Friendship

OK, so not exactly from a book, but more from a chapter of my own story: Can we talk about friends? What is a friend? Do we use the term too loosely? What are your thoughts?

Childhood

What were your favorite books when you were a child? What are your childrens favorite books? Although kind of hard to see the picture, mine was a book called "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" by Richard Scarry. It is a cute book, and there is a little golden bug on every page that we used to huddle around and try to find. My kids love all of the Veggie Tales books. Tylers favorite books, when he was little, were Pokemon books. What great memories!

God, the Creator of Pleasure...........

OK. I don't know why this hit me while I was reading the Shaping of Things to Come. I mean, I guess I could have figured this out, after all, I know that God created all things. So, some people cannot connect God with our daily lives. Some people cannot feel God in pleasure. Is pleasure selfish and therefore sinful? God created the things in us that give us pleasure. Our taste buds, our skin, even our likes and dislikes. Here is what I think.... God wants us to feel pleasure. He wants us to enjoy our lives. Can pleasure LEAD to sinfulness? Absolutely. But that is because we fail to see God in those things that make us pleased. We fail to see our pleasure as a gift from Him, and therefore misuse and abuse it. Those are just my thoughts. What are yours???

What Are Your Thoughts???

Please check out one of my older posts....Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What do you think about the comments that were made???

Shaping of Things to Come....

I love, in this book, how they talk about the well in the center. To summarize, if you are a farmer and have livestock on a small farm, you would fence it in, to keep your animals with you and other animals out. If you are a farmer and have miles and miles of farmland, it is impossible to fence that in. So how do you keep your livestock from running away? Put a well in the center. Animals do not travel far from a water source. OK. Now think about church. In the past, church seemed to be the farm that put up a fence. We are in, they are out. What we want to be is a farm where you are never out, just a little further from the "well", which is Jesus and the Gospel. The closer that you are to the center well, the more Christlike your journey is. I desire to be close to that well. I pray that God leads all of closer and closer to the center. I pray that he allows us to see all of his people, not as being non-Christian or Christian, but as being a little further away from the center, never out. Gods grace reaches all over and covers all of us.

HUH?

OK. I have always been one that is true to myself, not ashamed of my own limitations and not embarrassed by most things. Can I just ask if I am the only one who is having a hard time reading this book??? It has been my understanding, in the past, that when one is defining a word, they take the word, and use smaller, easier to understand words to explain it. It seems that in this book, I get excited...like OOOO I finally get an explanation of what incarnational (just as one example) means....then they use other huge words, that I do not know what THEY mean, to define it????!!!!???? I am feeling inadequate. Maybe this book just wasn't made for the stay at home mom who hasn't read much besides Veggie Tales: The Chicken Noodle Soup~er Bowl, for the past few years!

Happy Birthday!

Happy 5th Birthday Kaileigh! Finally older than Dylan again! I love you sweetie!!!!

Outside the Walls

Page 23 begins to paint this picture in my mind. They talk about a man named Brock Bingaman that opened up a shoe store (his great passion) to serve the community and to begin to blend the secular and non secular lives. A shoe store fitting people with the love of Christ and a snazzy pair of sneakers! From that point, they talk about different places doing the same sort of thing; a bar, an art gallery, etc. Moving outside the walls of the Church. Moving out of the "come to us" mindset. I cannot help but get a picture of a downtown. A street full of shops. Some owned by Christians, some not. Blended beautifully. Owners of shops getting to know the people in the community. Helping to serve their needs. What would your shop be? Help me paint this picture.

Error

Just wanted to clarify, I misspoke in my last post. I was not in Chapter 2. I was in the Second Section of Part One. Confusing. Thought I was almost where I needed to be for tomorrow nights meeting! I was wrong. Oh well. I will use page numbers from now on!

Chapter Two: The Heartbeat (The Shaping of Things to Come)

This hit me like a ton of bricks. "Mission is not merely an activity of the church. It is the very heartbeat and work of God." Our hearts beat to send blood through our bodies to keep us moving, functioning, living. Without it, we do not exist in this life anymore. So what does being missional mean? I have read through what a missional church is not.....attractional, dualistic, and hierarchical. So, where does that leave us? It seems so simple, it leaves us with the picture of what Jesus and the disciples were, what they did, how they preached, and how they lived. At least, that is what I think of and picture in my mind. But, how does that fit into where we are? How do we move from the "come-to-us" into the "go-to-them" church? What are your thoughts on this?

Happy Birthday!

I know I am writing a book blog, but I just have to wish my Dylan a happy birthday! He is 4 today. So, he and Kaileigh will be 4 together for 12 days! He is my angel!

Just an interesting FYI about this years Burning Man

SAN FRANCISCO - After the signature effigy of the Burning Man festival went up in flames four days ahead of schedule, festival-goers vowed to rebuild the 40-foot icon by Saturday's planned climax. But not everyone was disappointed by Tuesday's incineration.


The alleged torching of the wood-and-neon figure by a San Francisco performance artist has cast light on the disillusionment of many who feel the annual celebration of radical self-expression has lost touch with its spontaneous, subversive roots.

"People have been trying to set that thing on fire for years," said Hugh D'Andrade, a San Francisco artist who attended the festival for many years. "This is not a new phenomenon."

Organizers trace the first Burning Man back to a 1986 party on a San Francisco beach where Larry Harvey, who still runs the festival, set ablaze a crude 8-foot wooden figure.

Since then, the event has evolved into a weeklong gathering of nearly 40,000 people who descend on the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada around Labor Day each year to celebrate countercultural creativity.

In San Francisco, especially, Burning Man has emerged as a kind of underground high holiday as legions of so-called Burners devote the rest of the year to choreographing fire dances, decorating art cars and building elaborate interactive sculptures.

The event has become such a mainstay of the city's cultural calendar that Burner parents in 2005 unsuccessfully urged the San Francisco school board to postpone the first day of school so their children could attend.

But the rise in Burning Man's popularity has also brought a backlash.

In the immediate aftermath of this week's unscheduled burn, gleeful expressions of approval for the alleged prank rained down on blogs and Internet forums.

Some comments came from conservative posters ready to mock anything carrying a hint of hippiedom.

But many originated from self-described former attendees complaining that Burning Man has been spoiled by crowds of "yuppies" and "frat boys" mostly interested in doing drugs and ogling naked participants.

Steven Black, a 40-something librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, has attended Burning Man 11 times. But even though he had a ticket this year, he said, he didn't go.

"What has happened here is giving pause for a degree of introspection and reflection on what it means to burn this man that is perhaps long overdue," Black said.

According to Black, Burning Man's huge crowds have attracted heavy law enforcement attention to an event that was originally meant to be an exultation, leaving him feeling "less secure and less free" than if he had just stayed home.

Paul Addis, 35, of San Francisco, who is accused of setting fire to the Burning Man, posted $25,632 bond and was released from jail in Pershing County, Nev., on Tuesday. He was arrested on suspicion of arson, illegal possession of fireworks, destruction of property and resisting a public officer, according to the sheriff's department.

Known on the city's art scene for playing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson on stage, Addis has apparently had long-standing gripes against the festival. In a letter published in a local alternative newspaper in 2002, a person using the same name complained about the imposition of rules he felt were spoiling the event.

"Those rules and judgments, such as what art is permitted in B(lack) R(ock) C(ity) and radical free expression's outer limits are determined in line with what will make the most money for B(urning) M(an) and generate the fewest potential controversies in the media," the person wrote.

Law enforcement officials said they did not know Addis' whereabouts after his release. Calls to a telephone number listed for him in San Francisco were not answered.

A spokeswoman for Burning Man organizers did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Despite the criticism, even disenchanted Burners like D'Andrade haven't completely written off the festival.

"When I first started going, they already said it was over," said D'Andrade, who went to his first Burning Man in 1999 and designed the ticket for this year's event, though he hasn't attended since 2005. "New people are still getting a big blast of all the positive elements that have made it what it is."

___

On the Net:

http://www.burningman.com

Chapter One (The Shaping of Things to Come)

What struck you in this chapter?

Chapter One (The Shaping of Things to Come)

I think that we all have a deep seeded desire to feel and be accepted for who we are. No one wants to put on a mask and walk around pretending to be someone they are not. That is why, I think, things like Burning Man are such a huge movement. Think about it, imagine that you are gay, or an alcoholic, or a prostitute, or a drug addict. Where do you go to feel accepted, loved? Church? I highly doubt it. Why not?

Imagine that you were in Jesus' day. Where would you go then? Maybe to Jesus? I think that I would. He never turned anyone away. He never made anyone feel unwanted or unworthy. So, if we are Christians, why are we so unaccepting of others? Why have we gotten such a bad reputation? If we are Christ followers, why do people who need it most feel that church is the last place they would go for acceptance and love? Shouldn't it be the first?

What can we do about it?

Book 2

OK. I am moving on to our next book. The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsh. I cannot wait to start this book. I will go back to the second and third books by Brian McLaren when I am done reading this one.

Anyone read this one already? Any thoughts?

New Hope and Post Modernism

What do you think about New Hope and Post Modernism? Do you think we are there? Are you there? Do you want to be there?

I really, at first, had a hard time reading this book. Lots of big words and things like that. But after the first chapter or so, I felt like I finally understood who I am and why I am the way I am. Post modern all the time, but I just had no idea what it was. I used to feel like a "baby Christian" because I felt more laid back than most Christians that I knew (outside of New Hope). Reading this book was like someone turned on the lights for me because I was sitting in the dark. Like, I knew what to do I just could not see the way. Do you know what I mean?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Anybody read this yet? Anyone, besides me, finished? What a fantastic ending to a wonderful series! Just wanted to share that I give it a big thumbs UP!!!!

The Math Book

I am in Buffalo right now, visiting my sister and I keep thinking about the part of A New Kind of Christian when he talks about the Bible and a Math book. I am going to paraphrase, because I left my journal and book at home. I was a small part of a group last night that met and talked about some chapters of the Bible. It was so great listening to how different verses touched different people in such different ways. So, I have been thinking about the Bible a lot.

Brian talks about the Math book by saying that it is a very important thing. Not because it has all of the answers in the back of it, but because you have to work and struggle through it to learn something from it. Is that how we need to approach reading the Bible? Not to find answers; not to say who is right and who is wrong, but to struggle through it, pick it apart, work through the things we do not understand, sharing our thoughts with others...........

What do you think?

Page 38

On page 38 of A New Kind of Christian, there is a quote that I love. "I want you to invest your lives not in keeping the old ship afloat but in designing and building a new ship for new adventures in a new time in history, as intrepid followers of Jesus Christ."

While reading this book, I needed to look up a lot of words on M-W.com. I was glad that I did on this quote especially. Intrepid means= characterized by resolute fearlessness, fortitude and endurance. What does this quote mean to you? What does it bring about in you?

A New Kind of Christian

Our first book. A New Kind of Christian by Brian D. McLaren. Use this blog to share your feelings about the book, questions, parts of the book that moved you, just as they hit you, like a journal.

Getting closer!

And so it begins.....

Hi there everybody! Ever read a really great book and wish that you could chat with others about the things that really moved you? Well, me too! That's why I created this blog. Every few weeks or so, I will suggest a new book to read. Then we can all talk about it. Jot something down that meant something to you, or something that confused you. We will talk about if we liked the book or not so much. So, if you have any great book suggestions, you can use this blog to comment them to me.