Webbkins!

Feels like camp this morning. For some reason, I woke up at 5:30 and all our windows are down, and the air is very wet. I could have campers waking up in a few hours. But no, it's my adult life.

me, Didi, Bennythebull (not the one who injured a basketball fan recently) and his great wife Kate all went to dinner last night (please, see the photo to the left)then to see Derek Webb sing.

It was a great night in a run of great days around here. Don't come around Cincy these days unless you want to be tempted to move here. I'm just saying.

I was greatly disappointed that some girl named alli (who was completely unannounced and unadvertised) played her harmless music for about 30 minutes to kick things off. Then I was greatly disappointed that Derek backed up his wife's harmless music for at least another half hour. Then I was greatly disappointed when they announced that this 'tour' (5 small shows, i think) was to support an EP they recorded out of boredom together. And we all know how I get revved up for husband-and-wife music. Don't we all? So they proceeded to sing some of that stuff. Then Derek's wife left the stage. An hour and a half in, and I was finally getting what I came for (this is true for far, far too many concerts). Up to that point, it had been MY GOODNESS boring.

This gives you a feel for what an old, crumbling, catholic mass hall at 1/3 capacity is like. With bad lighting. And bad sound. In a word, awesome. Can you pick out Derek Webb's tiny body in this photo?

Once The Show I Paid For started, it lasted about a half an hour. So, it was overpriced. But I did enjoy that half hour. Derek sang A New Law and A King And A Kingdom from Mockingbird, which are my two favorites. He also turned me onto a couple others I didn't know, like This, Too, Shall Be Made Right--a reminder to us all that we're to be putting stock in an unseen kingdom that's coming and will restore All Things. Yeah. There were several times when my heart beat heavily in my chest at hearing someone else say these words. I feel lonely, often, in my convictions, and it was great to hear someone else say them aloud. I wondered a few things as I watched Derek:

1) Have he and his wife left the religious machine? If they haven't, they must be miserable. I hope they have.
2) Why wouldn't he travel with at least a drummer? He would sound SO much better!
3) What are his statement-making tattoos about? Tattoos often seem to be a screaming message to the world that "I have a secret!!" I see them like t-shirts: if you want everybody to see your message, please don't make it inscrutable. But whatever, I mean it's your body, Jesse.
4) Why wouldn't you get up on the stage if you're particularly small? My wife called them both "tiny" which, had it been said with disdain, would've been hypocritical on her part.

I also thought a few other things:

1) If you have a guitar and some songs, and you keep after it, I really think you can make a living out of it. Really. Call me crazy here, but I really think that if moljer plowed through years of lonely motels playing in terrible places, he would eventually find his audience and be able to make a living out of it. I really do. Jerry Seinfeld says the same about comedy. If you do the leg work, you learn the lessons, period, and you come out okay. I don't think music-making is any more mystical than accounting. It's romantic to think otherwise, but I know better.
2) Throwing him in with Bob Dylan (another guy who said unpopular things and people were drawn to him because of his passion and purity of message, more than anything else), who Derek alluded to several times, I'm encouraged that there's an audience for that kind of message. (If you're not a Webb fan, I'll sum up: the church is constantly being betrayed; she doesn't mind it all that much; her being involved in politics isn't particularly good for her soul; loving our neighbors is a necessary part of the Good News of Jesus. Also, several questionable-value love songs.)
3) I really, really like it when concerts give me a better picture into the heart of songwriters. I want them to TALK. This is decried far and wide ("More rock! Less talk! We come to hear the hits!"), but I own a copy of the songs, if that's all I want to hear. I want to know these people more. That's just me. I enjoyed hearing Derek talk.
4) He and his wife have a really sweet thing going. They have a moderate following, get to say exactly what they want, and seem to live fairly low-key lives. Maybe that assumption (based on very little) is wrong but it seems nice.

Lastly, a comment about the bizarre confines of Vineyard Central in Norwood, Cincinnati. This is a group of people that I roundly like, but they took over this old catholic property and my goodness the strangeness that arises from that marriage.
Here you can see an image composed of colored glass, a practice, I learned, which has nothing to do with Jesus, the Bible, or the early church. This is clearly Ray Beam Avian Jesus, sending his Lasered Grace to -what a surprise!- a praying monk (another tacked-on tradition that has nothing to do with Jesus, the Bible, God's message of the gospel, or anything related. Even Bambi knows how wacked it is when Bird/Jesus zaps a man whose lifestyle is a paen to fifth-century paganism and this sci-fi transaction is commemorated by glass in the year 2008.

Revelation 18:3-5

...all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.

The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,

and the merchants of the earth grew rich
from her excessive luxuries.

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

"Come out of her, my people,

so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.

NBA Playoff Quick Hits

Turn away, Bobby. It's about to get sweaty in here.



-Let's get this out of the way. No, it doesn't disappoint me that the Mavs will lose in 5 to the exciting Chris Pauls. That's what I WANT to happen. Am I a 'fan' of the Mavs. YES, in that I want them to do well and be good and cheer-worthy. Am I fan in the sense that no matter what they'll do I'll give them my money and support? No. I want them to exit quickly because I want it to be GLARINGLY OBVIOUS to those schmucks that this team needs to be BLOWN UP, finally, for goodness' sake. Like, 2 years ago. Wishful thinker Mark Cuban, who's conVINCED that "we're just one little piece away...", has to be slapped to see that this combination of men creates one collective LOSER. He doesn't seem to be getting it, no matter how many playoff losses his team racks up. Well, GET IT, Cuban. These guys don't work. BLOW IT UP.

-I believe that, when players come to the NBA from other countries, they have to sit through flopping seminars. They receive a certificate, then they can sign with their teams. Stevie Nash was sick that day, and missed the classes altogether. (Robert Horry was in Toronto on a road trip and slipped into a class.) Technicals should be issues to all actors (Manu, Tony Parker, Kirilinko, and Varejao spring to mind). That'd put this nonsense to rest in a hurry.

-Stevie Nash seems to think that he must defer to Amare and O'Neal. But we all know that HE's the Man out there and should shoot more and make it happen. The Suns are quickly turning into the heartbreak kids, and I can't bear to watch.

-We all know the refs favor the Spurs and Lakers, but I just can't figure out why. The Lakers, sure. It's about the money. But WHY do they love those teeny-market Spurs so much? Ever seen a kid on the streets outside of, say, Round Top wearing a spurs jersey? Do they have fans outside of the Texas hill country? There was actually a play last night in which a ref leaned over a Sun (who was sat on the floor) in a challenge. What? Where does that happen? Hey ref, you're not in this game, did you know that?

-Brian Skinner should be fined for his ridiculous goatee. Didi laughs at me when I say this, as if to say "oh ho, YOU've had an offensive look or two in your day." Yeah, right.










-Never was there a more meaningless series than Magic/Raptors. (I still can't believe an NBA franchise has a raptor as its mascot. If they drafted me today, I couldn't do it.)

-Go Rockets! You guys are winners! The heart of a champion! 22 game win streak! Woo woo!

Ticker

WARNING: BLAND STORY ABOUT MONEY AHEAD. NO SPIRITUAL DISCUSSION. JUST A MONEY STORY.

Several moons ago (27), I lived with Mr. Robbie Pratt, who's a kind of Louisiana version of Ben Folds, only less angry. Rob is a nice fellow and a very slow talker, and reads Zane Grey novels (seriously. First guy I ever met with this hobby). What Rob also does, which was a completely unknown world to me back then, is that he Owns Stocks. In my middle class world, Owning Stocks was something for robber barons and oil tycoons, and maybe the fat guy on Monopoly. We Tuffskins-wearing, bacon grease-recycling families did NOT Own Stocks, not in the 80s. My father certainly owned no stocks.

But Robbie showed me that this needn't be a forbidden/intimidating scene. He helped me set up a teeny little account with ETrade--I think I literally put in like $50 or $75. I remember our big coup that year was a stock called UTX, which jumped from the $40s to the $80s, much to my ticklement. It was a petroleum company, or a construction company, or somesuch.

Are you intrigued so far? And that was just my intro!

...Well that was a long time ago, now. My stock portfolio hasn't diversified much (I think I currently own like 4 stocks), but there's a recent tale that amazes me that I have to share:

I guess I've been at this around 10 years now, and as you may know, the market's been amazingly steady and productive for about the last 80. So my money's increased. It still feels like play money to me, since I started with very little and have put in MAYBE $200 since then. Well waaaay back in Aught-Four (sp?), I owned a little stock whose name I can't remember. It was some company that made potash, which is used in agriculture and in making asphalt, I think. I bought 100 shares at, I believe, $6.50 or thereabouts. For you math geeks, that's $650 worth of stock. Okay.

Stock Trading has become a Less Important Hobby for me. I don't look at the numbers hardly ever. I recently did look, out of boredom, and noticed that I hadn't checked out the prices in over a year (on it!). Well, my little potash company had been bought out, at which point its prices had doubled, then it had realized incredible growth since. Are you curious at what the price is now? I know I am--this is a fascinating tale of finance!

As of yesterday, that stock (MOS. The new company is called Mosaic) is at $140. That's, uh, 14 grand of stock for me.

This amount of cash doesn't exactly make me a candidate to talk to musrat (Shane is a trader for Fidelity Investments, and you have to be a Million Dollar Baby to talk to him), but it is significant to me. It's more money than was on my tax return in either 1997 OR 1998. It's not enough to buy me a new Porsche (for you Californians out there) but, uh, it sure feels like a nice little pad out there! Not that I'm selling anytime soon.

True story.

Keeping Your Head Down

Few weeks back, some friends wanted us over for their kid's first birthday. Not a normal party. The little guy's afflicted with what looks like cerebral palsy. I say that as a point of reference; really, the doctors don't know what it is. But he has a hard time, and they struggle at giving him the care he requires. It's hard. So the party was a come-pray-for-healing-for-our-son party.

To be honest, I didn't want to go.

I like the fact that these people have faith, and I like people getting other people into their homes for God meetings. I support that. But I've been tired of the praying-for-people-to-be-healed-and-nothing-happens-but-we-keep-acting-like-it-will game lately. We have friends losing pregnancies, people being taken out by cancer (one of my favorite mentors, a Mr. Alan Stickney, who deserves several posts on his fantastic Stickneyisms, is losing the good fight in Dallas), and people just not seeing what God's promised. (And I know all the answers to this, by the way: "walk by faith, not by sight", "do not tire of doing good", "yea, though he slay me, I will trust in him", "KEEP ON asking, and it will be given unto you", etc. Yeah, got it.) It is, to put it plainly, tiring. God doesn't answer to me, and I'm surely not going to call him to account (yikes). I'm just saying that this present system is draining. There's grace for the drain, but it's still there.

So we went, because we love these people and mourn their son's condition with them, and sure enough, we all prayed and quoted God's scriptures to Him, and nothing happened. Concretes the soul, this sort of thing.


What picked me up that night was spending time with the husband, a guy I love. Paul asked Chris how we could pray for him, and he said "I just want endurance. It's been a long year." (shades of Chaz Tenenbaum) I didn't have it in me to pray that, so I said "why don't we consider what the Bible has to say about endurance..."

Here's what we found, in that offensive, baldly honest letter by James (one name only. These old guys were like Prince or Sting with the names). James says that if you want to end up mature and perfect, then you're going to have to add Endurance to your toolbox. Um, okay. I DO want that maturity you're describing. Okay, I'm down. I'll take endurance. Then James (ever the prima donna) says "okay, if you want endurance... you're going to have to have your faith tested." Faith tested? Well I know what that means: that means that things don't work out. That means that God doesn't seem to come through for you. That means that you feel alone and have to believe, for no defendable reason, that you're NOT alone. That means that you look like a fool to yourself. Faith testing is a bitch.

Having one's faith shaken, as I considered it, isn't uncommon for the Bible Times Gang. Peter's faith was totally shaken when it looked like the Romans won against Jesus. (I mean, it REALLY looked like it, didn't it?) Ezekiel asked God to kill him, he felt so alone. (Ever prayed that prayer? I have.) David despaired all the time of God. He never seemed to LEAVE his faith, but it was tested. Severely. And repeatedly.

Well what about the guy who's so often painted up as Bible Super Hero (not to be confused with Bible Man, Willie Aames' absurd portrayal of a Super-Christian!?), the Son of God? Did Jesus ever despair of his faith in the unseen God? Yeah, I'm gonna say he did. He cries out on the cross (and that crying out, remember, was a regular part of his life, according to Hebrews 5) in shock, horror, and surprise. GOD! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME!?!?

I find that to be an incredibly sad (and comforting) plea from Jesus. Think Jesus' faith was tested in that moment, in what (we can see, in retrospect) was the crowning moment of his life? Seems like it was.


So my faith being tested seems to be par for the course. It's reassuring when the sergeant tells you that your hyperventilation isn't unusual; everybody deals with it. It's good when the doctor tells you that bleeding and nausea is one of the known side-effects. And when the Master says to pray without ceasing, and that being disappointed with the results isn't the end of the world, it's settling to the soul.

So the knot I endeavor to tie is that of faithfulness. God's just crazy about faithfulness, as his book states over and over. He likes a little stick-to-itive. He's got it in spades, and likes to see it coming out of his offspring. Faithfulness is one of the fruits of the Spirit and, if I can make a circle here, is one of the tip-offs to maturity.

We're getting there, kids.

Can't quite read this caption but I'm sure it's pithy/overwrought.

Same Guy!