This Is Awesome

It seems to me that more and more artists are turning into one-man-shows. I applaud them for it; keeping their art as personal as possible is something that is not easy to do. I'm not sure I could do it though.

I'm not sure I'd want to do it...

Twice Is No Accident

So, yeah, my hands don't function in the cold. But I don't mind when it's this kind of snow.

No, your screen isn't dirty; that's fluffy goodness falling from the sky.

Oh boy! Maybe more pictures when it finishes falling...

Ah, to Breathe Another Year

And thus I have put one more tick mark onto my "years lived" wall.

To be honest, I feel exactly the same as I did yesterday, and I'm sure I'll feel the same tomorrow.

I can say, however, I feel astronomically different now than I did this time last year, and I am sure the same will hold true for the next year.

Do I regret my life? No. Have I made mistakes? Yes. Do I have much still to learn? Most certainly. I pray only that God will continue to use me as He sees fit.


By the way, The Soloist is fantastic, and you, sir or ma'am, should go purchase/rent/borrow (but not steal, that is unethical) it and watch it before you do anything else moderately important.

When Dreams Get Serious

Merry Christmas!

December 24, 2009

In an old city bar
That is never too far
From the places that gather
The dreams that have been

In the safety of night
With its old neon light
It beckons to strangers
And they always come in

And the snow it was falling
The neon was calling
The music was low
And the night
Christmas Eve

And here was the danger
That even with strangers
Inside of this night
It's easier to believe

Then the door opened wide
And a child came inside
That no one in the bar
Had seen there before

And he asked did we know
That outside in the snow
That someone was lost
Standing outside our door

Then the bartender gazed
Through the smoke and the haze

Through the window and ice
To a corner streetlight

Where standing alone
By a broken pay phone
Was a girl the child said
Could no longer get home

And the snow it was falling
The neon was calling
The bartender turned
And said , not that I care
But how would you know this?
The child said I've noticed
If one could be home
They'd be all ready there

Then the bartender came out from behind the bar
And in all of his life he was never that far
And he did something else that he thought no one saw
When he took all the cash from the register draw

Then he followed the child to the girl cross the street
And we watched from the bar as they started to speak
Then he called for a cab and he said J.F.K.
Put the girl in the cab and the cab drove away
And we saw in his hand
That the cash was all gone
From the light that she had
wished upon

If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last

By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger

And to know who needs help
You need only just ask

Then he looked for the child
But the child wasn't there
Just the wind and the snow
Waltzing dreams through the air

So he walked back inside
Somehow different I think
For the rest of the night
No one paid for a drink

And the cynics will say
That some neighborhood kid
Wandered in on some bums
In the world where they hid

But they weren't there
So they couldn't see
By an old neon star
On that, night, Christmas Eve

When the snow it was falling
The neon was calling
And in case you should wonder
In case you should care

Why we're on our own
Never went home
On that night of all nights
We were already there

~"Old City Bar" from Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Eve and Other Stories


And of course, Merry Christmas, lest we forget.

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed
his people.

~Luke 1:68

By the way, did I mention it is snowing? SNOWING! On Christmas Eve! In Texas! Merry Christmas!!

?

But as long as there is a remote possibility of explaining the resurrection naturalistically, modern people say we should not jump to a supernatural explanation. Is this reasonable? I don't think so. Of course, we don't want to be gullible. But neither do we want to reject the truth just because it is strange.

~John Piper

I must concur with Dr. Piper. Truth, strange or familiar, is truth; and I think keeping an open mind is what makes it believable. I found this an interesting way to look at things that are superficially unbelievable (like the resurrection); and it really hit home in my naturally-skeptic heart.

I was raised to question, to unearth meaning. With my parental roots in science and education, skepticism goes with the game. It's what brings answers. Unfortunately, this has provided not a few obstacles that I have had to overcome in my philosophy, in my faith, and I think this is a good thing. Today, a little of the smoke cleared. I've always known, I've always believed, but there's always that little nag in the back of my head. He's still there but now he's a little quieter.

"He said to the crowd: 'When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, 'It's going to rain,' and it does...Hippocrytes! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?'"
~Luke 12:54-57

Yes, I am guided; but that doesn't give me the excuse not to think. You see, I believe the being a Christian is far from static. True faith demands thought, action, struggle, and growth. Otherwise we become like the Pharisees who Jesus rebuked so many times ("You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God, in order to keep your tradition!" Mark 7:9). So, by all means wrestle! Grow in your knowledge of God as you walk by faith in Him. Joy and unspeakable beauty await him who pursues the Father. And by no means does that make you a dogmatic hippocryte. I may not have figured all of the ins and outs yet (nobody finds all of the answers on this earth), but I firmly believe Christianity makes sense.

After all, we believe physics makes sense, yet we still don't understand gravity.

Well, Hello There Goofy

Also, go here. It's pretty much fantastic.

So I Suppose I'm Feeling Ouchre

It's been quite awhile, but there's an aspect I've missed about blogging. So I decided on another try, not to mention blogger has gotten way cooler since the last time I was on it.

And Facebook notes are so...limiting.

Yes, I enjoy the Minima theme. That doesn't make me a brazen commercialist.

Here goes [nothing, something, everything]!