Vetting an Idea: "House Call Concerts"

[This is a lengthy, against-basic-blog-rules post. Please give it a couple paragraphs at least. And, if so inclined, kindly comment, re-post, email, link, etc. Much appreciated.]

In mid-2008, a woman emailed a question to me that, to put it mildly, caught me off guard. She essentially asked, "My Husband is a big fan of your music. He has terminal cancer. Would you sing at his funeral?"

The Adjective That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Several years ago my Wife and I were at an Emergent Church Conference. (For those not fluent in Churchianity-speak, "emergent" is the catch-all term for a large cadre of people trying to figure out what comes next in Christian Faith and practice. Oftentimes that can be quite helpful, other times it seems a heartfelt but misguided effort to redefine terms. It's one thing to gussy up the terminology, it's quite another to do it for real and and to do it well. If we're just trying to re-brand apples by convincing people they're really oranges, what's the point?. But that's a whole 'nother blog post.)

Memorial Day 2012

The majority of us commemorate those who died from a generalized distance.

Others have to painfully remember and mourn up close and specifically.

My heart, in all it's blessed ignorance, goes out to them.

In Defense of Occasional Worry

Bobby McFerrin's catchy 1988 song notwithstanding, sometimes it's downright difficult to "Don't Worry, Be Happy". But I would argue that you're probably in much better shape if you can occasionally "Be Happy Because You Can Still Worry". Of course, as Desi would intone to Lucy, I "have some es-plainin' to do".

The Right Thing Usually Happens the Wrong Way

Most everyone has an internal list of thoughts, sayings, and insights which they find helpful. Positives to be remembered, warnings to be heeded, etc. Whether self-composed by direct experience or passed on by others for lifelong use, they comprise what I call "The Rules of the Road".