Friday Five: Dream a Little Dream

Dream a Little Dream for the last Friday Five this year, for 29 December, 2006:

"In the Last Days," God says,
"I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions,
your old men dream dreams.
When the time comes,
I'll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both,
and they'll prophesy."
(Acts 2:17-18, The Message)

On this final Friday of 2006, it seems appropriate to speak of dreams. A very important dream about a lighthouse played a role in my journey towards ordained ministry, and mine last night were vivid and included a flying church.

Please feel as untethered yourself in responding to this Friday Five.

---

Being tethered by the HS, from Tucson, AZ, here's my play for today:

1) a dream you remember from childhood

I'll bolt some distance from those halcyon (not!) early days and cite some songs that refer to dreams, so here are a few I'll probably add to at a later time; at this moment I'm not linking to them in my usual compulsive manner because I'll be on my way to Tombstone in a few:

• Dan Hartman - I can Dream about You
• Spanky and Our Gagn - What a Day for a Daydream
• Eurythmics, ANNIE Lennox! - Sweet Dreams are Made of This
• Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
• Gary Wright - Dreamweaver
• Heart - These Dreams

2) a recurring or significant dream

Not recurring but significant and confirmatory: shortly after I realized I absolutely positively needed to spend a lot of time this winter in prayer, contemplation (maybe discernment, too) and apartness from my usual pace, I dreamt I was in the courtyard of my complex looking up to my condo and seeing it disheveled yet in a neat (decent?) and orderly manner. In the dream I realized I wouldn't be able to get back in my living space for several months, but amazingly, I calmly told myself, "At least I have everything I need for the winter here with me now."

3) a nightmare

About a week ago I dreamt I'd showed up for a guest preaching gig in very not-put-together nor well-coordinated clothes and bedroom slippers, made all the more perplexing knowing I'd left home attired reasonably appropriately. This wasn't horrendously nightmarish, but I've long been maybe too concerned about my public presentation, due to lots of things—early childhood, basic personality, my love of an audience and the years I spend in a public position. However, more often than not, I carry this to extremes, so the dream became a cautionary tale.

4) a favorite daydream

What a time for a daydream...moving right into the New Year 2007...I love pretending I'm back in one favorite place or another, beach, city, desert or wherever, and often I end expressing the daydream in color, line and design. Of course, it's sometimes possible to approximate the situation right where I am now!

5) a dream for the New Year

As a Daughter of the Church, I constantly pray and dream of healing for one of the churches I'm involved with and for continued health and growth for the other.

Reign of Christ

We Bow Down

You are Lord of the Heavens and Lord of my life
Lord of the land and the sea
You were Lord of Creation before there was time
And Lord of all Lords You will be!

We bow down and we worship You, Lord
We bow down and we worship You, Lord
We bow down and we worship You, Lord
Lord of all Lords You will be!

You are King of the Heavens and King of my life
King of the land and the sea
You were King of Creation before there was time
And King of all Kings You will be!

We bow down and we crown You the King
We bow down and we crown You the King
We bow down and we crown You the King
King of all Kings You will be!

~~Twila Paris~~

Thanksgiving to Advent to Winter Solitude

I'm cross-posting this blog.

Thanksgiving

The time of year is here for listing reasons for attitudes of gratitude! In my heart I hold thankfulness for nothing if not for God's matchless gifts of Church and Sacraments, and above all for Jesus Christ, Gift of Gifts. I bless God that in baptism I am paradoxically both dead and alive in Christ--both dead to the world and alive for the world; that the Good Gift of the Eucharist connects me with all creation everywhere in every age while challenging me to discern the body within the community where I find myself at that particular moment in time and space. I give thanks that I am bound by water and the Word yet claim the liberty of the children of God—bound above all by grace! This Thanksgiving 2006 I give thanks for nearby neighbors and emerging friendships, and amazingly, for a pair of online sites that have shown me (the physical, tangible gospel person) that community, trust and friendship can happen over the internet! Who would have thought?!

I give thanks for shelter, warmth, food, creation, beauty of every kind, the year-long Design School program I finished a month ago at the local branch ("expression of" as we'd say in the Church) of the New Media Consortium—I especially give thanks that God knows to keep putting options in my path sufficiently late to force me to make quick decisions! For the IMCP I interviewed and attended orientation on a Friday in early January, started classes at 7:00 the following Monday morning.

With Rascal Flatts ["Bless the Broken Road"– 2004] I bless the broken road on which I've tripped and frequently fallen. I am increasingly grateful that the God of the bible, Lord of the Church, is a servant God Who Self-reveals not in ornate finery but in the Cross of Calvary Hill and in extravagant unmerited gifts of grace given in spite of me, in spite of us, sometimes because of the messiness, brokenness and devastating shatteredness of life disintegrating into simple survival. And surely the Best News arrives to the dis- or less-enfranchised, to the broken and empty?! (I don't need to mention smelly shepherds quite yet, or do I?) If the upcoming days were not shorter, darker and a little depressing even here in Southern California, how else and why else would anyone ever be motivated to look for the light that would be invisible if not surrounded by night?

To Advent

Sunday we'll celebrate Reign of Christ, and then the season of Advent, with its retrospect and prospect of judgment, repentance, renewal, redemption and hope will be upon the world once again! In the Bethlehem manger we meet the God Who comes to earth amidst silent darkness, pleased to share our common lot--of casino-style payoffs, fast bucks, fast cars and fast career tracks? No, not—because surely brokenness, estrangement, stranger-ness, strangeness, disappointment, disillusionment, loneliness and betrayal are far more common than what the world out there deems success?! God comes to earth incarnate not only into the thick of human need but in human need, too...Jesus born in Bethlehem, Little Town of House of Bread, reveals to the world the God Who forms us, shaping our identity in situations and relationships full of uncertainty and precariousness--not in the assurances of institutions of higher learning like Harvard Business School!

To Winter Solitude

I hope to make the coming season into an experience of real, near-total winter, getting as close as possible to a somnolent hibernation into darkness in the midst of the city. What with everything going on in my heart and in my head, estivation would have been helpful this year as well, but being in the thick of design school during summer 2006 effectively zapped any estival options. Three days and three nights in the heart of the earth: heart is earth written with H at the beginning rather than at the end! Heart as an organic metaphor, a spatial one or place where emotions, will and humanness reside.

To Wintersong: this far by faith

Check out my blog for Epiphany 2006, where I quote Marty Haugen's version of the Service of Light that opens evening prayer or vespers:

1. Joyous light of heavenly glory, loving glow of God's own face,
   you who sing creation's story, shine on every land and race.
   Now as evening falls around us, we shall raise our songs to you,
   God of daybreak, God of shadows, come and light our hearts anew.


2. In the stars that grace the darkness, in the blazing sun of dawn,
   of the light of peace and wisdom, we can hear your quiet song.
   Love that fills the night with wonder, love that warms the weary soul,
   Love that bursts all chains asunder, set us free and make us whole.


3. You who made the heaven's splendor, every dancing star of night,
   make us shine with gentle justice, let us each reflect your light.
   Mighty God of all creation, gentle Christ who lights our way,
   Loving Spirit of salvation, lead us on to endless day.

© 1990 GIA Publications, Inc.

Isaiah 51:3

Isaiah 35:6-7

...with a new version of the similar graphic that includes blue—not sure if I've blogged this one before:

Deuteronomy 28:3

Early August note: Oh, how I love Deuteronomy, with its constant refrains: "into the land, into the land..." and "the Lord your God, the Lord your God..." Here's a digitized version of an old styling of God's promise of a holy wholly grounded Good News—at first I thought the original was too damaged to clean up well, but later on...

Monday, November 6: This morning I Photoshopped another plain version plus one with filters that came out so well (probably due to my being relatively rested and fresh-brained after three weeks away from school) and will display advantageously on the Big Screen, too, but at least for now I'm keeping all of them here—changing the blog post date from early August, too.



With filter—sprayed strokes; and layer style—vivid light:



Finally, here's the scan of the very original:

tfbf october 2006

this far by faith october 2006

[Thursday evening]

Last Monday I tried blogging directly from Google docs with their word processing nicely called "Writely!" I have a half-dozen blogs in mind, plus the rest of a Generous Orthodoxy that initially excited me and then I all but forgot about in the excitement and intensity of finishing a final IMCP portfolio and graduating last Friday the 13th. My only complaint about Writely is the fact this blog didn't get a title, so I'll give it one now.

Next Wednesday I'm moderating the FOW discussion of our current study document, The Nature and Mission of the Church, so I need to work through "The Church in and for the World," which maybe I'll blog about on desert spirit's fire. Then I hope to get to my other ideas before they grow not only stale but moldy.

Separated and yet bound--Paul Tillich's all-so-true observation. Bound by water and word; bound above all by the cross. Separated by?

Isaiah 60:1

So far as I can figure, this is brand new—well, actually old, but I just finished editing for my portfolio:

Isaiah 43:11-12

Another revised version with a very different effect:

Psalm 63:7

Genesis 49:10

1 Timothy 4:10

Flash Site Proposal

Flash Site Proposal – revised
Leah Chang | Morning IMCP | Thursday, September 14, 2006
Music artist: Leah Chang, pianist

This site needs to be bright and engaging, without being brash or brassy! In terms of site style, I am so in love with the city and with the desert and the seacoast, so I've planned my color palette to reflect colors typically found in all those environments, with a camel sandy brown dominating.

Color palette

Although I worked out a palette with Pantone process colors in Illustrator, I'm planning to begin with the background to my flash slide show, which already includes the tertiary colors I've suggested! But here's my original palette, nonetheless:

• Camel tan
• Turquoise blue or equal amounts of light blue (periwinkle?) and pale green
• Golden yellow
• Accents: Coral; lavender or light plum

Fonts

Only one lonely, sans-serif--to be determined.

Proposed pages

1. Front Page: Flash shapes pieces with motion or shape tweens fading to about 60% opacity to form page background; navigation; suntreeriver logo I made in Illustrator during first module silhouetted on the background.

2. Biography/contact: education, interests, performance experience, links to my design site and to my main blogs; I'm planning to draw a cityscape in Illustrator to silhouette on the background of this page.

3. Current Repertoire: pieces I've performed during the past few years and that are performance-ready. I may add a page with historical repertoire, which (of course) I can rework to performance level. On this page I plan to have a beach or nautical or marine or seashore scene silhouetted on the background.

4. Sound Clips

5. Potentially available CD's, hopefully including playlists. The CD titles reflect my theology, with three of them from my blogs, though Preservation Project is a very recent addition to my blog repertoire and it's mostly about urban brownfield development, neighborhood revitalization and storefront improvement rather than about other specifically theological concerns. On this page I'll probably silhouette my suntreeriver logo again.

Advance legwork

I own the domain names suntreeriver.com, sutreeriverlive.com, suntreeriver.us and suntreeriverdesign.com. However, at this time the only server space I have is from IMCP, though I'm planning to put this site on suntreeriverlive.com and after graduation to develop suntreeriverdesign.com. I may decide to make suntreeriver.us a personal site, linking from there to my other sites and blogs. As a writer and theologian, my theology and testimony blogs, hosted on Blogger, are important parts of my résumé, but especially as I've been returning to my softer, more creative side since returning to school last January, I'd love to develop a comprehensive place where I could journal, draw and reflect. I've posted some of my IMCP work and some of my old freehand graphics on my testimony blog, and – of course – eventually I expect to have a professional site as a designer.

Recording

I hope the sound person from one of my churches will be able to make a professional recording. For sound clips I'm planning excerpts from pieces by Schubert, Debussy, Prokofiev, J. S. Bach, Chopin and two or three 2oth century Americans, possibly Lukas Foss, Vittorio Giannini and Paul Nordoff, plus three or four arrangements of contemporary Christian songs—I especially like "You Are my All in All" and "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High."

Here are some sample CD titles and subtitles; most likely I'll design the actual covers in Photoshop with my page design as point of departure.

Late August Blog

Very late August—so very late in fact that August has turned over into September; today is September 7, the end of the first week of the next month, but I'm keeping the title from when I started writing on the afternoon of Saturday, August 26.

Over the summer I've defaulted into almost daily sandwiches, most often the $2.99 Sandwich of the Day Special, from the local Subway (sandwich shop, of course; this is the West Coast where I haven't yet run into any subway train systems, with run into aptly suggesting near-frantic running after buses, subway trains and commuter trains back in Boston).

Exactly like preaching the lectionary, going with the SOTD at Subway is both freedomed discipline and locked-in pre-determination. I tell people "I appreciate the RCL's discipline and especially its ecumenicity!" Ecumenical – the entire earth's household, sometimes described as "the whole, known inhabited world," which also means the dwelling-place where all creation – not just human – lives and needs to have maintained in integrity if all of us hope wholly to thrive together.

Yesterday evening there were 26409 Subway restaurants in 85 countries, up some from 26347 a few days earlier, making me wonder about the bills-of-fare or plain old menu boards in places like Aruba, Belize and Costa Rica; on the site I found an answer:

The SUBWAY® chain opened its first restaurant outside the U.S. and Canada in the small Middle Eastern nation of Bahrain in December of 1984. Since then, the SUBWAY® chain has gone worldwide.

Despite the diversity of cultures wherever SUBWAY® restaurants are located, the core menu stays relatively the same—with the exception of some cultural and religious variations.

Is Subway(®) behaving like American Presbyterians did in Korea? Maybe. So does Subway® believe they have Good News that needs a particular kind of containerization in order to be effective—efficacious, even? In writing grant proposals "Measure of Effectiveness" is one of the parameters we define, usually listing criteria that minimally must be met in order for the goal or objective to be considered to have worked out well or achieved the desired effect. In mission, evangelism and ministry and in the Subway® sandwich restaurant's chain's market share, how is effectiveness determined by what measure and by whom? How do those results play out?

Or could they find a way for "Eat Fresh" to work with basically non-Western ingredients whenever they're assembling and serving subs in non-Western contexts? A couple days ago I posted a short blog about contextualizing ministry, mission, and evangelism; how well does Subway(®) contextualize its sandwiches? I'm suggesting Subway could be considered ecumenical—just like the RCL!

Also notice Subway® gets called a "chain," which means each part is linked to the next part in a way that's difficult to break or undo. But links in a chain definitely don't need to be equal, the same, or even very similar, do they? In my experience they don't! Looks as if this is turning into more-or-less pure blog...and my thinking is getting crazy, as is the hour, for someone who has to be in class at 7 Friday morning.

From The Shamu Adventure, "I remember the days of the starry nights" with music, maybe lyrics too, by Brad Kelley. A few days ago I bought a pair of Ocean Dream stoneware bowls—definitely worth posting a pic here as soon as I remember to take a few. This evening I'm recollecting – literally gathering together over again, re-linking into a hard-to-unlink group in my memory – days of starry nights and wishing they'd return and knowing they can't because this is today, almost the start of the second week of September 2006 and we can expect some days and some nights of Santa Ana Winds. In addition to those amazing weather moods, I can expect regularly to be considering many more ecumenical RCL lections and Eating Fresh™ quite a few more ecumenical(?!) sandwiches from the nearby San Diego branch of the Subway® chain.

current favorite authors

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Disclaimer: I truly am a little embarrassed, since everyone I've listed is a guy and all the theological types are protestants! I've listed mostly in the order the authors came to mind, categorizing each writer according to their literary genre or type I'm most familiar with. If you visit my other blogs, you'll notice I'm cross-posting; I expect to remember some omissions, so most likely I'll be adding to these lists.

Mostly Prose:

William Faulkner
Walter Brueggemann
Tony Campolo
Martin Luther
Martin Luther King
Paul Tillich
Martin Buber
Robert Farrar Capon
Max Lucado
Rick Bragg
James Cone
Matthew Fox
James Agee

Mostly Poets:

Richard Shelton
Hermann Hesse
Heinrich Heine
Conrad Aiken
Walt Whitman
Langston Hughes
Carl Sandburg

Pair of Scenes

Scene in Jewel Tones



Country Scene

1 John; 2nd Isaiah

My description of desert spirit's fire, my theology blog says, "a whimsical view of my often passionate theology"; you might call this pair of scriptural graphics I did ages ago and scanned this afternoon whimsical, too!



1 John 3:21



Isaiah 51:3

Digital Graphics from (the end of) the Last Century!

Seagulls; Scene in Cools

Citrus

Until the Day Dawns!

2 Peter 1:19

Isaiah 55:10-11

1 Peter 1:8

With His Spirit He Sought Us...

Sweet Dying Lamb | Jamie Owens © 1973 Lexicon Music, Inc.

With His own hand He made us;
With His love He forgave us;
With His mercy He saved us when we'd wandered away.
With His own Word He taught us;
With His Spirit He sought us;
With His own blood He bought us when we'd all gone astray.

Oh sing praise to the Savior, Oh sing praise to His name
O precious Jesus my Savior, He's forever the same.
I will sing hallelujah to the sweet dying Lamb Who is risen triumphant
And is coming again.

1 Peter 2:9

Isaiah 35:1-2

I love this text but this design seriously needs redoing in Illustrator; nevertheless, I wanted to post this original version:

2 Corinthians 12:9

Self-explanatory...a few weeks ago I preached on this text:

1 Peter 3:8

Here's an old freehand graphic I scanned and tweaked:

Fifth Evangelist

Once upon a warm summer weeknight, we held a liturgical celebration of JS Bach; here's the bulletin cover I designed...

city_fence

Here's a collage I did in my very first ever semester of Photoshop; some time ago I posted it over on city delights. Seems as if it also belongs here on my faith journey/testimony site, since I so tend to ride fences about almost everything. Usually urban ones, of course...

Lions Lambs Eagles Doves

This blog-title happened because I remembered a greeting card (I think) with a quote from Weston Priory about the lion lying down with the lamb. Thinking it might be from a Weston Priory song, I tried doing an internet search, but found nothing. Most likely it's on a Christmas card I've saved, so when I find the card I'll amend this blog with the exact passage.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Well there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove

~Stephen Stills~

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
From the album Absolutely: ABC—"One Better World"

One better world
One better world
One better world

Someway – Somehow – Some place – Somewhere
Let the lion lie down with the lamb
Someway – Somehow – Some place – Somewhere
Don't use the color of the skin to judge a man

~Martin Fry and Mark White~

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
On the news this past Monday, the Rt. Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop-Elect essentially said she could form a relationship with just about anyone through dialogue and conversation. But that's what I'd always imagined about myself, and it had happened close to countless times—but what about now? Oh, I know, "overdeveloped skills in reconciliation, accommodation and peacemaking," but the world would have no social workers, pastors, therapists, teachers or much of anyone else in that kind of direct service profession were some of us not somewhat codependent! Before writing codependent I hesitated and came close to saying "people-addicted," but instead I consulted Microsoft Word's synonym list and found mutually dependent, mutually inter-reliant and mutually supporting. Those words sound just fine to me!

starfield

Monday we formally presented our videos; Tuesday we started Flash. I've learned some Flash before, so I was ready to do something really fun. Here's my first Flash movie, presented as a GIF:

Attachment and Loss

Got a blog, gotta blog, finally, but first, let's see how this semi-ASCII horse looks here:

<\___~
//    \
This blog-title reminds me of our discussion of Water Buffalo Theology a couple years back on the old UCC online forums. Kosuke Koyama wrote WBT as a threefold offering: Christian-Buddhist dialogue, ecological theology and liberation theology. Even before I finally made the connection, such passionate attachments and devastating losses so have been informing the thinking, feeling, journaling and more formal writing I've lately been doing.

Blog

The early church always...always baptized
The 21st century church always baptizes
The early church baptized in the river’s flowing waters
River runs high and river runs low river runs through the land from source to destination
Rivers of baptism's bountiful streams ripple through our lives from source in Christ to destination in Christ
You know how I love paradox, and I love polyvalent images (and symbols) almost as much!

Like high summer's blush of fresh new love's blazing intensities and obsessive near-trances I was passionately in love with The Church; I still love the Church passionately--despite these past more than a dozen years.

The church had given me life! Oh yes, of course the sacraments, but when I say life I don't mean baptism and I'm not referring to the Bread of Life and Cup of Salvation.

Hospitality, hospital – hospitality industry! God's industrious hospitality in cross and sacrament. Sacraments, cross? But how about community--the church as the exhibition of the Reign of Heaven? The sacraments depend on the church for their existence.

Hospital=healing place

Cross=healing place, healing grace, healing embrace, hospitality place

The Cross is God's "been there, done that, have (bought) the scars as proof." But is not the church, born at the cross and energized at Pentecost--the community bought, purchased at the cross proof of God's being and doing, as well?

Here's some of Fred Pratt Green's song we sang last Sunday to Cyril Taylor's tune, Abbot's Leigh, which always sounds so Anglican to me:

God is here! As we your people meet to offer praise and prayer...
Here are table, font and pulpit; here the cross has central place.

Those words remind me of Marty Haugen, "Gather us in":

Here we will take the wine and the water;
here we will take the bread of new birth;
here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.

From a newer favorite I've posted at least a couple of places:

I, the Lord of font and cup, covenant to lift you up; splash the water, break the bread; pour out your lives!

Time to prepare for tomorrow...

Reach Out of the Darkness

Feelin' nostalgic:

Friend & Lover: Reach Out Of The Darkness, summer, 1968

I think it's so groovy now
That people are finally getting together
I thinks it's so wonderful and how
That people are finally getting together
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
And you may find a friend

I knew a man that I did not care for
And then one day this man gave me a call
We sat and talked about things on our mind
And now this man he is a friend of mine
Don't be afraid of love
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid to love
Everybody needs a little love
Everybody needs somebody
That they can be thinking of

---

Interesting:

With its captivating bass line, anthemic chorus, male-female vocal interplay, and lyrics entirely in tune with the swell of cooperative spirit engulfing American youth in the late 1960s, Friend & Lover's "Reach Out of the Darkness" became a Top Ten hit in the summer of 1968...[and] would be Friend & Lover's sole album, though the male half of the duo, Jim Post, went on to a long and ongoing career in folk, children's music, and the theater...Like hundreds if not thousands of fellow American folk musicians of the '60s, the pair would soon move into rock music as Friend & Lover, Post (who wrote their material) being the "Friend" and [Cathy] Conn the "Lover." ...

Post's composition "Reach Out of the Darkness" was recorded in Nashville, the production credited to Joe South--not long before South, already an established session musician, songwriter, and producer on the Southern recording scene, would himself become a star artist--and Bill Lowery...Ray Stevens" --also a busy session musician, in addition to recording hit records under his own name-- "played all the keyboards, and arranged the strings."

The single took a long time to take off, adds Post, as initially, "the only place that played 'Reach Out of the Darkness' was [the small Northern California town] Chico. It sold about twice as many as the #1 song normally sells in a little town." Nationwide, however, "the record just sat there, I don't know, six, seven months, and didn't do anything. We figured the record was gone and dead. But they had a Selective Service sit-in in California, because there was a hearing on Selective Service or something like that, and they arrested 3,000 people. They took them out to Kezar field [then used as the San Francisco 49ers' football stadium, in Golden Gate Park]." As Jim remembers, it was at that point where a promo man who "had had faith in 'Reach Out' for a long time sent copies to every radio station in the Bay Area with a letter. Then he grabbed a sound truck, went out to Kezar field, and started playing the music on the sound truck. About six o'clock that afternoon, they were playing it almost back-to-back in San Francisco, and that's what started it."

After the ball was rolling, continues Post, "it hit up and down the west coast, and hit in the Midwest. The first time I heard it, we were driving down the Outer Drive in Chicago and turned the radio on, and there's 'Reach Out of the Darkness.' It totally blew our minds. But New York wouldn't go on it, so it started down the charts. Then someone shot Martin Luther King, and it went back up the charts. It sold enough to be a #1 record, but hit at different parts of the country at different times. So it never got to be #1, except on certain radio stations."...Much of the album boasted full arrangements drawing from various influences in late-'60s pop-rock, soul, and psychedelia...Post hardly gave up on music itself...More information on Jim's music, concerts, and other activities can be found on his website, Jim Post dot com.

--Richie Unterberger

Here's the liner notes complete.

Word Salad

Today's Topic

Word Salad?! Maybe I'm running of blog ideas? Fat chance! However, this'll go on my testimony site rather than with my more formal theology on desert spirit's fire.

Pondering Word of Life, Bread of Life, Eschatological Feast (manna, milk, honey, wine, figs, lamb, goat, sheep, Lamb, et al.) gets me thinking about the colors, varieties, mixes and textures filling each of our lives--not only culinary events, but every aspect of each day: sound, sight, smell, tactility. But what about my expression "culinary events"? Does the local fast food emporium serve up anything qualifying either as true cuisine or viable event? Or, for another stretch, both event (measurable in time and space) and cuisine (intentionally imagined and passionately created) in a single portion?! In the Church we recognize glossolalia as one of the more demonstratively eschatological Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, but word salad's not quite the same as glossolalia; the phrase Word Salad also has some currency in the computer world. From a clinical standpoint, word salad...do a search and find out for yourself!

As my Boston friend Nick (there's a pic of Nick's back steps and part of his garden on my blogger profile) would insist, this topic is both a stretch and a shrink, but I'm going with it anyway. Oh, by the way, Nick is a PK and the brother-in-law of a preacher, and despite the fact he doesn't read theology or even spend much apparent time reading the bible, he doesn't often miss Sunday worship and he's astute in matters of the Spirit. However...at times my theology seems far more earthbound than heaven-bound, but I'll assure you that's the Reformation influence! To continue briefly with Word Salad:

Word of Life

Jesus is the Living Word, the Word made human flesh that lives, breathes, walks, teaches and talks! Some of us even get to preach what we trust and pray will become a Word of Life. Word of life has to be something that accompanies our every breath, thought and step; it must be something that generates living! Word Salad points to the variety of interventions and the variety of venues in which the Word of Life acts.

Bread of Life

That's not only Johannine, the idea goes way back to the Hebrew scriptures and probably further back than that into prehistoric times. Close to a million times I've written about Israel receiving manna from heaven in the Exodus Desert.

Eschatological Feast

To conclude, check out my blog for Earth Day 2006.

Resurrection 2006: Easter, Tucson, Arizona

[Ava] April come she will,
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again...Paul Simon, 1965

Ava April is a 2 ½ year old Husky mix, finally adopted, and just in time for Easter! Now she lives with seven Husky and Husky mix siblings (even numbers of girls and boys), including Easter Angel, adopted four Easters ago, 2002. In nature's realm plentiful newness happens during spring every year; rivers grow beyond winter's seemingly harsh limits, increasing with water--gestation's essential and necessity of sustenance; spring of the year is when trees and flowers bud, bloom and flourish. Always replete with life, though often at least somewhat concealed, during spring desert habitats extravagantly display abundant glory.

On Easter the Church proclaims,

Love's redeeming work is done!
Where, O Death, is now thy sting!

Sadly, again this year I missed having an opportunity to participate in an Easter Vigil, but Easter morning we worshiped at Casas Adobes United Church of Christ--wonderful music, and preaching I needed to hear.

The Lord went before them in a cloud by day and fire by night. This year I missed keeping Easter's Vigil, but I have intense memories of kindling the new fire at Easter Vigils long past. Possibly you can miss a Cloud by Day, especially if you don't look upward or outward, but Fire blazing amidst night's darkness is unmistakable. Baptized with the HS and with Fire? Baptized into the fire of the cross and into the fire of the constant, unmistakable and irrevocable Divine Presence. Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? Immersed in Fire and Spirit? Think about it!

Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Beethoven Sonata cycle...this far by faith!

Since online storage is so useful, I've decided to keep track of the sonatas and discrete movements I've learned. The sonatas I can play are bold indigo; if you're wondering at what level I play the Indigo Sonatas, they're either at public performance level or will be there as soon as I have them scheduled for a live gig.

[update] As it turned out, I've indigoed only the sonata number and opus number rather than going through and indigoing all the separate movements; for most of the sonatas I play all the movements, anyway.

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No. 1 in F minor, Opus 2 no 1 | 1796
Dedicated to Joseph Haydn
1.Allegro
2.Adagio
3.Menuetto & Trio : Allegretto
4.Prestissimo

No. 2 in A major, Opus 2 no 2 | 1796
Dedicated to Joseph Haydn
1.Allegro vivace
2.Largo appassionato
3.Scherzo & Trio : Allegretto
4.Rondo : Grazioso

No. 3 in C major, Opus 2 no 3 | 1796
Dedicated to Joseph Haydn
1.Allegro con brio
2.Adagio
3.Scherzo & Trio : Allegro
4.Allegro assai

No. 4 in E flat major, Opus 7 | 1797
Dedicated to Countess Babette von Keglevics
1.Allegro molto e con brio
2.Largo, con gran espressione
3.Allegro
4.Rondo : Poco allegretto e grazioso

No. 5 in C minor, Opus 10 no 1
Dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne
1.Molto allegro e con brio
2.Adagio molto
3.Finale : Prestissimo

No. 6 in F major, Opus 10 no 2
Dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne
1.Allegro
2.Allegretto
3.Presto

No. 7 in D major, Opus 10 no 3
Dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne
1.Presto
2.Largo e mesto
3.Menuetto & Trio : Allegro
4.Rondo : Allegro

No. 8 in C minor, Opus 13 | 1799 "Pathétique"
Dedicated to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky
1.Grave - Allegro di molto con brio
2.Adagio cantabile
3.Rondo : Allegro

No. 9 in E major, Opus 14 no 1
Dedicated to Baroness Josefine von Braun
1.Allegro
2.Allegretto
3.Rondo : Allegro commodo

No. 10 in G major, Opus 14 no 2
Dedicated to Baroness Josefine von Braun
1.Allegro
2.Andante
3.Scherzo : Allegro assai

No. 11 in B flat major, Opus 22 | 1800
Dedicated to Count Johann Georg von Browne
1.Allegro con brio
2.Adagio con molto espressione
3.Menuetto
4.Rondo : Allegretto

No. 12 in A flat major, Opus 26
Dedicated to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky
1.Andante con variazioni
2.Scherzo & Trio : Allegro molto
3.Marcia funebra sulla morte d'un eroe
4.Allegro

No. 13 in E flat major, Opus 27 no 1
Dedicated to Princess Josephine von Liechenstein
1.Andante - Allegro
2.Allegro molto e vivace
3.Adagio con espressione
4.Allegro vivace - Presto

No. 14 in C sharp minor, Opus 27 no 2 | 1801 "Moonlight"
Dedicated to Countess Giuletta Giucciardi
1.Adagio sostenuto
2.Allegretto & Trio
3.Presto agitato

No. 15 in D major, Opus 28 "Pastorale"
Dedicated to Joseph Edlen von Sonnenfels
1.Allegro
2.Andante
3.Scherzo & Trio : Allegro vivace
4.Rondo : Allegro ma non troppo

No. 16 in G major, Opus 31 no 1 | 1802
1.Allegro vivace
2.Adagio grazioso
3.Rondo : Allegretto

No. 17 in D minor, Opus 31 no 2 | 1802 "Tempest"
1.Largo - Allegro
2.Adagio
3.Allegretto

No. 18 in E flat major, Opus 31 no 3 | 1802
1.Allegro
2.Scherzo : Allegretto vivace
3.Menuetto & Trio : Moderato e grazioso
4.Presto con fuoco

No. 19 in G minor, Opus 49 no 1 | 1792?
1.Andante
2.Rondo : Allegro

No. 20 in G major, Opus 49 no 2 | 1792?
1.Allegro ma non troppo
2.Tempo di menuetto

No. 21 in C major, Opus 53 | 1803 "Waldstein"
1.Allegro con brio
2.Introduzione : Molto Adagio
3.Rondo : Allegretto moderato - Prestissimo

No. 22 in F major, Opus 54 | 1804
1.In tempo d'un menuetto
2.Allegretto

No. 23 in F minor, Opus 57 | 1805 "Appassionata"
1.Allegro assai
2.Andante con moto
3.Allegro ma non troppo

No. 24 in F sharp major, Opus 78 | 1809
1.Adagio cantabile - Allegro ma non troppo
2.Allegro vivace

No. 25 in G major, Opus 79 | 1809
1.Presto alla tedesca
2.Andante
3.Vivace

No. 26 in E flat major, Opus 81a | 1809 "Les Adieux"
1.Adagio - Allegro
2.Andante espressivo
3.Vivacissimamente

No. 27 in E minor, Opus 90 | 1814
1.Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck
2.Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorzutragen

No. 28 in A major, Opus 101 | 1816
1.Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empfindung
2.Lebhaft. Marschmaessig
3.Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll - Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr, und mit Entschlossenheit

No. 29 in B flat major, Opus 106 | 1818 "Hammerklavier"
1.Allegro
2.Scherzo : Assai vivace
3.Adagio sostenuto, appassionato e con molto sentimento
4.Largo - Allegro risoluto

No. 30 in E major, Opus 109
1.Vivace, ma non troppo - Adagio espressivo
2.Prestissimo
3.Andante, molto cantabile ed espressivo

No. 31 in A flat major, Opus 110
1.Moderato cantabile, molto espressivo
2.Allegro molto
3.Adagio, ma non troppo - Fuga : Allegro, ma non troppo

No. 32 in C minor, Opus 111
1.Maestoso - Allegro con brio ed appassionato
2.Arietta : Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile

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Word Image: Fire

For this assignment, we chose a word and applied styles, transforms and other tweaks so the text illustrated the word's meaning--the font originally was Braggadocio.

Valentines Day 2006

City Delights, or "Delightful City"

In the current Print Module we've started Adobe Illustrator; providentially, I'd learned some of the program last summer and did a little more in late fall, so it's not totally obscure. For the first part of this small, 20-point project, we had to trace shapes with the [scary?!] pen tool; the second phase, the one we turned in for grades, was to use the shapes to create a picture of anything but a beach scene. The shapes – which we could break apart into their separate components – were umbrella, cloud, waves, sailboat, palm tree, seashell and delivery truck. After I finished tracing, I spent a ton of time working with fills, lines, gradients, transforms and stacking orders. Then, when time got short, I designed an energetic, optimistic, happy urban paradise.

summer dreams

We did this project in ImageReady, PhotoShop's web formatting component; it's a quick comp of the splashpage of a website, something you'd prepare for a client – without spending unreal amounts of time doing something that might not fly – to give them an idea of what you had in mind. This image includes additions not required by the minimum assignment directions.

photo retouching and colorizing: Harwich House

Wednesday I turned in my second major project; these notes are from my Artist's Statement.

194 Church Street, Harwich, Massachusetts

Image source: for this assignment I chose a black and white photograph of the house my grandparents first owned and later lived in at 194 Church Street in Harwich, on the vacation peninsula of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; they probably took this shot shortly after buying the property in the early 1950s. Clapboard siding and shake shingle roofs characterize most New England farm-style houses built on the Cape during the mid-to late 19th century.

Over the past few years I've scrapbooked many of the better snapshots of this house, but this one was in close to disreputable condition, making it a great candidate for repairing and colorizing!

Hoped-for outcome and rationale: because I have pictures taken after my grandparents made repairs, improvements and additions to both house and yard, I planned the colorizing to reveal what the house would have looked like when they first bought the property, before starting renovations and transformations.

Regarding the hues: always trying to avoid the temptation to imagine this project was supposed to look like a color photograph, I took some freedom with the color. I made the siding on the house creamy white, although an almost chalky white tends to be more typical of houses of that period in that geographical area. In addition, I aimed for pleasing (to me) interactivity among the roof, grass and sky colors. The original roof probably was green, but it might have been gray or brown.

images from my first print media project

Tuesday was the date to turn in our first real project in the Interactive Media Certificate Program / IMCP Print Media module! We each got to pick a sometimes cryptic phrase...from a hat? I don't know, I left class a little early for Faith, Order, Witness, so Carolyn O'Barr, our Tuesday through Friday instructor, gave me Dreams of Swans, the only one left. We could choose to design a CD, DVD or book cover; I decided on a CD. Here's the front and the back! For the CD itself, I omitted the harder-edged urban fire escape on the upper left and Rotterdam roofs lower right, faded the cannabis leaf a little more and also made the swans less opaque. In addition, I rasterized the playlist and credits so I could move them away from the CD's center hole.

from my Artists Statement:

Creative Concept

• Swans
• Images of swan pairs posed so a heart forms between their heads are common, but I chose a swan couple forming almost a heart, illustrating the often tenuous, frequently fragile, inevitably changing bonds love and relationship form.
• Dune Grass
• From summers on Cape Cod – as well as time I've spent on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia – dune grass has become one of my favorite seashore symbols. The photography I chose particularly reminds me of Nauset and Chincoteague.
• Urban Fire Escape
• The subject is dreams, and where do multitudes of dreams emerge more insistently than in the residential and commercial structures of any inner city? Escape suggests going elsewhere than the daily mundane, and I love the dual imagery of "fire" both as a danger to be quenched and a crucial aspect of creativity.
• Rotterdam Rooftops
• For me, this image is polyvalent! Rotterdam is one of my favorite cities in what's probably my favorite country. In one of my former lives, the roof of the apartment building where I lived at 39 Clark Street in Boston's North End (a block away from Old North Church, "Christ Church in the City of Boston" of Paul Revere fame) was a great place to go to dream, do homework, sunbathe, visit with friends and just plain chill. Reinforced by the song "Up on the Roof" (I consider James Taylor's the real version), rooftops evoke a cascade of nostalgic memories and the slick, contemporary ones in this photograph cleanly dovetail with my current life and style.
• Cannabis Sativa Leaf
• Pipe dreams! Not exactly renowned as a hallucinogen, nevertheless marijuana tends to induce an altered, not-quite-real state of mind and being, so I chose this image to suggest a possible new reality superimposed upon rationalized 21st-century life.

New Books, Early January 2006, and some updated personal info

Here's the list of my new books; for details, you can click on the Amazon link. Over the next couple of months I'm planning to do more reading than recently I've been doing! In addition, this coming Monday I'll begin the 12-week long (plus spring break) Print Module in the Interactive Media Certificate Program—IMCP at the San Diego Community College District's North City Campus, which is a member of the international New Media Consortium. By the way, although I tried linking to the program's course listings the link wasn't specific enough, but according to the site listing this module will include: Mac Basics, Digital Graphics, Vector Graphics, Desktop Publishing, and Portable Document Forms. According to the material we received at orientation and registration, that'll be Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro and Portfolio development--the main reason this program interests me so. Since I'll be concentrating heavily on design, with 25 class hours per week, for the next near future I may try to make most of my blogs reflections on my current reading rather than my own theologizing.

Brueggemann, Walter. Texts That Linger, Words That Explode: Listening to Prophetic Voices

Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World

Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation

Robert L. Millet, Kent P. Jackson, et al. Studies In Scripture, Vol. 4: 1 Kings to Malachi

Robert L. Millet et al. Studies in Scripture, Vol. 6: Acts to Revelation