12 years

June 26, 1998, on a sweltering night in Charlotte, NC, Becky and I made vows, exchanged rings, and began our life together. Twelve years, three kids and one cross-country move later I am still so thankful that I can wake up every morning next to my best friend. She is a faithful companion, loving mother to the girls, tireless gardener and homemaker, and I am blessed to have her as my wife.

I love you Becky! Here’s to the next three dozen years!

Learning to spell a new word, or, how do you spell 'blerg'?

It’s fascinating to see how a new word evolves, especially in the case where a word is introduced not via written text, but rather via audible means. Twenty-one years ago Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!” appeared on the cultural scene, and quickly became a part of the American lexicon. Its addition to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2000 officially marked its transition from a cartoon interjection to an accepted part of the ever-evolving English language.

With “D’oh!”, a standard written form of the word was quickly propagated by means of episode titles of The Simpsons. The past few years, though, have introduced a new interjection with much less apparent standardization. I’m talking, of course, about Tina Fey’s portrayal of the character Liz Lemon on the popular NBC sitcom 30 Rock, and her exclamation of disgust that Wikipedia appears to have settled on spelling “blerg”.

Anyone surfing the web in the past couple of years will have encountered any number of variant spellings, all apparently based around the various authors’ ideas of how it should be spelled. Google is of great help in honing in on the popular options.

‘Blergh’ - about 94,700 results.

Adding an ‘h’ to the end is a popular way to go - Blergh is quickly found on this budgeting website and as the name of the self-proclaimed “official boy band of the 21st century”, an Aussie group whose Facebook page, as of today, boasts 17 fans.

‘Blerg’ - about 47,500 results.

This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that this is the spelling that Wikipedia has settled on. The Liz Lemon page on Wikipedia provides some insight into usage: “Liz also has a tendency to say the words “blerg” and “nerds” as a replacement for swear words.”

‘Blurg’ - about 170,000 results

It is apparent that the English-speaking world thinks that the /ur/ spelling is more intuitive than the /er/. Additional popularity for this spelling is evidenced by blogs named with this spelling, for instance blurg.tumblr.com and blurg.wordpress.com, and the fact that my wife uses it in all of her instant message sessions. (No major blog links showed up for the first two spellings. Grab ’em while you can!)

‘Blurgh’ - about 214,000 results

What is it with the added ‘h’? This hefty spelling appears to be the most popular, and has the added weight of being the spelling used by Tina Fey when she wrote about it on the 30 Rock blog.

A hint as to the fictional origin of the word can be seen in a shot from the Pilot episode of 30 Rock where this pile of unassembled Ikea-esque furniture is shown in Liz Lemon’s apartment:

blerg

Come to think of it, I might use the name of pesky assemble-it-yourself furniture as a swear word, too, if I were coining words. Using the ë, though, makes it a little bit tough to type. As for me, I’ll stick with ‘blerg’.

Another thought on church shopping and polarization

Yesterday’s post on church shopping and cultural polarization reminded me of a question I’ve been cogitating on for the past week or two.

What would it look like if we were forced to go back to attending local community churches? How would it affect our view of what was necessary in a church and what things were “essentials”?

Say gas prices spiked to the point where we couldn’t afford to drive the 10 miles each way to our church of choice. Our choices are now walking or riding bicycles on Sunday morning. In my neighborhood, that would limit my choices to four churches, one Catholic, one United Church of Christ, one “Community of Christ” (which I know very little about) and one Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

In our 2008 church search (not limited by driving distance) we didn’t really consider any Lutheran churches; would a walking-distance limit change my mind? Probably, given my options. Another possibility: would we canvas the neighborhood to see if there were other like-minded evangelicals who wanted to meet in a house church with us? Seems like an option, but it also seems somewhat fractured and silly given that there’s a LCMS church in the neighborhood.

See how quick the criteria changes? All of a sudden I’m thinking about what might be “good enough” rather than finding the church that’s exactly what I want. So what I’ve proved (to myself, at least) here is that in my non-distance-limited church choosing I’ve unconsciously made a tradeoff, choosing a church that more closely aligns with my doctrinal and worship style comfort zone above a local church that would have me going to worship with my neighbors.

This isn’t an unusual trade-off; it’s one that our suburban culture has widely adopted. Gas is (relatively) cheap, driving everywhere is natural, and so we spend time in the car to associate, or shop, or worship, with those of our choosing rather than those of our neighborhood. And this post isn’t really all that different from a slew of other blog posts and books wrestling with the suburban culture and longing for a true local community.

But it’s a challenging exercise to think through. What churches would you have as options? What would you do?

Church shopping and cultural polarization

CNN.com has a blog post today exploring “How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country”. Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I’m helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.

Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who “…believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”, and modernists, who “…would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life”. Modernists, they note, “…have become less likely to attend church at all.”

In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their “personal values”, and has modernists staying home.

The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today’s evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism’s close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.

There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors’ views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.

However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our “distinctives” to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, ’the gospel plus conservative politics’ or ’the gospel plus homeschooling’ or ’the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism’, etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.

The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.

So, I just invented a new word.

Fidgetoid, n. an object with which one fidgets.

A Google search reveals no substantive results, so I’m gonna call this a new one.

It came up after this Tweet from Geof:

I’m a fidgeter at a desk. I fidget. My current object of fidgeting is a UAH Hockey puck that Coach Cole gave me. Indestructible.

My reply:

@gfmorris A hockey puck is a good fidgetoid. Can cause some damage if you get mad and throw it, though. :-)

There you have it: language evolution in progress. I can only hope that my language hero, the late William Safire, would be proud.

Well, we joined.

After taking quite a bit of time to make our decision, Becky and I yesterday became members of Stonebridge Church (EFCA). For a while we were wondering if enough members would show up to form a quorum so we (and 14 others) could be voted into membership, but eventually enough trickled in to make it official.

It feels good to have made the decision and committed to a body of believers. We are very thankful that God has led us to this fine group of folks as we continue through life’s journey.

Staying Organized: What Tools should I Use?

Some weeks at work are calm, with just a few meetings and only one or two things to keep track of. Then there are weeks like this week, when the meetings are numerous, the to-dos are flying left and right, and the number of things to keep track of increases exponentially. It’s about at this point that I start to despair that I will ever actually keep track of it all. I’ve had a hodge-podge of tools that I’ve tried to use in the past, with only middling success. I’d love to find the right tool (or toolset) to meet my needs, so I’m throwing it out here to help organize my thoughts, and to open it up for any input my multitude of geeky and resourceful friends might have.

What I Need (or at least really want)

  • Calendar to keep track of meetings
  • Ability to attach notes to meetings - would allow me to keep track of my thoughts in preparation for the meeting.
  • Task manager to organize and prioritize tasks. Tagging/filtering for work/personal/etc would be a bonus.
  • Ability to take notes/record meeting minutes. Once they are in the past I don’t necessarily need to tie the meeting notes to the calendar item - rather, I’d like to just be able to tag and search the notes when necessary.
  • Ability to reasonably input data from my work computer when I’m at my desk. (If I have a mobile device, if at all possible I don’t want to have to step away from my computer to enter the data into another device.) I guess this implies syncing w/ my work PC.
  • Ability to sync w/ my work calendar would be a bonus, but seems like a low-probability item given that IT restricts syncing w/ the company network to company-issued devices.

What I’ve tried in the past:

  • Google Calendar - this syncs fairly well with my iPod Touch. However, this is limited by the fact that I can only sync it at home during the evening (no Wifi access at work). It also doesn’t provide much useful ability to attach notes to meetings.
  • Tasks - This nifty web-based tool from Alex King is serviceable for recording to-dos, including recurring items, etc. Works great any place I’m actually at a computer.
  • Evernote - tried it for a little while, but it didn’t seem exceptionally usable. There is an iPod Touch version but again I run into the syncing issue. I need to be able to sync more often than once per day.
  • Notebook - this retro analog device works well with a #2 pencil or black ink pen. It’s great for recording notes but quickly it gets messy and disorganized. It works best when I bring it back to my desk and then copy to-dos into Tasks or onto a paper task list.

A little analysis

OK, so let’s face it: my desire for something that stays synced up on a regular basis is a limiting factor. Given that syncing with my work network is unlikely impossible, I’m pushing myself toward a personal device w/ some sort of over-the-air network connection.

When I posted my first lament on twitter this morning, Mark Simoneau recommended Cultured Code’s Things. And I’ll admit, it does look pretty sweet. It doesn’t specifically do calendar integration, but it does very nice, slick task management, including tagging, categorizing, grouping into projects, etc. There is an iPhone/iTouch version available, which will sync with the desktop. The only big hangup for me is that it only runs on a Mac. Which makes this Windows-office user a sad panda.

I’m tempted at times to just go to using a paper daily planner. Advantages: it allows me to take notes, add agenda notes to calendar entries, input method is relatively quick. Disadvantages: no syncing, sorting, or searching.

So any thoughts from you all out there? I’d love to just go with a solution like Things on a 3G-enabled iPad, but that’s $700 I can’t afford right now.

The freedom to chill the heck out

Just found a link to a great thought that Jared Wilson posted back in January. Given that it’s only a paragraph, and it’s a good one, I’ll quote it in its entirety.

Yes, people watch too much TV and play too many video games and spend too much time on the Internet and what-have-you. But the proper response to our media over-saturation is not a rigorous attention to the explicitly “spiritual” in every margin of life. Be a Christian, not an ascetic. Don’t be lazy, but realize that Jesus Christ did not die and rise for you so that you would stress out about whether you’re being spiritual enough. So take a nap. Watch some television. The gospel frees you to chill the heck out.

Doctrine good, stories bad?

I have learned much over the past several years from brothers and sisters of the Reformed theological persuasion. I love and respect them deeply. But the good Dr. Daniel J. R. Kirk today puts his finger on a point which has provided me some unease in my conversations with my Reformed brethren, saying it, as usual, more succinctly than I could.

Quoth Daniel:

Doctrine Good. Stories Bad. That’s the mini-theme of this month’s Christianity Today.

I begin with the most egregious offense. There’s a short inset on p. 26, snipped from a book by J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett (Grounded in the Gospel; Baker, 2010) entitled, “The Lost Art of Catechesis.” The point? Back in the old days, folks used to have to learn their theology. That waned for a bit, but was revived in all its glory in the Reformation. Doctrine. The church has to learn its doctrine.

When did this all go astray between then and now? When Sunday Schools entrusted instruction to lay people and rather than teaching people theology substituted “instilling of familiarity (or shall we say, perhaps, over-familiarity) with Bible stories” (26).

Daniel, though, strongly disagrees, and he hammers it home here:

This is the classic inversion of sola scriptura: no longer do we really want you to do what the Reformers did (read your Bible), we want you instead to read and memorize what they said after they had read their Bibles.

And that is the unease I’ve always had w/ the Reformed types. So often when asked a question, they don’t respond w/ Scripture, but rather with a quote from one of the Confessions or with a paragraph from Calvin or Edwards or Spurgeon or Packer.

I know, I know, those Confessions are a distillation of the church’s understanding of the whole Scripture over the years, and useful as a doctrinal reference and as a safeguard against taking any single Scripture passage wildly out of context. But Dr. Kirk makes a great point here: our first priority and focus should be to the Scripture, and the Confessions and Institutes need to come later.

I’d love to hear from some of my Reformed buddies on this one. And yeah, I’m afraid what I might be in for when they pile on. :-)

Bullet Points for a Monday Morning #5

  • We have high temperatures in the 50’s forecast for this week. Incredibly thankful for spring to be making an appearance.
  • Stayed up too late watching the Oscars last night. Have watched only two of the films nominated across all categories: District 9 and Star Trek. One of these days I’ll catch up on some of the others. Very little time for watching movies these days.
  • Star Trek is the last movie I’ve watched in a theater. Before that I think it was The Dark Knight the year before. At least that gives us lots of choices to watch on DVD.
  • Three day work week for me this week. Then on Thursday we road trip to Indiana. Becky and the girls will drop me off in Indianapolis where I’ll hang out/ride along with Andy Osenga for a couple days while he plays some house shows.
  • Becky and the girls will head up an hour north of Indy to visit some friends who moved there from CR last year. Everyone is pretty darn excited about it.
  • Have the details lined up for Andy O to play a “house show” at Brewed Awakenings in CR on Monday, April 19th. Hope to get the “official” confirmation from Andy this week so I can start publicity in earnest.