Bullet Points

Finally back home and getting ready for this week's communion service. Although I was able to work on it some while I was gone, it's a good feeling to just sit and think and work and get some things done. Anyway, here are a few updates.

*FAMILY--Went to my for a couple days after we left Suz's parents house and had a wonderful time at both places. My dad found out that he doesn't have any cancer in his lungs or his bones, which is about the best news we could expect from what we knew. Thank you all for your prayers and please continue. He just started chemo yesterday, he said he felt pretty good when he got home from the hospital, but he was pretty pale.

*IGNITE--Ignite was ok. JR opened the night in a really weird, incoherent way. He showed his photography, rapped the Ebonics version of "The Night Before Christmas" and sang a cheesey song about Christmas from the perspective of Joeseph. It just felt weird. John Heaver spoke about Brokenness which I thought was really good. He talked about how leaders need to be transparent so self-disclosure can take place. Noel's message was a great balence to that. He used the Chaos theory to show how connected we are to others and that we are broken, so we can have empathy with others and serve them. Pavi Thomas also had a good message explaining the differing beliefs throughout early church history and how we need to find more unity in our core instead of dividing over the "jars" that are farther out.

One highlight of the conference was hanging out with Tim and JD on Tuesday Night. We hit Mac's bar and had a good discussion about Authority, the Bible and even some Dispensational/Covenent debate. Good times. Then on wednesday Jimi joined Tim and I. I was tired, but in the mood to step out of reality and mess with people. We asked a few Igniters for a cigarette. We saw a tray of food in the food court, at a table and decided to take all the seats around it, to see what kind of reaction we would get. we thought about asking Pavi if we wanted to go out to eat with us. We would take him to McDonalds and tell him "get whatever you want." Then we would continually refer to him as "Ravi" and ask him questions about apologetics.

*Movies--Dodgeball was better than I expected. Garden state not nearly as good as I expected. The Life Aquatic was amazing! I'm going again to see it with Suz on Saturday. Great movie.

Update

We've been at Suz's families in the cornfields of Indiana and it has been a great time. We've just been playin cards and talking and eating too much. Everyone has been getting me tools for Christmas since I'm finishing the basement. Pretty cool. I'm just hoping we can fit everything in our car. It's to Akron tomorrow and Columbus on Monday.

Kilt

This was two years ago when I was in Dan and Andi's wedding. You can't see it too well here, but yes, I am wearing a kilt.

Christmas, Family and Chemo

So my sister and her boy Javier came to visit this weekend. It was so nice to see them, even though it was short.

This last week Suzanne's parents came up for a day and dropped of the old farm dog Leo. He is very old and deaf and covered with sores, but he has a great temperment and generally likes people if given even minimal attention.

Please keep praying for my dad, he starts chemo at the end of the month. He has more tests this next week to find out if the cancer is in his bones and lungs. So pray that he doesn't.

Christmas is coming up and so we will be traveling to Indiana then to Columbus Ohio for Ignite and then up to Akron for a day or so. Then back home we come to a new year.

Famous

Oh, and here is an email convo that I had with Kyle. He's so funny.

Kyle: Groovy, hey, when will the CD be finished...so we can become famous!

Me: Probably middle of January. We probably won't be famous until at least June.

Kyle: ...just in time for the MTV summer beach party!!

Morning

It's amazing how going to bed early (10:30) leads to waking up at 6am naturally. And I've been at il Bacio since 7 and have gotten tons done. It's a good feeling. Also, I can't get the song "Tell Me A Lie" out of my head. It's good.

I'm still reading the new Don Miller book and finding that it is almost exactly what I've been thinking about for my next sermon. The text that I was starting with is Jeremiah 9. God says pretty much "don't boast about what you have, what you know or what you do, but boast that you know me..." It's weird cause it seems we are wired to need/want affirmation in our lives from other people, but when we find our value in that and not God, then we can be boasting in what we do. I talked about this with Sean today on IChat because he was up early too. Here is some of our conversation...

DAN: cool
yeah, let me know when you give those teachings again i want to hear them
Ross was like "i was just listening to him and was, like, totally convicted..."

SEAN: yeah well it's totally God
because it's been last minute
epiphanies
about stuff that I never thought about much before

DAN: i love it when he works like that
8:10AM
boast in God...he works in our weakness....suprising

SEAN: I actually used the "Santa Claus theology" thing from Dons book

DAN: nice there is so much truth in his words

SEAN:yeah

DAN:there are a couple things i found myself not quiet agreeing with...but nothing major

SEAN: let's just move to portland and go to his house all the time

DAN: that would be cool...i want to go to Horse Brass

SEAN:we could totally be a "character" in one of his books, like Tony the Beat Poet

DAN:lol

DAN:"yeah and to tell you the truth, I learned a lot that summer from my two friends Firehead and Groovingdan..."

SEAN: haha we're such losers

DAN it's ok to dream....

SEAN:about being a footnote in some one elses book?

DAN:yeah
that's why we are losers
that's kind of the point of a lot of his book

SEAN:yup

DAN: finding worth in things like that
it's weird because we are wired that way
but it can be bad
and it's good to encourage people with our words, but bad to find all our value in them
such a hard balence

SEAN: yeah

DAN:it's kind of like what Steve Bush talked how he was getting "hits" of flirtation...well i know i get "hits" of affirmation and one thing keeps me going till the next thing comes along that I get excited about

SEAN:yeah

New Bloggers

Check out some of my friends that I've added...Liz, Paul and Joel. Also check out my link to Paste magazing. It's like Relevant, except cooler.

New Music

Here's a list of some new music I've been listening to lately...

1. Griffin House A sentimental singer songwriter. Folksy. Johnny Cash meets Ryan Adams meets Bob Dylan...but not quite as good as any of them...Still worth downloading. Listen to "tell me a lie."

2. Ray Lamontagne People say he sounds like Van Morrison, but I think he sounds more like a mix between Neil Young and Tracy Chapman (hey she has a deep voice ok?). Check out the song "How Come."

3. Sufjan Stevens Singer songwriter who has an album dedicated to Michigan. Songs include: "The Upper Penensula", "Wolverine", and "Flint (for the unemployed and underpaid)".

4. The Fray Colorado's Coldplay.

2nd Mix

So I just got the 2nd mix back of Ish and it sounds much better, not perfect but better. The vocals are more even and have less reverb and the levels in general are more even. There are some things that still aren't perfect, but what do you expect for $500 bucks?

Tonight we had church and the music stuff seemed to go pretty well, we are learning how to play with the new formation of our band. Jeremy is still learning the songs, but most of the time what he's playing is great. We also did a jazz verson of "What Child if This" for offering and he pulled out the sax and blew like crazy.

Well I have more music stuff in the morning, I need some sleep. Nighty Night.

Backstage Pass

So we met OTR last night. I think it really made Suzanne's week. It was cool.

Over The Rhine

We are going to see my wife's favorite band tonight and the cool thing is that W. Joel Smith (known as Will Smith to some) is brother-in-law with Linford, the dude in the band or is related somehow or other, but the point being that we are on the guest list and have a pretty hot shot at meeting the band.

It's all about the mix

So I just got our cd back from the engineer and don't like the mix at all. Out of the five songs our vocals only sound good on two because he has all this stupid reverb on them, you can't even hear the acoustic guitar on most songs, the ride cymbal is piercing to the ear, and there are tons of little things beyond that that bother me. To top it all off, it will cost more money to have him remix it, even though he is the one that sucked! Kidding, he actually was really nice to work with, I just don't like his mix. I also just found out that it is going to cost some money to get it Mastered, not just duplicated. Suck.

Percolator

il Bacio Cafe is now my favorite coffee shop in the area. It has free wireless internet, free refills and a soothing fountain that reminds me that I need to pee every so often. I also get so much done at coffee shops. I think there are enough distractions here that I don't have the need to distract myself, which leads to getting things done.

Right now I'm working on a music/communion service for January. My question of the day for you guys is, do Christ Followers (or as the semantic Nazi, JR puts it "Jesus Followers) need to confess our sins to God, even though he has already forgiven them?

Still Here

So my dad has cancer. I've been avoiding posting because it's just not an easy thing to write about. The waiting game has begun. We don't know too much about what's going on except that it's lymphoma and is in his kidneys. So there is nothing left to do right now, except of course pray. It's made me think a lot about life and my own mortality. I decided that I'm going to build a recording studio in my basement because I've been wanting to for a while. Eric Craft is going to help me and then we will probably start our own little company recording local bands. It's just one of those little dreams, you know? It's like, we just go on and on living life doing the same old things and never go for it. I don't want to live like that.

Quote of the day

"In my opinion, there are two essential problewms with believing God is somebody He isn't. The first problem is that it wrecks your life, and the second is that it makes God look like an idiot."
Donald Miller "Searching For God Knows What"

Jaden waving

Jaden waving, originally uploaded by groovingdan.

Mom feeding Jaden

Mom feeding Jaden, originally uploaded by groovingdan.

What a hot mamma!

Taylor Mali

Ok, so here is a poem that Chis Seay quoted when he spoke at Reformission last month. Noel quoted it also in his last sermon.

Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.