I’m a 32-year-old wife, mom, neighbor and friend. I live in Birmingham, Alabama. I live in the city. I see why people prefer the suburbs, and that is fine for those who feel drawn to the suburbs, but I personally feel more comfortable in the city. I spend my days caring for my family, my home, and those in my community when the opportunity presents itself or slaps me in the face. I like to have a good amount of alone time. I think I need it in order to better care for others, so I spend some time trying to care for myself. Reading, yoga, art, music, wine, and food are all things that give me pleasure. I also value a really good beer—I don’t like typical domestic beer. I prefer something along the lines of Newcastle. I guess I’m a beer snob. I’m in a wine phase these days, though. I’m not much of a wine snob. I rarely meet a glass of wine that I won’t drink. More »« Less

You can listen to the entire Alison Krauss – Robert Planet album here (top left corner). I’m on track two, which is beautiful.

My guess is that when “bad things” happen to Phelps, he doesn’t interpret it as God’s judgment against him.

12 apps sent out so far. 12 of my disciples, sent out across the country to bring tidings of the gospel of Joel’s philosophy. About 75 to go. Weeee….

Sweet justice. Hope this means they’ll never be able to afford travel ever again.

Is it really that bad? How rotten is the current crop of American teenagers?

Some bloggers are offended by the reference to fundamentalist Christian lemmings. I don’t care for the pejorative, but if intellectual and academic life in the future depends on the Christians I know, then we are headed for a new dark age of some sort.

Truth is Stranger than…....Churches embrace Scientology.

Greetings, Charlotte, and welcome!

We’re gearing up for parties, trick-or-treating and lots of candy, so I may not get to do my bio and whatnot til later tonight or tomorrow… So my slight delay in doing all of this is not because I’m not absolutely thrilled about the whole thing, it’s that I need to be thrilled and expectant with my children for the next few hours. We need to do more “practice” trick-or-treating at the back door for my two and a half year old son who has no recollection of this fun craziness. We also need to eat some scrambled eggs and other high-protein food stuffs to off-set the impending sugar situation…

Welcome, Charlotte.

Woohoo, I’m not the newest drunk anymore.

I’d like to welcome the newest BHT fellow, Charlotte. She was initially impressed, which was a bad sign, so I put her on hold for a while and she still wants in. After sending me a nice bio and writing samples, I’m convinced she’ll do well.

Sadly, I’m removing Kent from the list. If you’re out there, Kent, give me an email and catch me up. If it was something I did, I apologize.

One IM commenter said it well. This is the day we can all feel good saying “I am of Paul” and “I am of Apollos” and, of course, “I am of Christ.”

• What the hell is Reformation Day?  I thought it was Halloween…


• I don’t celebrate Reformation day.  October 31 was originally a pagan holiday that Christians like Luther and Calvin co—opted.  I don’t want to celebrate a holiday with pagan roots.


• At least the holiday I’m celebrating has the word “holy” in it.

TSK on the Emerging view of the Reformation.

One IM commenter said it well. This is the day we can all feel good saying “I am of Paul” and “I am of Apollos” and, of course, “I am of Christ.”

participation in Christ’s death and resurrection.

MOD: You don’t know what “You died with Christ and you were raised with Christ means?” As in, “I don’t understand the Biblical concept?” ??

Auth: Good point.  I mean I don’t know what that means if abstracted from belief.

I thought Jesus said a lot about believing, especially in the Gospel of John.  It seems to me that one of John’s big themes was that “through me” means “believing in me.”  Getting caught up and participating in a way of life is great and all, but Jesus gives quite a bit of attention to faith as well.

All: The point that Buechner is making is that reducing Christianity down to either of ‘Christians believe …’ or ‘Christians do …’ misses the reality that what makes us Christians is the fact that we are in Christ; and (as all good Presbyterians, even us liberal literary PCUSA types know) we are in Christ because of Christ, and not as a result of anything we believe or do. Belief and action are responses that only come out of our participation in Christ’s death and resurrection.

You can accuse Buechner – and me, and Jack, and Capon (and probably Michael, although it’s not accurate) – of being universalist, but you can’t accuse him of not being a good Calvinist.

Michael: I’m becoming convinced that God reserves hell for people who think that other people should go there. What makes Hell hell is that those people, when they get there, will think they are in heaven simply because they will observe the absence of the people they consigned to “hell,” while at the same time they will entirely overlook the more pressing Absence they have in fact demanded.

Ben Myers asks “Can we prove the resurrection?”

Joe Carter calls to mind the golden age of the BHT, when Scott Ward did his Chick tract commentaries and all was right with the world.

I’m sure Buechner is going to hell with the rest of the literary types.

With about 10% Calvinist pastors in the SBC, Timmy Brister is still optimistic that younger SBC leaders are going to lead a Calvinistic reformation.. I love my Calvinist brothers, but they are all hived in at SBTS, listening to one another and really out of touch with 90% of the SBC. This will never be a Calvinistic denomination guys. Calvinists can play a part in reforming and do much good, but this denomination won’t be, can’t be and shouldn’t be Calvinistic.

You know, of course, that we are risking guilt by association for even mentioning Buechner here. I have read some Buechner. He makes me think. I don’t formulate my theology with him as a strong resource.

Count me among the delusional (Ron Paul) and among those who think Buechner’s off his rocker (whoever he is). Attempts like his always collapse within a paragraph or two. So, it’s not about “believing” or “doing” anything. Instead:

He said it was only by him – by living, participating in, being caught up in the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.

I don’t know who Buechner is but I’m pretty sure he’s incorrect on several points.

Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily believes certain things. That Jesus is the son of God, say. Or that Mary is a virgin. Or that the Pope is infallible. Or that all other religions are all wrong.

Others think of a Christian as one who necessarily does certain things. Such as going to church. Getting baptized. Giving up liquor and tobacco. Reading the Bible. Doing a good dead a day.

Some think of a Christian as just a nice guy.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). He didn’t say that any particular ethic, doctrine or religion was the way, the truth and the life. He said that he was. He didn’t say that it was by believing or doing anything in particular that you could “come to the Father.” He said it was only by him – by living, participating in, being caught up in the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.

Thus it is possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason, you may be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God.

A Christian is one who is on the way, although not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank.

A Christian isn’t necessarily nicer than everybody else, just beter informed.

Tom: delusional.

Jim, so what am I if I support Ron Paul?

Neuhaus doubts the New York Times’ announcement of “The Evangelical Crack-Up.”

Chuck Warnock on Theological Hair Splitting (including Piper on Masturbation and Reformed Theology.) Congrats to Chuck on being added to the Christian Century family.

I agree with Chuck that turning everything into a discussion of how much reformed theology you understand is ridiculous.

Heard these guys at the Celebrate Recovery meeting tonight. In the category of kickin’ band necessary for megachurch evangelical good times, they get a 10. Very good new band. Check them out.

Look familllllllliar?

“If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and…great laughter.”

You have to suffer from a personality disorder to vote Democrat.

You have to be completely cynical to vote Republican.

You have to be delusional to support a third-party candidate.

I will probably vote Republican, but like other Republican-supporters, I won’t really mean it.

Because I don’t remember making a post about the Golden Compass or high school girl curriculum :-)

Jim: I used to think that as long as you had one computer per person, you wouldn’t need something like an AppleTV. However, it turns out that when the kids are on “Gumby,” my wife is on “Lappy,” and I’m on “Monster,” I sometimes want to watch something with roughly half my attention, and I need all my screen real estate. So yeah, an AppleTV is looking pretty good right now.

What’s really sad is when a couple of brothers come over to hang out, and each brings along his MacBook, too. A living room with four people tapping on laptops and four glowing Apple logos is a little strange. Nice, but strange. At least it only happens once the kids have gone to bed, so the iMac sits dormant in the other room.
While I’m geeking out Apple-style, I should mention that I only recently discovered just how wonderful those boomboxes with iPod jacks are. Sadly, I discovered them just after getting an iPhone, and so far all the ones I’ve encountered in the wild are not certified to work with the iPhone. Either the iPhone doesn’t fit snugly, or I get a warning prompting me to switch to “airplane mode” to avoid interference.

If anybody spots a device that will get decent sound out of my iPhone, I’d appreciate a tip. Thanks!

The Mighty Mouse of portable speakers.

This appeared at Monday Morning Insight. It cracks me up. I wonder if the Ken/Ingrid bot is aware it now has developed its own dialect?

First of all… today, I’d like to make an apology. Yesterday in the buzz, I wrongly said that Rev. Ken Silva wrote a piece over at his CRN website about the Robert Schuler “ReThink” conference. Turns out that it wasn’t indeed Ken that wrote the post; but rather “Editor”, who is someone other than Ken. My apologies, Ken. In return for my blunder, Ken managed to get some digs in on me as well. In typical fashion, Ken (or someone writing for Ken) called my workplace (Leadership Network), ‘a group of seeker sensitive new evangelicals who made sure the slumbering American Christian Church would have the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church.’ He also managed to call Schuler and Erwin McManus “sinner-sensitive semi-pelagians”, Rupert Murdoch a ‘christian pornographer’ and Rick Warren the “purpose driven pope”. Yeah, I remember when I was in third grade. Again, my apologies.

Don’t tell the Kenbot I’m going to a Celebrate Recovery Meeting tonight!!

More links, quotes and comment from Chataway on The Golden Compass.

Many thanks to the generous BHT lurkers who donated funds to purchase our High School Girl’s Bible Study curriculum. We’ve covered the cost and will designate the excess for the next curriculum need for those young ladies, probably after Christmas. I appreciate your partnership and confidence. Again, many thanks.

I have a ‘no private itunes library’ rule on the family computers. We keep a single itunes library for everyone on a shared external drive attached to a system that acts as a server.

I’ve created playlists for each of the 3 ipods we own, so that everyone gets their own stuff. I also have a playlist for videos that go on the iPhone.

I will be looking very seriously at Apple TV soon, mainly as a music/media server so I can play things from the itunes library while someone is using the computers.

Matthew: I used to have both a 10GB iPod and an iPod shuffle synced at once. They had different names, and when I plugged one in, it would remember which playlist I had told it to sync with. So that’s it—just give them different names, and tell them each to sync with a different playlist.

I now have four iPods in my house, but I’m currently only syncing one of them. I need to start distributing them to my children, or something. One’s still in the package, and the two mentioned above are very old.

Michael, let’s face it: you’ve been skirting the edges of being a Southern Baptist for years, and it’s time for you to make the jump and join them.

Does anyone have 2 ipods using one iTunes library? I just acquired an iPod nano in addition to my 3 year old 20GB iPod and want to use the nano for exercise. That means two or three playlists and some podcasts. Can someone tell me how to do this?