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Five Things...

I usually don't do memes, but that's because most of the ones I see are the 250 question types that teenagers seem to like filling in. The one Maggi tagged me for is more intriguing - also a lot fewer questions. And wow, what illustrious company!

Anyway, five things you probably didn't know about me...

1) I didn't get my driver's license until I was 26 years old. In the US this would be unthinkable - un-American, even. However, in the England of the seventies there were a few reasons - lack of opportunity and the inherent poverty of students and the cost of owning even the most modest of rustbuckets. It was strange, though, because my Dad was all over teaching my next younger brother how to drive, but not me. I guess I never pushed for it. And somehow, I had promised myself I would get my pilot's license before I got my driver's license. Well, that didn't happen either, because...

2) ...I only have one good eye. Yes, I was born with eyes of two different focal lengths. What the brain does is essentially disconnect one of them from its fine focusing task and just uses the other. This is one of the causes of amblyopia or "lazy eye". The disconnected eye, having nothing much to do, just amuses itself. Caught early enough, the condition can be managed, but it has to be no later than age 5. Given the parlous state of the National Health Service, the likelihood of that was slim. There was a brief attempt at correction too late, but it was, well, too late. "What has this got to do with flying?", you ask (remembering the end of item 1)). Well, with only one good eye, it's pretty difficult to have normal depth perception. You need two good eyes, slightly separated, to be able to judge distances. Oh, there are other ways, but the two eyes method was what God intended us to use. Now, driving is difficult enough without depth perception (I do have other distance cues, though, like how big things are, etc.) but flying is another thing altogether. I had a few flying lessons, and it's a bit freaky landing on a grass field when you can't tell whether you're 50 feet up or 5 feet up. It makes a lot of difference in how hard you hit the ground coming down. Not to mention just being generally disconcerting. Anyway, the upshot was no pilot's license for me (as if I could have afforded to fly in England anyway...)

3) I have a Masters in Management from Antioch University Seattle. In the late nineties I decided I'd like to get an MBA or something like it. However, the need to get a "hard" finance type MBA didn't appeal, and as I already had a Ph.D., the academic necessity to prove myself wasn't really there either. A friend of mine had attended the Graduate Management Program at AUS and found it to be interesting. Now, given that AUS is 99.9999 on a scale of 1 to 100 in "liberal", and my friend was a devotee of Rush Limbaugh, this was a potentially volatile mix. He went because his boss (a director) suggested he go somewhere where people didn't think like he did. It turned out to be a good experience for him, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was pretty good for the first year, with excellent faculty. The second year, not so much. One good faculty member was assigned to our class, along with one absolutely dreadful one. However, my classmates were awesome, and it turned out one of them who worked at Microsoft was Terri, Rose McGowan's mother. (Who's Rose McGowan? She was the girl who was killed by the garage door in Scream, and later became the replacement for Shannen Doherty on Charmed). At the time we were in the program, Rose was engaged to Marilyn Manson. Terri bought him a Teletubby for Christmas.

4) I lived in Scotland for two years, from when I was eight to ten years old. Not much of a revelation, you might say, but somehow in those years I went from being a totally average student to, usually, the top of the class most of the time. Obviously at that age it's difficult to pin down what the difference was, but the only thing I can say for sure is that it was more rigorous, and more was expected of students. When I moved back to England, school was much easier.

5) I love to read chick-lit. Well, probably not just any kind. It all started when I was browsing a Christian bookstore. I always keep an eye out for books to use with teenagers in youth group, or books that might make good gifts. One day I stumbled on the Diary of a Teenage Girl series by Melody Carlson. I thought, what the heck, and bought a copy of the first one. Carlson manages to write books with Christian themes without bludgeoning the reader over the head with faith or with bad theology. I liked the book and recommended it to a few teens and their moms. They liked it, and then I started getting recommendations back from the girls in our youth group about the books they were reading. It ended up as a sort of informal book club. So that's how I ended up reading Megan McCafferty's books (Sloppy Firsts, etc...), and Louise Rennison's (the Georgia Nicolson books  - hilarious) and Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books (and yes, I cried at the movie...) From there, Amazon is pretty relentless at pointing out similar material, so there are others, but they are the cornerstone of this relatively new, um, craze of mine or whatever. I do think it gives me a bit more insight into what's going on with our teenage girls, and I can definitely see some of the issues surface once in a while. I recommend these books to the guys in our youth group. Honestly, I think it would give them great insight into the psyche of the fair sex, but no, they choose to remain ignorant and continue to go up in flames (much like the Hindenburg) on a fairly regular basis...

So there you have it - more than you ever wanted to know, probably. Lacking a clue of who to ping to continue this, I'll defer that until I've had time to think...

By the Way...

That previous video was posted with the help of Videoegg, which makes uploading video clips to Typepad extremely painless...

And the winner is...

Whoever googled "barclay james harvest featuring les holroyd" from Google UK.

You go, person #25,000!!!

And the ironic thing is, the googled text was in a comment from "Martin" and wasn't written by me at all.

Well, ironic in a certain Alanis Morrissette Ironic way. Which is to say not very ironic at all really - like rain on your wedding day (which just sucks, it's not at all ironic, unless you were the bride, who just happened to also be a TV or Radio weatherperson who had predicted sunny blue skies on your wedding day, around which you had planned an elaborate outdoor wedding and reception without any backup plan in case of rain, but then, oh too bad, it rained and everybody got soaked, and the cake was left out in the rain, and OH MY GOD! I just realized Alanis Morrissette ripped off the whole song from Macarthur Park, which is also incomprehensible, pathetic, insane and sucks).

Now that would be ironic. But not otherwise. See what I'm getting at?

Blogs and Counters and mY5pAc3, d00d!

So sometime in the next few hours this blog will get its 25,000th page view. Not a huge amount, but a milestone of sorts. I have yet to figure out exactly what Typepad's stats actually mean, because the math never seems to add up. But still, just like turning an even 10,000 miles on a car it's fun to watch. I should also be able to figure out exactly which hit does the trick.

Will it be a regular reader, or someone looking for "anne ursu photo"? (that would be anne ursu, aka BatGirl, and btw, that book, Shadow Thieves, is really excellent.) Or maybe some looking for "sarah mclachlan Fumbling Towards Ecstasy historic context"? Or maybe "Post ww2", "women's roles"?

Wow, these are erudite, tasteful searches. The internet must be on the blink.

Speaking of the internet being on the blink, has anyone checked out MySpace? As a youth leader it sort of became a "must do" thing simply to figure out what everyone's talking about. But OMG, it's a nightmareish piece of software. Crazy interface, garish colors, trashy ads all over the place... it's what you might expect to get if a bunch of crackheads started an online messaging/blogging service. Oh wait, they already did.

International Day of Women plus Four

Apparently the International Day of Women was four days ago on March 8th. Rachelle got a grid blog going and quite a few people took part. I wasn't particularly moved to participate, but it did make for interesting reading. Rachelle's own post was interesting, in that it obsesses a bit about Marc Driscoll, founding pastor of the in/famous Mars Hill church here in Seattle. I quote:

"I’ll admit, I’ve been afraid. I’ve been afraid to say anything contrary about Mark Driscoll and his institution. I’ve been afraid of his column in the Seattle Times, his titles, his affluence, the power of his charisma and his money and the shear(sic) numbers of followers."

"Mark Driscoll is a very powerful man in Seattle. He was listed as one of the 25 most influential people in Seattle magazine. In an era where religion reporting is rare, he has the powerful position of being a religion columnist for the Seattle Times."

From these and other quotes, you might think that Seattle was about to be named DriscollTown any minute. Which is pretty laughable if you know Seattle. The success of Mars Hill is pretty much a weird anomaly in the city famed for grunge music, a laid back, laissez-faire lifestyle (we might have even invented it if the French hadn't beat us to the punch by a few centuries), Microsoft, Boeing and which is sometimes known as San Francisco North. This is the city where the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral is a highly regarded gay man who was a protege of Desmond Tutu and who is now a candidate for Bishop of California. This is the least churched state in the country. What fundamentalist religious leanings there are in Seattle have almost all been imported via those who migrated here from the South and Midwest.

And really, the position of "religion columnist in the Seattle Times" is maybe a smidge above that of cat-catcher in the average one horse farming town, but honestly I'm not even sure about that. Not only that, Driscoll shares the one weekly religion column (Saturdays) with The Rev. Patrick J. Howell, a Jesuit priest and dean of Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry, Aziz Junejo, host of "Focus on Islam," a weekly cable-television show and a frequent speaker on Islam, The Rev. Patricia L. Hunter, an associate in ministry at Mount Zion Baptist Church (yes, a *gasp* female pastor - that must gall Driscoll no end) and Rabbi Mark S. Glickman who leads Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island. Now, that's Seattle diversity for you.

So Driscoll only gets a column about every five weeks. And Driscoll is not a particularly good writer. Whether it's the toning down of the message that he must do for a mainstream audience, or the sheer inability to project his alleged personal charisma via the written word, it's just not that good. Check for yourself with March 11's column. It's not even Chicken Soup for the Soul material. Sample dreck:

"According to the Bible, God made the world and all the people in the world in a perfect state of goodness to operate together in flawless harmony. But because of human rebellion against God, everything and everyone in the world is now infected with imperfection, like a virus corrupting every file on a computer. Subsequently, God spends each day frustrated with the state of people and the world."

Driscoll sure knows his computer-savvy audience, and I just love the way he knows what God feels.

I make this point for a reason. As Rachelle points out in her post, Marc Driscoll and his misogynistic theology harms women. No question. Not only that, he's training other men to do the same. The strongest reaction I had to any of posts linked on Rachelle's blog was that of Renee (aka iphy) which harked back to a brutal incident back in 2003. Here's one of Driscoll's Acts 29 (church planting organization) proteges displaying a complete and utter lack of pastoral care by attacking a first-time visitor to his church on her own blog. Unbelievable.

Still, I believe the likes of Driscoll are better off left to condemn themselves with their own words and actions. Driscoll's public screw-ups are pretty well documented. He has been drubbed on a regular basis by the theology faculty at Seattle Pacific University (which is still a pretty conservative school with strong Methodist roots.)

And I guess my final point here is that people like Driscoll only have power if you let them take it. I still see way too many emergent folks (almost exclusively those who are emerging from fundamentalist evangelicalism) far too concerned about what the culture they are leaving behind thinks. For those of us who don't share that background it's (still) just really annoying.

I can even work this around finally to the New Testament reading from the lectionary today:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Oh yeah.

Square One, and Maybe Two

Wow, Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users (the best free book anyone could ever want) once again nails the basics of well, the basics.

Somewhere in there is an argument in favor of core competencies (a much maligned business fad of the nineties...) which, I think, still has great relevancy to life, the universe and everything - including the church (which should really be addressing life, the universe and everything anyway.)

So what is "square one" and "the basics" for the church?

(And no, the basics do NOT include "making people feel so guilty about all the bad things they've ever done so they'll break down and give their lives to Jesus RIGHT NOW". But thanks for playing anyway.)

Yet Another Gay Old Time

So this has been a big week for controversial pot-stirring in the emergent church world. First, Rachelle led off with a critique of emergent in the area of including women (well deserved, even if it comes off a bit too self-pitying in places), then Brian McLaren walked into the lion's den with his pretty mild story of treating the gay community with a bit of humanity. Seattle's own (not that we claim him gladly or anything, you understand) self-professed "male lesbian" Pastor Mark Driscoll felt obliged to throw the first, second, third and fourth stones at McLaren with a staggeringly inept riposte. Sample:

"4. We have already lost - or are badly losing - in the war against other sexual sins. When all statistics and surveys show that divorce, adultery and fornication are present among church members in the same proportions as in the world at large, that is the only conclusion that we can draw. Having begun by softening the edges of the Biblical position on divorce, the rest seems to be swirling down the drain along with it. Perhaps we have drawn this line to avoid giving the enemy a complete victory in the area of sexuality. For now, incest and pedophilia are still taboo; but once we redefine marriage and relationships to include homosexuals, can the others be far behind? That slope, indeed, is slippery ."

Ah, the old slippery slope argument. It worked real well in that whole Vietnam War deal, didn't it? And Driscoll neatly avoids thinking more deeply about the issue. Why might it be that holier than thou evangelicals are prone to the same failure rate as the rest of the world? Might it be that they really aren't holier than anyone else? Add to that his disparaging reference to Doug Pagitt as Brian McLaren's Tonto and you have a clear picture of a man that completely lacks any sense of decency.

Then Adam merely pointed out the mud-slinging going on in the wake of McLaren's post and that triggered even more mud-slinging. Adam wonders whether it's possible to have a civil blog conversation over the issue. I don't know if it is possible, but I'd rather people tried than not. If nothing else it does tend to expose the reasoning (or lack of it) behind the various positions. For example, every time Mark Driscoll opens his mouth or unleashes his keyboard he exposes himself as a crass idiot. Apparently that doesn't disqualify one from being the pastor of a hip fundamentalist megachurch, though.

Ultimately, this is a major reason my mind changed on the gay issue. There is simply no way that I can listen to people like Mark Driscoll and feel that I want to be on that side. Who wants "teammates" like that? I don't like how they sound, or what they say, or how they say it. Something just feels so horribly wrong when I'm around people like that - call it the Holy Spirit at work if you like.

However, one positive aspect of this whole mess is that Brian McLaren continues to epitomize grace, charity and class. I'm sure he would love to leave the life-sucking evangelical debate behind, but they just won't let go. (Admittedly, writing an article for a Christianity Today blog may not have been the best way to shake them off...)

The disappointing part is that emergent(tm) really doesn't have much to offer the non-post-evangelical world until they do shake off the ankle biters of the Evil Acne Gals (*). And while the evangelical establishment will continue to hunt down emergent like the dogs they think they are, the key point is that emergent, in order to get anywhere close to where they want to be, is going to have to forget about them instead of hoping they'll "come around" eventually.

It doesn't seem to like that's going to happen any time soon.

(*) Oh, and just in case you need them, some other anagrams of "Evangelicals":
Snag Evil Lace
Scale Evil Nag
Evil Ace Slang
Lance Evil Gas
Clean Evil Gas
Evil Cane Slag

Top 5 in 2005

Bob Carlton (The Corner) is once again (2nd Annual?) running a Top 5 posts in 2005 for anyone who wants to participate. Blogging really dropped off my personal radar in the second half of the year due to various reasons, but I'm not giving it up, so hopefully I'll be more consistent in 2006.

However, we're not done with 2005 yet, so in no particular order, here are my five.

Shortest - one of my favorite one-liners. Also got a link from the inimitable, the delightful, Maggi Dawn...

1. I always wanted to be...

Next, another humorous one, but this time a somewhat elaborate Emergent related April Fool's joke that worked way better than I could have dreamed:

2. Score One For...

Third, an account of the consecration of Nedi Rivera as Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Olympia. I've had the opportunity to work with her quite a bit this year, and the lady is remarkable. Her husband Bob is also a real joy.

3. Blogging Nedi

Fourth, here's an account of the shenanigans going on in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Still a mess, and I've with everything else going on, I've given up caring about this issue for a while. I'll get back to it, though...

4. Fear and Gloating...

Finally, a tough choice, but I'm going to go with this one about my reservations about neo-colonial do-gooding...

5. Feel-Good...

And there you have it.

Happy New Year when it gets here.

Mild Blog Makeover

Finally got around to cleaning up some of the debris left on the blog by various Typepad "upgrades" and sheer lack of ongoing maintenance.

See the spiffy new seasonal header! (the nearest we'll get to snow here this holiday.)

See the new Gateshead Angel photo album (sidebar on the right, well worth checking out, IMHO.)

Also some photos from Arsenic & Old Lace (not great quality, but enough for a taste.)

New books in the book list!

New CDs in the iPod list!

Oh well... :)