SpiritFarmer

. . . I woke up for the last time as a single man.

. . . I put on a tuxedo.

. . . I walked into a church alone.

. . . I walked out of the church with a beautiful bride on my arm.

. . . I began a life that’s been better than I could have dreamed.

Geez, man, it’s not even winter yet, and we here in Seattle are getting a dose of cold, snowy weather. In the past couple years since we moved here, we’ve had light snow maybe three or four times, which lasts a few hours and then goes away. Not this time!! Yesterday evening, here’s what I saw out on the back deck.

Anyway, it did create some mayhem on the roads. Lots of people stranded on freeways, abandoning their cars, sliding down hills. And, as I said, it didn’t go anywhere today. I think the high at our house was 33F. Lows in the teens tonight. Neither Michelle, nor I made it in to work today. Maybe we’ll get brave tomorrow. For now, there’s a fire going, and we’re just hangin’ out.

An American architect designed and built this here building for a church in Rome.  It is a white concrete structure that has a coating on it that was made to be self-cleaning, and minimize maintenance.  As it turns out, some tests indicate that not only does it deliver on that goal, but it actually “eats” smog.  Apparently, the coating contains titanium dioxide, and helps to destroy pollutants in car exhaust.  Read more here.

Bill, your friend with a bookstore is having a post-conference clearance sale.  Tasty titles at killer prices.  Go here and see for your own self!

I did a quick trip to New Orleans over the weekend.  Landed at 2:30 Friday afternoon, and flew out 7:15 Sunday morning.  I was at a conference doing some recruiting (again), but got to drive around town just a little bit.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get to Chalmette, where I was able to spend Spring Break with our college students earlier this year.  Still, the parts of town I went through were significantly under water and significantly damaged by Katrina.  New Orleans continues to be in shambles.  But one definite difference I noticed was that as opposed to 6 months after the fact, there are now lots and lots of the FEMA trailers sitting in front of peoples’ houses, indicating that they’re back on their property and at least in a process toward rebuilding.  More grocery stores are open and looking normal, more restaurants around town are in business, more cars on the roads.

I booked my hotel the cheapskate way, through Priceline, so I didn’t pick the location, but I ended up downtown, one block away from the west end of Bourbon Street.  On my previous trip, I spent zero time there, so I walked down there to look around on Friday night.  Gross.  Now, I’m not being a moralistic, pious, judgemental guy when I say that – I’m just saying that it was a big big turnoff.  I guess drunk people who think they’re either hot, funny, tough, or horny just don’t impress me all that much.  Honestly, that place made me think of how very classy Las Vegas is by comparison.  I only walked about three blocks in, and turned around – it really reminded me of the party scene in Tijuana, where I spent a little time in high school.

It was weird, though, because on Saturday night, when I stepped out to grab a sandwich for dinner, I began walking the opposite direction from Bourbon Street, but was drawn back that way by the sounds of a brass band.  There, on the corner of Canal and Bourbon, were a couple trumpets, a couple trombones, a tuba, a tenor sax, and some drums, being played like there’s no tomorrow – really fun stuff, with a ton of gusto.  After watching that, I walked back down the street and found a little cafe to buy a PoBoy, and they, too, had a little band – dixie style this time.  It was much earlier in the evening than I had been on the street the night before, so people weren’t quite sloppy drunk yet.  My impression of the scene was improved a little.  Still wouldn’t go there for anything I’d call fun, but at least I didn’t come back home with only negative memories of it all.

After having been to New Orleans twice this year now, I still have mixed feelings about the whole scene there.  There are still incredibly tangible racial tensions around town, still so much devastation everywhere you look, so much of life built around feeding the vices of tourists.  But there are still people who love their hometown, and the community they’ve been a part of, and they’re still fighting for dignity with courage.  Those people know how to survive, even when they’ve been abandoned (or maybe because they’ve been abandoned).  I wish them well.

When I returned to the quiet of my hotel room, I flipped on the TV, and found the HBO Comic Relief show, taking place (in part) live, from the very street I was just on minutes prior.

I’m glad to be back home – the only travel I’ve got left this year is actually with Michelle (imagine that).

Just read a blog post over at Caffeist about a new coffee shop over in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.  It’s the first shop for the for-profit co-op call Equal Exchange, that’s been in the fairly traded coffee market 5 years longer than Transfair, the most widely known Fair Trade organization.

Interesting little article, and it sounds like Equal Exchange’s quality is on par with some of the best in Seattle.  Sounds like I’ll be finding my way to Ballard soon . . .

Rose Swetman, co-pastor of the Vineyard in Shoreline, WA – that’s just north of Seattle for you out-of-towners has written an open letter to Mark Driscoll in the wake of yet another debacle his crass bravado has created.

[Read the letter here]

Rose is to be celebrated for her wise, measured, and humble approach.  I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her for a little over a year now, and have been to her church multiple times.  She’s a godly woman, who is powerful in all the right ways.  I pray her letter gets read and respected by its recipient.

Just finished my weekly school chat with my cohort.  Fun times.  This week, we were honored to be joined by Alan Hirsch, co-author of the awesome book, The Shaping of Things to Come, and solo author of the forthcoming The Forgotten Ways.  Good guy, and very good book.  A lot of it is an expansion of stuff that was in the other book, but he throws down some very good new concepts as well.  Without giving too much away, he makes a couple of really good arguments.

First, he discusses a latent missional impulse that lies within all followers of Jesus, and all communities of the Kingdom.  Awakening that impulse is the major task of our time.  When it happens, there will be movement.

However, he argues that movement will be toward the edge of chaos, where real change will go down.  Equilibrium brings death.  Chaos ignites energy within us to be the kinds of people that do the right stuff.

If you’d like to chase some of these thoughts a bit, go to Hirsch’s website, and check out his blog while you’re at it.

The book will be out in January.

I’m thirty minutes into this week, and already feel a bit overwhelmed.  Oh yes, and tired.  24 hours ago I was returning a rental car in San Diego after taking a grand tour of SoCal last week.  I was on a recruiting trip for inter::mission, and visited the campuses of California Baptist University, Azusa Pacific University, Biola University, and Pt. Loma Nazarene University.  It was a super busy time, and I wasn’t able to see nearly enough friends, but I got to crash for a few nights with my parents and hang out a little with the family, which was good (long overdue).  I did get to have dinner with some quality young adults one evening.  Oh yeah, and I had heard about the legendary Archives Bookshop in Pasadena, which isn’t too far down the road from Azusa Pacific, so I stopped in -  they were having a sale, and had some some really good deals, so I didn’t walk away empty handed.  The store did not disappoint – a ton of quality books – not your typical Christian bookstore fluff.  However, I’ll say that as I perused their “new titles” section, my admiration for my friend Bill Bean increased.  He had a ton of those same books at his table at the Revolution Conference.  Even though he’s got a small business with a limited (and traveling) inventory, he knows how to pick the good ones.  You should go buy a book from him.

Thankfully, I got home yesterday morning in time to hang out for at least a little while with my bride.  This is a big deal, because today is her birthday.  I made quiche, which is her favorite.  November is one of my favorite months, because I get to say happy birthday and happy anniversary to my favorite person.  Too bad the birthday part of that equation lands on a Monday for her this year.

Now it’s back to work.  My hope for today is that I can at least get a handle on exactly how far behind I am, and how long it’s likely to take me to get back to treading water.

Peace to you and to me this day.

Well, here it is Thursday, and I’m just getting around to blogging about last weekend.  It was a good time – hectic, but fun.  It was a very rare convergence of worlds for me.  I had friends from my past, school freinds, work friends all in the same place at the same time.  It really was fun, but I was left feeling like I didn’t spend enough time with any of the above.  Oh well.  Once again I’ve been reminded of my own limitations.

It was truly good for Michelle and I to host our friends Jason and Brooke Evans.  They’re warm and loving, agitate against the norm, and make friends everywhere they go – including people they aren’t eye to eye with.  We also got to host Matt Casper, a fairly new friend, but a witty, clever guy.  He’s just written a book with Jim Henderson that you can look for next spring.

Saturday night we had a little hang-out gathering.  Bill Bean, Kevin Rains, Chris Marshall, Randy Buist, some new church planter friends, and, oh yeah, a certain heretic was there too.  Good times.

Our poor dog, Maui – big time lover of all people – just got wiped out.  Too many people to see and lick and jump on.  I think she slept for two days straight once things settled.

Now that I’ve caught up from last week, I’ll have to blog about my adventures from this week . . . but I doubt I’ll get to it until next week.