigs straight.”
• “I don’t really care what happens to these people…I just want to sleep.”
• “must….stay…awake”
• “hrmph…where am I? Holy cow…this movie is still going?”
• “Is Alex still in the bathroom?”
• “Is it Thursday already?”
• “I sat through the credits for that?”

I’ve not made it a secret that I’m not a big fan of MySpace. Personally, I think the basic concept of it is pretty cool, but it’s just so dang ugly I can’t really bear to look at most of the pages. Even the best pages look about as attractive as a half-eaten donut sitting on top of the kitchen trash.

Todd Hiestand gave me a heads up on Virb a few months ago and I set up a profile. It’s a much cleaner site layout and even the basic template gains my aesthetic approval. So, if you are ready to flee the garbage heap, come on over to Virb. I’ll be your friend…

6264 air miles traveled
7 nights in a hotel
398 pictures taken
4 theme parks visited
40 rides and attractions
8 naps taken by Ellie (she’s perfected the stroller nap)
1 nap taken by Macey
3 length in hours of nap taken by everyone but me the day after we got home
29 characters met
0 days of rain
169 times that Macey reminded me she wanted to ride Splash Mountain again
300+ unread emails when I got home

Oh the things you find while cleaning your hard drive…

Is it pathetic that most of my day will be marked by an anticipation of the return of Heroes tonight?

As I pointed out last year, the beauty of spring in the Pacific NW braings a new richness to Easter for me:

Being aware of spring is giving me a refreshing anticipation of Easter. The new life reaching out of the soil is a very fitting reminder of what Easter is about. The geological and the religious seasons are crashing into each other — and I’m happy to be standing right in the middle of it.

Yesterday, we enjoyed a beautiful day in the tulip fields of Skagit County. Getting out to celebrate spring like this is quickly becoming one of my most treasured Easter rituals. The video below can’t completely do justice to what we experienced, but I hope it can serve as a reminder of new life springing out of death… (If you’d like a larger — 350mb! — hi-res version, you can download this one. Right click and Save As…)

In celebration of holy week, we partnered with another church in the area to create an experience called Journey to the Cross. At the end of the journey, there was a wall for people to write prayers of celebration, heartache, or thanks. The video below is a time lapse capturing the prayers as they were added to the wall over the course of three nights.

(If you are reading this by feed, and the video doesn’t appear, please click here for the original post.)

Our delightful Macey turns 5 today. She is a typical preschooler who can be a rabble-rouser at times — like just now, when she stole a ball from her sister. But, one of the things we really appreciate is the big heart that she has. We want to help develop that in whatever way we can.

One of the things we decided to do was to give her some money to loan through Kiva.org (read more about Kiva). We gave her a rudimentary explanation of how a microfinance loan works and then let her choose. I wasn’t surprised when she mentioned that she wanted to loan to someone in Africa, nor did I give it a second thought when she wanted to loan money to someone in a retail industry. Macey chose to loan money to Nkechi Florence Eze for her paint shop in Nigeria. We hope you’ll consider joining Macey in helping Mrs. Eze get more goods to sell so that she can support her family.

On a personal note, it’s a little overwhelming to me to think that the choice of our five year old has the ability to influence the well being of a family on the other side of the world. All of this, as my friend Justin pointed out the other day, just because of where she was born.

I would like to introduce you to that tiny little speck in the middle of the picture. Right now s/he is only 3 millimeters long, but will s/he will grow about 20 or so inches before bursting on the scene in mid-November.

Mommy & Daddy were a little surprised at first…they quickly got excited.
Macey was really excited at first…she still is.
Ellie…well, she just doesn’t really know what’s going on, but she smiles a lot anyway.

This is a picture of ‘mount goodwill’ - aptly titled by someone from Pathways. The picture doesn’t quite seem to do it justice but there was enough here to fill three SUV/Minivans. (This is suburbia, after all!)

We’ve been wrestling with what it looks like to live as followers of Jesus in our culture of consumerism. How can we live as those who live in the giving way of Jesus when the dominant influence of our culture is to get and receive? I introduced this question last week, and we challenged everyone to think about the excess they have. We asked everyone to go through their closets and bring back any extra clothes or shoes they have the following Sunday, and Mount Goodwill is the result.

I’m thrilled that we will be able to spread these clothes to a number of organizations in our community that can help distribute them to people that need them. I’m equally thrilled at how people from Pathways responded. There was a general sense from most that they had this desire to purge, and just needed a reason and opportunity to do so. I hope that for all of us this is just the beginning of us wrestling with a number of difficult questions.

02.20.07

I got a license for Delicious Library as part of the MacHeist package. Not to gush, but I love it. It catalogs books, DVDs, CDs and games, and displays them on a virtual bookshelf.

I thought the program would just provide some nice eye candy, but it’s been very useful. It’s turned into a program that I gave a space on my dock and it’s open most of the time. It’s got a feature that allows me to check books out to people in my address book and assign due dates. (Ahem, Cyndee and Dean!)

Most useful to me has been the ability to create a new bookshelf and place books out of my library on it. I’ve always had a shelf (or two) that I dedicated to books I hadn’t yet read. With Delicious, I was finally able to just put them on my (real) bookshelves and create a virtual bookshelf of unread books.

For anyone who takes their book or movie collections seriously, I’d recommend it. It’s a great program, much of which is probably due to the fact that the guys who developed it work out of Zoka.