Please note the incredible gore, both of the triceratops having a chunk ripped out of its back and of the T-Rex getting gored in the stomach. The three cavemen watch the fight with some interest, while a pteradacyl soars over the volcanoes in the background.

It’s like a modern Van Gogh.

Well, my landlord really hasn’t turned out to be such a great guy. The place isn’t so hot either. For the last couple weeks they’ve been doing some kind of mysterious work to the apartment downstairs (the one that always has bass coming from it, regardless of the hour) – and so this is what the backyard looks like.

This picture was inspired by the fact that the guy that my landlord hires to do stuff decided to mow today, so he just literally mowed over and around all this crap. Classic.

And here’s the challenge. Can you all of these things in the photo? If you can, you win!

- Snow shovel
- (4) half-cinder blocks
- One FULL cinder block
- Croquet set
- Taco bell cup
- McDonald’s cup
- Coffee mug (with coffee still in it)
- Tire
- Bag of cypress mulch
- Mysterious cable
- Empty bottle of mountain dew.

Keep it Together
Guster | Keep It Together
An older song, but my favorite Guster offering — and that’s saying something.

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Love Will Find a Way
Delirious | Kingdom of Comfort
A favorite off Delirious’ most recent album.

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Death and All His Friends
Coldplay  | Viva La Vida
Listen from 1:16-2:00. Enough said. Coldplay, you’re onto something.

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Hopipolla
Sigur Ros | Hoppipolla
Always awesome, always strangely inspiring.

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Beautiful Love (Acoustic)
The Afters | Never Going Back to OK
This song is breathtaking. A beautiful, inspirational duet.

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The Lighthouse’s Tale
Nickel Creek | Nickel Creek
Probably the oldest song on here – but I still listen to this album all the time.

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Sweetly Broken
Jeremy Riddle | Full Attention
A recent find, this song is my favorite worship song at the moment.

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Ain’t No Reason
Brett Dennen | So Much More
Chosen for its awesome lyrics, though most of the album is great.

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Two
Ryan Adams | Easy Tiger
Another favorite off an album that gets frequent playing time.

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Life is Beautiful
Vega4 | You and Others
A great accidental find, this one’s currently on ‘repeat’ – on my ipod and in my head.

The class is at the dilapidated, somewhat-melancholy Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base (named for Gus Grissom). A few decades ago, the base must have had a thriving little community. It was originally a training and testing base, and has been greatly downsized in the last decade. One of the guys at the training is a local – “grew up just on the other side of that fence there,” as he says – and talks about how he used to come onto the base to play with the military kids. It feels a lot more like a ghost town. Really, this picture says it all.

The base isn’t entirely inoperative – there’s still a squadron of KC-135 refueling planes that operates out of the base, and it’s also been opened to civic use. The base might have been closed were it not for an accident that occured in 1964, when a B-58 (a supersonic bomber) skidded off the runway with five nuclear devices.

“On December 8, 1964, during a routine Operational Readiness Inspection, a B-58 strategic bomber skidded off the runway) at Bunker Hill AFB, IN (later named Grissom Air Force Base). The consequence of the accident was a fire and destruction of five nuclear weapons on the aircraft. The high explosives in the weapons did not detonate, but melted and burned, leaving some residual radioactive contamination in soils adjacent to the runway. The contaminated area was excavated and buried along with the aircraft wreckage at a different location on base. In June 1996, the Air Force Safety Center conducted a review of both classified and unclassified documents in its possession and concluded that sufficient data did not exist to support closure of the site. Since that time, the State of Indiana and this organization performed small- scale scoping surveys that identified a small area with elevated gamma radiation exposure levels. Soil samples collected from the area indicated the presence of depleted uranium.”

Oops. Anyway, I guess that’s a good reason to not close the base. Back in Bloomington tomorrow!

I can’t believe I’ve never written about this before. There are, in life, certain things – books, sermons, moments or people – that shape who we are. They’re unique to each of us, and we can always revisit them, relearning the lessons we’ve learned before.

In high school, my Young Life leader shared a sermon with a small group of us that has had a profound impact on my life. It’s given by a pastor named Bruce Thielemann, from Pittsburgh, and judging by the manner of speaking and the references in the sermon, it’s probably from the early 80’s. It’s loosely based around Acts 5.

Thielemann begins his sermon in this way:

“I’m deeply and personally convinced that the Christian life is to be an exciting and a joyous experience. I think we are to be living lives which are thrilling to behold, exciting to watch, ennobling, enkindling, enabling, enthusiastic. That is what the Christian life is supposed to be.”

I love it. Thielemann goes on to discuss the counsel given by Gamaliel, a Pharisee, in Acts 5. In the passage, the citizenry become enraged by the teaching of the Apostles, and want to kill them. Gamamiel, who was “held in honor by all people,” stood up and dispensed his wisdom to the crowd. With apologies for the paraphrasing, here’s what he said: “People, I know you’re upset … but the best thing we can do is…. nothing.”

Sound advice? It seems logical, and, to steal from Frodo, “would seem like wisdom but for the warning in my heart.” Do nothing? Make no decision, take no risk? The problem is that doing nothing is all too common an answer for the Pharisees.

Thielemann then uses the words of surfing legend Phil Edwards to describe those who, like the Pharisees, do nothing.

“There is a need in all of us for controlled danger. That is, there is a need for an activity that puts us on the edge of life. There are uncounted millions of people, right now, who are going through life without any sort of real vibrant kick. I call them the legions of the unjazzed.”

The legions of the unjazzed. To keep with the surfing metaphor, as Thielemann does, these are the people who never get out into the big waves. Maybe they splash around in the shallows. Maybe they play in the puddles, like C.S. Lewis describes. Maybe they can build the best sandcastles on the beach, but the fact remains that they’re avoiding something bigger. Thielemann

“If you’re going to get out to where the big waves are, you can expect to be beaten up a little bit,” Thieleman continues. It’s true, we get tossed around and beaten up when we take get into the deep water. We’ll frequently get slammed against the ocean floor – tossed and turned by the turbulent power of the waves. It’s a rough and experience, but one that locks you into being alive. The disciples in Acts 5 are living this out in living by faith. They’re out in the big waves.

Thielemann concludes with a wonderful descriptive passage, and it would not do anyone service for me to paraphrase it.

“When you get into one of the truly big waves off the islands of the Pacific, there is a time when if you ride the wave properly, you can crest the curl, and coming down the other side turn into the wave so that the wave curls over your head. In that moment you find yourself in a tunnel of water. It swirls all about you, like a whirling green cathedral. The water above is most thin, and the sunlight coming down spangles it so that it looks like green diamonds. And it’s absolutely silent in there; you cannot hear a sound. And if you want to, you can lean back against the wall of water behind you, and it lifts you and carries you like a pillow. Now you can never know that, what it’s like to be carried, what it’s like to be in a whirling green cathedral, what it’s like to have life spangled with diamonds — you can never know that until you move into the midst of the wave, until you say ‘yes’ to God’s dares.”

Amen. May our faith teach us to lean into the waves of life, meeting the challenges that are before us. May we always be riding through life on a surfboard with God.

((I have an MP3 of this entire sermon, and if you’d like to listen, please let me know.))

Basically, you make a huge pile of snow – the bigger, the better – let it sit and sinter for a few hours and then dig out the middle, making a sort of igglo/snow cave combination shelter. It was actually quite warm inside, and you probably could have slept three people in the shelter we built. As it was, we had five of us sitting inside fairly comfortably at once.

Anyway, pictures: