Wondering...

...who reads my blog?

cRAZY eIGHTS

Crazy 8's

8 Things I'm passionate about
Tara
my kids
God
Church
Photography
Food
Cooking
video games

8 things I want to do before I die
be debt free
travel some
be organized
baptize my children (or watch someone else do it)
hold my grandchildren
to feel like I live up to the title Pastor
to take a photograph that points people to God
to eat in Colin's restaurant

8 things I say often
"hey"
mmmhmmm
o-kay
listen to your mother
are you okay
I love you (to my wife and kids primarily)
as if
What did you say?

8 books i've read recently (or am reading)
3:16 The Numbers of Hope
Working the Angles Eugene Peterson
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Dark Night of the Soul St John of the Cross
Hebrews by Garth Leno
Getting things done by David Allen
I'm Just here for the food by Alton Brown
In the heat of the kitchen by Gordon Ramsay

8 songs i could listen to over and over (this one is REALLY hard!!)
So damn lucky by Dave Matthews Band
Where are you going by Dave Matthews Band
Crash into me by Dave Matthews Band
Hawkmoon 269 by U2
Running to stand still by U2
Empty me by Jeremy Camp
This is a call by Thousand Foot Krutch
This is your life by Switchfoot
(this list would be different tomorrow)




8 things that attract me to my best friends
honesty
sense of humor
acceptance
understanding
time for me
comfort with silence
openness
courage

This is me caving.

As it seems that people keep tagging me (read: TARA) and that Colin caved and wrote up one of these tagging things... I decided that I would play along, but I do it somewhat begrudgingly and am mildly annoyed at Colin for caving so that my stand was made that much harder....

Anyhow, I've been tagged a number of times so I'll start with this one:

The Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.


Okay here goes:
"Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross; translated and edited by E. Allison Peers

On page 123 there is only 5 sentences (gotta love books translated from another language! - in this case 16th century spanish)


The spirit (referring to the human spirit) suffers all these afflictive purgations of the spirit to the end that it may be begotten anew in spiritual life by means of this Divine inflowing, and in these pangs may bring forth the spirit of salvation, that the saying of Isaias may be fulfillled: 'In Thy sight, O Lord, we have brought forth the spirit of salvation.' Moreover, since by means of this contemplative night the soul is prepared for the attainment of inward peace and tranquillity, which is of such a kind and so delectable that, as the Scripture says, it passes all understanding, it behoves the soul to abandon all its former peace. This was in reality no peace at all, since it was involved in imperfections; but to the soul aforementioned it appeared to be so, because it was following its own inlcinations, which were for peace. It seemed, indeed, to be a twofold peace-that is, the soul believed that it had already acquired the peace of sense and that of spirit, for it found itself to be full of the spiritual abundance of this peace of sense and of spirit-as I say, it is still imperfect.


So that isn't five sentences but you get the idea, if you want to read the book for yourself you can find HERE. I am working through this book with my home group. It can be tough to get through at times, but so far I would say that there is value in perseverance.

I am going to "tag" the following people

Jinny
Colin
Chris
Aaron although he seems to have forgotten how to use blogs
Dave (although he doesn't write in this blog anymore)

I was tagged.

She tagged me.
Something about "Crazy Eights". Bah.

This is what I have to say about being tagged.

(I hope you enjoy the slightly coffee stained tongue too)

She will likely say I'm lame and then make this face...


Which is fine, because I'm fine with my decision in not be crazy about crazy eights.
(this photo of Tara is now my computer's wallpaper)

wow... that's harder than I thought

So ever since my wife won a new blog template I have been silently lamenting the fact that my blog has only a "stock" template. I know I could find a template from a third party kind of website, but I thought, I'm a semi-creative type. I know what I like and what I don't like; I'll make one.

Now I am using the GIMP an open source program much like Adobe Photoshop. I know that the program is far and away powerful enough to do what I think I'd like, but as I was trying to make a header for my blog, I found I wasn't so sure of what I like and wasn't so sure of how I wanted it to look and tie together. So I have to think some of this through a little bit.

I'm thinking it's harder than I thought to be a designer of any kind.

So this is how it is...

So I read a blog post today that I thought was pretty neat. It's from a guy named Joe McNally. You may have heard of his name before as he's a pretty top notch photographer.
Allow me to quote some of his words...

You see, I’m in this club. Along with a few million other guys. We are card carrying members, have a secret handshake and hand signs similar to the tap to the nose Redford and Newman used in “The Sting.” It’s a huge club cause every lumpy guy who somehow ended up with a wonderful woman in his life is continually thunderstruck by that event. You look over at her at the end of the day and scratch your head. “How exactly did I swing this?” you ask yourself.

Cause face it, most guys just recently stood upright and discovered the miracle of opposable thumbs and the world of possibilities that presents. It’s pretty cool. And being in the club really can get you through the worst of days in the field.

So, yeah, what he said...

Tara, I love you. You make me smile. You give me a safe place to be me. You let me be me. You remind me when I'm not being me. Knowing you love me helps me feel secure in what I do, in how far I can stretch and helps propel me to be more than what I am now.

Happy Valentine's Day

You rock.
DJR

Soccer fans, you think you've seen ball control?

I had to share this, I found it via Bob Hyatt's blog, he said, soccer parents despair. All I could must was WOW!

Pub Fifa Street 3 (Foot Capoeira)
Uploaded by mehzz

A few pictures.

I thought I would share a few pictures I took recently that I'm pleased with.  They may or may not be the best, but regardless, I enjoyed taking them and posting them.

sigh

I think these temperatures are getting a little old.

Visual Gluttony

As I said recently I wanted to say a few things about pictures. I recently was at Prayer Retreat. While there I was talking to someone who is involved in the arts and I was talking about this "thing" that's in my head that I can't really explain, but I need some ideas from somewhere (yes that is a run-on sentence). Anyway, while talking to him I had this thought, that as a rule, we are visual gluttons. How long have you looked at any scene, photograph or image and looked at it for more than two minutes? How many have you looked at for more than thirty seconds?

In particular, I have found the internet to be a good/bad thing when it comes to images. I can find some incredible images taken by all kinds of people. Yet my appetite for such images is rather large, and I don't savour them as I likely ought to. There is SO much out there that I feel that I have to see more...  Yet I wonder if skimming over so many images so quickly has a detrimental effect on our creativity.  Certainly it can expose us to many different kinds of photography that we might not have thought of previously, but does it give us the sense that everything has been done before so what can I add to the world with my own art.  I think it's the same in any of the arts, I mean what can you sing a song about that hasn't been sung about before?  What can you sculpt that hasn't been sculpted, what can be written that hasn't already graced a page?  Is it all meaningless?  (and honest I haven't been reading Ecclesiastes although maybe I should go back there).  

SO to wrap this up, does looking at hundreds of images at a time and skimming over them briefly change how we see the world?

Maybe I'm just saying we need to simply slow down.

Creative

Here's a question for any of the theological thinking types in the crowd (crowd... that's funny): What would make a compelling contemporary photograph of the life of faith?

Let me share why I'm sharing this question, as you may know, I enjoy photography. I also have been somewhat "stuck" creatively. I think part of it is being honest and truly stuck and also the thing I want to try next is going to be difficult I think. Hence the question... how does one take a photograph that shares a story of the life of faith? Not something that encapsulates faith (although that would be neat too), my goals are much smaller, just one aspect of the life of faith. A self imposed rule, no text in the photograph or superimposed over the photograph in post production.

I would love to have enough ideas to have a series in colour and in black and white. In an ideal world I'd like some to be strong enough to stand alone as a photograph that engages the viewer (or even just me), and others that would serve really well as backdrops for powerpoints presentations, or serve in conjunction with presentations (yes I realize that this breaks the no text rule - but I want to start with an image and not text- for this project anyways).

I am not even sure exactly what "kind" of photograph I'm looking for, mostly I'm using this here space to think out loud. Perhaps a still life, or a long exposure nighttime shot, a photograph with people in it, or structures, or simply nature or a combination of any number of those things.

I'll likely post something else about pictures soon... watch this space. Here are some pictures that I think are starting to lean in the direction I'm thinking of, but I really don't know...


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.