Another week, another grainy cellphone photo from the Cathedral... Last night we went to the Bruce Cockburn solo show and that makes it two visits to the Cathedral within a week of each other. I was telling Janel how the last time I had a chance to go to a Cockburn concert I couldn't go because I was broke. It was at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing in 1998 -- I had borrowed money to buy my ticket to the festival and couldn't afford the $10 ticket for the concert. Fortunately I did get to go to the session he led and got to hear him talk about his writing and play a few short selections for us. I wanted to go to the Cathedral show in part because I missed that one, but also because it seemed like a rare opportunity -- considering the venue. I loved it. The sound had a definite resonance and it felt like an intimate little gathering (with people in the audience calling out now and then). What an amazing guitarist!
I've had this SOTU remix on my list of things to do for a while, and since the State of the Union is more ancient history every day, making this project less and less relevant, I decided the anniversary of the war was as good a time as any to tackle it. So last evening while Janel was cramming for her comprehensive exam, I was acting immature, but having fun doing it. Click below for the result (which ended up being a lot shorter than I initially intended, but I ran out of time to work on it.)
We joined in the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq service at the National Cathedral last night and marched down to the vigil at the White House. The service was inspiring and I appreciated the explicit Christian emphasis. Interfaith gatherings have their place, but there was something powerful about the fact that it was a Christian peace witness, that we were gathered there because of our faith...maybe because the war and US foreign policy have often been couched in language and imagery that has been misappropriated from Christianity.
Janel forwarded an article to me this evening which is an interesting look at some of the "revolution" that is nascent in evangelicalism. It's nice to get confirmation now and then that this is something larger that's brewing and not just a little pocket of people I happen to know. God knows that the church in this culture could use a little revolution. Click through for a taste and a link to the full article.
One more thing about Friedman's The World is Flat before I move on: why isn't he more excited about Open Source? It's not that he's overtly negative--at times he's actually somewhat positive about it and the concept of "uploading" (the ability to participate in the online experience instead of just consuming it). I have to say that I was expecting him to be giddy about it since it fits so perfectly into his theme of the "flat world." In terms of software, how much flatter can you get than free (flattening the playing field in terms of cost) with source code available (flattening the playing field in terms of opportunities to learn and explore the code). How much flatter for developing countries who can now redirect payments from Microsoft (to license software) into their own economies (in the form of local support for the free software)?
Janel forwarded an article to me this evening which is an interesting look at some of the "revolution" that is nascent in evangelicalism. It's nice to get confirmation now and then that this is something larger that's brewing and not just a little pocket of people I happen to know. God knows that the church in this culture could use a little revolution. Click through for a taste and a link to the full article. 
One more thing about Friedman's The World is Flat before I move on: why isn't he more excited about Open Source? It's not that he's overtly negative--at times he's actually somewhat positive about it and the concept of "uploading" (the ability to participate in the online experience instead of just consuming it). I have to say that I was expecting him to be giddy about it since it fits so perfectly into his theme of the "flat world." In terms of software, how much flatter can you get than free (flattening the playing field in terms of cost) with source code available (flattening the playing field in terms of opportunities to learn and explore the code). How much flatter for developing countries who can now redirect payments from Microsoft (to license software) into their own economies (in the form of local support for the free software)?