Merry Christmas!

to all of you who stumble across this site, or read it, or whatever...

Merry Christmas!

May the arrival of our Messiah bring you hope, love, joy, and peace in every situation.

As we look for His return, may you find all you need for each step in Him.

Maranatha!

steve rose's mental picture of the nativity....

i know if steve could have it happen this way, he would...

habits

i haven't posted on here in a while, so i'm trying to make up for lost time...

advent season at hope has been such an incredible experience. i keep wondering where this momentum is headed--it seems like God is reminding us of a lot of things we may need to hold to for our next season of life. it's funny how deeply i'm being affected by the story: the other day i was at a coffee shop and a christmas carol came on, and i started crying out of the awe and gratitude of Jesus' showing up. the word became flesh...it has never been so profound to me. i absolutely hated being away from church this weekend. i was at the airport, finding out my flight was canceled, wondering what amazing truths would come alive in the life of our body. if there are things any of you have realized through our advent journey this year, leave them in my comments and i'll share them in a post...

thanks to all of you who are supporting me both in prayers and finances for my africa trip--i'm going to put a post up soon with all the details i have so you can be praying. i'm not sure if we'll have internet at any point on the trip, so i don't know if i'll be able to send out anything from there, but i do want to keep everyone in the loop.

ok--side note--forty day fast just came on my shuffle, and i about fell out of my chair--if you don't know who they are, you are one of many.

lastly, i'm thinking i may open up a blog on behalf of hope--on thursdays, we have bible study before any rehearsal we do, and sometimes we write psalms--poetry, reflections, open and honest prayers about where we are in view of who God is. people have written a lot of things that are quite profound, and i've talked about posting them up in our church. but as i think about it, i'd rather post them online, so people who come to our website can link into some of the things coming out of our church; expressions of faith, struggle, and hope. if you think about it, mention to me next time we talk as to if you think this is a good idea or not...

an advent prayer by JD

read this on JD Walt's blog...thought i'd republish it. its an advent prayer:

Almighty God, Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, giver of the Holy Spirit, we gather to thank you for the gift of Christmas and for Advent, the season of preparation. With every week the lights grow brighter, our anticipation heightens and our attention sharpens. We affirm that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us: because the Lord has anointed us. (Isaiah 61:1)

We are looking to you, the Mighty One, who has done great things. Teach us to worship you. Show us what it means for our souls to magnify the Lord. Instruct our spirits in what it means to rejoice in God our Savior. (Luke 1:47-49) For you have done great things for us and we are filled with joy. (Psalm 126:3) You have clothed us with the garments of salvation and covered us with the robe of righteousness. (Isaiah 61:10)

We affirm that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us: because the Lord has anointed us.

As the Son of God was formed in Mary’s womb, so we bless you because your Spirit is forming His life within us for the sake of the World. In a time of unparalleled prosperity, we come before you to pray for the poor. Across the world, countless millions of children roam the streets in search of their next meal. We stand in your presence now on their behalf. In our own community we witness some of the worst poverty of all: lonliness. Make us to be good news to them. We take our stand with them now.

We affirm that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us: because the Lord has anointed us.

We remember the brokenhearted, those whose loved ones have been lost to the hatred of war, the violence of disease, the injustice of death. As those among us stand, receive it as prayer and bind up their brokenness with our love.

We affirm that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us: because the Lord has anointed us.

As your anointed, we plead for release to the captives. For many of our brothers and sisters around the world, the Gospel has meant persecution and captivity. By your Spirit, cause some among us to stand now as prayer for their release and reward. We pray for friends and loved ones in our midst who have become prisoners in webs of addiction. Make our standing on their behalf to become the seeds of your deliverance, the planting of the Lord, to display your glory. (Isaiah 61:3)

We affirm that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us: because the Lord has anointed us.

Give these for whom we pray a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. (Isaiah 61:3) Fill their mouths with laughter and their tongues with shouts of joy so that it may be said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” (Psalm 126:2)

Lord Jesus Christ, make our lives and our life together to magnify you. Cause our glad tidings and good singing to combust into worship that moves the World. We bless you, the one who is, who was and is to come as we pray the prayer you taught us:

so i was wrong...HOORAY!!!

LSU is playing for the national championship. in a year of such absurdity in college football, i shouldn't have been surprised. we'll take it , though. and honestly, tOSU has no shot.

and the christmas nonsense begins...

i love christmas this much

goodbye national title hopes...

in honor of the death of LSU's chances to win it all, i offer two videos; for some reason, these songs popped in my head after the horrible loss today.





i hope to see you again next year--

inaugurating worship--a response

here's chapter one of j.d. walt's worship seminary videos. i'm gonna just react to these; i think they hold some cool ideas, questions, and truths.



i love, LOVE, the symbol of the candle of His presence; ever burning, ever present in the sanctuary, the light of the world, ever-illuminating and all-consuming flame! it's Jesus who gives light, for He is light. we who have seen His light and responded to it are welcomed into the mystery of light. we become light as He is light--paul calls us children of light, who were once in darkness, but no more...

children of light taking in light, consuming it as it consumes us, bringing light as it creates light...wow

in 1 chronicles 16, the ark, which marked the very presence of God, was being brought back to jerusalem, back to its proper place in their culture. david knew that the presence of God had to be restored to its proper place in their lives, to be given the honor and reverence He is due. his instructions to the levites were specific: to celebrate and thank and praise the God of isreal (v. 4), or more specifically to be about the praise, celebration and thanking of God. to be ever praising--it became their job, their task, their aim...their reason for being. without giving too much away of whats coming up in the series, this point is very important. people set aside for the praise and thanking and celebration of God...

i think there's a link between positioning God in His proper place and even having the ability to respond with celebration, thanksgiving and praise to God. the isrealites had lost the ark, the symbol of God's power and presence, to their enemies years before, and even when Saul was king, the ark was not positioned back into the temple in jerusalem. the temple was central to almost all of the social aspects of jewish life, all the rituals of worship, remembrance and cleansing, and above all reminded the people that God was to be central to all of their actions and interactions. when God was not the center, every aspect of life lost what gave it its meaning, and through that, their culture of faith was weakened.

so if this occasion marked the beginning of the continuous worshiping of God by the people set apart for those purposes, it must noted that it accompanies the positioning of God in His right place, in the place He deems best, right, and good in their lives.

or, to simplify things a bit, lives centered around God are marked by continuous praise to God.

could it be assumed, then, that where there is a lack of worship, there is also a lack of proper positioning of God?

perhaps positioning is the wrong term--it implies we put God where we want, when i don't think that's necessarily the case. instead, it implies a relationship between the placement of God and our everyday living--that's something we do have control over. what relationship do we have with the presence of God in the details of our day? how do we make choices that make Him central to all those things? how do we as a church encourage and even enable people to centralize Christ in their everyday?

sold

for anyone who's ever asked for a sign when considering who to vote for:

J.D. Walt and worship seminary

i came across the blog of J.D Walt today; J.D. is the Dean of the Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary (where hopefully soon i'll be a student). on his site, he linked to a youtube channel that hosts videos of his teachings and processes on worship:

click here to check it out

i've watched enough of them to know that i want to watch them all a number of times; i think i'm going to start blogging on each one...thoughts, questions, etc...

go to the channel and check them out if you have time. i'll post the video with each of my responses as i go.

oh-and if you have $10 to drop on an album, go buy Jessica Reike Heine's album Finding a Fugitive on itunes. she lead worship here a while back during the big 5 series we did at hope, and her husband jeff preached that morning along with preaching the d-now weekend we did. this record is amazing, and i'm sure you'll agree.

and it begins...

today's the first day of the advent fast; happy first-day-of-the-advent-fast day!

it's funny how unfamiliar the practice of fasting is to most believers, including myself. since the advent season is about celebrating the arrival and birth of the Messiah and on preparing oneself for His return, i think to fast without adding these two dimensions into your practices may miss the point. steve and i were talking this morning about beginning our fast, and how we both decided not just to withhold certain things from our routines or diets, but to add another element to it: to celebrate and prepare (or anticipate) everyday in some way.

which brings up something strange for me: purposed celebration. it's not weird to me to celebrate something on purpose; but it is weird that i have to "make" celebration a part of my everyday routine. i guess i celebrate when there is something to celebrate, but i'm already seeing that there's never not something to celebrate because of Christ. and if i'm honest, i think i do a horrible job of celebrating (and this is not a cry to be encouraged or anything like that...more making a point to myself...i'm weird, i know). real, true heart-felt celebration looks so different then my mild hoorays-- it's dancing, leaping, creating, shouting from the rooftops; it's loud, it's proud, it's full of awe, of wonder, of almost disbelief at what has occured; it makes you do crazy things, it makes your hoarse from telling, it's the moments you relive over and over...

we can even celebrate as we anticipate things...and it's weird how these two things hold hands in the redemption story; celebration and preparation. re-telling, re-living and celebrating what God has done through the coming of His son brings those things into our moments, into our story, and because He lives, we celebrate with Him and those that are His in what He has done and is doing, and even in what He will do. He will return; He will finish the restoration He began on calvary, He will redeem fully what He has already redeemed...and because of this, we prepare, we act, we change our routine to shout this out, to celebrate it by living in a way that testifies of its validity, of its truth. its almost like we cannot prepare without celebration being woven throughout everything...

sad to say i missed this...

i found out last night that God's gift to finland, hard rock, and all things both pseudo-christian and pseudo-undead, the band LORDI, was in louisville last month, and i missed it. i fear it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and i am contemplating shaving my head to show my soul's state of mourning.

seriously, though, this band is over the top...



and if you have the guts, go to youtube and look up Devil is a Loser by lordi. they call the devil their...well, don't listen to it at work or in front of kids. i don't understand it, but i still laugh at it.

plus all their videos genuinely scare me. watch them on full screen in a dark room at night, and i bet you don't sleep.

my postsecret crush

a confession:

sometimes i get crushes on other people's creative ideas

as of late, there are two artistic crushes i have: one can be seen at the website www.postsecret.com , and the other is on the new aqualung album Memory Man.

postsecret, a community art project started by frank warren, began as frank sent postcards out to anonymous people and asked them to anonymously submit their secrets to him on postcards...hoping to make them into a collage and exhibit in their area. he began getting cards from people in the area, then people outside of the area, and now from people all over the world. go to the site and read some of them. i'm still trying to pin down what i find so profound about the project: perhaps the (perceived) honesty on some of the cards, or the idea of being confessional to a group of people. i don't think it's odd for that to be attractive to me; confession is supposedly a part of both my faith and my community of faith. i note supposedly because i don't know if it always is, and especially in the later of the two. i'm fairly comfortable being confessional with God, at least most of the time. but being confessional with the body of Christ? why does that feel so odd...

perhaps thats my confession #2: i don't feel comfortable confessing to the body...

but i do...but i still don't. it's weird. i like the concept of confession, and i agree that its essential to our faith. confessing is agreeing with the truth of God about the reality of our actions. it's owning our wrongs and their consequences. it's exposing our flaws, failures, and faults, in the hopes of not returning to them. and i agree with derek webb, who thinks the best thing that could ever happen to any of us is that everything we've ever done be projected on a screen for everyone to see; it would make us be honest with everyone else and with ourselves. and the one thing i think postsecret doesn't accomplish is healing and restoration from the junk we do keep inside; we need the Lord's truth and other's encouragement and correction (and accountability).

but still...one thing i've always been told, perhaps to my detriment, is that i, as a leader (or as a church staff member, or paid clergy, or whatever other distinction one makes between lay leaders and pastoral professionals...geez, it all sounds so horribly professional), am not supposed to be all too confessional with the body. that confessing creates doubts in leadership, that it would be costly to the ministry as a whole. i know it contradicts itself, but it seems like socially those of us in ministry as a profession are taught to hide our stuff--and yet, ironically, thats what leads to all the big church scandals and whatnot...people hiding their struggles and those eventually eating them up, along with those around them. i just wonder where the balance is--you know, like how open can i be with the body? is it with just certain people, but not with everyone? how do you draw those lines? is it just with the socially acceptable struggles (or vague ones) like pride, lust, or lack of discipline, or can it be more that that? and how can i expect a community of people i'm a part of to become honest, open, and confessional if i'm not truly allowed to be that among them?

so i'm a little frustrated. my first reaction to warren's project (aside from "how brilliant--i hate him") was "if only the church could be like this..." and i honestly feel like its socially impossible for me to be a part of a community like that for someone in my profession, or at least impossible without anonymity. is that weird?

enough rambling for now...check out aqualung on your own...

advent is (second)coming!

i've started reading up on the advent--we're going to practice the advent traditions, or at least some of them, this holiday season. i think one of the things i hate about growing up in the SBC is the lack of a liturgy, or at least one that dates further back than the 50's. the more i read about the traditions and symbols of the advent, the more moved i am, and the more excited i get about celebrating it with our family at hope.

one of the prayers i came across reads like this:

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a wonder at the wisdom and power of Your Father and ours. Receive my prayer as part of my service of the Lord who enlists me in God's own work for justice.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a hunger for peace: peace in the world, peace in my home, peace in myself.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a joy responsive to the Father's joy. I seek His will so I can serve with gladness, singing and love.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me the joy and love and peace it is right to bring to the manger of my Lord. Raise in me, too, sober reverence for the God who acted there, hearty gratitude for the life begun there, and spirited resolution to serve the Father and Son.

I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, whose advent I hail. Amen.

it takes a lot of guts to pray a prayer like that and mean it...

moving from my fresh experiences in NOLA back into life in frankfort/lawrenceburg has been weird; it's really like walking into a familiar place for the first time. i'm seeing things i've never seen--needs, hearts, people. like at qdoba: i love qdoba tacos, and they fix into my diet on p90x (as i read it, anyway). so i've gone to qdoba about 3 times in the past week, and each time the same dude makes my tacos. and i find myself wanting to talk to this guy...and not just about what i want on my delicious qdoba tacos. i'm praying for him, and i'm praying that as a door opens, i can connect with him, and connect him with Christ if he's not already.

i'm also hanging out at panera a lot, even now. free wifi + republic of tea's chai = happy drew study situation. and there are regulars here, and employees, and people who don't go to hope but do go to panera.

the prayer above is a prayer about preparing my own heart for the coming of Christ. advent is the celebration of the first coming of Jesus and a look toward His second coming. it's about expectation. it's about anticipation. it's about preparing yourself for His return; it's hope, peace, love and joy. and it's about the heart before the actions...

that's one of the big truths the NOLA trip drove home for me...that all of the things this world needs start with a heart that is yielded and bowed down to Jesus...and i see that preparing for everyday situations with everyone i may encounter, including my coming savior, starts with correcting my posture.

some NOLA reflections...

wow, what a trip. i'm still reeling from my trip to new orleans a little bit (and it didn't help my reeling to pack up and head to texas, though seeing michael and amber was a great joy). i'm going to try to gather my thoughts a little here, though it will probably end up being ramblings...

on wednesday, we broke for lunch and went to the KC hall for pizza and an air-conditioned break. while we waited on the pizza to be delivered, connie (from beacon of hope) came and asked for someone to help get a lady into a van who was sliding out of her wheelchair. i followed her our to antoine's van where he was struggling to get a woman back into her chair. i jumped into the van and helped him lift mrs. dee back into her chair. antoine's van wasn't handicap-equipped, and honestly, i didn't know how he got her chair into the van--i just knew she was about to fall out of it. so we slid her back up, and antoin ran a broomstick through and under the arm rests of her chair to restrain her in a bit. once we got mrs. dee in place and locked down with bungee ties (his van was an open cargo van, so we had to stablize her somehow), we loaded up to take her to her house.

i started talking to mrs. dee just to calm her nerves a bit--she was visibly upset by the near-fall, and she didn't see too happy about being bungee tied and broomsticked to the back of the van. i asked her when she had gotten back into the new orleans area after the storm: she told me she was about to see her house for the first time since it was renevated both from the flooding and for her disability. she didn't evacuate until the storm had already hit, and was trapped for a number of days in the superdome. while being transported, someone had severly crippled her by trapping her legs under her wheelchair when moving her. antoine later explained that this tragedy had paid for all of her house renovations and the handicap-accessable van her daughter had taken for the day, thus leaving her stranded. her face filled with excitement as she told me about her new house, how excited she was to see her kitchen; she loves cooking and can't wait to see where she'll be cooking in her own house. she calls me baby like only a older black woman from new orleans can--it sounds more like "bei-bay" than "be-be".

at one point, antoine asks me to duck down so i can't be seen; apparently, he's more likely to be pulled over in this neighborhood if i am seen (because i'm white). "cops in this area would pull me over just to see why you're here. it makes no sense for a white person to be here. 'cross the way i'll get pulled over for being in your neighborhood."

we back the cargo van up to her door, and antoine pulls this ramp out and sets it up so we can roll her right out of the van and into the house. mrs. dee gets a little panic-y as we de-bungee her--she tears up and looks at me and almost cries: "please don't hurt my feet--please watch my feet; they hurt so much..."

i look her in the eyes and assure her that we are going to make sure her feet are taken care of, though i also pray to God--please don't let this be one of those moments where my lack of coordination, balance, and general awareness of reality kicks in...

we back her out of the van and into her house. she marvels at the house, and it really does look wonderful--the tile work and painting was quite elegant, and her kitchen brought her to applause. we left her with two relatives and jumped back in the van. as we rode off, antoine explained a little more of their family situation, how her daughter took the van and left her to fend for herself, and how he had this handicap ramp, so he ended up helping her--

"$300. That's how much that ramp cost me. I can't return it after it's been used. and it hadn't been used until today. now i'm out $300. is it worth it?"

my response was yes: yes it is worth $300 to get someone stranded by their own family back to their house. i thought he was asking a rhetorical question, but he wasn't. he went on to tell me how pissed he was about that $300, and now he had a ramp and nothing to do with it...

i think what shocked me most was that antoine was a pastor. and he looked me in the eye and said that the ramp was a waste. i understand that it sucks to drop $300 on a ramp when the daughter could have taken care of it if she hadn't been selfish. but i do think that there are things that cost us that are worth the cost. apparently, we had stumbled across one of antoine's barriers: the barrier between what is reasonable and what is not when serving someone.

i don't bring this up to sound judgemental--the first place my heart went was to my barriers...the places where i say "that's too far, too much...the cost outweighs the reward..." and it's there where i bacame really disgusted with my own heart. i mean, it wasn't my $300, so it is easy to say $300 is nothing to help someone; but when i look at the limits on service i really do have, i'm ashamed. how many times have i said "too much" to opportunities to serve, "too costly" to opportunites to love, to really offer all of me for the glory of God? i prayed, asking the Lord to expose to me where my limits are, and why they exist--cause i didn't learn them from Him. With time, with love, with effort, with resources--with all kinds of areas, i've determined to give only so much. why waste time where nothing's really going to happen? why love when someone has already rejected love? why keep trying when it's accomplishing nothing? why give if i'm no longer getting?

i'm so selfish.

honestly, how can i taste of grace and live like that? but i do all the time...and i seldom see it. but if if only give to get, if i only love for the results, if i only invest for the return, i am as performance-driven and self-centered as the old nature I'm freed from. I dismiss the cross, neutering the gospel and the power of grace.

and ultimately, i deny crutial truths to our faith: that all I need is supplied in Him, that it is more blessed to give than to receive--

ok--i have to run...i'll add more thoughts as the week goes...

zambia ahoy!

shortly after my last post, i was heading to new albany, indiana to lead worship for a friend of mine's youth group, and i decided to stop in louisville to see my best friend T and all of the crossings crew in their main office. well, T was not there, and neither wa david melber, my long time friend and pseudo-mentor (he would claim he is the voice of the holy spirit for me from time to time, and i only mark him a pseudo-mentor because we're not in each other's lives like we once were). but i did get to see lauren, heidi, chris, and reagan, my surrogate brother/sister. as she and i caught up, i mentioned a lot of the things i mentioned on my last posting to her. she responded with an invitation to go with crossings to Zambia in january; they are aiding in the construction and funding of a school-slash-orphanage there.

so i'm heading overseas for a few weeks...if anyone has some money they want to lend a brotha, let me know...

but i am getting fired up about it; amazing that an opportunity to do some overseas work opened up so quickly, and i have a strange suspicion that this could be a watershed experience for me. as i've been praying about what the next step of obedience entails, one thing that continues to come up (along with what i mentioned in the previous post) is the idea of sacrifice. the more i really look at the world, and myself within it, the more i see people with big dreams, big desires, but very little willingness to give up things to get those big ideas out of the brain and into reality. as a whole, that is... the people who are big sacrificers are the exception to the rule, and they accomplish big things, or fall atempting to accomplish big things.

in the faith world, we live with some tough truths: like faith is required to see the kingdom come on earth, and that that kind of faith is the active-doing-believing-truth-so-real-it-moves-us we read about, and not the acknowledging-the-validity-of-but-not-allowing-it-to-transform-anything type. we believe that provision is found within vision; that vision (or calling) supercedes provision, or that believe and you'll see it, and not the other way around. we believe that there is nothing we will give up that God does not fully make up for in His divine ways. yet that means that we belive giving up things is a part of the process, and that we wil have to sacrifice with no clear vision of how God will provide, but believing fully (to the point of action) that He will be as faithful as scripture, history, and His very word testifies.

and if i'm honest with myself, i don't know how much i sacrifice these days. and what i'm praying about seems like it's full of sacrifice, and i'm wondering where to start; what does obedience require of me? maybe i'm making it more than i need to, like there has to be some noble, virtue-filled move instead of the simple abiding life, which is God's true calling for all of us. and i don't want to overlook the fact that paul and many saints after him found that no sacrifice seemed sacrificial when compared to gaining Christ; but i don't want to act like i'm at that point. i just want to come to a point where i'm willing to say yes before He asks, and being that loose-handed with some things is easy, but others require a lot more than i think i've ever given up. and it keeps highlighting a big question for me: do i really believe? do i believe that He's faithful before i see it (though all of my life and everything else proves it) ? do i believe that no sacrifice is a sacrifice compared to what i'll gain (namely Christ Himself)?

as the wise man told Jesus: i believe! help me overcome my unbelief!

wow. is that ever my faith life...

those ponderings aside, life is so wonderul, full, and amazing. andrew murray was right: the more i recklessly depend on the Vine for everything, the more alive and the more confident i become (in Him to be all in all).

and the new Radiohead album in one of the best albums i've ever heard.

love written, poverty and other stuff

again, i don't know if this is my outlet or if anyone is reading this, but i'm going to get this out bit by bit...

1. i've become very intregued by the movement "to write love on her arms". one, there are some rockers tied to this that initially drew me to it--jon foreman, dustin kensrue just to name two. but i was introduced to it on SL--i was at a christian site there, and there was a twloha t-shirt for sale that i bought because the phrase was so damn magnetic. Leave it to me to wear something that communicated something i had no insight on (hence why i never wear christian t-shirts; well, that and they're usually cheesy and usually are undermined by the wearer). but as i started looking into it, i was all the more captured by the story and motion of it all. twloha is about creating dialogue about depression, creating hope for the down and especially for those who have turned to self-mutilation as an outlet for their pain, their hurts, their life. i've met my share of cutters, and have met even more in SL, and to stand, to love, to offer hope is one of the most essential tasks involved in helping people out of the hole of depression.

here's a link to the story that started it all:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=61976377&blogID=96896737

now, i feel a real burden for this topic, part of it because i've wrestled with my share of depression, and i know the hope that heals, that sets free, and that is closer than the hopeless recognize. i think i'm going to try to go to phila for the benefit tour. i'd love to get into the movement somehow, but i'm unsure how as of now...

2. while ordering my twloha t-shirt (haha--yes, i'm one of those), they also sold a shirt with the word rescue written in hindi. i ordered it too. partially because it looked so damn cool, and partially because i feel like i have a heart tie with india. i, much like jon bailes often has, blame Caedmon's Call. their "share the well" album sparked something in my heart for india--when i think about that nation, my first thought is always "i want to go there and plant churches". last year at passion, i decided to pursue going to plant churches and reach unreached people groups with the hope of Christ. when is a big question: i know my time at hope is purposed, and i know that i have to get an m.div to be considered a somebody by most mission organizations worth their weight. so i'm planning on starting seminary at asbury theological in the winter, and i'm going to focus on missions and church planting as much as possible. but this india thing popped back up when i saw the t-shirt: i'm honestly not sure where to start with it either. but it's there, and i'm starting to look at it more seriously...

3. every time i look at the possibilities of going overseas, or even think about what it means to prepare to do so, i always think: i have too much. i've said casually to a couple of different friends on a couple of different occasions that i think i'd be fine living poorer--even taking a vow of poverty. rich mullens always inspired me in that way (ok, in lots of ways). but i don't know what it would take, or if its me just being idealistic or egotistical or if this is really something worth looking at...but its come up again in my heart. i'm in a 9 month lease as of now, and there's a part of me that wonders if when it's done, i should try to get a small cheap place in a poor part of town and try to live off of much less than i do now. one thought i had was to have a group of people i entrust my finances to and let them decide what happens with the excess. rich always lived off the average income for a person where ever he was living. i don't know...i'm just thinking out loud. something to look into i guess. but its weird. i don't have a whole lot of people i'm telling this to, but i would ask you to pray about these things and offer insight as you get it...

and the new DCB is money.