October 2005

Fall Break: An Update

October 17, 2005 · 4 comments

I'll give you a quick¹ update on what has been (and what will be) going on during fall break. Maybe I'll do a full recap upon return to school.

On the way home Friday afternoon, I noticed the "battery" warning light was illuminated on my car's dashboard. I didn't think much of it. Until. I had to stop in Ames to drop something off at a friend's place, and when I had to stop at a stoplight (the first time a stop was necessary in nearly 3 hours) my car stalled. Wouldn't even turn over. I got out, extremely embarassed as all of Ames stared at the idiot with the stalled car, and took a seat on my trunk so as to direct traffic around me and to make frantic phone calls. It started again after a few minutes and got me to my friend's place. On the way out of Ames, it stalled again. So I waited and everything worked out - the car started again. Between Ames and Des Moines, I had devised a perfect route that would require no stopping until I arrived at my house. The car only stalled if I had to stop, see. The car would have none of this scheming, however.

As I was driving on I-235, I turned on my lights because it was quickly getting dark. So I flipped the switch, but the lights didn't come on. This concerned me for a minute or two until my concern quickly changed to the fact that my car was now losing power in surges and I knew that it would soon die. The car did not care that I was doing 75 on the freeway, enclosed on either side by cement blockades, no, it was going to die. What's worse is that there is immense construction going on and a few of the normally existing bridges and offramps are now temporarily non-existant, thus eliminating several escape routes.

I floored it - as much as I could in the dying and sputtering car - with the intention of getting to the nearest offramp. About a half mile before my targeted offramp, the car gave up. I slowed and coasted onto the offramp and maneuvered my dead vehicle to the side of the ramp. I made the necessary phone calls - my mom - and sat by the side of the road, again looking like an idiot.

It is 216 miles from my driveway to my parking spot in Decorah. Give or take a mile. The offramp where my car ended up is only 2 miles from my house. If you do that math, I made it more than 99% of the way home. The 1% my car couldn't go cost $60 for towing and $200 for an alternator. Welcome home, Jake. Welcome home.

Because that story ended up being longer than I had intended, I will make a bullet list of what has transpired since that incident.

I spent the time immediately following my car's death (c. 9:30pm) until 8:00am hanging out with junior high students doing such things as roller-skaiting (not blading), broomball, bowling, and eating pizza at 4:00am. Good times.

I slept for 5 hours.

I woke up and went on some errands with my mom and then watched the first 5 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 2.

Dinner.

Watched the movie The Machinist. Fell asleep shortly after at 9:15pm.

I woke up on Sunday at 12:30. That's 16 hours of sleep, people.

Watched some football and worked a bit on my message (see below).

Went to Sunday youth group at Valley Church and gave a message on forgiveness. It was supposed to be 25 minutes - and I was scared I wouldn't make it - but it ended up being 45.

Went to lunch at the new Chik-fil-A. It was decent.

Bought A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren and have been reading it since. Unbelievably good. More on that later.

Tomorrow I am going to see the movie Domino, starring my favorite actress (Keira Knightly) with my brother. I'll probably read after that.

That's it for now.²

Unfortunately, at home I am still limited by a dial-up connection, so a much longer and detailed post is out of the question. Not entirely, but mostly. [↩]
I realize my previous annotation is almost invalidated. I guess it's a good thing I said it wasn't entirely out of the question. Gotcha. [↩]

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Fall Break

October 14, 2005 · 2 comments

Today is the first day of fall break. I am volunteering at my church for an all night junior high event called "Blitz," so I'll be up all night hanging out with twelve year olds. I think that's how old they are... Saturday I'll hopefully get some sleep. Sunday I am speaking at HSM, the high school youth group, about forgiveness. I'm really excited to see all of the students I got to work with this summer. And then? I have no plans. Maybe I'll finish Gilead and get my hands on A Generous Orthodoxy. I'll be awaiting some more replies for the J-Term trip and I might make some phone calls.

Really, I am just excited to go home for a while.

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Late Night Vocation Binge

October 10, 2005 · 5 comments

I had been trying to fall asleep for nearly fourty minutes when my room phone rang. I decided that I wouldn't answer it because if things had gone as planned, I would have already been asleep for a half hour and wouldn't have heard the phone ring anyway. Shortly after, however, my cell phone rang. Because it was lying right next to my bed, I looked at the caller ID and it said "Tom." I answered.

Tom explained to me that he, too, had been trying to sleep but found himself unable to enter a state of semi-consciousness because he had just read the first chapter of Finding the Open Road. I grabbed a packet of instant apple cider and made my way down to his room.

He told me that I should read the first chapter too, so I did. It was very inspirational, insofar as these people had done the same thing that Tom and I have been talking about nonstop. It turns out that these three guys who had done this a while ago have actually set up programs on college campuses nationwide so that students all over the nation can embark on road trips to find vocation. They even have grants available. Don't worry, we applied.

Tom always says that true moments of creativity and inspiration are always spontaneous. You cannot plan for them. Last night was spontaneous. From 12:45 - 4:00am we worked on the trip. We emailed professors on campus. We emailed people about scholarship money. Most importanly, though, we came up with lists of people we really want to meet on this trip.

I sent out probably fifteen emails last night between the hours of 1 and 4am. A typical email presented our trip and asked if the person would be available for interview in January. I contacted the following people last night:

Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead

Brian McLaren, Pastor and author of many emergent Christian books, including A Generous Orthodoxy

David Crowder, lead singer of the David Crowder Band

Cameron Strang, President/CEO of Relevant Media Group and founder of Relevant Magazine

Matt Wertz, one of my favorite singer/songwriters

Jason Kottke, founder of kottke.org, a famous weblog that is completely reader-supported

Joshua Griffin, manager of Purpose Driven Youth Ministry

Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners Magazine, and author of God's Politics

David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, "a nationwide Christian citizens movement seeking justice for the world's hungry people by lobbying our nation's decision makers."

I found two events that would be great to add to the itinerary if possible. Politics and Spirituality: Seeking a Public Integrity is a conference taking place in Washington, D.C. January 14-16 that features Jim Wallis (Soujourners, God's Politics), Anne Lamott, and Richard Rohr. Eugene Peterson, author of The Message and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, will be speaking at Calvin College in Michigan on January 24.

Another idea that I had, inspired in part by my good friend Mike, is to take 30-60 copies of the Gospel of John to give to various people during the month. That's between one and two per day. This does two things, (1) it is an opportunity to spread the Gospel and (2) it "forces" me to initiate conversation with people I might not normally approach. I also decided that I want to visit some "out-of-the-box" grassroots Christian ministries. The search is still on for some of these.

Update: Companies/media that have been contacted thus far (will be updated as more are contacted):

Jones Soda

Red Bull

The Oprah Winfrey Show

The Des Moines Register

The Cedar Rapids Gazette

Beyond Magazine

Ask not what you can do in your life. Ask what your life can do in you.

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New Song: Freefall

October 9, 2005 · 2 comments

I recorded one of my new songs tonight, entitled "Freefall." The recording itself isn't the best quality (i.e., Tom's phone ringing in the middle of the first chorus, various "bumps" in the sound, my guitar being slightly out of tune, etc.), but it works. Someday I'll get into a studio. For the select few who heard a "rough cut" of this song, this is a new recording.

You can download "Freefall" here. The lyrics are below.

I'm playing a set this coming Thursday the 13th on Luther's radio station, KWLC. The station has a show called "30 Minutes on a Thursday" which features Luther students doing original music, and this week, I am the featured guest. Mike Lang (bassist for Damascus Avenue and all-around great guy) will be joining me. The show starts at 11:00pm and can be streamed live from KWLC's website. I'll be playing "Freefall" and a few other originals.

The lyrics:

Freefall
Words and music by Jake Bouma

Barely hanging on to every word you say
My grip is slipping away
The view from here shows me slowly falling behind
Wishing I could rewind

Well, I know you need some time
But baby you've gotta make up your mind

Hey, what do you want, baby?
You gotta let me know
So we can figure this out someday
I can take the hurt and I can stand the pain
Just tell me
Hey, what do you want, baby?

Open up my parachute to find
There's not enough wind at this time
Now I'm grasping the gravity of it all
As I spin in this freefall

Well, I know you need some time
But baby you've gotta make up your mind

Hey, what do you want, baby?
You gotta let me know
So we can figure this out someday
I can take the hurt and I can stand the pain
Just tell me
Hey, what do you want, baby?

Love is patient, love is kind
And love hurts, but it's worth it

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Blue Merle

October 7, 2005 · 1 comment

I am always on the lookout for new music and new bands. In the past week, a couple of people have mentioned the band Blue Merle to me.¹ One of them told me that they sound like Nickel Creek mixed with Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay. I agree with him to some extent, except that I would say their sounds is just more of a more laid back and folky Coldplay. In other words, it's the perfect music to compliment my favorite season of the year: autumn.

I got a hold of Blue Merle's debut CD ~~(?)~~², Burning in the Sun a few days ago and I love it. If you'd like to get a sense of what they sound like without having to buy their CD or find someone who owns it (or... shhhh... download it), they are offering an entire live show to download for free on their website in the "downloads" section. It contains most of the music from Burning in the Sun and some other songs as well.

I originally said that one guy had mentioned them to me, but it slipped my mind that two people had mentioned them to me. Seth and Kristin. [↩]
Seth informs me that yes, this is their debut album, recorded in February 2005 at Dave Matthews' recording studio. [↩]

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Friday Linkfest

October 7, 2005 · 0 comments

Here are this weeks links:

Visions of Science: BBC News' top ten picks for scientific pictures. The first one is amazing.

Donald Miller's new website: The author of one of my all-time favorite books, Blue Like Jazz, has a newly redesigned website. Relevant Magazine has a good interview with Don on their website. His new book, To Own a Dragon: Rewriting the Legacy of an Invisible Father, comes out next February.

Sorry, gotta go...: For those times when you need an excuse to get off the phone. There are some really funny ones. I've got to try this...

Anatomy of a Photograph: "An analysis of a single seemingly innocuous photograph, and the pervasive media bias it reveals." This is both enlightening and disturbing.

Oh My Gosh!: I literally laughed out loud¹ when I stumbled on this photograph on Flickr.

A song-by-song analysis of DCB's A Collision: If you own this album (even if you don't) this is a must-read. In an era when a lot of (not all) worship music is just recycled and regurgitated, David Crowder puts a ton of thought into his music and lyrics. Also, "David Crowder Band’s third release, A Collision, ended up debuting at number 39 on the Billboard charts. This is DCB's highest placement to date. Not bad for an album that was recorded in a barn in Waco, Texas²." - Relevant.

Google Search Tips 2005: Provides a bunch of search syntax basics and advanced tricks for Google. If you know exactly what you're looking for, knowing these can greatly reduce unnecessary searching.

The Fray - A Review: Remember when I talked about The Fray and how big they're going to be? I wasn't lying, folks. From the aforementioned review: "Although it's still premature to compare this band to the likes of greats such as U2 and Coldplay, The Fray possesses that same rare quality of undeniable musical talent and classic sound."

The Bible, text message style: Someone from Australia went and translated the entire Bible (CEV) in to text for cell phones. My favorite verse is John 3:16, which says, "God luvd da ppl of dis wrld so much dat he gave his only Son, so dat evry1 who has faith in him will have eternal life & neva really die." I'm not kidding.

Because of the widespread use of 'LOL' on internet messaging and the inverse proportion of those who type LOL to those who actually do laugh out loud, I find it necessary to say that I actually did laugh out loud. [↩]
A quick shout out to my favorite Parisian/former Waco-ite, Miss Megan Rapp. [↩]

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