Ick. I'm sick.

The day after my last post, I started coming down with a nasty head cold. I'm still feeling lousy. I got it, I believe, from my daughter, who was sick and who is ever one to share anything she has... So I have been congested, feverish, achy, headachy, coughing, sneezing, and generally unable to sleep more than an hour or so at a stretch for four days now. 

Can a geek get a "There, there, poor dear?"

This is, of course, of no great interest to anyone except the poor souls who have to put up with my grouchy self (i.e., my family) and the makers and vendors of cough, cold, and pain remedies, all of whom have no doubt seen a marked bump in their profit, owing to my rabid consumption of their products. There is a corresponding dip in the profits of vendors and distributors of coffee, since I have had absolutely no desire for any since coming down with this mess.

To me, the worst thing about being sick like this is the total inability to concentrate on all the trivial and useless pursuits that usually bring me such joy and hours of diversion. Things like TV, or reading geek news, or doing Sudoku, or reading sci-fi novels. I suppose it is bad enough that I don't feel good enough to do the things I really need to do, but the indignity of not being up to do the things I usually do to avoid productivity is just too much.

Makes me wanna go cry in my NyQuil.

Mops and ministry

I had an interesting experience in ministry today. Well, maybe "interesting" isn't the right word.

I've been spending some time during the week at our church building, studying for the class I'm teaching and doing some administrative stuff for the worship ministry. I was getting ready to update our song database, and pulling some filed song sheets in our workroom, when I noticed a pretty bad smell. Brian, our minister, had mentioned a few minutes earlier that the toilet in the bathroom off of his office had overflowed, and he had spent a few minutes mopping it up. There is also a bathroom off of the workroom. Its toilet had overflowed, as well, and without getting too graphic, let's just say it was yucky.

Obviously, we have a systemic problem, plumbing-wise.

Now, I'm not on staff. I'm not involved in the building & grounds ministry. I don't even need to be at the building, I can take the materials and work elsewhere. But I'd be a real jerk if I didn't do something to clean up the problem, myself. Brian would have done it, but should I expect someone else to clean it up, when I'm capable and available? I'm a part of this church family, and I ought to be willing to pitch in for things like this.

Granted, I hated this part of working in restaurants when I was in high school, and that's one of the main reasons I was motivated to get an education and make a living as far away as possible from a mop.

But Brian's position as our minister doesn't qualify him to do this any more than my status as a sometimes-volunteer. He's got a Bachelor's degree in Bible, a Master's in Religion, and a PhD. in Communications -- that'll earn you a free trip away from mop-land, even more than my Bachelor's degree, if anything will.

But, as I said to him as I was cleaning, "It's all part of full-time ministry."

Because even though I am not a "full-time minister," in terms of employment at our church, my status as Jesus' disciple makes me a full-time minister of reconciliation, and with that job comes a lot of opportunities to serve. Sometimes those opportunities look like teaching, sometimes like leading worship, sometimes like counseling, and sometimes like doing technology stuff around the building. But sometimes, it looks like a mop.

Too many Christians are very willing to let someone else do the dirty work, whether it's plunging toilets, mopping floors, teaching Sunday School, carrying food baskets to a shelter, listening to someone who is asking for help, or reaching out to tell people about God.

Obviously, we have a systemic problem, service-wise.

So, what about you? Have you mopped up anything messy lately? Have you overlooked an opportunity to free someone else from an undesirable task, even though it's not your job?

Just something to think about on a Wednesday.

Et tu(nes), Amazon?

Regarding the story that broke yesterday about Amazon working to develop their own competitor to iTunes, and even an Amazon-branded MP3 player:

Is it just me, or does this count as another "ho-hum" for Apple? Virgin said they were going to do the same thing, and we haven't heard a peep about it since the announcement. The only advantages Amazon might have is that the companies they're planning to partner with have a boatload of titles that people might actually want, and their database technology will probably adapt to the music store task very well. Other than that, it's pretty much going to be just another potential source of stuff to put into iTunes.

If they were to come up with their own branded media player app for both Windows and Mac (and really, why even try on the Mac?), I doubt it'll convert anyone from iTunes. Having to re-import your library and playlists would be enough of a deterrent for me.

As for another hardware device, have they learned nothing from watching Sony, the inventor of the personal media player (by way of the Walkman), flounder in the digital music space? If Sony (who used to be coolest-of-the-cool) can't keep up, and Creative (the only other company whose players you can buy just about anywhere) runs a distant second to the iPod, why is introducing another device into the market going to get them anywhere?

Besides that, if you're walking around with an MP3 player bearing the Amazon logo, you're GONNA get razzed. "Did you win that player in a contest? Was it a freebie for buying a bunch of books or something? What's with the logo?" It'll look like a cheap "me-too" product iPods have the cool factor mindshare locked down, which is why they have the market locked down.

To the music-buying public, Amazon is a guy in business-casual attire, ready and willing to sell you CDs and books. Apple is one of those silhouettes in their ads, dancing around with reckless abandon, listening to the beat of their own personal drummer. And the music-buying public thinks that Amazon guy, while he can get you just about anything you can think of asking for, doesn't know what's cool. The silhouette guy can tell you what stuff is cool, and help you show off that you're cool, too. The music-buying public is, by and large, all about being cool.

I don't blame Amazon for jumping into the space, though -- even if they bleed off only a percentage point or two off of Apple/iTunes/iPod, that's still a significant chunk of change. They'll make some money off the deal, perhaps.

Now if it were Google announcing this, it might work up a little sweat in a certain Cupertino executive suite. But then, Apple could just buy Google and solve that problem. Right after they buy Disney.

The Parable of the Lost Sheep, Retold

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Once he notices that they haven’t been around lately, he stands by the sheep fold, shouting, “Sheep! Here, sheep! Come home, Fluffy, come home!” Then, he looks around, wondering if he’s done something wrong, something to offend the one who wandered off, and he tries to think of what it will take to keep any of the other ninety-nine from leaving.

After a while, he decides that he’ll just have to live with it. If God had meant him to have all one hundred sheep, after all, then God wouldn’t have let that one sheep wander off. Perhaps, the shepherd thinks, he wasn’t given the gifts to lead all one hundred, and he should lower his sights to having only ninety-nine sheep, and accept what God has given him. God bless that lost sheep; he probably just wandered into another fold, where he’ll be taken care of, just fine.

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I think that I'm done with thinking that my church isn't supposed to be very evangelistic, because we don't have anyone really gifted in it. Well, maybe it's better to say that I'm done with thinking that I'm not supposed to be very evangelistic, because I'm not that gifted in it. The parables in Luke 15 tell us that God is willing to go to extreme measures to bring every individual back to him. If we're going to be like Him, shouldn't we follow this example, too?

I'm not saying that giftedness isn't relevant. I'm just saying that ignoring the mission of every Jesus-follower -- to point the way to God -- misses the point of the gifts we have. Our gifts aren't just for encouraging other believers, they are for drawing as many people to God as we can.

I read an illustration last night of the point. At the firehouse, each of the firemen has various duties to do when they're not fighting fires. One cooks, one cleans, another maintains the equipment, another feeds the dalmation... But those duties aren't their job; their job is to fight fires. When fighting fires, they also have their various roles, based on their training.

So it is with us as Jesus-followers; our job is to point the way to God. How we do that is largely influenced by our gifts and skills. What we do the rest of the week (jobs, school, hobbies) is secondary, even though it may take up most of our time.

I've got some re-thinking of my gifts to do. I have been letting myself get away with thinking that because my gifts have more to do with things that happen on Sunday mornings, that my time is best used on that, and not on reaching out to people who need to know God. I need to find out how to apply my gifts to serving others.

So how does a big-mouthed, music-loving, computer geek with aspirations as a writer do this? I'll let you know as it happens.

Thoughts on evangelism

I have been thinking a lot about the topic of evangelism lately, mostly because I am preparing to teach a series of lessons on it at my church. One of the ideas I am struggling to express has to do with the goal of evangelism, or rather, some things that are NOT the goal of evangelism, but that have been mistakenly stated as goals of evangelism. First among them, in my mind, is the myth that we need to “convert people” in order to increase attendance in our churches, and therefore the contributions given. That’s just plain idolatry. Maybe I’ll write about that some other time.

The issue I’m thinking about right now is that we have acted like the goal of evangelism is to earn favor with God. The myth says that the number of souls we “save” is directly proportional to the quality of our faith. It says, “If you’re a really GOOD Christian, you’ll convert a lot of people.” Further, it says, “If you’re not converting people, you must not be a very good Christian.”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it assumes we can do anything to earn more favor with God. From what I read in the Bible (without going into a lot of proof-texting here), God doesn’t love any of us better than any others; He loves all persons equally, even those who don’t put their faith in Him. The point of following God isn’t to “get in good” with him, but to be made over into His likeness, through Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and transformation by the Holy Spirit. Being saved isn’t about the process of becoming good enough to get into Heaven, but of becoming like God enough to display His Kingdom here on earth.

Obedience, then, is not what we do to keep God happy. It’s what we do to keep ourselves on track with His transformation of our lives and our characters to match His own. So, evangelism, like anything else we do in His name, doesn’t make us any better; it’s one of the things we do to allow transformation in us. If we hold back from doing anything that pleases God, we hold back some part of our lives that needs His touch to make it more complete. By not obeying, whether it be in evangelism or anything else, we miss out on opportunities to be made better than we are.

Some people are good at evangelism – they’re gifted for it. Others of us, like myself, aren’t particularly gifted for it. That doesn’t excuse us from our need to work at it, to try our best, and to submit our lack of giftedness to God, so that He can work through our weakness to achieve His goals.

When it gets down to it, evangelism isn’t that hard. We just have to let people know that God cares about them, and wants them to be His. What goes on from there is God’s doing. There are things we can do to prepare ourselves to express God’s truths to them. I intend to learn more about those things in the coming months. Maybe I’ll write about them as I learn them.

Rambling thoughs on a Thursday evening

My dad, Garey Castle, is a real smart guy. He is a voracious reader, a great teacher, and very capable at lots of different things. When he graduated from college, he had a degree in math with a minor in physics, and had audited enough classes to have racked up minors in Bible and Music, as well. Of course, it took him ten years to finish, but considering that he got married and had became a father by the age of 22, that's not too surprising. He worked hard to make enough to support his family and finish school, all the while learning as much as he could.

He has never stopped learning, really. Despite having some kind of reading disability (a mild dyslexia, I think), he studied constantly when he was preaching, and even more when he completed his MA in Religion -- when he was in his 40's. I can remember so many times seeing him reading some thick, dusty tome, listening to classical music, looking so much at home and in his element. I learned to love books, myself, growing up in his home.

Dad spent much of his working life as a mathematical engineer/computer programmer/satelite analyst. He also spent a lot of time as a preacher. Even now, retired in San Diego, he studies and teaches at his church. A lot of folks have learned so much about Bible history and church history from my dad.

I learned a lot about how to teach from watching Dad. He always seems to be at ease when he's teaching, and it seems to come from a strong knowledge of his subject and a respect for the people he's teaching. (Obviously, some students are easier to respect than others!) When people ask questions he didn't know the answer to, he's not afraid to say that he doesn't know; he can usually point them in the right direction for answers, anyway, and usually from a book he's got in his own respectable library.

(Mom's no slouch as a teacher, either, but I'm talking about Dad right now!)

Dad recently wrote an article for his church's bulletin about giving. Briefly reviewing the way that people gave to God in the Old Testament, he makes the statement, "It seems that the average Israelite family was commanded to give somewhere between 35% and 50% to the Lord on an ongoing basis." Beyond the "tithe" that so many evangelical Christians pound on, there were other regular offerings required under the Law of Moses. The sum total of it boggles the mind for we 21st-century Americans... until, maybe, we total up how much we pay in various taxes.

Dad's article goes on to talk about the expectation that we Christians will give to God's work today. The institution of the church, for all of its flaws and weaknesses, is the primary channel for giving for us. I firmly believe that it is vital that I and my family give to our church -- and not only for the sake of the church's finances, either. We give because... because we have been given a LOT! Our giving to our church, though, is not the sum total of what is modeled for us in the New Testament. Our example is Jesus, who gave up everything. That's more than challenging, it's brutally difficult for us in our culture. We are trying to learn what it means to live in surrender, but it's easy to lose track of that when we're trying to plan for our future. We'll probably never get it down perfectly. Thank God for his infinite grace!

When it gets down to it, I learned about giving the same way I learned about teaching -- by watching my parents. For my parents, giving is just part of living for God. We were never rich growing up, and sometimes things were really tight; but if someone needed something, my parents were never afraid to give to a need, even if it meant going without for a while. As a kid, that was dreadfully inconvenient for me, but I guess the message got through.

What does all this have to do with the price of papayas in Peoria? I don't know. I'm trying to understand how I can give more of myself to God's service. By "give," I don't just mean money. I mean of my time and my talents. Are there people around me who could benefit from something I have to give? I'm sure there are, but I'm trying to figure out how to connect and find a place to serve.

I don't know how I'll make time for that. Someone told me recently, though, that when you are put into a situation where you have to take care of someone else's needs, you learn a lot about slowing down, and removing yourself from all the busyness we usually find ourselves in. Ironic, isn't it? When you have to drop everything to serve others, you find that everything you've dropped is probably going to be fine without you, and you without it.

Lord, help me figure that one out.

Question of the day

If you write a blog, and nobody reads it, is it still considered a waste of bandwidth?

Another fad turns to dust

For those of you who think "spinners" are cool, you are now officially wrong. I just saw them on an otherwise unadorned Ford Taurus.

Another great ZOE Conference

Nina and I were able to go to the ZOE Group Worship Conference in Nashville again this year. It was an incredible experience! Besides the thrill of worshipping in song with over a thousand others, and the blessed times of fellowship and sharing with friends from all over the country, and the meals we enjoy at Cracker Barrel, we were challenged by the missional theme this year.

What is "missional?" It's a current church buzz-word, to be sure, but the people who use it are, by and large, trying to get us to wake up and be the people of God, instead of just being the people who support a church. It's about "going into all the world," instead of waiting for people to come to our church buildings and special events. It's recapturing the Great Commission of Jesus as our own mission, recognizing that we need to be doing Jesus' business in the world -- reaching out with hands to help, listening to people's stories, and pointing the way to the Great Physician. It's not about making more church-goers, but making disciples, apprentices of Jesus. While most of our churches claim to be doing this, we spend way too much time and energy on operational and logistical issues of running a congregation than we do getting out to touch the people who are hurting. You don't need a program, project, or even a "ministry" to do it on your own, but we can't seem to do anything without organizing a committee, or hiring a minister to do it for us.

Leonard Sweet challenged us to give our churches an "MRI scan" -- changing to being Missional instead of attractional, Relational instead of propositional, and Incarnational instead of colonial. I'm not going to describe all of that here, but it describes a major change in the way churches work. It's going to be a hard change for most of us to make.

Larry James of Central Dallas Ministries convicted us about how we avoid dealing with the poor, treating them as if their status is a disease instead of an opportunity to learn what's really important in life. He said that when we look at the poor, all we see is their need, because of our materialism. We don't see their assets, and we completely ignore their dreams. Poor people are the most generous, both with their money and their time.

Mike Cope's biggest contribution to my thinking and faith this weekend was a quote he borrowed from a book called "Unveiling Glory" -- "Living like Jesus is not something we do to get salvation -- it IS our salvation." And his retelling of the Sermon on the Mount is one of the best things I've ever heard in a sermon.

Randy Harris got one of my biggest "AMEN"'s this weekend. He said, "People need to stop complaining about new things in church making them 'uncomfortable.' Where do we get the idea that we're supposed to be comfortable in church? We're standing in the presence of the living God! That ought to make anyone at least a little uneasy!"

Jeff Walling portrayed Matthew instead of just preaching. He told us about the messy Messiah we follow, about the disgrace that Jesus lived in all his life. We've romanticized Jesus' story; he was born in scandal, he died in scandalous fashion, and for his whole ministry he was unpopular and laughed at by the "polite folks" of his time. It was the underprivileged and outcast that he surrounded himself with -- the very people we do so little for today. Very convicting.

Brandon Scott Thomas and the ZOE singers gave it their all in leading worship, as usual. Randy Gill and the praise team from Woodmont Hills also gave it up during the leadership conference. They were able to include some instrumental praise in various sessions, which really added to the whole experience.

Michael Card gave a short concert on Saturday afternoon, and it was such a thrill to be able to meet him. His music has been very special to me for 20 years, and he has such a great servant heart.

And it was great to spend time with our extended family of friends: Owen Burgess and his daughter Becca, Dan Dalzell, Chris Lockhart, Rob and Clarissa Cox, Gary Bruce, and Shane Coffman. I also got to meet and re-meet in person several folks from the blog world and Worshipforum: Dwight and Jeanna Powell, Andrew Batiselli, Wes Bedwell, Bret Morris, Mitch Fewell, Eric Livingston, Chris Helterbrand, and so many others. What a blessing.

And so now, I return to my everyday life, but a little more focused on being less everyday about it, and more intentional in looking around to see where people need the touch of Jesus. I'm sure that will be a gradual change for me, but I can't see turning my back on it now. I'll let you know how it goes...

What we leave behind

I've been thinking about the things that we pass on to our children. Not so much the neuroses, dysfunction, and bad habits, though those are arguably the most significant contibutions we make to their lives. No, I'm thinking about the heirlooms we pass on. When I was in high school, I got a Hawaiian shirt from my dad which he got when he was in college. That shirt (now departed and much-lamented) got me hooked. Now I wear Hawaiian shirts often -- probably too often for my long-suffering wife, the half of this marriage with all the fashion sense. My son has also acquired the habit. (See above, under neuroses.)

I have something that I plan on giving to both of my children, when the time is right. It's something my mom gave me the day she dropped me off at the beginning of my freshman year of college. Several sheets of paper from a small notebook, handwritten with "Mother Castle's Washing Instructions." I keep them in a letter-sized envelope, and for several years had them tacked above my desk. Now I have them tucked away for safe keeping.

By the time I started college, I had already become mostly familiar with the job of doing laundry. It went like this: take stuff out of the already-sorted laundry baskets (or piles, depending on how things were going) and put it into the washer, then follow it through the dryer to the baskets for folding. (I've already blogged about "glumphing," so I won't belabor it here.) I usually tried to ignore the folding part, but didn't often get away with it.

Now that I was leaving for college, I had to add one more element to all of this: sorting my own laundry. >gulp< I didn't have much that was red, as I recall, so I wasn't too worried about ending up with pink socks. But I did want to keep from turning my white t-shirts from turning a dull grey after being washed with items of clothing in various colors. So my mom wrote out her advice on the matter.

Some gems:
"If you have anything new that is a bright color, wash it only with things you want to turn that color. Especially note -- red things must be washed several times before they stop turning things pink, and even after that I wouldn't trust it with your unders."

"Each group [that you have sorted] must be washed separately -- don't sort them and then wash them together, that would be dumb."

"Load machine 3/4 full loosely -- don't cram it in the machine, that just lets the washer make mud and spread it on all the clothes."

"Never pour bleach right on the clothes -- you're a good kid, but you don't need holy clothes."

On doing an extra rinse for whites that look grey: "You can pay the extra to wash them twice in the washer (once on cold, then the usual way), or you could rinse them by hand -- I guarantee your hands won't melt."

"If possible do not dry anything on 'hot' -- unless (a) the dryer doesn't really mean 'hot' or (b) the clothes are all cotton or (c) you're in a hurry and you don't care that your clothes will come out small enough to fit your little brother and so wrinkled that Goodwill won't take them."

And at the end: "P.S. Do not try to wait and bring all your dirty clothes home at Thanksgiving."

Wouldn't you agree that wisdom such as this needs to be shared?

I have started instructing my son, John, on how to handle the laundry. He's up to loading the sorted laundry, putting in the detergent and fabric softener, starting the load, glumphing, and putting the clean, unfolded laundry in a place that I will trip over it, so it'll eventually get folded. I will make him a fresh copy of "Mother Castle's Washing Instructions," possibly retitling it "Granny Gerry's Washing Instructions" for him, and set him to the task of sorting.

Now, if I can get him to fold and put away the landry, that'd be great. I still try to ignore it.

I'm back!

Okay, I haven't actually been anywhere, I just haven't had the wherewithall to post for two months. Not much to say, I guess.

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Like the rest of the world, I'm still stunned at the destruction and loss in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. Words fail me. Words fail me even more at the posturing and political hay being made by anyone who can convene a press conference. I'd be happier with the President if some of his visits with people who have lost everything were less publicized. I guess you can't do much about that; if he's out there, everyone's going to want to know what he's doing. Wouldn't it be nice if he, the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama would take their entourages do some shelter and lend a hand PHYSICALLY, and NOT hold a press conference? A lot of people are frustrated that they can't get into some of those areas and DO something to help. Here are people who can call up a helicopter or caravan of Hummers, and get in there, and they're spending more time on camera than passing out MREs.

And of course, it's all [insert your least favorite political figure or group here]'s fault.

I'm befuddled by the people who are making the rescue and recovery a racial issue. Yes, it is true that most of the folks that we saw on the news who were in danger and needing help were African-American. It is true that of all the poor people in this country, a disproportional number of them are African-American. This is the result of many factors; I'm not a sociologist, I can't list all the factors, but it's obvious that we're a far cry from "getting over" the racism that was part of the fabric of the culture during the founding of our country.

But to say that the response to the disaster was tainted by racism is pretty hard for me to accept. The slow response was horribly, shockingly unacceptable, but I don't think it had anything to do with bigotry. It's just another opportunity for people with an agenda to get their faces on TV.

Consider this: the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needs an incredible number of people to respond to sudden emergencies. When there's not an emergency, the need far fewer people working for them. How do they go from "normal" mode to "emeregency" mode? How do they mobilize people into an area where the infrastructure has been wiped out, and where the number of people needing help is staggering? I think it probably could have happened faster, but I'm still amazed that they can get anything going in such a chaotic situation.

I am praying that God will be apparent to the people who are having to evaluate their lives and figure out what they are going to do. I'm praying that they will look away from what they've lost and toward what they can gain by faith in God. I'm praying that they find hope, not just relief from their losses.

If ignorance is bliss, I'm a VERY happy man.

There are any number of things I don’t understand. That, I suppose, does not make me unique, but in admitting it, I feel that I elevate myself somewhat above those who refuse to seek wisdom by confessing their need for it. Of course, that is probably an unwise feeling on my part.

One thing I don’t understand is the appeal of the idea of having a “soul mate.” I understand essentially what it means. The basic idea is that we are born as one of two “twin souls,” or some would say, with half of a soul, and it is our destiny in life to wander the earth until we find our other half, our “spiritual twin,” and join our lives together to be complete. If we fail to find that person, we will never know the great joy of being a “whole person.” With something on the order of 6 billion people living in the world, the odds of finding that one person make this a rather depressing idea, to me. Of course, if “destiny” is involved, I suppose it would arrange to at least lob the two souls in the same corner of the planet.

There is a more popular understanding of the idea of a soul mate, though. A soul mate is someone with whom you share a deep affinity, and with whom your every moment is comfortable, happy, and open. You share pastimes, you complete each others sentences, and there is no barrier between the two of you. This is because, again, you are “meant to be together.” It’s supposed to be a very romantic notion.

I feel this is just plain hooey. What is romantic about the idea that I picked my wife because I was meant to, because “destiny” brought us together, and we couldn’t help it? It seems much more romantic to say that I chose her, out of all the other women I might have chosen, to spend my life with.

I have never regretted that choice. I have often regretted how unfit I am for the task of being a husband, but have not regretted that she is the poor woman I have inflicted myself upon! I’m not an awful guy, really, but if I’d know how much of a heartless, thoughtless jerk I can be at times, I might have just kicked her in the shin to start with, and said, “If you can come away from that smiling, you just might understand what being married to me will be like!”

If Nina and I are to be anything like “soul mates,” it will be because both of us have chosen to do so. We chose to marry each other, and we must continue to chose to become more like the person our spouse needs in order to feel fulfilled and happy, and in order to continue to grow into the person they need to be.

I am thinking of these things today because I talked to a friend this morning who is having some difficulties in his marriage. He is very confused and hurt by everything going on, but is honest enough to realize that he is not without fault in the situation, and is trying to figure out how to move forward and make things better. He’s learning to put words to ideas he instinctively knew, but is now having to flesh out into words so that he and his wife can talk constructively about their relationship. Things like, “Getting married is easy; staying married is hard work.” Well, what does that hard work look like? It’s different for each marriage, though it’s bound up in similar principles: find out what your spouse needs, what they want, and meet those needs and wants as best you can, without sacrificing yourself. If both partners give themselves to this principle, it can make things easier. The problems arise in wanting to give yourself to your spouse, and in really being able to identify and distinguish between their wants and their needs.

Well, that’s what’s on my mind right now. A tad heavy, I realize, but what fun is thinking about this stuff if you don’t make someone else put up with it?

Happy Birthday to me!

Today I turn 41. Nothing special about 41, I suppose, except that it's the last prime-numbered birthday before.... 43.

We're not planning much of anything for today. Kids have school, wife has work, son has end-of-season party with his baseball team. My wife's hospital is having its very crucial accreditation review and state inspection right now, so she's pretty well consumed with that. I may take myself to breakfast, just for the fun of it. Other than that, my day looks filled with laundry and kitchen cleaning.

Someone asked me the other night if I was having a midlife crisis. I responded, "I'm not done with my first childhood, and I'm supposed to be starting a second one?" I'm not buying a sports car, I'm not looking to looking to change careers (that kind of happened for me), and I'm not yearning to sail around the world in a VW bug. I suppose I'm content with the way things are. I never had any big plans for my life; I've just always wanted to be a good guy and to have people think I'm worth knowing. So far, so good.

Well, I guess I'll let you know what's on my birthday wish list, since you asked. (Okay, nobody did, but I've got to fill up some space here.)

• The Real Group's "Live in Stockholm" album. I've recently discovered this great a cappella group from Sweden, and just can't get enough of them.


• Star Trek: Insurrection on DVD. Once a Trekkie, always a Trekkie.


• A Starbucks gift card, of any value. I've recently begun enjoying soy lattes. I never liked a regular latte because of the flavor of milk. Soy milk takes care of that, so I get a good cup of strong coffee that's not too sweet.


• An iTunes gift certificate. The perfect gift for a music-loving, iPod-toting computer geek!


• And, of course, the ever-popular (at least to me) Hawaiian shirt!

Other than that, I'd be happy to hear from you, and for you to treat yourself to a good cup of coffee, or an apple fritter, or fish taco, or a few minutes of good music, as a "Happy Tim's Birthday to You" gift.

And be sure to think of my parents, Garey and Gerry Castle, of San Diego, CA. Today is their 44th wedding anniversary, as well.

Beat up the guy in the rat suit.

I am writing this in the local Chuck E. Cheese, where we have brought our kids, as all good parents must, in order to amuse them, feed them, and prepare them for a life of gambling. It's a "gateway drug" of amusement. From here, they will feel at ease on the carnival midway, forking over mounds of cash in the hopes of acquiring one of those adorable stuffed animals the size of an NFL linebacker.

When they're older, it's on to Dave & Buster's, the adult version of Chuck E. Cheese, without the climbing tunnels. Good thing, I suppose; it wouldn't be wise to locate those tunnels too close to a full-service bar, especially with all those adults around. (shudder)

The next nefarious step is, of course, Las Vegas, or Atlantic City, depending on which is either 1) closer, or 2) a place you are less likely to see anyone you know. Of course, here in California, we have the "Indian casinos," thus allowing all of the folks who are too old for Chuck E. Cheese a more convenient place to lose all their money.

The final destination on this forbidding road is, of course, Bingo at the local Catholic church. That's one place you REALLY don't want any alcohol served -- some of those folks are as likely as anyone to be packing heat, ready to use it whenever some young punk in a Dave & Buster's t-shirt yells "Bingo!" when the caller read G-53, instead of the G-52 that was needed.

The whole point of a place like Chuck E. Cheese is, obviously, to get you to into a place that is noisy enough, flashy enough, and scary enough to distract you from noticing how much money you are spending. I have this image whenever I enter of the very nice young person at the gate, first stamping all the hands with a number in invisible ink (The mark of the beast? Perhaps. I'm always careful to proffer my left hand, just in case.), then inserting a vacuum hose into my wallet.

A trip to Chuck E. Cheese, however, is a gift that keeps on giving. The kids enjoy whatever little toys they get with the tickets they win. My wife and I enjoy how much quieter it seems at home, after having subjected ourselves to someplace much, much noisier for a while. And we all share the most lasting effect of the trip: Indigestion.

Depriving my children

I am a bad father.

At least, that seems to be the message I'm getting, whether explicitly or subliminally, from various quarters around me. I have deprived my children of one of the basics of life in the 21st century. They don't have an Xbox. Nor do they have a GameCube, PlayStation 2, Gameboy, GameGear, Nintendo DS, or Sony PSP. How DO they ever survive?

I did break down and buy a Nintendo 64 a couple of years ago, just before it was relegated to antique status by the GameCube. And I do mean only "just before." By a matter of weeks. I knew the GameCube was coming, and yet, I bought my son a dinosaur waiting to happen. And only four games. We've since added three to that count, thanks to eBay and a couple of garage sales.

I don't feel compelled to buy anything newer right now, of course, since Micro$oft and $ony have announced their new consoles, and I'm may have missed mention of whatever Ninten-dough is coming out with next. I need to wait until a few weeks before their release to buy something obsolete.

When I talk to other parents, they seem rather shocked that I don't have one of the current-generation game consoles. Some are surprised because they know that I am a computer and electronics junkie, and it would be only natural, in their view, for me to want to keep up with gaming electronics, as well. Others are suprised because they know that I have an 8-year-old son, which, of course, means that I have a person in the house who begs and whines for whatever the latest thing is, especially when "...everyone in school already has one!" These folks seem shocked that I could resist the begging and whining. "I finally just gave up and gave it to him so that he'd be quiet!" seems to be something of a mantra shared by way too many parents.

Now, I don't want to get on a rant about other people's parenting skills, especially since I know my kids are probably on the fast track to being part of, at some point in their lives, an organization whose name beings with, "Adult Children of...." (insert some disease here, like "bookaholic," "caffeine-dependent loser," "computer geek," etc.) But it seems to me that when you give in to whining, you're training the kids to whine. They whine for something, you resist. They whine more, you resist more. They whine long enough, and you give in. It's a battle of endurance, and whoever gives up first is saying to the other, "I recognize that yours is the dominant will in this relationship, and I look forward to surrendering to you in some future battle."

I don't like these kinds of battles, and I'm hoping that by not giving in to them, my kids will eventually give them up, in favor of some more socially-acceptable way of getting whatever they want out of me. Like blackmail.

Hey, now, there's an idea for a video game: "Parent-Child Power Struggles." They come up with that for the MicroSonyTendo XGamePlayBoxCubeStation, and I'll buy one! Of course, my kids'd still probably beat me at it.

It's not a hiatus, it's a lull.

Well, I'm back. I realize that I haven't written anything here in... oh, well, a 'coon's age," perhaps a geriatric 'coon's age. I am not going to promise that I will try to be more prolific, more faithful, more diligent at this. I will write when I will write, and leave it at that. Didja ever hear the old line about, "When I feel the urge to work, I lie down until it goes away." Well, when it comes to blogging, I've been lying down quite a bit lately.

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Okay, I realize that this topic has probably been overdone by way too many stand-up comedians, but I think I'm just a tad fed up with the "model years" of cars being offset from the date they actually hit the showrooms.

In April 2003, we bought a brand-spankin' new 2004 Toyota Sienna van. We got ours when people who had been on the waiting lists to buy them were still waiting. (It was a matter of timing and luck, when my wife happened to call a dealer who had taken delivery of the vehicle, but the person who had ordered it backed out of the deal.)

But let's face it. That "2004" vehicle, which was available in the early second quarter of 2003, was probably assembled in early 2003, based on prototypes made in 2002, based on design work done in 2001. It's already three-year-old technology when you drive it off the lot! No wonder cars can't seem to hold their value!

Still, we love our van. On road trips, it's a great step up from my wife's 1999 (1997?) Camry. And it was cool to be driving one of the few on the road, at the time we bought it. About a week into our ownership, though, we pulled into a parking lot in San Diego (about 500 miles from here) and parked next to our van's twin. The polish was already wearing off.

Now, of course, you can't stroll through a Wal-Mart parking lot without seeing three or four vans just like ours, down to the color and options (running boards, moon roof, DVD player, tinted windows, just to name a few). The incidence grows ever higher the closer you get to the location of gymnastics lessons, dance classes, little league parks, and other such kid-saturated locations. There's practically one in every garage -- right next to the potof chicken.

...I still love you in my heart.

This afternoon, my wife, Nina, called from work to ask a question. Our daughter, Natalie picked up the phone in the other room, knowing it was her mommy. She was her usual cute self, but was interrupting a little, so we had to ask her to hang up. She complied, but then she got back on and said, "Mommy, I forgot to tell you. I love you, and even when I think I don't love you, I know I still love you in my heart."

What a great sentiment! In her own childlike way, Natalie was recognizing that sometimes we don't feel so happy about those we love, but that doesn't change our love for them. She expressed it so beautifully that I just had to record it for posterity!

A new toy... and thankfulness

I splurged a mighty splurge the other day, and purchased an Apple PowerBook G4 laptop. My old Dell laptop had finally outworn its welcome, falling short on performance and capabilities when I needed them the most. In replacing it, I wasn’t going to go for the cheapest option, but for an option that would last me as long as possible. Since I have an 10-year old Powerbook 530c that still works (slow though it may be), and two Windows laptops that are five and six years old that have failed, I opted for a Macintosh. I should have done it sooner.

I’ve used Macs since they came out in 1984, and have used Windows since version 1.0. I used other things before that (MS-DOS, CPM), and have used various other systems in the past 25 years (Unix, Linux, VAX/VMS, etc). I have always found that the Mac systems were the ones that helped me get things done without getting in my way. David Pogue said it best: “I’m not a Mac bigot, I’m an elegance bigot.”

Windows has always been problematic. Before Windows 2000 came out, being an expert at Windows was always about knowing how to overcome its shortcomings. Windows XP was a major improvement when it came out, and I continue to favor it over all previous versions of Windows. It’s the closest Microsoft has ever come to “plug and play,” and has been by far the most stable Windows ever.

But give me a Mac any day. Especially now with Mac OS X, with its Unix underpinnings, it’s a real geek’s operating system, with a face that even your grandmother can love! For the past several years, I have had both a Mac G4 and an HP Pavilion Pentium 3 on my desk. They’re about as old as each other. I have had to reinstall everything on the HP at least three times, when it has completely crashed on me. Getting all of my programs reinstalled and getting everything configured correctly takes hours and hours. I have had to reinstall everything on my Mac G4 exactly once; recovering my configuration was as easy as moving a few folders around, and I only had to reinstall two programs. Time spent: about two hours.

So the choice to get a new PowerBook was as easy. Deciding to spend the money was tough, but with my consulting business coming together, I have some justification to make such an investment.

Tuesday, when I went to buy it, I went to the Apple Store at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton. That’s very near my friend John’s office, so I invited him to come with me and share the fun! He met me there, and we gawked and drooled at all the fun stuff in the store while we were waiting for them to get all the pieces I wanted together. Then we went back over to his office, so I could open it up, kick the tires, all while kibbutzing and drinking coffee together. It doesn’t get much better than that. Well, maybe if there had been a large-ish basket of Gordon Biersch’s garlic fries....

As I was driving to John’s office, I was feeling very thankful. I started praying a prayer of thanksgiving to God. Not so much for the laptop; I doubt whether God gets as excited about our new toys as we do. But I was thankful for having a vocation that I enjoy, and good tools to do it with, and for friends who I can share such non-essentials with. Especially since I have several friends (John, Ken R., Walt B., Brian S., as well as my brother and my dad) who are fellow geeks and fellow Christians. The material things we enjoy together (computers, coffee, baseball, music, books) are transient, but the faith we share is eternal. We can talk about our mutual interests, build friendships based on our shared experiences, and know that we are building relationships that will be carry on into eternity. Computers will crash, become obsolete, and go in and out of fashion, but the fellowship of Jesus’ followers will go on forever.

So, what do you think? Is God a Windows user or a Mac user?

...but it's a good tired.

My family and I spent Friday and Saturday attending the ZOE Group worship conference in Fresno. We got back home at 1:00 Sunday morning, very tired, but very blessed. I just wanted to note a few of the blessings here.

We got to the College Church of Christ a bit late Friday morning. Nina and I, with John and Natalie in tow, greeted Eric Noah-Wilson, the guy who keeps the ZOE ministry ticking, in the foyer, and then walked over to the chapel, where worship was already starting. Walking in, Brandon was the first person I saw, and his smile greeted us warmly. He's a good guy, and such a gifted servant of God. We found space in the back, and and joined in the worship. Despite knowing only about a dozen people in the room of nearly a hundred people, it felt comfortable and welcoming to lift our voices and hearts with these other Jesus-followers.

In the Worship Minister's track, we found a corner in the back of the room with a sofa in it, and got the kids settled. Now I know what you're thinking. Taking kids into a conference, with all the talking to bore them, and continually having to shush them and get them to settle down. After all, they're only 8 and 5 years old! But the kids did great. We did have to shush them occasionally, and try to keep them from moving around too much. But for the most part, they were fine. It helped that the air of the session was very informal. I was struck by how blessed Nina and I are to have kids that we can trust to behave themselves in such situations.

Later, we had a quiet worship time, with three stations to participate in various activities, and quiet music playing, with readings showing on the screen. Great blessings in this time. First, my son, John was dragging me away from the folks I was talking with in the hallway beforehand, because he wanted to go in and do the different stations. He and Natalie were both excited about doing these things. I didn't know they'd even been listening to Brandon's explanation of the stations. The one that he and Natalie both enjoyed was the one with modeling clay, where the task was to sculpt something that represented your heart, given to God. John's first (of 11!) sculpture depicted the recent Indonesian tsunami. That's something which has been on his mind a lot lately. He really hurts for those affected. Natalie's creation depicted Jesus on the cross. It was so great to see them getting the point of the activity. At the prayer station, we were to write the names of people who needed God's touch on post-it notes and put them on the wall; then we were to pray over all the names as we looked over them. Natalie made sure to add my wife's grandmother, who has just gone from a 3-month hospital stay into a nursing home. At the meditation station, the scripture to read and meditate on was Psalm 51, which I had just read that morning. It has been on my mind ever since.

It was great to see our kids participating in these simple worship exercises. Brandon talked about how his Maddie still talks about a worship activity that they did several months ago at their church. The hands-on, tactical, illustrative things that have a lesson can be so powerful for children, helping them connect to God in meaningful ways that will secure their hearts to Him.

During the worship time, music was playing; Brandon had chosen some songs by Fernando Ortega, including two of my all-time favorites: "Jesus, King of Angels" and "Give Me Jesus." The latter always reminds me of Dr. Paul Piersall, who was the director of the Seaver College Singers when I was at Pepperdine. "Doc" was a great teacher, a gifted director, and a godly man who helped us see how what we were doing had an impact on the listeners, as well as on ourselves. We always ended our concerts with "Give Me Jesus," and I'll never forget the last concert we did with Doc, in Camarillo, CA in May of 1986. None of us got through that song without a few tears, and Doc himself broke down with us. He's now the chair of the Music Department at Abilene Christian University.

In the afternoon session, we made a new friend. Jack Weldon, a new member at the College Church, who asked if our kids might like to play with his son, Dakota, who was at home a few blocks away, and BORED! A little later, Dakota came in, and John and Natalie had a new buddy! They played the rest of the afternoon, and again on Saturday. Saturday evening, Jack and his wife Carrie invited the our kids to spend the evening at their house, watching movies and playing with their kids, while we went to the conference. It was such a blessing to meet some great people, and make new friends. Jack and Carrie own the Koffeeheads coffeehouse in Fresno, which, I understand, is quite popular there. I'll have to check it out the next time we're down there!

It was good to meet Chris "Sweet Tea" Lockhart, from Mobile, AL. He's the youth and family minister at the Port City Church of Christ, and we had met via WorshipForum.com, but it was good to share a few meals with him, and get to know him better.

It was also good to spend time with Owen and Dorothy Burgess from Bakersfield. They are dear friend whom we have known only about four years, but it seems as if we've been friends forever. They're very musically gifted, and approach and life with such genuine love for God. We've shared many meals with them -- most of them at Cracker Barrel in Nashville!

It was a great blessing to me to have so many people come up and say hello, after having seen my name and face on WorshipForum.com It's good to make connections with other people who are interested in studying and discussing worship. I met Ken McAlpin, the new music minister at the Campbell Church of Christ, former member of Acappella, and a really neat guy. I finally put the name with the face of Allen Gillespie, another WorshipForum friend. Chris Lindsey, of Watershed Worship and MediaShout was good to talk to about both of those endeavors.

As we left Saturday night, we were touched by all those who were concerned for our late-night drive home, with the possibility of fog, and knowing how tired we'd be. We made it home safely, with not too much fog, and with a strong sense of God's blessings on us.

No confessions, here, please!

I've been doing more blog reading than blogging lately (obviously), and it's interesting to think about the very broad range in the kinds of blogs there are, and what people seem to want to do with them. For some, they're writing commentary on their fields of expertise. Others use their blog to rant and rave about politics, religion, culture, or the irritating people in their lives. There are a LOT of blogs that are outlets for peoples' silliness and nothing else.

And then some use them as an alternative to getting counseling, spilling their guts about everything going on in their lives, and the awful things in their lives that have messed them up so badly, and taking time to lay the blame on everyone they possibly can, especially their parents. I suppose they think they're just shouting into the void, but what if their parents actually found their blogs and started reading them? Their kids couldn't get mad, since it's not like the parents have picked the cheap lock on their diaries to dig into their kids' lives. You post it on the web, and who knows who can see it?

I just can't see using my blog as a diary and confessional, myself. Why people would lay out in front of God and everybody all of their problems and shortcomings is beyond me. The people who are closest to me know my shortcomings pretty darn well, and if they want to complain about me on their own blogs, more power to 'em. But I just can't bring myself to confess all of my iniquities and point the finger of blame at my parents.

'Cause I KNOW my mom reads my blog.

Not long after posting my Christmas wish list, I was talking with my mom on the phone, and she asked what I wanted for Christmas. I told her that I'd posted it on my blog, so instead of having to get a pen to write down the list, she could print it out from her computer. Just tryin' to be helpful, mom!

The next day she called me again. Her first words were, "Okay, now you've done it."
"Oh?" says I. "What this time?"
She replied, "I read your blog."
"Oh." I was furiously racking my brain to try and remember if I'd said something negative about her, or my father, or any of the multitude of mistakes they made in raising me, or if I had written some confession of some hither-to-unconfessed childhoot transgression.
Mom went on. "I read all of it."
"Aha."
"Then I followed some of the links to some of your friends' blogs."
"Oh!"
"And I read all of theirs."
By this time, I'm thinking, "What's a woman your age doing sitting in front of the computer, playing voyeur to other people's lives? Haven't you got anything better to do than that, like going out and trying to scrape up money to buy me the iPod I have on my wish list?!!!" But I didn't tell her that.

Though I guess I have now. Oops.