It's Friday fun-fun time!

Hey! Did you know that I work at a Zoo? A Zoo where a baby chimp was recently born, too. I get to drive a golf cart to see her tomorrow morning.

Hey! Did you know that it's the Trish's birthday on Monday? I'm going to Lincoln this weekend where we'll don red, cross our fingers and celebrate with copious Runzas.

Hey! Have a great weekend...try and get out and enjoy it, will ya?

Question of the day

When is bossa nova coming back?

In my opinion, there isn't much sexier music (save most of jazz and Maxwell, of course).

Since all my buddies seem to be bloggin about tuneage, I'm curious, dear readers....

What's your favorite sort of music that makes you feel beautiful?

Listening to : Astrud Gilberto, Shirley Bassey

Share the health

I watched Sicko a few months ago and it crossed my mind that while, yes, health care is horrible for Americans, there has to be a way to use new strategies proposed by American politicans to help Africans. Since I don't work in health care, it had largely left my mind until I read this amazing article today in the New York Times (Link) that touches on the problem in Rwanda specifically.

The details are hard to fathom. (I think we'd all agree that it's pretty much unacceptable that a woman there has to borrow 5 months salary ($5) from friends to afford a c-section.) The thing I like about this piece is not that it outlines all the injustice (which it does) but that he details the success of community-share programs.

I am by no means a socialist, but after being to Kenya and seeing the power of limited resources stretched and shared, as well as employing community-based sharing in my own circle in KC, I'm pretty sold on its power. Quite simply, we MUST share our blessings to minimize the burden of others.

Anyhow, it's heavy stuff for a Monday, I know, but it's a great piece and I hope you read it.

Go tell Mama

As we get closer to election time, I'm sure I'll be posting more about who my favorite candidates are, through right now, I'm pretty much in on Obama.

An old friend was posting cool posters on his blog and this Chicago artist did a slew of 'em for Obama. Check it. I'm thinking of picking this one up.

on missing pieces

Read this today and wanted to share it. I tried to put together some thoughts on why it reached me so tenderly, but I want you to receive it without all that setup.

In my mind, NT Wright is the sort of visionary man of God you have to grow into. If you like this, I highly recommend reading some of this other thoughts.

The Bible and Christian Imagination - N.T. Wright (excerpt)

How do we give an analysis, then, of the world as it is, the present, and of our task within it, within the biblical vision of what it means to be made in God's image. I have an illustration which helps me to understand this. And it may help if you're musical, but you may be able to understand it even if you're not musical. And I want you to imagine that some people in an old house in Vienna, in Austria, in Europe, are grubbing around in an attic, and they come upon a musical score, a piece of music, a manuscript, written by hand, and they look at it and they wonder what it is. And it turns out it's a piece for the piano, and somebody takes it to the piano and says, "This is strange,” playing it, “this is great music, what is it?"

And they phone the museum or the culture center somewhere, and somebody comes and says, "Actually, this handwriting, this is Mozart’s handwriting, but it's very strange, because we don't have this piece of music. We've never seen it before. What is it?"

And then they get a professional pianist, who plays it, and it makes a lot of sense, but it's incomplete. There are bits where there are gaps, where the piano stops and there's a few bars' rest. And it's awesomely beautiful, but it's pointing toward a larger whole. And they realize that what they've got is the piano part of a string quintet. And we haven't got the violins, the viola, and the cello. We've got something which is a signpost pointing us to something further which has yet to be discovered.

That is what the beauty of this earth is like. It is a true signpost. God has put us in a beautiful world, and wants us to celebrate it, but he wants us then to use our imaginations to write those other parts. We'll get it wrong, we will imagine it wrong, but then we'll get glimmers which are getting it right, and the music will grow, and swell, and we will teach one another, and enlarge one another's horizons so that we can actually glimpse and see that there is to be a yet fuller beauty, a beauty in which the ugliness of this world is redeemed, in which the violence is rebuked, in which the possibilities of this world are finally fulfilled. Our culture is not good at imagining that, and it takes the arts to help us to do it — music, poetry, literature, dance, drama, all of that.