Spiritual Journey

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Everyone knows by now that the iPhone is misnamed — of all the things it is, a phone is the least of them. It’s a calculator, it’s a camera, it’s a level, it’s a photo album, it’s a DVD player (via Netflix), it’s a floor wax AND a desert topping! (That’s right, there once was a time when SNL was funny.)

It’s also a portable game player, enough so that Sony has started attacking it in it’s PSP ads. I never have been much of a game player myself, much to my son-in-law’s chagrin, but last year at Christmas my sister showed me Word Warp, and I was immediately sucked into the Black Hole from Hades.

Spiritual Journey

The Smaller Picture

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A few years ago, my wife and I went to an actual movie theater to see a movie (radical, I know). The movie, based on a short-lived sci-fi TV series from a few years prior, had received rave reviews, so, although we had never seen any of the series, we thought we’d check it out. Coming out of the theater, our collective opinion of the movie was an unqualified…

…meh!

It wasn’t a bad movie, but we certainly didn’t think it was deserving of the praise being heaped upon it. It was just… well, “meh” is the best word I can think of.

Church / Music

Speed Trap

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I recently attended The Summit, and it was, as always, excellent (more on that later). However, I was almost completely distracted during one of the sessions on the second day by a Music Speed Trap.

You know speed traps on the highway? Those places, almost always outside of small towns who have very small revenue streams, where a speed limit sign is put where you can’t see it (or can’t see it in time), and the police sit just on the other side waiting to catch you going too fast? Well, this is the like that, only with music.

There are two kinds of MST’s.

Justice

Two pollices down

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Being a critic of anything is a thankless job (that’s critic in the formal sense, not in the Internet age “I’m brilliant because I have a computer” sense). The word “critic” comes from a Greek word (doesn’t everything?) that means “able to discern,” and that’s what the best critics do — they are discerning about what they’re watching (TV/movies) or eating (food) or listening to (classical music), and then they express what they discerned in a reasoned, hopefully entertaining, way.

But, as mentioned, in the Internet age, everyone’s a critic, because everyone has an opinion, and most think that an opinion is all it takes to be a critic.

Family

Unexpected Sounds

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“Hello win column — the Texas Rangers have won the World Series!”

“And the winner for Best Actor or Actress in a Leading Role is… Megan Fox.”

“When asked about the situation, Jerry Jones only reply was, ‘No comment.’”

Unexpected sounds. Words you’re not expecting. Phrases that are out of sync with the present circumstances.

Twenty-three years ago this month, I was working as a consultant at a client site when the phone rang. The voice on the other end said someone named Sharon was on hold for me. This was odd for a couple of reasons — one, she had no idea where I was working, and two, she’d told me several months before she didn’t want to see me, “for a while.” Her voice that afternoon was completely out of the blue, as was her invitation to dinner with some friends.

Justice

Everybody must get …

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I heard a story tonight I’ve heard before. This isn’t the first time this has happened — my grandmother had favorites she told over and over, and we laughed with gusto every time we heard them, because she told them in a way that made them fresh every time. It won’t be the last time it happens — as I get older, I hear myself telling stories I’ve told before and wonder whether I’ve told it to the current audience, and pray I haven’t, because I do not have Mimi’s gift for storytelling. Unfortunately, the yawns usually tell me I have …

This particular story involved two young girls and an evil man (I don’t throw that word around lightly, as you will see).