myopic pilgrim

Occasionally, I’ll describe the image of Jesus on the cross with the phrase pinned to a tree. I can feel the weight of it in both hemispheres of my brain. The understatement is supposed to make you cringe a little. It’s like a rag doll with stick in the hands and feet. Is the phrase trying to diminish the sacrifice of Christ, transforming the crucifixion into a caricature. The thought of a rag doll, arms spread, on a two pieces of wood is ridiculous. But then so is the act of sacrifice for a people who don’t care for you.

This list addresses the different areas the Church organism can grow. Obviously, a local church can get bigger, but what else?

I can’t remember where I picked this up. I think perhaps from Gil Stieglitz, the District Superintendent for our denomination. Read the rest of this entry »

While listening to Pandora, I heard the band Tremolo and I liked them so much that I wanted to find out more about them. After listening to the song samples they have on their site, I still like them. The music is well produced with interesting arrangements and thoughtful lyrics.

More than just the music, I found out more about the band itself. Justin Dillon of the band defines praxis as extending yourself to do good and how your capacity to do good increases because of it. Has anyone else heard this before? I rather like it because of the hope I hear in it. And of course, I think if this is true it’s only true because of Jesus’s redemptive work.

So, how does the guy do this praxis thing? Half of all the royalties from Tremolo’s first album goes into a trust fund, calling it Love > Revenge Fund. This goes along with their single I Believe (Love Is the Greatest Revenge) Then he invited people to vote on where the money goes. (By the way, Free the Slaves won. They want to end slavery everywhere in the world. Slavery is still around, you ask? It’s nice living in America, isn’t it?).

Like last.fm, Pandora has a streaming radio that hopefully plays music based on music you already like. However, there are a few differences.

I wrote about last.fm a bit ago, describing it. In essence, last.fm plays songs based on what you play in media player, e.g. iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player). It also allows users to tag songs with words and phrases like southern rock, rapcore, bubblegum pop, angry break up songs… you get the idea.

Pandora associates music based on what it calls “genes” of music (hence the Music Genome Project. You choose a song or artist and based on its genes (subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, acoustic rhythm guitars, etc.), it will play a song with simliar genes. Then based on your reaction to the song (I like it; I don’t like it), it evolves the radio station.

Pandora has nothing to download; it plays in your browser window. It seems to play more obscure bands, upping your chances of becoming the guy that listened to them before they sold out to the man.