I have something to share with you.
It’s a little video, and it’s bizarre, and non-sequitur and involves Kirk Cameron.
Click here to watch a guy explain how bananas prove the existence of God.
Make sure you watch until the end, that’s when it gets truly surreal.
Mercifully, Kirk Cameron does not speak.
Before my engagement with the “real” blogosphere (that is, the blogosphere that is not LiveJournal and its clones), I assumed “real” bloggers did not engage in this kind of self indulgent memery. I was wrong! They do. And so, in an effort to fit in with the cool kids, so do I.
Friday Random Ten
1. Bloc Party, “Banquet (Phones Disco Edit)”
2. Ruthie Foster, “Real Love”
3. Memphis Minnie, “Ma Rainey”
4. DJ Vadim feat. Sarah Jones, “Your Revolution”
5. Joan Jett, “I Love Rock & Roll”
6. Kinnie Starr, “Cee God”
7. Son Volt, “Tear Stained Eye”
8. Magnetophone, “Rae and Suzette”
9. The VaGiants, “Alright”
10. The Hummers, “Au Feu”
It seems iTunes was feeling a bit feminist this morning and that is more than all right with me.
Can’t talk more now, have to leave for tai chi.
… I will be forced to take action. And not the kind they were hoping for.
Today is the day we remember the day our Lord Jesus Christ died a terrible death. I personally remembered it by sleeping ’til 1 p.m. And I didn’t even do anything naughty on Bad Thursday night! It’s for the best. Some friends of mine, aging hipsters all, spent a truncated and despondent evening at Mod Night, surrounded by underclothed, eighteen-year-old, Fabu-Tanned flesh.
As evidenced by my behaviour, I’m still not much for church services these days. Especially not for Good Friday services, which are typically too bizarre for my taste. (I mean, bizarre is usually my cut of tea, as they say, but in this case it’s not the good kind of bizarre.) I will go to the service on Sunday like any good tourist, of course, then gorge myself on candy and roast leg of lamb of God.*
My mood has been greatly ameliorated, however, by the emergence of spring in our northern clime. There’s always this day in spring when you get up in the morning and leave the house and are all, “Woah, where did all these people come from?!” Everyone’s outside these days, even me. It’s nice.
What else is new? The new Geez is out. If you check the letters section there’s a little quotation from this very blog! Used with permission, don’t worry.
In other thrilling events, Tony Jones commented on my blog. Tony, the next time I’m in the Twin Cities I will not buy you coffee — I will buy you beer, and perhaps make a donation to the Tony Jones Beer Fund.
*One of two tasteless jokes in this entry. Can you find the other?!
Fellow Winnipegger the old bill has won me over twice this week, first with a post about the nature of time, quantum mechanics and all those sci-fi things you know I dig so much.
Then, he touched on something I’ve been thinking, too — that all this media hype spinning around The Da Vinci Code and The Jesus Papers and “did Jesus really die?” theories and controversies is pretty tired. He’s right; it does come up every decade or so. Century after century, for that matter.
We are walking in the fields of myth and meaning, here, not fact. Even if we could use positivistic data to prove/deny Jesus death and resurrection, we’d achieve little. The fundamental issue is not the death and resurrection of Jesus in ancient Judea, but the death and resurrection in our lives today.
My thinking these days is along the lines that faith in Jesus is not dependent on the historical facts. I think the evangelical obsession with providing “proof” and “evidence” (a la Lee Strobel et al) is a mistake. It’s so strange that this religion that talks about a “personal relationship” with the ghost of a dead guy takes historical fact so seriously and places it so centrally in doctrine.
I think it’s absolutely possible to have faith in Jesus and the Christian God without reading the Bible as an incontrovertible record of historical events, specifically as they’re laid out in the gospels. I don’t know if I have that faith, but I believe it’s possible. (See? Belief! Right there!)
Last weekend I visited the United States of America for the first time in many years. I visited the fine metropolis of Minneapolis/St. Paul (current home of everyone’s hero, Tony Jones. I briefly considered undertaking a Celebrity Pastor Stalking mission, but abandoned the project in its planning stages as in the end I’m far to lazy and not nearly Emergent enough). The Twin Cities are quite nice, and I say that without irony — I enjoyed looking at many pretty, old houses, lovingly restored and/or maintained.
I stayed with a friend who attends a Lutheran church which, during the summer, holds drive-in services. I personally enjoy outdoor services, but something about the drive-in concept rankles me. Maybe it’s the idea of staying neatly insulated within one’s vehicle (gas-guzzling SUV or not) that seems to run counter to the idea of corporate worship. Or maybe it’s the aftertaste of church-as-product/entertainment that the drive-in concept imparts.
During my visit, I indulged in a visit to the Mall of America. (OK, actually two, but one time was just to eat at Famous Dave’s, to sample the barbecque which my brother adores enough to make biannual trips to Fargo.) I was born in Edmonton, so I thought I knew a few things about giant temples of consumerism, but I was wrong. Canadians cannot and never will be able to do consumerism the way Americans can. We’re just not as willing to get our glitz on the way they do south of the border. We’re satisfied with weird bronze whales and deadly dolphin tanks. West Ed, once the largest mall in the world, is completely quaint when compared to the gleaming, carpeted halls of the MOA, glass and silver shined to a blinding glare (by legal or illegal immigrants? Only the night staff can tell!).
In a place where you can buy anything from designer jeans to designer hot sauce and Lego a la carte, it’s no surprise then, that you can also consume yourself some religion, before you consume some coconut shrimp at Bubba Gump’s.
NB: I’m sure we have mall churches here in Canada, too. But they’re probably not this… pretty.