personal — Page 4

A good sabbath day today, comparatively. I’ve been grabbing bits and pieces of many books when I can, mainly at night when my lovely wife is asleep and I have a bit of time to read. That’s life while being in the ministry and sharing the joys and responsibilities of rearing infants. So its mainly my lightwedge and whichever book of the moment I grab from my bedside table: at the moment Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis, NT Wright’s Simply Christian, Peter Rollins’ How (Not) To Speak of God, Jack Haberer’s God Views, and a re-read of Steve Taylor’s The Out of Bounds Church? Its a joy to read these, but hard to process them well in the short bits I get to chew on here and there.

Friday’s the day off, but I’ve not been good at taking much of it as a day off lately. There’s typically something that has to get done, and it takes up good hunks of my Friday. Even today that’s somewhat the case (don’t get me started on my perpetually infirm but beloved shih-tzu), but less than normal. So today, instead of figuring out how to file tax forms for our household employee (the girls’ daycare provider) like last Friday or figuring out an emergency fix for the busted showerhead the Friday before, I spent a good chunk of the day working on thousands of pictures of the girls I’ve been meaning to process-upload-and-share with family. And they’re so fun! And now I’m actually reading, getting more than those 40 sleepy minutes. I’m almost finished with Bell’s Velvet Elvis.

To be fair, it probably wasn’t smart of me to decide to use the wireless connection at the coffee shop to upload pictures to shutterfly. It says I have hours to go, but I’m sitting here enjoying my eclectic favs playlist and sipping joe while digesting Bell. There’s not a lot that I find to be profound in Bell’s book, but its refreshing to read anew much of what I have seen in his Nooma video series and that is fairly close to many theological convictions that I share. Bell writes in short bits, which is fine; I’m thinking that there are some people in my church who really would get a lot out of this book. I don’t really get the charge leveled at him in previous comments that Bell “has no theology” and is mired in relativism. Well, I get it; I just don’t concur. His work is deeply biblical, and there are clear theological convictions there. People might not agree with them, but they’re there.

Anyway, INXS‘ New Sensation just came on my playlist, and I’m rockin as silently as I can over here. I wonder if people are looking at me, but that’s ok. I’m enjoying my time off…

Live baby live
Now that the day is over
I got a new sensation
In perfect moments
Impossible to refuse
Sleep baby sleep
Now that the night is over
And the sun comes like a god
Into our room
All perfect light and promises

Gotta hold on you
A new sensation
A new sensation
Right now
Gonna take you over
A new sensation
A new sensation

Dream baby dream
Of all thats come and going
And you will find out
In the end
There really is
There really is no difference

Cry baby cry
When you’ve got to get it out
Ill be your shoulder
You can tell me all
Don’t keep it in ya
Well thats the reason why I’m here

Are you ready for a new sensation
A new sensation
Right now
Gonna take you on a new sensation
A new sensation

Hate baby hate
When theres nothing left for you
You’re only human
What can you do
It’ll soon be over
Don’t let your pain take over you

Love baby love
Its written all over your face
Theres nothing better we could do
Than live forever
Well thats all we’ve got to do

Hey now I’m gonna take a new sensation
A new sensation

For anyone interested, the next song on the playlist shuffle was the Gipsy Kings‘ Djobi Djoba.

I’ve been hard to find lately, I know. The reprieve from the workload that I projected in my last post didn’t really come to be…yet. That’s ok, because life is good: my kids are wonderful and healthy and happy; my wife is incredible; my congregation is strong. So all in all, while I’d like to have more time to get back to regular blogging, I’m not stressed by it. Things are good.

Hopefully soon I’ll be back in the thick of things.

In the meantime, I have a new camera to play with. Well, not a Kodachrome, but I couldn’t help think of Paul Simon as I was picking up my new Nikon D40:

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds
a sunny day, oh yeah

I got a nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama dont take my kodachrome away

We got this camera to take better photos of our kiddos. It promises to drastically reduce the shutter-lag that annoyed us with our previous point-and-shoot camera. And we found ourselves leaning to this one because my wife and I agreed on wanting something lighter and easy to use, and cheaper, than other dSLRs out there. This D40 is, at the moment, one of the smallest, lightest dSLRs on the market and is a great value.

I considered the Sony Alpha A-100 to be a great camera, and almost went that route. I also looked at the Olympus EVOLT E-500, the Canon EOS 400D/Rebel XTi, and the Pentax K100D. Each has something going for it. But since we prioritized size, price, convenience, this Nikon promises to be perfect for us: allowing my wife point-and-shoot capabilities and me a bit more tinkering–a lot, actually, packed into this dSLR.

(For those who care about such things, the biggest limitation to the D40 that I can tell is that there are, for the first time, limits on the use of Nikon lenses with this camera, having to do with the decision to remove the auto-focus motor from the body of the camera; one of the trade-offs they made to get the size and weight of the camera down. This move, though, requires the lenses themselves to have an auto-focus motor if you want to use auto-focus. Other Nikon lenses might well work, but only in manual focus mode. Be sure to read up on that at a good camera review site…I prefer dpreview.)

Ok, the kids are waking up, and need bottles. I’m off to see them, and to play with my new camera.

A Good Friday, a New Sensation…

Kodachrome…