t.ford

This was taken from my senior pastor’s blog. I love the thought, and how the reality of our eventual surrendering of every earthly thing shouldn’t keep us from abandoning ourselves (in the name of self-protection from the ache) to all the things worth loving.

The River
by Greg Boyd

I had an interesting time with the Lord Saturday morning that I’d like to share. As I typically do, I was spending the first part of the day laying in bed, remaining aware of, and surrendered to, God’s loving presence while paying attention to feelings inside of me. I felt this familiar “ache” in my soul that I’ve written about before. As I remained aware of God’s presence and explored what this ache was about, I suddenly found myself in a very vivid imaginative scene.

I was standing at the banks of a beautiful, wide, calmly flowing river. All around me and on the other side of the river were large trees reflecting the morning sun with a magnificent array of fall colors. I was also aware that Jesus was behind me, though it didn’t feel appropriate to turn and look at him.

Suddenly, all the things that are dear to me began to appear in front of me, one by one. I intuitively knew I was supposed to load each one on a raft and send it down the ever-flowing river, watching as it floated away and disappeared around a bend down stream. Just as one thing disappeared, another would appear and I would repeat the process. I can’t communicate how each of these things were represented in my imagination, but I ended up saying “goodbye” to all my possessions, all the activities that I love, all my accomplishments, all my most precious memories, and even all the qualities that make me the individual that I am. I felt the ache in my soul rise slightly as each thing was carried out of sight around the bend.

Then all the people who are dear to me began to appear before me, one by one, and I knew I had to release each one of them to the river as well. This was more difficult. They never spoke a word, but each had the calm look of resigned wisdom and a bittersweet smile that communicated compassion toward me. It was as though each person was saying; “Thank you for the life we’ve shared, but you need to let me go for now.” I knew they were right, though I felt the ache intensify as we embraced and then waved goodbye as the calm stream took them away from me. I wept as I watched each of my children and then my wife Shelley disappear around the bend, waving goodbye till the very end.

Then I was all alone. I stood for several moments staring at the quietly flowing stream and the beauty of my autumn surroundings. Despite feeling profoundly alone and empty, I felt a strange sense of harmony between the ache in my soul and the beauty of the river. It was as if my soul ache and the river were two sides of the same coin. And I knew I needed to embrace both. When I did, I felt like the ache as well as the river were my friends.

I then slowly turned around and saw Jesus, sitting on a tree stump with a tender smile and a look of serene wisdom. He nodded his head slightly and I teared up as I said, “You are enough. And I will trust you.”

I am more acutely aware than ever that the river never stops flowing, not even for a second. It eventually carries away everything and everyone we love. Yet, if we keep growing in our capacity to have Jesus as our sole source of life, we can trust that in the end, love will lose nothing — including the valuable lessons the ache in our soul is trying to teach us. Clinging to Christ alone while remaining aware of the relentless river that carries all things away allows us to cherish the people and things we love moment-by-moment.

I encourage you to embrace the ache; embrace the river; [give yourself fully to your] life and all that you love, moment by moment. And most importantly, embrace Christ.

Greg

(link to slideshow at the bottom)

Fallen Princesses
by Dina Goldstein

These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The ‘…happily ever after’ is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues.

The project was inspired by my observation of three-year-old girls, who were developing an interest in Disney’s Fairy tales. As a new mother I have been able to get a close up look at the phenomenon of young girls fascinated with Princesses and their desire to dress up like them. The Disney versions almost always have sad beginning, with an overbearing female villain, and the end is predictably a happy one. The Prince usually saves the day and makes the victimized young beauty into a Princess.

As a young girl, growing up abroad, I was not exposed to Fairy tales. These new discoveries lead to my fascination with the origins of Fairy tales. I explored the original brothers Grimm’s stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney’s perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.

There are 2 more to be shot for this series which is going on exhibit on Oct. 15/09
(Click for Slideshow)

or click here to visit Dina’s website

- I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

- Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you were planning to go? But instead of just turning a 180, you have to first do something like check your watch or answer your cell phone to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions mid-stride.

- Do you remember when your Nintendo wouldn’t work as a kid? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that. There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s to tell us how to fix the problem. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

- There is a great need for sarcasm font.

- Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I really had no idea what was going on when I first saw it.

- I think everyone has a movie that they love so much; it actually becomes stressful to watch with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

- I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- Was learning cursive really necessary?

- Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I’ve got nothing else of significance to say to you”.

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

- More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

- How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.

- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

- Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

- You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

- Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

- I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- ”Do not machine wash or tumble dry” might as well say, “This garment will never be washed as long as you own it.”

- I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring, but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

- I’ve collected every song in my iTunes. So how is it, when it’s on shuffle, that I hate 80% of the music?

- Sometimes I’ll look down at my phone 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

- There are people in my phone that I’ve edited their name to “Don’t answer this.”

- Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

- I wonder if cops ever get frustrated that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

- I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

- Brainless decisions make the best stories.

- Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? I know my name, I know where I’m from; this shouldn’t be a problem….

- My friends’ 4-year old son asked me the other day “Treber, what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How do I respond to that?

I saw this list a long time ago, and every couple years get it in an email again – it’s always been good for a laugh or two.
Apparently some English teacher kept adding to this list of things she’d read in her students’ essays – and as you know, high schoolers can be so dumb they make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist…

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two outter sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underwear in a tumble dryer.
3. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
4. McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.
5. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left New York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Washington D.C. at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
9. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the periods after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
10. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met.
11. The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene of a play.
12. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
13. Even in his last years, Grandpa had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
14. The plan was simple, like my Uncle Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
15. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
16. “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 25 cent-hot wings night.
17. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
18. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.”
19. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
20. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
21. It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.
22. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a street sweeper in reverse.
23. She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.
24. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature ground beef.
25. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
26. Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.
27. It hurt, the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

I’ve been on the communications team at Woodland Hills now for a year. Every week, Greg sends me his sermon outline and I have to create slides for it – you could imagine that my work adds a depth to his sermons not otherwise found in what he’s saying.

Normally, I can’t think of anything too creative. But every once in a while I get something that’s worth putting in my archive folder – either because it’s pretty decent or embarrassingly lame looking.
Here’s a collection of some of those from August ‘08 – July ‘09

(Click for Slideshow)

entitled “The Hero. The Leader, The God.” by Alexandre Kosolapov.

Lenin, Mickey Mouse, Jesus Christ.
I’m not sure if it’s more effective to explain how this gem came into existence, or just let the weirdness speak for itself…

I think we may have run out of cool catch phrases we can add “Ob” to to get other cooler words. Obam-azing didn’t really work like I thought; it takes about 7 seconds to come out of my mouth.

Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t deny the marketability of a cool black dude for president. Just putting Obama’s face on something in the last few months instantly raises it’s sellability. Go through the magazine rack at Borders or the stores in any airport in the U.S. and you’ll see that everyone’s trying to get you to drink the Obama Kool-Aid. I was even in the gift shop at the top of the Sears Tower recently, and I think they had more Obama stuff than Sears Tower stuff.

No President has ever been so used and loved in this country’s pop-culture than Barack Obama. However, I suppose it would have been pretty difficult to make a Jimmy Carter sticker that looks cool on a skateboard.

Below are some of my favorite examples of things that have been Baracked lately.

Some friends of mine have this sign on one of the walls in their kitchen. I also have a shirt and a hat that say the same thing. But what does it really mean to live simply? I think I need to wear the hat and the shirt to remind myself to value simplicity more than I do to tell the world how I do life.

I think every person who seeks to follow Christ needs to get to a conclusion on a handful of issues:
What passions/gifts/sense-of-purpose has God gifted me with to use in my time here?
How do I feel about violence?
What do I think about money?
What is really the point of going to my church?
and
How simple a life does God hope I live?
When I look at the life of Jesus, I feel like he must have come to some conclusions about those topics. I have a suspicion that some of the other things I spend my time on might actually be kind of insignificant.

Gandhi said, “There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.” It’s weird to think that there is enough food for everyone in the world, but there’s still gluttony and starvation. God seems to have set up a planet where all will have enough if no one gets greedy and everyone’s willing to share. The worst part is that I understand how hypocritical my life is that I even have to refer to a radical like Gandhi (to associate myself with his lifestyle), but have a life so opposite from his.

I get stuck somewhere in the middle of being overwhelmed by the worlds biggest problems and being overwhelmed by the “unachievable” lifestyles of the radical people doing what they do to help fix those problems. I wonder if that’s where most people are.
I hate that other humans are dying of starvation, but I don’t feed them because it’s just such a huge problem.
I hate that kids are recruited as killing machines in wars that destroy families for no reasons but to further one’s power by oppressing another, but I don’t have any clue how to stop that.
I know there’s homeless people within 10 miles of my house, but it’s not like they can move in with me, and I don’t really know where my money goes if I hand it to them…

It feels like it’s the not knowing what to do with my “value” (time, money, talent) that just keeps me defaulting to spending it all on myself. I want to know that my value is making a difference, but I have no idea what giving $50 to Darfur would do for anyone. But if I take a friend to Chipotle, instant reward: I am full of tex-mex goodness and I feel generous for paying for my friend… but in the meantime, the broken world is not really getting mended by that.

I think I need an experiment. I think that’s helpful for anyone who doesn’t know where to start. I’m obviously not moving to Calcutta tomorrow, but how can I just loosen my grip on the materialism I have today? That’s the only question for right now.

Any ideas?

My friend David is an architectural designer. I’ve helped him with just a handful of projects, and he’s pretty good at what he does. He recently submitted pictures of one of his latest projects to the show Renovation Nation on the Discovery channel and was picked as one of their next projects to air on the show. I went by there today to see if David was going to be cracking jokes like he always does or maybe he’ll be as nervous as he said he’s been feeling about being on TV … both would have been entertaining.

Here, David is explaining to Steve Thomas (former host of This Old House) something about the cost efficiency of the method of insulation he chose. Notice how contractorish they both look with one leg up on that stack of lumber.

The camera crew is filming with David for about 8 hours today in what will soon be a garage, and then another full day Sunday with David and his parents in the house. I was hanging out with some of his friends and we’re all hoping they offer David his own show … even though the FCC probably wouldn’t allow it to come on until later at night.

This picture is awesomer than it looks.

At Woodland Hills Church, we print about 1,800 bulletins for the three weekend services. My job is to put those 4 pieces of paper together every Friday, 1,800 times – a task that might take me all day if it weren’t for the Golden Girl Mafia…and Larry.
There’s Dorothy, Cleo, Barb, Larry & Sue, Phyllis, and Vivian – the 8 of us start at 9am and usually get done by 10. I’d say they’re all extremely dope, but they would probably take it as an insult.

Cleo is my good friend. She’s 92 and dying of some kind of kidney failure/disease thing. This picture was from this morning after we finished stuffing bulletins; she went straight from there to the hospital and told me tonight that this is probably it for her.
The picture of us here is hilarious to me. Both because Cleo is so fun to be around, and it shows that there’s two reasons you shouldn’t hand your camera off to someone who voted for Stephen A. Douglas instead of Abraham Lincoln. 1) They probably didn’t care about that little “slavery” issue. 2) The last camera they used probably made a giant puff of smoke when they hit the button, so they have no clue how to point a digital camera.

The longer we’ve known each other, the freer I felt to ask bigger, more personal questions because it looked like she actually enjoyed answering them.
She said she had a great life and told me how hard she worked at her father’s bottling company and a paper mill where she muscled the logs loose if they got stuck in the chute coming in from the river. She worked one factory job because all the men were off at World War II. She remembers bringing sandwiches to the homeless people that would come up from the train tracks into her back yard during the Great Depression. And she loves Elvis.

I’d go over there most Friday afternoons and if we weren’t teasing each other, eating all her candy, or surfing the internet for funny pictures, we’d watch Oprah, Dr. Phil, or her “Elvis Sings Gospel” DVDs. When we talked this morning, she made sure I would bring the few of them she lent me when I came over today. To be honest, I thought it was a bit weird how much getting her DVDs back was such a high priority to her during all the pain and complications she was having. Like if I died with someone owing me money, would I be mad they never paid me?

When I got to her place at the normal time, she wouldn’t answer her phone or door; I got a bit worried and asked a neighbor to help me get in. I had a weird thought as I turned each corner in her house, “Oh geez, I’m about to find a dead body in God-knows-what position. This picture is never gonna leave my mind.”
She wasn’t there and I eventually tracked her down at the hospital. “You stood me up!,” I said as I walked in her room tonight. She has a running joke that my name is the only one on her dance card for Friday nights … I don’t know what that means, but I like having an inside joke with her.

I’ve always been so apprehensive to ask elderly people how they feel about death and heaven and all that business (“Hey old man, you look like you’re on death’s door – how ya like them apples?!”). But that seems to me the most important and even interesting question at the moment. Cleo never shies away from the topic. She said she’s got so much metal in her hip that she wants to donate it to the Navy when she dies so they could use it as an anchor. She told me she’d be mad if anyone bought flowers for her funeral “cause flowers are for people who can see ‘em and smell ‘em, and they should give that money to a starvin child … or to you!”

She says, “If heaven is half as good as people say it’s supposed to be, this is gonna be my last and greatest adventure. Most people are scared of dying…,” shrugs her shoulders, “I just look forward to the peace … and the kindness.” I thought that was a beautiful and interesting thing to say. I asked her what she anticipates she’s going to feel or want to do the moment she sees Jesus. She looked off to a random place in the room, “I want to just walk up to him and say (she paused) … Amaaaaziiing Graaace…” she just sang those first two words almost to herself, and didn’t look back to me for a few seconds.

After we talked for a bit more, I pointed to the DVDs I put on the shelf. “Hey I brought your Elvis movies back. Thanks for letting me borrow them.”
“Oh good, does this [Hospital] TV let you play movies?” What she said next made me think that if Elvis were still alive, he’d definitely put this quote on his album cover:

“I just want to hear Elvis sing Amazing Grace one more time.”
-Lady On Her Death Bed

So my friend Chase has this highly-advanced doggie chew toy/water bowl/frisbee-thing called the Dura Doggie Disc. He’s gonna make gazillions. If you have a dog, and you love that dog like Jesus does, you’ll get in touch with them (click here) and get your dog 4 of them.

Chase asked me to think up a design for the packaging. Click on the thumbnails to see a little sample I cut out to see how it would look.

a special muchos gracias to Jeremy & Moses for helping with the cover art pics.

This barn doesn’t look interesting, but it’s one of the more interesting stories I’ve heard in a while…

Apparently this guy from New York just retired and wanted to use his retirement money wisely. Knowing land was a lot more affordable pretty much anywhere but New York, he decided to look in his family’s native country of Portugal.
Somewhere on the land he was looking at, this barn stood vacant for at least 15 years, but the bank threw it in with the land since the owner and his wife had died and they had no heirs. The house and the property (along with this barn that sat pretty far from the functional part of the property) were eventually just put on the market just to pay the backed taxes on the title.

There had been several people interested, but the steel doors on the ugly barn had been welded shut so no one made the extra effort to get inside. Plus, the barn was ugly and not a very complimentary part of the overall property anyway. None of those interested had ever made an offer on the place.

So the dude from New York buys it for just over 50% of it’s appraised value, retired there, than made plans to tear the barn down. Before he hired the demolition crew, he got curious enough to go buy a generator and a grinder, so that he could cut through the welds.

This is what they found… lucky punk.