Interesting thought re: Wesley's theology of the providence of God

"The coherence of Wesley's teaching on the omnipotence of God is questionable.  How God is the sole agent whose providence is responsible for everything except human sin is not clear.  Wesley protects human freedom, but even that is to be ascribed to God's grace.  One reason his thought is not very coherent here is that it is peripheral to his primary concern - God's saving grace.  It is God as loving parent he most wishes to describe, not God the agent whose existence explains causality in the physical world." 

| United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center by Scott J. James

Baseball Radio

Baseball is made for the radio. But the radio is pretty irrelevant, so I learned that these Podcast things are pretty cool. Not surprisingly, my favorite one is about baseball. It's by the main prospect guy from that beloved/reviled Baseball Prospectus. If you like baseball/the Reds/Steve Albini start with this one from last week:

"Green Apple Is Not Cool"

Meka vs. Eden in "Movie Hockey"?

Meka: Eden pushed me in the hallway!
Eden: Meka, I'm just playing movie hockey!

Super Slow Mo Slaps from Mythbusters [VIDEO]

Ed Helms (aka. Andy Bernard) on Fresh Air

Fun stuff on Fresh Air today.  Ed Helms & his band, the Lonesome Trio, play music. And talk & stuff.

CLICK HERE to listen.

motown

a remnant of detroit's golden days. check out the whole slideshow of detroit's fall on the link below. beautiful ruins.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,739986,00.html

Amusing Customer Service from theGameShop.com

This was in the email regarding my order:

After months of hard work, our senior toy maker has finally finished making your games. All the game pieces have been carved by hand to your exact specifications. The board was painstakingly hand-painted to be a glorious work of art. Then the contents were inspected by a team of 30 highly trained employees to ensure that your games would be perfect for the upcoming game night with your family or friends. Your games were then given to our packing specialists who placed your games into the finest gold-lined mahogany box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration when it was sealed, and the entire city of Philadelphia came out to wave "Bon Voyage!" to your package as it was loaded into our privately rented FedEx truck.

Grace E-Bike Proves Electric Transport Can Look Tough & Stylish (via @fastcodesign)

Love this description:

The ultralight Grace electric bicycle is greener than a car, less douchey than a Vespa, and looks amazing. 

How do you satisfy a bike snob, a sustainable urbanite, and a slightly lazy normal person at the same time? The Grace Pro E-motorbike, that's how. It's an ultralight commuter bicycle with a handmade aluminum frame and a lithium-ion battery to pick up the slack while climbing tough hills. But with killer styling from handlebar to taillight, the Grace Pro looks respectable enough to win over even a grizzled fixie-riding bike messenger.

See the whole post: http://bit.ly/fWg6ig

Social Media Venn Diagram (via Despair.com)

Cross to bear?

For quite some time I've been bothered by the way we folk often use the expression, "that's my cross to bear."  We say that to refer to our hangnails, difficulties at work, hard to handle children, or any number of life's miscellany that presents us with an inconvenience or challenge.  In the book From the Library of C.S. Lewis I came upon this passage from C.H. Dodd this morning.  He says what I've felt but been unable to articulate as well.

It has been taken to refer to habitual forms of self-sacrifice or self-denial.  The ascetic voluntarily undergoing austerities felt himself to be bearing his daily cross.  We shallower folk have often reduced it to a metaphor for casual unpleasantness which we have to bear.  A neuralgia or a defaulting servant is our "cross," and we make a virtue of necessity.  What Jesus actually said, according to our earliest evidence, was, quite bluntly, "Whoever wants to follow me must shoulder his gallows beam" - for such is perhaps the most significant rendering of the word for "cross."  It meant a beam which a condemned criminal carried to the place of execution, to which he was then nailed until he died.  Jesus was not using the term metaphorically.  Under Rome, crucifixion was the likeliest fate for those who defied the established powers.  Nor did those who heard understand that He was asking for "daily" habits of austerity.  He was enrolling volunteers for a desperate venture and He wished them to understand that joining it they must hold their lives forfeit.  To march behind Him on that journey was as good as to tie a halter around one's neck.  It was a saying for an emergency.  A similar emergency may arise for some Christians in any age.  In such a situation it is immediately applicable, in its original form and meaning.  For most of us, in normal situations, it is not so applicable.  But it is surely good for us to go back and understand that this is what Christ stood for in His day.  We shall then at least not suppose that we are meeting His demands in our day bearing a toothache bravely or fasting during Lent.

"Neil Young" (aka. Jimmy Fallon) & Bruce Springsteen perform "Whip My Hair." Brillian! [VIDEO]

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On [VIDEO]

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Hauschka & his prepared piano via NPR [VIDEO]

On NPR's All Things Considered this evening there was a fantastic bit about an artist who goes by Hashka & puts a bunch of junk in the grand piano creating fascinating sounds. Amazing stuff. CLICK HERE for the whole story & other videos @ NPR.

Reading & what the world wide interwebs have done to it

I was recently given a Barnes & Noble Nook. It's raised a myriad of questions...

What constitutes a book? Who owns the "book" on my device? What's an eBook "worth"? Shouldn't there be some way for me to get the hard copy books I own onto my device? Will reading on a device have the positive effect on my kids that we know setting an example of reading codex forms of books do? Don't I have an obligation to the environment and to stewardship of the earth to give reading on a device a shot (after about a dozen books the eReader becomes greener, as long as you aren't upgrading devices every year)? And more...

At his blog Scott McKnight discusses the ideas from the book The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time. (I checked to see if it was available on the Nook. It is not). McKnight summarizes some of the books thoughts:

The distraction of the internet age is one that seduces us into thinking that we can, if we read more e-mails or more tweets, be in the know or more up-to-date. There is a genine anxiety about not keeping up. 15 years ago we didn’t try to keep up with most of what drives us.


The internet provides mostly information, endless and never-ending. Reading probes into wisdom through reflection. Internet reading is an emotional hit and run; reading a good book, undistracted, for hours at a time digs deeper. There is a difference between an informed brain and a literary brain.


Reading a book well means entering into a history of conversation into which that book fits. The internet is not a conversation but a buzz of information, disconnected and disconnecting.... 

Real reading generates memory because it leads us into the world of an author and a story and a book that is interconnected to other books. Why remember when you can look it up? ...

Internet reading is about being connected; real reading, book reading, means being disconnected and lost in the world of the book.

I certainly feel the anxiety when I am not "keeping up" with the stream of information, whether that's the daily articles in my email inbox or the blogs I read used to read or my twitter feed or the newspaper I try to read on my phone. Distraction. Yeah. That's pretty much the issu...woah...a video of a kitten...

Missionary Builds Flying Car. For Reals. [VIDEO]

Baby Quinn Learning to Walk [VIDEO]

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Forgive My Family | Sermon 10-24-10 [VIDEO]

Forgive My Family | 10-24-10 from Anderson Hills United Methodist on Vimeo.

Doggie Duathlon 2010, Cheryl & Dylan [VIDEO]

Rock Show? Worship? What's the difference these days. What's "good" worship?

 

On the twitter this week this picture was posted by a church-leadery-business-thinker-type-of-person I ended up following along the way somewhere. The caption said this: "Top picture is from the inside cover of my new #Rush DVD, bottom is #OneLife worship from tonight."

Now...I can't tell for certain but it sounds like that's a good thing to him.

Is it really a good thing (or is it a bad thing or doesn't it matter) that our worship services look like a Rush show (or any other rock concert for that matter)? Do our toes have to tingle & chests feel the thump of the bass & the chord progression have to be catchy like a rock show? Hmm...

The Rise of Text Messaging [INFOGRAPHIC] (via @mashable)

Woody Guthrie pictures from LIFE.com

It's a Book [VIDEO]

Why Everything Sucks by my Favorite Scotsman (other than Brian Mitchell of course) [VIDEO]

NYT: Can We Build in a Brighter Shade of Green?
For more: http://s.nyt.com/u/mrO0