On Halloween

Halloween used to be different.

It used to be a time where we put some really ugly cardboard stuff on our windows, got dressed in ridiculous outfits with bad plastic masks held on with elastic string, and went out trick or treating. Adults had costume parties, and did whatever it was adults did; we were kids and we didn’t care. The big question was “What are you going to go out as?” We had “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” to watch on TV, and maybe some old movies with Bela Lugosi. The older kids went out and kind of kept an eye on the younger kids, and sometimes they got some candy out of the deal.

It’s becoming increasingly dark. It’s not fun anymore. It’s gone from a fun kind of scary to flat out evil. I can’t tell you the last costume party I attended; it’s been at least ten years and probably longer. In fact, too many people are afraid to have parties anymore; the liability issues aren’t worth it. Kids don’t go out at night on halloween, twilight is about the best they get anymore and they have to have all the candy inspected to make sure it’s safe to eat because you just know some sicko has poisoned it, or added bugs or razor blades to it. That’s if they can get it home without some teenager mugging the kid for it.

In a sense, it’s too bad. Kids today have lost out on yet another childhood ritual, because we adults have held onto things too long. Some of us have made our lives like that of the undead.

I admit don’t get all the goth scene. I’m not into vampires, were-anythings, zombies, or monsters. A Zombie was a cheese filled yeast bun when I was in school, most bloodsucking is best left to the IRS, and with cloning we are creating our own monsters.

When you run in the circles I do, you only die once. Then you face judgement, and if you are not right with God you go straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200. (See Hebrews 9:27.)

And Hell is not a party place. The devil is evil incarnate, and Hell is a place where you are in torment for eternity. (Eternity, by the way, means forever.) It’s dark, you are tormented all the time, there is no rest, and it is a lake of fire.

Not exactly my idea of a vacation destination, kids!

So I won’t be dressing up this year, though I have a nice Star Trek Next Generation tunic with chirping commbadge and can make my iPod a tricorder. (Yes, Virginia, there’s an App for that.) I’m not even sure I want to be home; the U of O is playing USC in an early evening kickoff, ESPN’s College Gameday will be here, and it’s Halloween. Which means the party will start about 4:30 the day before, and is likely to go well into November 1st.

Now that’s scary. In fact, the only thing scarier to me is Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare plan.

Enough for now.

On The Big Windows 7 Party

I’ve spent the last few days flat on my back. Acute impacted sinusitis does that to you--you get dizzy and can’t sit up for too long at a clip, until your eustation tubes drain and the pressure equalizes in your head. As I write this, I can sit upright for about an hour. Yesterday, it was 35-45 minutes. The day before that, 30 minutes tops--and walking unassisted was a real experience. To top it off, my vocal folds have been hamburger for four days now. If all goes well, I should be okay by the start of the workweek.

While I’ve been recovering, I’ve noticed that Windows 7 has finally been released for those of you who have PC’s. This is indeed a grand milestone for those of you who went with Vista, and is light years ahead of same, if all the reports I’ve read are even half true. However, If you still have XP, seriously consider buying a Mac or a new PC. You’ll have a lot less headaches as far as I can tell, and trust me, I’ve had a few real winning headaches of my own this week.

Now, I love a good party. I like certain celebrations; that’s why I attend things like Barbershop and Sweet Adeline Internationals, BrickCons, and so forth. I like getting together with friends and having a good time. But since I have a Mac, I’ve felt a little left out of this party. I mean, I kind of wanted in on the fun that PC users seemed to be having. I’ve read about the launch parties, and all the other attendant hoopla. And I really felt like I should join in on all the fun and games.

So I decided to celebrate this fantastic milestone by removing Win XP from my Mac.

Here’s the fun and games part: I’m not replacing it with Windows anything.

That’s right--I have finally cut the Windows cord. See, I only installed XP because I thought I’d need it for a few things, like for work. Turns out there’s a Mac version, and our IT person was kind enough to send me the link for it. The other two programs I had it for...I don’t need the one anymore, and the other refused to transfer to the Mac. (When they said one copy to one computer, they weren’t kidding around.)

Gone is the Open Office I installed. If I really want it back, I can get it as it runs on Mac. Also gone is the last Norton product I’m paying for. I didn’t really need it for the Mac side, but did for the Win XP side. When Deena’s Norton subscription runs out, I think I’m going to download Avast or AVG for her, unless she wants to pay for Norton herself. (I have been suspicious that part of her HP’s issues stem from her Norton, however.)

I don’t mind cutting Win XP; it’s been good but is now two versions back and the support for it will dry up soon enough. I also don’t mind losing Norton, mostly because I didn’t mind gaining 100 GB of memory back for the whole Win partition.

Have fun with Windows 7. Me...I’m saving some of what I would have spent on upgrades for Windows, MS Office and Norton and be getting Snow Leopard, iWork and iLife 2010 (if there will be such a thing). I’ll also be doubling my RAM from 2GHz to 4GHz. It’ll be like having a whole new computer, for about the cost of a PC netbook.

And I’ll have enough left over to throw my own party, if I want.

Enough for now.

Faith and technology

Theology and computers are my stock in trade. I work online, and while that allows for certain perks, there are certain drawbacks as well. It also makes for some trying times. This week has had a few of those in my life, mostly good people who do not understand how things like cutting and pasting something into a browser works. (Not all links in an e-mail are live ones, mind you. Nor should they be.)

Now I could very easily go off into a blog about how, as Christians, we should not be afraid to use the technology and yet need to not make it more than it is. It would certainly be easy enough to write.

I’ll get to part of that in a minute.

It just surprises me that, in this day and age, there are those people my age and slightly older by a year or three who really don’t understand technology, people of faith not withstanding. Worse, they’re afraid of it, and I don’t understand why. Granted, I grew up in a home where technology was embraced. We learned by doing, and doing meant having the tools to work with, or at least going to where there were tools to work with in order to learn.

But technology didn’t replace hard work as such. For example, calculators were used to check math, not to do it. A spellcheck would have been helpful (and is today), but we had a big dictionary. Encyclopedias were available at home as well.

I’ve written enough of late to give most of you the idea that I know a little about computers. But in a sense, I’ve had a lifetime of learning about them. BASIC in summer school, plus TRS-DOS in high school. AppleSoft in college. More software programs over the years than I want to list or admit to, never mind the hardware that ran them all.

Now you can see why I wonder why people don’t understand how things like the Internet works.

Now, moving forward, we add faith into the mix. As Christians, we need to use whatever tools we can to advance the Gospel of Christ, and use them well. And while I admit to a fondness for “dead tree editions” (read: books), I am not against using Keynote or PowerPoint for worship services as opposed to hymnals and Bibles. (I still think we should have both in the seats or pews, however. Some folks like to have the book in their hands.) We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of being afraid of computers or the Internet. We must learn to use these tools, not to keep up with the world (or worse--become worldly), but because the world uses these tools and has come to expect their use on a daily basis. If we want to reach the world, we need to take the tools (which are neutral, in and of themselves) and put them to work for the Kingdom, just like we did with radio, television, and music. (Notice I haven’t mentioned movies. There are better Christian movies being made--Left Behind, Facing the Giants and Fireproof among them--but Christian movies still have a long way to go in terms of writing and production values.)

And this isn’t just for large churches, or well-to-do Christians, either. This is for all churches, and honestly, given the cost of computers these days, any Christian.

I understand that I am preaching to the choir, as it were. If you’re reading this, you’re online unless someone printed it out. (If so, I’d like to know, okay?) I guess I feel so strongly about this because it used to be that the Christians were well educated. Now we are perceived as being backwards, a little slow perhaps. We react, and we need to be proactive in its place. We put our faith in front of our brains, and it needs to be that our faith molds our education. We need to be the educated people God called us to be, and that means being able to use a computer for more than an expensive doorstop.

So...go learn how your computer works. Figure out some of those programs you don’t know much about. There are books that you can get that will help, and online tools as well. You can’t really break your computer, anyway, unless you mess with the registry or you drop it. (I do not recommend you do either. Both become very expensive.)

If nothing else, at least learn to cut and paste a link into your web browser.

Enough for now.

This Whole Green Mess

Okay, I admit it. I’m sick of everything having to be green.

Don’t take it wrong. I’ve long been a supporter of nature, starting with several years of being in the Nature Club at Mt. Diablo Elementary. I got Ranger Rick magazine from the National Wildlife Federation for years, and a few years of National Geographic World. (I also had a subscription recently to National Geographic, but have since let it lapse.) I recycle my plastics, cardboard, and glass here at the apartment complex, take newspaper to my Barbershop chorus for recycling, and take recyclable bottles back to the store. (That nickel a pop for pop cans and bottles starts adding up for a Coca-Cola addict. Not to mention that Oregon duns the same amount for water in those 20 oz. bottles.) I just recycled the old Dell laptop, a Toshiba laptop, an old clock radio and both my old electronic PDA type devices at NextStep Electronic recycling. I have long been a supporter of “recycled” (read: used) books: both Tsunami and Smith Family Bookstores here in Eugene, as well Powell’s Books in Portland are current favorites. Growing up in Concord, the late, lamented Book Nook at Park and Shop, and both Moe’s and the late Cody’s in Berkeley were favorites. (I’ll really miss Cody’s. That’s a tragic loss.) I’ve long said the government has underfunded our National Parks, and state parks are not much better. I’ve even replaced many of the incandescent light bulbs in our apartment with CFL’s, even though I don’t like them as well. I’ll even recycle myself when I go: I’m an organ donor. They can have whatever they can use from an aging epileptic that’s been on seizure meds since the Ford Administration.

But since being green has been shown to make money for business, all of a sudden it’s being rammed down my throat. As a result, it seems to be the cause du jour for everyone, and everyone just must do more. Plastics, styrofoams and chemicals are evil, natural, sustainable and organic is in. The world is warming at an alarming rate. (Yeah, right. I’m sitting at 42 degrees as I write this. A bit chilly for October 5th in these parts.) We must cut emissions, reduce plastics, and eat organically, and if we eat meat at all, it must be organic, free-range, and so forth.

Just hold on there, partner. Explain to me--with a straight face--why it is that I’m getting hit in the Big Mac with all this?

Kids, my body is a product of modern science! As mentioned above, my body is riddled with seizure meds and caffeine. I make a living (such as it is) by working online. (In fact, I probably spend more time in front of my Mac than is good for me.) I use cell phones (but turn in my old ones for reuse). I use a microwave to heat and cook things. Electricity, electronics, computers, and so forth are modern marvels, even now. This also means I am absorbing microwaves, radio waves, wi-fi waves, bluetooth waves, and UVA and UVB waves. (All those waves, and I can’t surf on any of them. Bummer.)

And, I eat meat because I grew up in a world where protein was A Good Thing. We ate beef and chicken and were not afraid to go outside and play; sunscreen was almost unheard of when I was ten or so and your choice was Coppertone. In fact, a good tan was a sign you were healthy! We ate meat, drank cow’s milk and put it on our presweetened cereals, and went outside and played. I spent summers in little more than a t-shirt, swimsuit and zoris, and swam daily. Rode my bike and/or my skateboard, went roller skating, and was in (generally) good health, except from the bruises where other kids beat on me, or from where I fell (or was pushed) off my bike. And was skinny like a rail until I was in the care of the US Naval Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, when I had my final growth spurt. (Civilians, you might know this better as Navy boot camp.)

All well and good. I’m a married adult now, and we’re not paying an extra $40 a pay period to buy organic food. We ask for the plastic bags at Walmart, so we can use them for cat dump. I personally am only willing to buy a certain amount of clothing from places like St. Vincent dePaul’s or the Salvation Army. Shoes and underwear are not among those items. (Some things should be bought new.) We are not turning the heater controls in the apartment to 65 degrees, and colder at night. (Granted, right now they’re set at 60 degrees. Winter is coming, however.) I am not riding my bike in the rain or at night.

Should we do what we can to reduce, reuse, and recycle? Sure, we should. There is only a finite amount of resources we have, and yes, Virginia, the globe really is warming. They have proven a certain amount of that is man’s fault. (The rest of it, however, is cyclical in Nature. It happens. Deal with it.)

Should we be less dependent on chemicals? Probably. Too many chemicals have or are leaching into our water, and if you really knew how they clean and retreat the water you drink you’d never drink a drop again. Sure, I drink tap water from time to time. (I run it through a Brita filter first, though.)

Can we go back and live like we did 200 years ago, before the Industrial Revolution? I don’t think so. If you want to try, go ahead. Leave all your technology behind. Walk everywhere, make your own clothes, grow your own food without chemicals and store it for the winter, and make candles. No computers, iPods, microwaves, etc.

Me, I’ll stay here and enjoy the nice modern technology. I am, after all, a product of the age.

Enough for now.

(published 10/9/09)

My Life with Computers

Computers have changed over the years, mainly for the better. The sleek, speedy MacBook I now enjoy is light years ahead of the IBM Thinkpad that I had prior to the Dell that died about a year ago. (Come to think of it, the MacBook is light years ahead of the Dell.)

I got to thinking the other day about my very first computer. I’m talking about the unit I got when I first went to Moody. The backstory: I had gotten a bit spoiled when I came home from the Navy; I had used Dad’s computer for various homework assignments, and LMC had a computer lab. So when I arrived at Moody and discovered that these things called typewriters were still in play, I panicked. One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that I can use a word processor such as Pages or MS Word with speed and grace, but I can’t type well enough to make a difference, even on an IBM Selectric 2.

Now, we didn’t have the TRS-80 Level 2 that Dad got while I was in high school. That unit had been replaced, and really, would not have helped me much at all. PC’s were king, and still pretty expensive. However, Dad found a neat little unit for me. The Epson PX-8, otherwise known as the Geneva, graced my desk for the three years I was in Chicago. I also had the TF-20 hard drive, the additional battery wedge/Ram upgrade, a Seikosha dot-matrix printer, and a modem that would connect me to Compuserve, at a rate of $6/hour. In essence, it was “the whole ball of wax.” Dad got it for me through the DAK catalog, and it was a lifesaver.

The Geneva, right out of the box.

The Geneva’s OS was a little something called CP/M, instead of DOS. The programs that came with it were on chips you installed as needed (WordStar, Portable Calc, and Portable Scheduler), and the memory was pretty limited, but I had something very few people did on my floor: A functional computer setup that allowed me to type and print from my room. Nice in those Chicago winters, let me tell you! And while I couldn’t type fast enough to take notes, I could do assignments quickly (and neatly, I might add) enough. Add a few dust covers and a printer stand from Egghead Software--when it was a brick and mortar store at the time--and I was in business.

Once I graduated and returned home, it wasn’t long before I got married, and we got a new/used computer from Dad, and another while I was in Seminary. In fact, the next truly “new” computer we had for our own use wasn’t acquired until 2000, when I was looking for work and using this “internet” thing to assist me. We got an HP workhorse desktop that survived some five years, and was replaced by another HP desktop that I ended up selling to by Father-In-Law to finance the move to the wireless setup the included by then the Dell and the HP laptop Deena has.

The Epson sat, well loved but unused, in its component boxes until 2004 when we moved. I ended up donating the thing, sadly, but at that time we had something like four computers, two of which were in use--the HP desktop, and the IBM Thinkpad. Someone got a true collectable, and I unloaded a piece of gear that I just couldn’t see holding on to, especially as we were moving out west.

Unlike the DX-150A I replaced, however, I don’t think I’ll be buying another Geneva. Some things are better left as pleasant memories.

Enough for now.

Moving day has come...

My blog, take two.

You’ll notice that this blog starts on October 2, 2009.

That’s not entirely true. It actually started January 11, 2008 over on (what was then) Yahoo 360.

But times change, and Yahoo 360 has morphed into some sort of social networking site. And while I like being social, what I really wanted was a place to write about what I thought. I know it’s hard to believe, but I have been accused of being slightly opinionated from time to time. (You have been duly warned.)

Plus, since it became some sort of social networking site, a number of readers have complained that they can’t read the Heaping Pile o’ Blog without first signing out of Yahoo. They also made it more labor intensive to write on the thing.

In short, it was becoming a pain in the lower half of my anatomy. (I’ll let you choose whatever part you wish.)

That’s why I moved here to Blogspot. Nice, neat, simple, and I can actually use some HTML to liven it up a bit. I know just enough HTML to be dangerous, having done a little website building in my time. I can add pictures, such as one of my Man-Cat, for example.

About the URL: Cpromptpoke is an old Applesoft command. Way back when, in those days where you actually programmed a computer, I learned a lot of programming in BASIC. (We all did, as kids.) There were programming languages called COBOL, PASCAL, and FORTRAN, but BASIC was what we learned first.

Then came the home PC revolution.

All you kids out there, who are are so used to having everything computerized, have I got a news flash for you: It wasn’t always this way! Instead of going online to play games or talk, we actually went outside to play and/or talk. Sometimes to talk, we used a little something called a telephone. It hung on a wall or sat on a table, was connected to the wall by a wire, and didn’t take pictures or have fancy ringtones. It used a bell to get our attention, and you dialed a number by using...a dial. When we did get to play a video game, it was a little something called Pong.

And once the Atari 2600 came out, we could play Missile Command and Space Invaders. Pac Man was a big deal. There was something called IntelliVision, Nintendo was a huge advance, and TRS-80’s, Commodore 64’s, (with a whole 64 KB of memory...not GB, not MB, but KB as in Kilobyte) and Apple I’s were on the landscape. We were lucky if we had a disk drive; most of us backed things up with tape. You know...a cassette tape. And in those days, you programmed a computer. Not just load a new program onto the hard drive. You wrote and debugged the program yourself.

Then came the Apple II. This was a great improvement over those Commodore 64’s and Apple I’s. (For some odd reason, I still have a soft spot for the TRS-80, tape drives and all.)

Applesoft was what I learned by taking a college course in PC on an Apple II of some extraction. It was designed to set memory location address to x. (You programming geeks might recognize the command better as C:\Poke addr,x.)

What is a blog, but one’s memories online? Hence, Cpromptpoke. A place to send my online memories.

Enough for now.

(Posted 10/3/09)

On Sorting Through Stuff

This last week I spent at my boyhood home, sorting through a bunch of stuff that represents a lot of Mom’s life. (Mom is fine, so no worries there.) There was stuff in the upstairs attic, garage rafters, and the back of the shed (and no, 99.97 percent of it wasn’t mine). It’s my Dad’s stuff, mostly, some of it Mom’s, a little each of both my sisters, and oddly enough, some stuff from the missus that she didn’t even know was up there. It was quite a lot--we filled 10 yards of a 20 yard dumpster, and the Salvation Army wound up filling what appeared to be a quarter of a truckload. Not bad for three days work.

A bit o’ ancient history: way back when I was in high school, back in the early 1980’s, I was called by several names (most of which are unprintable; I’d like to keep this blog somewhat family friendly). One of those was “Packrat.” I earned that because I carried a backpack to all my classes. In those days, you could and nobody cared. Nowadays, they search them for things. My, how times have changed...but, I digress. I carried my ‘pack because my locker was smack in the middle of “D” wing (D1214, to be precise), and I knew I couldn’t get to it, into and out of it, and to my classes on time. You just can’t stretch five minutes into eight, no matter how good you are.

The fact I collected all manner of junk...excuse me, really cool stuff...was a secondary issue. Or, so I thought.

So, why bring up ancient history? Because of what was unearthed.

Thongs like old magazines. Stuff from Blue Devils (Yes, all three of us kids were in the Concord Blue Devils. My two sisters were both in the “A” Corps, and I was in both Cadets (now “C” corps) and “B” Corps) and the CVHS marching band. More old magazines. Office stuff from what appears to be Dad’s last five offices. Computer stuff that dates backs to our first few home computers. (I found some tapes from the TRS-80 we had when I was still called Packrat, as well as a template for planning programs, plus about two years of 80Micro. If you had a TRS-80, you know what that is.) Even more old magazines. Stuff that was from my Mom’s mother. And her Aunt. And her Cousin. Stuff my one sister created in college. (Both my sisters are disgustingly artistically talented.) Effects from when I was in Y-Indian guides. (Told you this stuff was old!) Styrofoam that fit monitors long gone. Foam peanuts. Newspapers that discuss Kennedy’s assassination AND the 1976 US Bicentennial. Yet more old magazines. Engineering books, and a fair number of them.

Now, to be fair, I have my own share of junk in storage. (George Carlin was right--Dad had some real junk, but I have some really cool stuff.) Roughly forty percent of my library is in small-sized cedar tubs. I have several boxes of stuff that frankly needs sorting and either pitching, donating, or putting aside until I can file it, use it, or put it on a wall. The vast majority of the LEGO, Star Trek items, and a lot of my Barbershop stuff is also in tubs. More back issues of Discipleship Journal, The Harmonizer, Animerica Magazine (and Animerica Plus as well), and Star Trek: The Magazine than is possibly safe to admit to. (Plus some old Manga, in issue form.) So you know I come by this honestly, and it seems to have come from from my Great-Grandmother, through Grandfather Crandall, to Dad...and thus, to me.

The biggest difference, however, is that I have already gotten rid of a lot of stuff. (Don’t believe me? Ask the missus.) And, as I have time (probably in the waiting times for each of my dissertation components) I am going to have go through and get rid of more of it. It’s not that it’s junk (although some of it is).

It’s because I don’t want the missus to have to sort through it all later on.

Enough for now.

(Posted 6/8/09)

A few thoughts over Memorial Day

It’s Memorial Day weekend. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. (So do you, for all that.) Many brave men and women have died--and many more have served our country through our Armed Forces--to secure our rights and liberties. This includes the right of free speech, which I will warn you, I am about to exercise rather vigorously.

Since this is blog is probably being read and monitored somewhere by some soulless, nameless bureaucrat because of my beliefs, then Uncle Sam, please mark my file as follows: "Right-wing, conservative male with occasional liberal leanings. In fact, I am white, male, conservative, Republican, straight, still married to my first wife--a woman I love and respect--and I am Christian above all. I work for a Bible School, and have serious Christian beliefs. I read my Bible and the daily news, just because I can. My beliefs shape my vote, not dictate it. I drive an import, because Detroit hasn’t made a decent car since the Dodge Gold Duster--and isn’t likely to anytime soon just because you asked them to. I voted for John McCain in the last election, and in fact have voted Republican in every election since 1984. I'm white, not "Euro-American"...please. I feel that cutting the Fine Arts in our schools is a crime. Music and Art and Drama are required to be well-rounded citizens. I also feel that vouchers for school should be the law of the land. I do not care for Nancy Pelosi, Al Franken, Joe Biden or Left-wing radicals. I don’t watch much basketball, golf, or NASCAR. I am a Navy vet, with Naval Anniversary medal and Cold War victory medal. I do not own, nor do I want, a gun. I am sick and tired of everything having to be “green.” I listen to Praise and Worship music, Southern Gospel music, and worship the Lord God Almighty and His Son, Jesus Christ. I have been in attendance at five Promise Keeper events-with my wife’s blessings. I own cats, and do not care for most dogs. I do not trust Richard Geithner OR the Office of Homeland Security. I want less government, a truly free-market system with reasonable checks and balances, and a flat-rate income tax. I want the government out of the education business, except to fund college educations, and believe that those paying student loans should have their loans forgiven after five or six years of repayment. I want every teenager, at high school graduation or age 18 if they’ve dropped out, to enroll in a branch of the military for a minimum four year hitch, to assist in paying for said education. I suspect I have an IQ higher than than the President, VP and the Secretary of State...combined. I believe in free speech and a free press, but I also advocate returning to the Family Hour(s) on TV...including all cable channels. I see premarital and extramarital sex as being wrong, and so I'm not in favor of abortions either here or overseas. In fact, we have no business telling other countries how to handle the abortion issue at all. We should be stressing control of our hormones and abstinence; after all, our parents could control themselves as teenagers. We need to control, if not end, porn and gambling on the internet. The Wall Street bailout, credit relief plan, and TARP are all wrong. People being responsible for their own actions, including paying their bills, is what made America strong in the first place. The government running Bank of America, Citibank, GM and AIG is A Bad Thing. It is worse if you insist on running them like you have Amtrak, the USPS, the VA and NASA. I am more than a social security number...I am a free person. I am also a thinking man, and therefore you should probably consider me dangerous. I do not play well with others, and I refuse to conform to the values of this world."

Happy Memorial Day. Say thanks to a vet this weekend.

Enough for now.

(Posted 5/23/09)

Whatever happened to the Church I knew?

Whatever happened to the Church I knew?

I feel like I have missed something, somewhere. Before I left the Chicagoland area for Evansville in 1997, Promise Keepers was doing well. Men were getting motivated, taking up the challenge, and becoming the leaders they were supposed to be. We were finally taking back the cause of Christ. Women of Faith was also doing a booming business. Christians were pushing back and claiming their rightful place in this country. While we still had a lot of kingdom work to do, we were out and about, doing it. We were being heard, and we were not going to stand by idly any longer!

Fast forward ten years. It’s a different world now, post 9/11. Bible bookstores have become Christian bookstores, and have become places where mostly women shop. (I have asked why, and been told that the sales demographics prove this out.) There is enough Christianized fiction to fill several aisles, where there are only small sections, oddly tied together, for men and finances. (We won’t even go into the lack of Bible reference books and study tools.) It seems like every possible people group has its own specialized copy of the Bible anymore. (Do we really need a “Recovering Football Junkie NIV”?) I don’t recognize even half the musicians and bands in the CD racks, and frankly, I don’t care to. It sounds little different from the stuff on secular radio, most of which I don’t like to begin with. I can’t find a t-shirt in my size with a design that I like in these places. (Yes, I wear an x-large. Deal with it.) Some of the designs look gothic to me—which I don’t care much for—or are blatant rip-offs of commercial logos. Promise Keepers? One hardly hears about them now; they’re only having one event this year. New Man magazine is online only, and has been since 2007. Moody Magazine stopped publication in 2003. (Something about declining sales.) Even the Navigators stopped using Daily Walk and Closer Walk devotionals a few years ago. Now they’ll e-mail e-maila daily devotional to you.

That’s right: The Navigators will send you an e-mail devotional six days a week. Moody’s Today In The Word is not only an e-mail, but a podcastpodcast. (I get all three, including the printed version as well. The joys of being an alumni....) Yes, I understand it costs less to use e-mail. But I like using my Bible, and it’s hard to do that unless I print out the e-mail, if I get it. (Spam filters are an article for another day.)

Does anyone out there memorize scripture anymore? Or, has that gone the way of inductive bible study and reading the Bible through in a year?

Sundays: Used to be, they were for resting, and for going to church. Even God rested on the seventh day (Ge 2:2). Sunday evenings, there were youth groups that met before or after service—but nevernever during. Wednesday night was choir practice, prayer meeting, and Awana, Pioneer Clubs, or Royal Rangers (depending on your choice of doctrinal beliefs) to keep the kids occupied. Now we program our Christian youth to death.

And we wonder why our children are leaving the church in droves. They’re tired!

In some cases, Church is optional, much less church membership. One used to belong to a church and only left it if you moved away; now one might belong to several churches, depending “on the kids”, “on the programs”, or even “I like the 45 minute service that is mostly music and very little speaking.” (Admission: as I write this, the missus and I are between churches—and looking.)

The church used to want as many people involved in ministry as possible. These days, there’s a vetting process that makes many of us think twice about volunteering for any duties outside of leading a small group—and we think twice about that, even.

There are fewer church choirs now. They’ve been replaced by “worship teams.” This is not a bad thing, but further reduces opportunities for ministry. Have we replaced worship for a slick, concert-style experience? Where are the Bibles and hymnals, with the songs of the faith? They’ve all been replaced with huge TV screens and the lyrics and the verses get flashed on them! Whatever happened to preachers preaching “Thus saith the Lord” and the concept of sin? Do we even preach about the redeeming blood of Christ, living for God, and the reality of Hell?

Or, has it all been replaced by “speakers” lecturing us about how to be good parents, how to spend our money wisely, how to be nice people to our neighbors, and “Godly Living” (which is different than Living for God)?

And, do we even care if it has?

Now, don’t get me all wrong here. I am all for the use of technology, and modern music, and a readable English translation of the Bible. (And, as I age, the use of larger font types as well. Since when did it become okay to use half-point font?) I am for the use of one’s Bible for everyday living, and any help we get in that department is (and should be) welcome. The world is vastly different today than the world I grew up in.

Nor am I advocating that we return to a romanticized version of an era that really existed, but looks much better in hindsight. This era seems to be lodged in the 1950’s for some reason, and frankly, the nostalgia overwrites the way things really were. I don’t really want to go there, and I suspect you really don’t either. (Besides, Flannelgraph materials and overhead projectors are getting reallyhard to come by.)

But I am all about making the church a little bit more of church, and not an overpsychologized, angst and guilt ridden place where we all must be perfect and not offend anyone and be all seeker sensitive. I suspect part of the problem of the Church Universal is we have gone too seeker sensitive, too far into the realm of Purpose Driven-ness and filling niche, boutique ministries, and gotten too far from what makes the Church, the Church.

In short, and in my opinion: we have, in our attempts to reach the lost, become too much like the world. In our attempts to “become relevant”, we have actually lost our relevance...and quit being salt and light as a result.

Even shorter: since we are now little different from the world, why bother with church at all?

Dear friends, the Cross of Christ is all about offense. It is a stumbling block (Ga 5:11). It’s not supposedto give us warm fuzzies. Church is not supposed to be a psychological clearing house, a religious coffee joint, and a place for a crossbred religio-spiritual concert. It is a place about getting right with Jesus Christ It’s about being surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses” (He 12:1), but not looking back (Lk 9:62). It is a place where the Family of God comes together, to hear the Word of God, to have their faith strengthened, to share in Holy Communion, and to pray to God and Worship Him alone.Christians are to be in the world, and not of it. We are called to be a “people for God’s possession” (1 Pe 2:9). We don’t have to stick out radically a la John the Baptizer, but we shouldn’t necessarily blend in like we are sheep, either. (Although the 23rd Psalm does say “The Lord is our Shepherd” for a verygood reason. We all are like sheep (Is 53:7). We should be different. And, we shouldmake a difference, because we are a new creature in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

My gut reaction is that, while we need to maintain good production values, cutting edge ministry, and being warm and loving not only to each other but to those who visit (Remember, kids: Love the sinner, but hate the sin!), we need to add back solid theology, biblical preaching, doctrinal teaching, church discipline, music that honors God, and maybe even the old-fashioned altar call more than once every quarter. We need to become the Church of Jesus again, and not the church of religious fuzziness and psychological way station.

We might also want to bring back all day singing and dinner on the grounds, too...but I’d settle for just having Bibles and hymnals back in the pews.

Enough for now.

(Posted 5/20/09)

Undergrad Memories....

This was due to be posted the 16th of May. I was busy--but a warm welcome to the newly-minted alumni of the Moody Bible Institute. If I had been a speaker at commencement, my remarks might have looked something like this:

Memory is a funny thing. When one goes through any given experience, one tends to maximize the positive, and minimize the negative. We do this with everything from past boyfriends or girlfriends, job situations (unless it was so fantastic or so miserable that is all we remember), or our schooling.

So it is with me.

I spent the better part of a week looking through drawers, boxes, tubs and more looking for my alumni pin from the Moody Bible Institute. (I got my BA in Pastoral Ministry there in 1991, and that was preceded by completing the Adult Open Bible Studies Certificate in 1990, after working on that since 1986 as a sailor.)

In and of itself, the pin has little value. It’s not much larger than a nickle, and was given to me upon graduating. (I have a second pin, with the old MBI logo, that is slightly older). It’s what the pin represents.

It represents, inasmuch as the degree I hold, three-plus years of hard work. (I took some classes over a summer, plus two correspondence courses--hence the “plus.”) Were those years perfect? Were they miserable?

No to both.

Oh, there were good times. My second and third year roommate and I got along famously. (Well, at least I thought we did.) Most of my brother floormates and I had some great times. The missus and I had our ups and downs there. I dated (?) two of my fellow students--and while those ended badly, I have long wished them both well and forgiven them (and pray that maybe someday, they’ll forgive me). There were lots of laughs, good times, and a lot of learning. Sometimes, I learned what was being taught in the classes, and sometimes...well, sometimes I learned a lot about myself.

Good times: trips all over Chicago. Eating at DB Kaplan’s Deli, Giordano’s Pizza, Mr. G’s, and yes, the late night Taco Bell and/or White Hen Pantry runs. Soda and snack runs on 2nd floor Culby. Shopping at Water Tower Place. Catching baseball games at Wrigley Field and the old Comiskey Park. Sunday church services at Covenant Presbyterian Church, followed by dinner in the Student Dining Room. Praying in Broman Chapel. Going to Founder’s Week was a treat.

There were bad times, too. All the breakups led to some unhappy, miserable, lonely days. I failed my first class--Theology 300, taught by Dr. Marvin E. Meyer--at Moody. Going to Founder’s Week was a chore. (You sit for three to four hours a day on wooden theatre seats in dress clothes and I defy you to tell me your buns aren’t sore.) I got used to being humiliated there. I almost took a swing at a fellow student there--it took several alert classmates to notice and keep me from completing what I started. I wanted to brain my first year roommate. (We have since made nice, and I hear from him on occasion.) I did take a swing at what I thought was drywall, only to discover that it was rebar reinforced concrete. I busted the knuckle on my pinky finger as a result, and learned that anger is much better managed than let loose. I had to take both PE and English again, even though I had taken them both at Los Medanos College, and passed with flying colors. I was 2100 miles from home, and in a totally different world. Planet? Heck, sometimes I felt like I was in a different galaxy! Many of my fellow students could go home on weekends or certain holidays. I was sort of stuck there on campus, along with many of our international students. In fact, sometimes I felt like an international student.

I wanted to quit at least once a semester. I was a transfer student that had successfully completed Navy “A” school and an A.A. I didn’t need to take this stuff. I certainly didn’t need an artificial curfew! (That was taken care of my final year there.) I didn’t care if Moody was the West Point of Christian Service; this was asinine and I didn’t need it.

The truth be told...was that I did. I needed it very much, more than I ever knew. Deep down, I knew if I could handle MBI and graduate with my faith and sanity intact, I could survive anything.

I needed the discipline, the education, the building of my faith and outright dedication to the Lord that was infused into me there. I have used the discipline to continue working on my third doctorate at home. The dedication to the Lord served me well when things went sour in my very first church position, and when things went south job-wise almost a year ago. My faith is what carries me in hard times, and helps me to celebrate the good times. The education has been built on...but it is the education I received there that I draw on.

As a student, then as an alum, I’ve bought many a book from Moody Press (now Moody Publishing). I listen to their radio feed; their praise and worship channel runs often on the Mac at home, often at work when I’m at my other job, and I’ll look for live feed in the car when I travel. (I enjoy Mike Kellogg and “Music Through The Night.”)

Is MBI for everyone? No. Not even close.

It’s not for the faint of heart or weak of constitution. It was sheer stubbornness--both mine and the wonderful woman who is now my wife--that got me through my time there. (Well, okay. That and the Hand of God pushing me along.) It’s not for people that want easy grades or straight “A’s”--although you can get them if you are diligent. Do I recommend people to go there? You bet. The education--both about God, Jesus, and the Bible as well as about myself--will serve me to the end of my days.

Oh, yes--I finally did locate my Alumni pin. It’s in a safe place now, where I can get to it and wear it on those occasions that warrant it.

Enough for now.

(Posted 5/18/09)

Listen up--There's a lesson here!

Hi, everyone!

As I write this, the events of last Tuesday and Wednesday are a bit of a blur, and for good reason. A lot of that period has been spent under a cloud of painkillers!

Let me go back a bit...this whole thing actually started last July, in what I thought was simply a bad gas cramp. It cropped up again in December, and started to become more of an issue off and on a few weeks back. I went to the doctor, who felt (based on what I told him) that it might be a “functional blockage” in my intestines, and I should be okay so long as Gas-X was taking care of my symptoms, and if it continued to go to the emergency room and get x-rayed.

Thursday the 9th of April, while at a rehearsal for the Harmony of the Gorge (A Sweet Adeline chorus I direct) I had what I thought was another really annoying gas cramp.


Except this one was so bad it took five hours to die down, and at one point I thought I was going to pass out. But I got through it, and was feeling better on the way home.

Then on Monday the 13th, everything came to a halt. My beautiful and charming bride and I were walking at Gateway mall when I decided that something was most definitely wrong. We determined that a trip to the emergency room was in order.

We arrived at 7 PM. About 9 PM, they gave me a shot of morphine to unbend me enough to take an ultrasound. By midnight, I had been admitted to Sacred Heart-Riverbend, with a gall bladder that was “inflamed” and had “sludge and stones.” I underwent the emergency removal operation the next day, where they found that my gall bladder was pretty well infected, too. I also had some blood in the bed where the gallbladder had been sitting. In short...I was in worse shape than the ultrasound showed. I spent the rest of Tuesday night and most of Wednesday at the hospital, and finally went home on Wednesday night. I’m on antibiotics for the next 5 days or so, and painkillers on an “as-needed” basis. I am also taking the rest of the week off, and will be on light duty all next week.

So, why share all this with you all?

Because I probably should have had this looked at a lot sooner than I did. The lesson I am giving here is pretty simple: If something doesn’t feel right, have it checked out sooner than later.

Enough for now.

(Posted 4/17/09)

The Truth About St. Patrick's Day....

As I write this, tomorrow will be St. Patrick's Day. Many Americans will use this for an excuse (as if they truly need one) to swill green beer by the litre, wear green (and pinch those who don't), eat corned beef and cabbage as penance for all that green beer, adopt a rather bad Irish accent and pretend they have Irish roots.

In short, many Americans will use this as an excuse to party to excess. Those of us who actually have Celtic/Pict roots will go through the day and wonder what the fuss is about. However, we'll celebrate with everyone else.

There are three things I learned about St. Patrick's Day when I went to Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland in 1997. I share these with you:

1. St. Patrick's Day--Lá Fhéile Pádraig--is a Holy Day of Obligation in Ireland. That means, in layman's terms, nothing opens until after noon Mass--if anything opens at all. Most places that do open are usually for the tourists who come to visit. Parades on St. Patrick's Day in Ireland are a fairly new thing--dating from the 18th century.

2. Many Irish don't like corned beef and cabbage any more than you do. They are more likely to have mutton or salmon, and potatoes for dinner.

3. Green beer is repugnant to the Irish. In fact, the national drink is Guinness--which is a brown stout! If you are successful in turning it green, it's not fit for drinking. Many others will have Harp; it's a lager--but best served without dye.
Sláinte Mhaith--good health to you.

Enough for now.

(Posted 3/16/09)

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What have we done?

Before I get started, I am only going to say this much: Don’t blame mefor the mess the U.S. is in. I voted Republican—albeit with misgivings—and did so before leaving for O’ahu. And while I am not sure that McCain and Co. would have been any prize, I also suspect we wouldn’t be mortgaging our grandchildren’s future, either.

For openers, I hear that we need to save money. On the other, I hear we aren’t spending enough. Make up your minds, please.

Then there’s this war we are still mired in, that we can’t seem to get out of. We can’t trust Wall Street, sports figures, or our elected public officials to tell us the truth about anything--including whether or not they've paid their taxes. Every time I turn around, something else is being recalled because it will kill you if you consume it. There are super-bugs that are resistant to antibiotics, so we can’t treat you when you get sick because you went ahead and ate something that was recalled.

Worse yet...Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are stillon the radio. Wellllllll...okay. This might not be as bad as I thought. At least they’re trying to shed light on what’s up with our elected Bozos...uhhh, I mean public officials. Yes, they can be very trying. Let’s not go there.

Looks like the era of Big Government is here. The Government is here to help you. This is called Socialism. Socialism is defined as a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership. Is thisthe change you all wanted? Back after 9/11, the French annoyed us in the US to no end. Now we want to be like them!Did I miss the memo on this radical shift? I though we were supposedto be a Capitalist Democracy, or a Republic, or something other than a bunch of Socialists. Yet, that seems to be where we are heading.

Now they are talking, since they have partially privatized the banks, about privatizing health care (otherwise known as “universal coverage”). I’m a vet—and if the government were to take over health care, they’d run it like the VA. Or worse...Medicare. Ponder that, Pinky!

Many of you voted for change. Seems to me that’s all we have left in our pockets!

Just in case some of you have missed the news, the economy is in tatters. As I write this, the Dow has lost over half its former value. People are getting laid off in the hundreds of thousands. Unemployment has risen to at least 7.6% as of January 2009. The government has passed the largest spending bill in the history of the nation...just shy of a trillion dollars. That’s right...trillion, with a “T.” We now are waiting to see if the biggest pork bill ever signed into law will bail us out. A side note to you all—it won’t. It won’t help us one whit. It certainly isn’t going to work for me. It isn’t going to work for you, either, unless you’re into blue-collar work. (Which is, by the way, quite all right. People working beats people on welfare and unemployment any day.)

Nobody, but nobody, wants to use the “D” word yet. As in "Depression."

I’m saying it’s way past due, kids.

Enough for now.

(Posted 3/4/09)

Thinking About Ramen....

What goes through my mind some days is deep, ponderous, and flows freely. Other days, it can be ridiculous, insane and somewhat clunky.

This is one of the latter, I'm afraid. Sometimes us Electrogeek types ponder weird, odd, off the wall things.

Like Ramen.

You read that correctly, kids. Oh, come on—you know what is Ramen: that mainstay of many a collegian diet. It’s what I’m contemplating today, Pinky. (Okay—guilty pleasure from 13 years ago: watching Pinky and the Brain.)

What is it about this conglomeration of cheap, fried and dried noodles, a salt and MSG pack that has some semblance of a flavor lurking inside, and boiling H20 that is so appealing to me? And, for all that and by extension, to all of us?

My favorite brand is Sapporo, and my particular favorite flavor is “Oriental Flavor.” I won't even go into that too seriously; after all, I doubt rather highly that it is flavored like an Oriental, and I seriously doubt any Orientals were freeze-dried and powdered to make a soup base. (At least, I should hope not.)

It certainly isn't very slimming--most of us eat a whole package, which upon further review, ends up being between 500-600 calories. (Not to mention enough salt to stun a moose.) Nor is it particularly healthy in its unadorned state-it's not bad for you, but there are far better things one could eat. It isn't particularly tasty, even with the soup base in it. I'd rather make fresh udon to-kamaboko (another form of noodle soup, using fresh wheat noodles and fish-cake); I usually have all the materials to do so on hand. It's also much better for me, because it's fresh, and has way less salt the way I make it. No, I do not make my own udon noodles. I’m good—but not that good.

Even so, I find myself turning to the stuff far more often than I should. Which is why I'm sitting here, writing this. I had a mug o’ Ramen for lunch today, and found myself thinking: What is it about Ramen that demands to be eaten? In its dried state, you could replace a roof shingle or two with the noodles. In its wet state, and without having added the soup base, you can patch holes in your walls for painting. (Don't laugh, kids. I've done so at least twice.) To me, it is the Japanese equivalent to a burger. (Okay-technically, that would be either sushi or a bento; but you get the idea.) You grab it, eat it, and move on with your day. Oh, you might linger a bit over it, but it isn't the kind of meal (here in the States, at least) that one does an extended lunch with.

But we seem fascinated with the stuff. I mean, on average, an American will eat nearly one package a month. (That's actually 9 packs/cups a year; this is from Nissin's website-they created the stuff in 1958.)

I just haven't figured out why.

Enough for now.

(Posted 2/26/09)