Stuck In My Heart

One of my many goals for this website is to eventually have a “Music” page that has a bunch of my music available for downloading and such. There is a link at the top of the page for it, but there is nothing there. This is for several reasons, one being that most of my music is not recorded, another being that the music that is recorded is pretty poor quality. Someday I’ll get in to a nice studio with some good musicians to lay down a few tracks. Someday.

As for the present, I have been writing a lot this summer. It is – in my opinion – my best work thus far. The first musical creation of the summer was a song called “A Nail” which is actually not about nails at all, per se. A nail is mentioned in the song, however. I plan to get a recording of that up soon. The lyrics can be found here.

The next song I wrote isn’t actually finished yet, but I’m not even sure if it would need to be. It sounds kind of like John Mayer’s “Covered In Rain”. If I ever played it with a sweet electric guitarist, I’m pretty sure I’d let him/her play a 10 minute solo. I like it because it is very mellow, and although it is simple, it is very beautiful. Maybe I’ll finish it soon.

I have often said that if I ever release an album, I would like it to sound just like Matt Wertz’s Twentythree Places musically. I mention this because the most current song I finished sounds to me the most like Wertz. It’s upbeat and catchy. It would sound awesome as a finished product (i.e. with a full band and background vocals), but I decided to record a bare bones version anyway. The song is called “Stuck In My Heart,” and you can download it here. The lyrics can also be found here. Please leave comments on whether or not you like it (if you don’t like it, be honest… I can take it, I promise).

Maybe someday I can play these songs on my new John Mayer Strat (see previous post).

The Fender John Mayer Signature Model Stratocaster

From www.ultimate-guitar.com:

“Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has teamed up with Grammy Award winning guitarist, singer and song writer John Mayer to release a new instrument based on Mayer’s own personal electric guitars. A combination of classic Fender specifications and newly designed features, the new Fender John Mayer Signature Model Stratocaster guitar is designed by Mayer himself. Known for playing a number of different Stratocaster guitars throughout his career, John jumped at the chance to add his own preferences to a new Fender model.

The guitar evokes a ’60s era “vibe” with vintage Fender bridge and tremolo, and vintage tuning machines. The back of the maple neck, the fingerboard and headstock are given a tinted and buffed finish to complete the vintage look. Newly designed Big Dipper single coil pickups were designed for John’s modern tastes, which accentuate the bass and treble frequencies while softening the mid-range, offering the unique tones found in Mayer’s playing. They are controlled with a volume and two tone control knobs, and standard Fender 5-way switching.”

I figured I should post this for a couple of reasons. (1) I have been posting lots about John Mayer lately, so why not keep it up? (2) I would like to own a sweet electric guitar, and this one fits the description (”sweet”) pretty well. *wink*

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that tickets to the John Mayer Trio shows in Minneapolis (9/23) and Milwaukee (9/24) go on sale this Saturday.

Baseball Devotional

I thought I would post the little devotional I concocted for the baseball trip this weekend. Enjoy.

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So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. – 1 Corinthians 10:31

Carlos Zambrano pitched for the Cubs in last night’s game. He has become one of my favorite Cubs players, widely known for his passion on the mound; very much wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Carlos, like many other athletes these days, points to the sky after he completes an inning of pitching. For a long time, I thought this was a selfish act designed to make all the fans see how “religious” the athlete is. Carlos would beg to differ.

From the Chicago Tribune:

There he was, Carlos Zambrano, the fierce 6-foot-5, 22-year-old Venezuelan pitcher for the Cubs, standing still halfway between the pitecher’s mound and the dugout, his eyes turned heavenward, his hands raised as if in conversation.

But with whom?…

“Any time I finish an inning, I look to the sky and I give thanks to God for that inning, be it a bad or good inning,” Zambrano told me when I asked about his, uh, rain dance the other day. “I just want to give all the glory to God.”

Wow. How refreshing. He’s not praying to win. He’s just praying to play. Whether the Cubs win or lose, it’s just a gift to be able to play, and for that he is grateful to his God, he said.

Let’s think about this. The Bible says that everything we do can be done for the glory of God. God blessed Carlos with the ability to play baseball at the professional level, and Carlos takes every opportunity he has to thank God for it. Psalm 149:4a says “the Lord takes pleasure in his people.” God loves to sit back and watch Carlos use the gifts that were given to him by his Maker.

This does not only apply to athletes. Our ordinary, everyday lives can be constant acts of worship to God. Martin Luther said that “even a dairymade can milk a cow to the glory of God.” It’s really all up to us to see our lives as gifts of God for however long we get to live them on this earth. God’s not going to tap us on the shoulder and remind us of this every few hours. You can probably live your entire life and never see it as a gift of God and an act of worship. But that’s not the point.

Our lives should glorify God regardless because we were fearfully and wonderfully made. So why not get in on it? Why not thank God for one more day of life? Maybe we could all learn a lesson from Carlos Zambrano.

Needless Lodging Woes

Tomorrow night I will be in Saint Louis, Missouri, watching the Cubs battle it out with the Cardinals. I am more than a little excited about this. Myself, Brandon Barker, a random father, and 8 students will be making the trip, which has us going to St. Louis tomorrow and Kansas City on Saturday for a Royals/Blue Jays game, then back home. As part of my internship, I got to plan the whole thing, which included finding and buying tickets to the already-sold-out Cubs/Cards game and finding a place to sleep in St. Louis on Friday night. The latter would prove to be a much more formidable task.

Brandon had a contact with a church in St. Louis, so I called him last week and inquired as to whether or not we could use their church to sleep in for a night. The dude that I talked with said that it shouldn’t be a problem and that I should send an email to the facilities woman. Shortly thereafter, Facilities Woman receieved a fun and information filled email from me. I did not get a response from from Mrs. Woman until Tuesday, at which point she informed me that we would not be able to use the church because they already had it booked.

Awesome.

Now I only had three days to find a random church in Saint Louis at which to sleep. This is approximately the point that I started freaking out. Molly calmed me down (she fed me warm milk and rubbed my head¹), and I began making phone calls. I called more than ten churches, all of which had nobody available or just plain refused. One church, however, had a very nice woman named Jill who said she would do some “research” for me. Jill, wherever you are,² you totally came through in the clutch. After nearly a day and a half of what I can only assume was extremely intense research, fact-gathering, and annotated bibliography making, Jill informed me that we could sleep at her church. How encouraging… I am just so blessed – ahem.

I am speaking for Sunday school on.. Sunday. I’ll probably talk about John 3 (Jesus vs. Nicodizzle) and John 4 (Jesus vs. Anonymous Samaritan Woman). Jesus wins both battles. It should be pretty sweet.

My brother and I played ultimate frisbee last Saturday in the Iowa Games, with my team from school, LUFDA. Temperatures reached nearly 100 degrees. Centigrade. The scorching heat, however, did not prevent me from ripping nearly 92% of the skin off on my knee on an incredibly poetic diving block. When all was said and done (more doing than saying, probably) we ended up with bronze medals, having only lost one game – to the University of Iowa. Not being content with an ugly, slowly healing wound on my knee, I thought it would be a good idea to sacrifice my body for the good of my team last night at Des Moines Ultimate Summer League. I completely ripped the scabs off of my knee and elbow, and my elbow was bleeding so profusely that blood was dripping from my fingertips. I had planned on returning to the game all courageous-like, but my weak tolerance for the sight of blood wouldn’t have that. So I basically passed out on my car instead.

As for other areas of my life, as Matt Wertz would say, “everything’s right”.

1. This is a lie. She neither fed me warm milk nor rubbed my head. She laughed at me for a while, though, which was pretty comforting. ↩
2. Probably St. Louis. ↩

Genocide in Sudan

In 1994, a horrible case of genocide erupted in Rwanda in which nearly a million Rwandans were murdered. A feature film was made in 2004 that tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina,¹ a hotel manager who took in many refugees for which he put his life and the life of his family in danger. Hotel Rwanda is a moving film that brings to light the atrocious events that occured in Rwanda in the mid 90’s. I was only ten years old at the time, and I had actually never heard anything about the genocide until the movie. Because I was so young, I don’t feel so bad for not knowing about it, and more importantly, not doing anything about it. The genocide in Rwanda may have ended, but there is a new situation which demands our attention.

Says savedarfur.org:

Violence and destruction are raging in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Since February 2003, government-sponsored militias known as the Janjaweed have conducted a calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement in Darfur.

It is estimated that 400,000 people have died due to violence, starvation and disease. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes and over 200,000 have fled across the border to Chad. Many now live in camps lacking adequate food, shelter, sanitation, and health care.

The United States Congress and President George W. Bush recognized the situation in Darfur as “genocide.” Darfur, “near Hell on Earth,” has been declared the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

That this is still going on is simply unacceptable. The UN estimates that fifteen to thiry thousand are being killed every month. “According to recent reports by the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people are now hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced due to violence, and 400,000 people have died in Darfur thus far. The international community is failing to protect civilians or to influence the Sudanese government to do so. ”

So what do we do? The Bible says tell us to learn to “do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, [and] plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17, ESV). Although it might seem like we are helpless, we can help. Savedarfur.org has a page with suggestions on how to take action, with lots of helpful tools to get you started. I am simply taking the first step by posting here, getting the news out.

While thinking about the whole situation last night, and brainstorming ways that I can raise awareness of the situation in Sudan, I realized that I can use my job as an RA at school to raise awareness. We are required to have a new bulletin board every month, and mine haven’t always been the greatest.² I am going to create a bulletin board about Sudan, with information about how to get involved, how to spread the message, etc. Maybe I can make a packet and have some RAs from every dorm put one up, so that it’s not just in my building.

More information:

http://www.savedarfur.org

BBCNews: Sudan – A Nation Divided (news and continuing coverage)

United States Fund for UNICEF: Crisis in Darfur

1. Paul Rusesabagina, I’ve heard, will be speaking at Luther College (my alma mater) some time in the next academic year. ↩
2. Two examples: “Am I Addicted to Caffeine?” and “A History of the Chicago Cubs.” Not exactly groundbreaking material. ↩

More on John Mayer…

At my brother’s wedding a week ago there was a string quartet playing, and the music that Skip and Whitney walked out to was the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby played by the quartet. It was very cool. My younger brother commented on how cool it was, and it reminded me that a while ago I heard about a string quartet tribute to John Mayer, but at the time I didn’t look into it.

Heavier Strings: A String Quartet Tribute to John Mayer’s Heavier Things is just what it says. It has string quartet renditions of every song from Heavier Things and an additional eleventh song, which I assume is an original, perhaps “influenced” by the stylings of Mayer. I am very interested as to how “Come Back to Bed” sounds. As soon as I have some spare change, I’ll let you know.

Heavier Strings is not the only Mayer tribute album. Not to be outdone, the bluegrass music community has produced their own tribute album, Pickin’ on John Mayer. “Each track,” the website says, “is filled with performances by some of the hottest Bluegrass musicians.” They also have two audio clip samples available, one for No Such Thing and one for My Stupid Mouth. They sound pretty cool, actually. These albums would probably make for really good background music for work, homework, sleeping, etc.

You may have heard of Any Given Thursday, the live album released between Room for Squares and Heavier Things, but you probably haven’t heard of As/Is. As/Is, recorded from various live shows in the summer of 2004, was originally released in five separate four-song albums exclusively on iTunes. For a while, I thought iTunes was the only way to get it, but I noticed last night that you can buy As/Is as a 14 track, 2-CD set at Awarestore. Don’t you worry, it’s already on the way to my house. You’ve got to hear the unbelievable rendition of “Come Back to Bed.”

Awarestore also has some old Mayer shirts for really good prices ($8.99), considering that you can pay up to $30 for a shirt at a concert.

The John Mayer Trio

There was a rather extensive post about the John Mayer Trio in the last version of this website. Unfortunately, that post doesn’t exist anymore, but my love for all things John Mayer does. A few new pieces of information:

There is now an official website for the John Mayer Trio located at www.johnmayertrio.com. It has a bio and a complete list of fall tour dates.

The best news is that the fall tour dates include a show at the Quest in Minneapolis on September 23, and a show at Eagles’s Ballroom in Milwaukee on the 24th. Eagle’s Ballroom is the same place that Jason Mraz recorded his live album. Both shows are easily makeable from school, with Saturday the 24th looking like the better bet. Now I just need to find out when tickets go on sale.

Oh yeah, I was right that they would be called “JM3″ as well.

A Farewell, A Film, and Furds

The past few days have been very interesting.

The two youth pastors – Brandon & Brandon – and a bunch of students left today for a week long mission trip to Belize. None of the interns, (myself, Molly and Megan) are going, so for a full week we will be “alone” at work. Anyway, Megan had the brilliant idea of meeting the group at the airport to say goodbye and whatnot. It’s just that they met at the airport at 5:15am. We decided to do it, and we met at the church at 4:30am in matching outfits with signs that read “We L♥ve Belize Team!”. Megan brought miniature American flags – I don’t know why either – for us to wave… it was really quite ridiculous. No one knew we were going to be there and it brought some smiles to people’s faces which made the trip worth it. I didn’t even sleep last night, figuring that three or four hours of sleep would only make things worse instead of better.

After saying goodbye to the Belize Team, we went to Perkin’s for breakfast, where I ordered the Tremendous Twelve®. In case you aren’t familiar, the Tremendous Twelve® is:

Three eggs (over easy)

Four bacon strips or sausage links (I got sausage)

Hashbrowns (with ranch, naturally)

Four pancakes

I finished nearly all of it save about 1/3 of the pankcakes, at which point I felt like I was going to vomit. Thankfully, though, Megan and Molly were very supportive and encouraging and I finished my tremendous breakfast with no vomiting.

After two hours of sleep between 8 and 10am I headed back to church to meet some people who wanted to see the movie Dark Water. Actually, I’m fairly certain that I was the only one who wanted to see the movie and everyone else just said they would go with me out of courtesy. Now, the movie was advertised as being written by the same author as The Ring, so I figured that I would mess myself at least twice during the film, but that was not the case. I mean, the movie didn’t suck, but as far as scary movies go it wasn’t the best. At least it wasn’t as bad as Boogeyman.

Which brings me to my next point – candy (I need to work on my transitions). Have you ever opened a box of Nerds, only to realize that each individual Nerd is covered in a thin layer of fur? Yeah, it happened yesterday. Laina, who I work with at church and who has forced me to wear diapers because of her overflowing abdunance of humor, came running into the office and told me to look at her box of Nerds. Take a look for yourself. What the heck is that stuff? Mold? Fur? I ate one of them, and nothing seemed to happen. Laina ate the whole box. She didn’t feel good later that night, but she is okay now. We decided to call them Furds… get it?

I’m off to hang out with T.J., a former co-camp counselor who also worked at Rosebud this summer. He’s silly.

Books, Movies, and a Wedding

I haven’t had much to do the last week, but I have gotten alot done. Mostly watching movies and reading books, but in other areas, too.

I told my brother that I would treat him to see Star Wars Episode III over a month ago, but I either haven’t had the time or the money until this last week. We were going to go on Wednesday, but because of time constraints and limited showing times, we ended up seeing War of the Worlds instead. War of the Worlds was a great movie. It was sort of like Independence Day from a civilian point of view. Lots of action and awesome special effects. We saw Star Wars on Saturday. Everyone that I have talked to said it was an awesome movie even though you know exactly what is going to happen. I would very much agree.

I mentioned in my first new post that I wanted to see the movie Crash. Sunday evening, I saw the movie with my mom. What an incredibly powerful movie. There is a description of the movie in the aforementioned post. It deals bluntly with the problems of racism and prejudice in a very moving way. I think that if I were still enrolled in the Film & Religion class I took a year ago, I could write a 10 page paper about this film.

I rented the movies Hostage and Coach Carter this weekend as well. Both are pretty good movies, Coach Carter being the better of the two, in my opinion. It was like a modern, urbanized Hoosiers. Who wouldn’t like that?

Don’t think I’ve been spending all of my time letting my mind rot in front of various screens, though. I’ve been reading a lot as well. This last week I bought and read One of a Kind : The Rise and Fall of Stuey “The Kid” Ungar, The World’s Greatest Poker Player, the tragic story of who is perhaps the greatest natural card player of all time. Stu Ungar, if you have not heard of him, won the 1980, 1981, and 1997 World Series of Poker, the most prestigious poker event in the world. He was truly a “gambling man,” betting away most of his poker earnings (nearly $30 million) on sports, horse racing, and everything else imagineable. He once bet $500,000 on a single round of golf. His lavish lifestyle and addiction to cocaine eventually got the best of him, and he died in 1998.

I finished David Crowder’s Praise Habit, which I was reading slowly as a devotional during the past few weeks. Although I am well aware of Crowder’s abilities as a songwriter and musician, I was a bit suprised at his talent for writing. After a few introductory chapters, Crowder goes through a few selected Psalms and deconstructs them, giving his insight into their meaning. His message is not new, but it is certainly refreshing. He reminds us that

Our condition is the same. Our habit is the Christ. He is what covers us. He is what identifies us. We wear Him into every moment, and when we live with this awareness, we praise Christ.

With the impending realease of the big-screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I bought a book called Finding God in the Land of Narnia. I have read the Chronicles of Narnia several times, the most recent being last summer, and am well aware of the Christian allegory contained in them, but I thought it might be a good idea to read up on the topic. I would be reading this book right now, but I am reading Harry Potter 4: The Goblet of Fire. I began reading the Harry Potter series several summers ago, but for some reason I stopped after the third book, even though I absoluetly adore the books. With Harry Potter 6 right around the corner (10 days), I still have books 4 and 5 to read. Hopefully I can finish both books before the release of number six. Ten days to read 1,500 pages…

The biggest thing that happened the last week, without a doubt, was the wedding of my older brother, Skip. He married a wonderful girl named Whitney on Saturday. The wedding was outside, at Whitney’s parents’ house and it was gorgeous. I kept thinking to myself that it looked like a movie. There were a ton of friends and family present, and I heard some of the funniest things. It is well known by now in my family that I plan on going in to ministry, but just because they know it doesn’t mean they get it. At one point an uncle of mine said, “aren’t you a reverend or something?” One of Skip’s friends said to me, “so what the f*** are you gonna do?” When I told him I was going into youth ministry, he said, “oh, that’s noble.” Ahhhhh…

Anyway, congratulations to Skip and Whitney Bouma. I love you guys and I hope that you have a wonderful life together. Also, I might need a place to crash when I graduate.

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