This weekend was supposed to be amazing.  It was going to be epic.  I had been looking forward to it for months, ever since my beautiful wife splurged on an anniversary present by getting a VIP package to see U2 at the Rose Bowl.

The weekend began when I woke up this past Saturday with a bit of an upset stomach, but thought it was just something I ate. Didn’t feel well enough to go to a friend’s housewarming party that afternoon, so sent my wife without me. I then spent the next few hours in unexpected agony and threw up about 6 times on Saturday. No bueno. I could barely stand and laying down hurt too much, so I spent most of the day and night trying to find a comfortable sitting position.

Sunday was better, but not great. Decided to pull it together and go to the concert since my wife had saved up a lot of money towards this and there was no way we were going to miss the experience. I was managing the discomfort okay, thankful we had easy VIP parking right next to the gate and a short walk to our seats in the 5th row. Spent about half the show sitting down as the Black Eyed Peas opened the night and I thought the intense amount of low end would be the end of me, but I did okay.  Glad I did, because we got to see Slash come out and join the Peas doing Sweet Child of Mine. It was an awesome moment.

When u2 came on, it was surreal. The stage was so amazing and the crowd was electric. I was starting to feel pretty good. Unfortunately, I think Leslie caught something similar to me. She wasn’t feeling great during the VIP party, but she decided to ignore it and enjoy the show. About 10:30, 90 minutes into U2’s set, I looked over and she had tears welling up from her stomach pain. I think her tears were also partly because she didn’t want to be the reason we missed out on anything that night. However, I love my wife… way more than I love U2, so we left and missed the last hour of their set. I’ll see the end of the show someday on DVD. I’ll be with my wife for the rest of my life. It was an easy decision. I guess in some ways, it was still an amazing weekend afterall.

John Wooden is one of the greatest coaches of all time.  He led the UCLA Bruins to 664 wins in 27 seasons and hung 10 championship banners.   He retired from coaching in 1975, but his work has continued to this day as a world renowned and well respected author, speaker and mentor to many.   Today is his 99th Birthday.  In honor of his ongoing legacy, here are 9 of the best quotes from the Wizard of Westwood:

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”

“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”

“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

“Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.”

“There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”

“I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.”

I really need to memorize these… and then live them.

Came across this great article today from Collide Magazine from an interview with Donald Miller.  I agree with it, do you?

Donald Miller on Artists, Metaphor, and the Church

Scott McClellan – Originally posted Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Photo Credit: Jeremy Cowart Photography

I wrote a feature for our September/October 2009 issue called, “Donald Miller: Storyteller,” in which I discuss an interview I did with Miller and his new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In preparing for that interview (conducted at the end of March) I came across a talk Miller gave at Willow Creek’s arts conference, “Creativity and Art, Why You Matter as an Artist.” I was immediately intrigued by what Miller might have to say on the subject, so I asked him about the role of artists in the Church. That section of our conversation didn’t make it into the print article, but I felt compelled to share it with you. Though short, I hope you find it validating and thought-provoking.
COLLIDE: What is your view on the importance of the artist’s role in the Church?

Donald Miller: It’s complicated. I think I’m not convinced the gospel can be arrived at through rational thought. I don’t think much of anything can be arrived at through rational thought that’s of great import. And all of life is performance art. It’s God’s performance art to sort of make poetic grunts back at him and say, “I’m like light, I’m like love, I’m like sheep to shepherd, I’m like king to subject.” Those are dynamics that are created by Him in order to educate us about who He is.

And so God uses art to do that, and so I feel like the Christian artist, like the secular artist, has this opportunity to point to greater truths. And the gospel exists in a realm of greater truth than what we can arrive at with a calculator. Does that make sense?

COLLIDE: Yeah, absolutely. You rattled off a few metaphors there – sheep to shepherd – and it occurs to me that we reduced that to sermon illustrations like, We’re like a precocious kid in Sunday School who said this, and that’s metaphor in large pockets of the Church. But the artist really explores metaphor and narrative far beyond the spoken word.

Miller: Yeah, and if you look at the writings of Moses you have narrative, narrative, and then he breaks into parallelism. He breaks into ancient Hebrew poetry. Job is almost fully a poem. Song of Songs is an opera heavily influenced by Solomon who’s interested in the Orient. You have artwork through the whole thing. I think Revelation is pretty trippy. I don’t know that there are any bullet points in the whole book, are there? There may be a few in building the temple.

COLLIDE: Maybe “Six things the Lord detests,” something like that.

Miller: The Ten Commandments.

COLLIDE: The fruit of the Spirit, maybe. More the exception than the norm, certainly.

Miller: Yeah, exactly, and even the fruit of the Spirit is an artistic metaphor.
So there you have it. To dig deeper into the idea of metaphor in the Bible, I believe Eugene Peterson had some things to say along those lines in his book Eat This Book: The Art of Spiritual Reading. Also, be sure to check out Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He doesn’t necessarily teach on metaphor, but the book is a brilliant example of its proper use. Finally, check out “Donald Miller: Storyteller” in the September/October 2009 issue of COLLIDE.
Scott McClellan is the editor of COLLIDE. Original Article is here

Our quick get away to Arizona was a lot of fun despite the 105+ degree heat. It was fun catching up with family we haven’t seen in years. It was fun floating around in a giant pool. It was fun enjoying some great food. It was especially fun for me to see some of the amazing architecture and venues in the Valley of the Sun. You can check out some of my iPhone Arizona Trip Photos on Flickr

While I do love traveling, and especially a good road trip, it is good to be home now where it’s currently a beautifully cool 68 degrees. I was reminded of one of the reason why I love living here when I heard the music in the park next to our little place in Orange earlier. I always forget about the annual summer concert series on Wednesday nights in Hart Park until it’s about half way into the summer and I’ve already missed all the good shows, only hearing them occasionally from a distance. In case you live around here too, be sure and catch at least one of these.

2009 Concerts in Hart Park dates (thanks to oc.metblogs.com):

* July 8, The Wise Guys Big Band Machine – Big band/swing music
* July 15, The Fenians – Traditional and contemporary Irish music
* July 22, Stone Soul – Motown, soul and R & B classics
* July 29, Open Wide – Classic rock
* August 5, Crashdance – Top 40 dance favorites
* August 12, The Sam Morrison Band – southern classic rock
* August 19, The Hodads – 50’s and 60’s rock-n-roll
* August 26, Film at Eleven – Motown and R & B classics

Hart Park is located at 701 South Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866

The music may be a little hit and miss for your taste, but it’s all free and free makes everything better, right? Are there any summer traditions you enjoy that make home just as sweet as a good trip?

Spending the weekend with family in Tempe, Arizona and decided to visit a place that Guy Fiere recommended. He’s the host of a show on the Food Network called Diners, Dives and Drive Ins. It’s a place in Glendale called La Piazza Al Forno.

The pizza was really good and the service was even better. We got the Itallion Stallion with a load of spicy meats, the Piazza Blanco with basil and white sauce and the Mediteranian with pesto and feta.

The place has a really comfortable and relaxed family feel. I’m sure that Guy’s feature on this simple brick oven pizza joint has helped business quite a bit. They’ve capitalized on it with a banner our front and literally putting Guy’s name on the place with his signature on the wall right by the front door. Have you ever gone to a place just because you saw it on TV?

This is a challenge I got from a designer friend of mine Tim McMahan posted on his blog a few months back.  I’ve been feeling lately like I need a jolt of creativity, so I thought I’d try it out.  It was a good, fun challenge.  Let me know if you try it, too.

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To Do This

1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 – Post it to FB with this text in the “caption” or “comment” and TAG the friends you want to join in.

(If you spend more than 5 minutes, you’re doing it wrong.)
((why couldn’t all of our school project’s have been cool like this?))

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Here’s my randomly generated, creatively branded Band Name and Album Cover:

So after years of determined resistance and occasional mocking, I finally decided to joined the cult last night.  The cult of Apple.  I’ve had just a basic phone for so long, waiting for the technology to really catch up with what I want and make it worth the investment.  My contract just happened to expire this month, right around the release of the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3Gs.

After a few weeks of hemming and hawing and researching and polling, I found the iPhone just made the most sense and there really is a reason for why it’s so popular.  So, I took the plunge and bought one.  Just picked it up last night.

It’s got so many features built in and countless others that you can add on.  Can’t wait to trick mine out with apps and music and photos and videos.  What do you think are the most essential, most fun, most productive apps to add? And, maybe now that I have a phone that I can use to blog, I’ll do it a little more often…

The trip to Israel was full of so many inspirational and life-changing moments. It’s been nearly two months since I returned from Israel and I feel like the the transformational experiences are still shaping who I am becoming. As promised, I’m recapping some highlights from the trip here on my blog (better late than never). As I try to recall everything, I’m realizing that many of the best memories I have were not so much of all the landmarks and monuments and ancient sites we saw, but of the moments we experienced together as a group.

There was beautifully simple worship sitting next to an ancient olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane as tears flowed from everyone in the group. There was the indescribable echo you could hear sitting on a bench in the Church of St Anne , where we had an unplanned worship service alongside a group from South Africa. There was the time spent along the edge of the Jordan River where my friend and unofficial rabbi Matt Davis baptized me. There was the other-worldly feeling of floating in the Dead Sea. There was the adventure of climbing down Mt Arbel overlooking the Sea of Galilee and avoiding the horns of a charging, wild mountain cow. There was the Israeli bunker assault lesson from our tour guide Ariel on a hillside just across a valley from the border of Syria. There was the journal of page after page filled with notes as the scripture we studied came to life in a fresh, new way.

I could seriously go on for hours about all of the experiences we had in the two weeks we spent there. Rather than bore you though, I’ve put up a gallery of a few of my favorite photos from the trip. I hope they give you a small glimpse into what Israel is like…

I’m still alive.   Of course, you wouldn’t know it from my blog.   A lot of life has happened in the last couple months.    I think I’ll start playing catch up over the next couple weeks and blog retroactively.  Stay tuned…

I’m leaving on a jet plane tomorrow for the Holy Land – direct flight from LA to Tel Aviv.  I’m totally packed, but still not feeling that ready to go.  It’s hard to disconnect from the pattern and the pace of life.   More than that, it’s a little scary as there are so many unknowns involved.  I honestly don’t know what to expect from this trip.  I’m just trying to remain open to whatever adventures comes our way.

I know that I should be excited and feel blessed to have this opportunity.   I do feel that in spurts.  But I also know that I’m feeling a little sad as I’m going to miss my beautiful wife and also the birth of our niece.  On top of that, I have to admit that I also feel disoriented, nervous, and a little stressed.     I know that I will be challenged.  I trust that I will be inspired.  I pray that we will all be safe.   I hope that I will grow closer to God and my fellow travelers as we walk the land where the Bible happened.

If you’d like to follow our journey through Israel – check out the Calvary Israel Blog