wherethehellismatt?

ok, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that i ascribe to the tenets of reincarnation. if one of those tenets happened to be that i could somehow be reincarnated as somebody now living, i'd seriously consider this guy. nadie sent me a link to his video from youtube, and, like her, i was strangely moved by watching it. i don't know. it was weird. eyes welling and such. maybe i'm becoming too much of a sacramentalist, but i really like to see people rejoicing in god's creation. st. irenaeus (incidentally, his feast was wednesday) is reported to have said: "the glory of god is a human being fully alive.” matt's fully alive, and i'd like to be more like that, whether in this life or the next.

greatest youtube clip of all time (except ellie's "mary")

oh my. dennis, this is for you. thank the sports guy.

(for boston fans only: lobel's 80s sports clip is great, too. so long, captain carl)

dc4free: interlude

no freebies this week, unless you count moving, which (a) was far from free, (2) was absolutely no fun, and (D) is still going on.

so, the good news is: we're in our new apt. on the 3d floor of the parish house @ asa. the bad news: apparently we should've relocated to an ark. it's been raining like crazy in dc for 3 days, ever since we moved into our nice little apt., which now has a big hole in the ceiling of the living room from whence rain drops keep falling on our heads. so, there's that. we even had to find an alternate route here from our old apt in alexandria b/c the 12th st. tunnel flooded. and i've got to find another part-time job to supplement our income and fill up the hours that i don't spend as pastoral ass't @ the church. on a related note, and to continue our diluvian theme, my first official task as pastoral ass't was to wet vac out the water that flooded the church undercroft. as you can see, i've precious little time for posting these days, but things will settle down soon.

unless an earthquake hits.

derek webb

here beginneth what i'm sure will be several days of rumination about derek webb song lyrics.

i braved a horrendous thunderstorm tonight, but it was worth it. i drove out to warrenton, va, to hear derek and his wife, sandra mccracken, play a benefit for blood:water mission, an organization "committed to clean blood and clean water to fight the hiv/aids pandemic, to build clean wells in africa, to support medical facilities caring for the sick, to make a lasting impact in the fight against poverty, injustice and oppression in africa through the linking of needs, talents and continents, of people and resources."

man, it was great. just derek, sandra and 2 guitars, exactly what i wanted it to be. i'm continually amazed @ derek's (and, now, @ sandra's) ability to cram so much provocative theology into a 3 and a half minute song. renee' doesn't get why i like it so much sometimes, what w/ his penchant for writing songs about ants and stained shirts and pennies under carseats. but the simple and mundane often communicate god to me better than flowery theologi-speak. i quoted "take to the world" in a trinity sunday sermon:

go in peace to love and to serve
let your ears ring on w/ what you have heard
may the bread on your tongue
leave a trail of crumbs
to lead the hungry back to the place you are from.

seems like derek's getting more aggressive in his songwriting lately -- i don't have the last 2 albums b/c, let's face it, i can't afford them (yet), so the songs were largely new to me -- but it was impressive tonight to watch this little guy in a plain white t-shirt up there boldly saying some things that may not play well in a lot of church fora. but stand he did, and his obvious love of christ and his church go a long way toward diffusing anything he might have said that ruffled feathers. (to get a taste, check out the relevant interview, in which he even says some nice things about episcopalians)

i'm way too tired from driving through a meteorological anomaly complete w/ hail and sideways rain to get into how moved i was by the night, but i'll leave you this:

who's your brother, who's your sister
you just walked passed him
i think you missed her
as we're all migrating to the place where our father lives
'cause we married in to a family of immigrants

there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
and that jesus christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it's to a king & a kingdom

(derek webb, "a king and a kingdom")

our wedding song, youtube style

renee' processed to pachelbel's "canon in d" @ our wedding, but it didn't sound quite like this.

one down, one to go

for a guy who doesn't have cable, i've been watching a boatload of sports lately. b/tw the nba and stanley cup finals, both of which air on broadcast tv (thank you, sweet jesus!), i've been riveted every night for more than a week. renee' has gotten some good rest, needless to say. now that i watched the 'canes skate the cup (i pulled for edmonton, but i did like the one guy on the ice @ the end tonight w/ a whalers sweater on), all i have left is to put the nba to bed, especially since thursday's u.s. world cup match is on espn or some such elitist network. finally, i'm almost back to reading books -- and the sox on mlb.com audio.

dc4free#1: civil war days

we loaded the whole fam into the mini-v today and set out on our first official dc4free adventure, making it all the way . . . around the corner to a park in alexandria.

today is "civil war camp day," part of the living history program @ fort ward in alexandria. improving over last week, we did make it the whole time w/o spending a penny, but it wasn't the most exciting event, especially as far as the kids were concerned. the most exciting (read, traumatic) aspect of the event was the firing demonstration, which had both kids crying w/in seconds.

good parents that we are, we immediately repaired to the apartment for popsicles. all is now well here, sitting comfortably in the a.c. awaiting the u.s. world cup match. that may not be very exciting for the kids, either, but pop is amped.

dc4free: test run

seeing as how we are moving into d.c. @ the end of this month, and we are far from wealthy, renee' and i have set a goal to do one free activity per week for each of the 50 or so weeks we expect to live in the city. if there has ever been a city w/ 50 things to do for free, it's this one. last weekend we had a trial run, going w/ some friends to the national zoo. panda man, pictured here, is not me; just some guy in a suit whose right hand i happened to be suspicious of when i snapped the pic (renee' looks just a bit too happy, if you ask me).

i'll confess we cheated a bit for our first run -- we drove to the zoo, which meant we spent about $9 for parking, plus the gazillion or so bucks it cost for the petrol to get the 10 miles there and back. i also bought a bottle of water for $2.50, but no food, no cutesy tshirts, and the little panda paddy is muzzle-to-muzzle w/ was a gift from ellie's godfather.

i'll be posting an account of our gallivanting on [rd] as we go, but i'd appreciate any ideas about free stuff in d.c. just shoot me an email w/ "dc4free" in the subject line.

d. webb in relevant

if you have a quarter hour, and you haven't done so already (i'm like 5 months behind the ball here), read derek webb's interview w/ relevant magazine. he even has a kind word for "episcopals," for heaven's sake. he is, indeed, my daddy.

"mary had a little lamb"

elmo's musical debut, thanks to youtube. i'd been looking for a platform to host some little video clips for a while, so that the grandparents et al. could see the kids more than once a year. dennis sent me a link to shatner's interpretation of "rocket man" (surreal doesn't describe it), which reminded me that i had read about youtube in wired, so i spent some time uploading some vids today. pretty cool.