my spin on the top 5

i’ve recently read a few blogs on “Top 5 something to do with music”. as you know, i am a music expert, so i thought i’d put in my two cents.

however, mine has nothing to do with 5…too limiting. what you will find is an old artist and a new artist for each letter of the alphabet. fyi: sometimes “old” refers to artists who have been making music for awhile even though they are still around. sometimes “new” refers to artists who have been around for a long time who are still making music. also, if there’s a comma somewhere in the name…i’ve cheated. deal with it.

seriously though, if you see someone you don’t know, check ‘em out…

here we go!

A:  Alison Krauss (with Robert Plant) / The Avett Brothers

B:  The Beatles / Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama (extra points in Scattergories)

C:  Credence Clearwater Revival / Carolina Chocolate Drops

D:  John Denver / Bob Dylan (remember that “new” rule)

E:  Elvis / Eddie Vedder

F:  The Faces (Rod Stewart) / The Frames

G:  George Harrison / David Gray

H:  Highwaymen (Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, & Kris Kristofferson) / Emmylou Harris (she’s still singing!)

I:  Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) / Iver, Bon

J:  Joan Baez / Josh Ritter

K:  Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) / The Killers

L:  Little Richard / Leon, Kings of

M:  The Mamas & the Papas / M. Ward

N:  Nina Simone / Neko Case

O:  Otis Redding / Old Crow Medicine Show

P:  Paul Simon / Patti Griffin

Q:  Queen / (I can’t think of anymore Q’s that are worthy…and you can’t top Queen anyway, right?)

R:  The Rolling Stones / Ray LaMontagne

S:  Bruce Springstein / Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Sam Cooke / Soweto Gospel Choir   (I’m sorry I had to do two sets)

T:  Tom Petty / TV on the Radio

U:  U2 / Uncle Tupelo

V:  Van Morrison / Vampire Weekend

W:  The Who / Wilco

X:  All the X-cellent music I had to leave out…

Y:  Neil Young / Pete Yorn

Z:  Ziggy Stardust (aka David Bowie) / Zooey Deschanel (She & Him)

Whew that’s some good stuff! Enjoy!

 

15 easy steps to buying a home

prep:  have a vague conversation with God about what this year might hold…maybe, possibly, i don’t know, a house?

step #1:  casually look for a house in the desired neighborhood, but assume there will be no commitment for at least a few months

step #2:  find a realtor who tells you all the potential (and lack there of) of each house you enter; ask her a lot of dumb questions

step #3:  make an offer on a house you’ve only “known” for 20 minutes in order to beat out a couple who’s undoubtedly been looking at the house for months

step #4:  when making an offer, never forget the lessons well-learned from Price Is Right ($1 makes all the difference)

step #5:  do whatever the nice, trustworthy-looking lady at the mortgage company says…ASAP!

step #6:  borrow lots of money from all relatives

step #7:  wait

step #8:  repeat as necessary

step #9:  sign your middle name for the first time ever

step #10: repeat approximately 101 times

step #11: hope to God you did everything right

step #12: share some bubbly with friends and fam

step #13: blow up an air mattress, calm your dog down (since he’ll be scared of the security system’s beeping), eat easy cheese, and call it a successful first-night-in-the-new-house night

step #14: ask yourselves one more time “what have we done?”

step #15: (aka. the most important) redeem tax credit after one year of homeowning bliss

 

mustardseedness

God has to use repetition with me, I’ve discovered. He’ll open up a piece of Himself to me, just a small portion of His wisdom, and just to make sure I’m understanding He brings it back to me over and over and everywhere. I usually take note of this when I begin a  sentence with “I know I said this the last time, but it still applies…” Let’s just say I get a little fixated.

The truth nugget I’ve been stuck on lately is this:  God asks us to take small steps of faith so that our eyes will be open to the big work He’s doing. He’s doing the big work, and will do it whether we’re watching or not. But without taking steps of faith, we miss the opportunity to see His power…to see Him at work.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said: “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20). Maybe He meant that what God is asking from us is relatively small. Not easy always, but small. He asks for faith, then He moves the mountains…and we get to see it and sometimes be a part of it. In that case, nothing is impossible.

Just a thought.

 

Heading Home – take 1

bobby posting:

(Today, I’m writing the account of what’s happened here in our family. Here shortly, my wife will come back and post in a more thoughtfully analytical way (no pressure, Angel). I’m just getting the facts out.)

(also, something new here at the Harrisonian.  When it fits, we’ll try to put a song with a post.  So turn up the speakers and listen while you read.  Here’s one of my favorites right now from a group called the Deep Dark Woods.  Little tongue-in-cheek for you.)

The Deep Dark Woods – All the Money I Had is Gone

2 weeks ago, I sat staring at this same screen, writing on this same blog that this year had the potential to be our biggest year ever! Well I can report back now, 14 days later, that we’re still right on track! Me and the missus have spent the last month “casually” looking at houses. A couple of weeks ago, we called up our dear friend Kalynn Hill, who is a realtor, and asked if she’d show us around a few places. We love Kalynn and her whole family. We’ve been to Africa with her, babysat her daughter when she was younger, and really think of her like an Aunt that lives out of town or some other member of your family that you only ever see the good side of.

As we’d walk into places, Kalynn would immediately point out the good, bad, and ugly. After a week and a half of this, me and Ames had a pretty good idea of what was out there. We saw what kind of home we could get for our price range, but we also knew what we really wanted in a home and believed we’d find it somewhere, sometime. We really wanted an open living area. A nice big living room that was open to the kitchen. We like having folks over and we wanted a space that was conducive to that. We also wanted a good kitchen and a sizable backyard.

Well, 6 days ago, after having lunch with some good friends, we decided we’d looked enough online at homes and that maybe we should drive around neighborhoods we liked. After 20-30 minutes of this, we started to narrow the path down a bit and began to make our way back home. But, with Ames driving, we took a turn and found one more FOR SALE sign. The most exciting part was the little “price reduced” sign that’d been attached. We pulled into a driveway and the wife got out to look into the windows. I always think this would just be hilarious to watch from a living room across the street…all your “potential” neighbors looking into an empty house…you secretly pulling for certain couples to get back in the car and keep on driving! After staring into the house for a sec, Ames turned back to me with that same face that a young child gives you when you tell them they can have a cookie before dinnertime. We immediately called Kalynn and Amy’s mother, and within minutes the four of us were walking around the Harrisonian “dream home”. Wide open dining room/foyer when you walk in that connects right to a great, big living room with built-in bookshelves and a wood burning fire place (both things Amy really wanted, but definitely was not demanding). Then Kalynn dropped the bomb on us: somebody else was making an offer on this house…that day!!! Lets just say it made that initial walk-thru a little more intense. We fell hard and fast for it. Kalynn left for the office to work out what we’d need to do to make an offer too! The three of us headed to the backyard and prayed over the process. We prayed that God would be glorified from beginning to end in this situation. We prayed that we would hold loosely to this home. We prayed that God would put us as a family in a place where he could use us for his purposes…and we prayed that maybe this wasn’t that place. We immediately did all we could to give it all over to Him.

Within a couple of hours, I found myself in a realty office that I’d driven by a million times since I could first drive. I thought of all the vehicles I’d been in as I passed this building. My sister’s old Nissan Sentra. My 1982 Jeep CJ7. My mom’s old Isuzu Trooper (R.I.P.) (I loved that car). I looked at what me and Amy were wearing: grey cardigans. Seriously, the day I make my first offer on a house I’m wearing a grey cardigan at the same time that my wife is? Silly and unbelievable. I knew I’d have to sign 6000 pieces of paper, but other than that, this was not at all what I pictured this process to look like. We spent an hour going over everything and went back to our beautiful rent home shell-shocked and hopped up on life’s version of Mountain Dew. That was on a Friday. Because this past Monday was a holiday, we wouldn’t find anything out until Tuesday. Four gruelling days.

While meeting with Kalynn again, four days later, we upped our competing offer to our max (that was still within our “comfort zone”) and signed papers for the last time. We were told we’d hear the next day now. Then…a few hours later, Amy popped her head into my office downstairs at the church and screamed, “We got the house!” Shocked. I was shocked. Absolutely, jaw-on-the-floor-shocked. Some may call that “buyer’s remorse”. Some would simply call it hysteria.

There’s still 2-4 weeks of closing everything up before we officially “get” the house. Things can go wrong and take a turn for the worse. But we are pretty confident (as much as can humanly be) that it’ll all go smoothly. God has certainly already been glorified through this story. As Amy will probably write about here in a couple-few days, every major decision of our relationship has been strikingly quick and strangely similar to this one. All I know is that for the next few weeks, before we actually end up in that home, I may have to don that grey cardigan at least once a day for good luck. Maybe all you fellows out there should go look for one yourself. I found mine at Saver’s for 5 bucks. May be the best Abe Lincoln you’ve ever spent.

 

Biggest Year Ever? Hmm…Maybe.

bobby posting:

So the missus tells me this may be the biggest year ever (of our own lives).  I’d have to say that she just may be on to something.  Things that could happen this year.

1.  Baby Maybe. That’s right Zeke…we may adopt another dog!  Or…we might begin to walk down that road known as “trying to have a baby.”  Either way, another mouth may be fed in our house…and either way, it’ll still be a few months before that “process” even gets going at all.  So listen up Debbie and Laura…no grandkids yet!  Patience!

2.  Home We Own. Me and Amy have been blessed each year of our marriage with an amazing rental home that was just perfect for us at that specific time.  We are now in the beginning stages of looking at homes and thinking about what we want.

3.  Bob’s Job. I’m in conversations with my “wise counsel” about further-down-the-road kinda stuff.  Ways to grow in my role within ministry and avenues to pursue to deepen my education.

4.  Video Schmideo. I just wanted to have another rhyming thing here, although Video Schmideo is the coolest video rental store name ever.  Amy saw it one time in Chicago.  Hilarious.

5.  ‘09 is the Time. Me and the missus have both jumped head-first into a few New Year’s resolutions, and they’re holding strong so far.  For Amy, that involves eating right, buying right, and excercising right.  From fresh-green salads to energy-saving light bulbs to pain-inducing yoga she seems to be doing great.  For me, that involves being very intentional in my guy friendships, really enjoying the sport of soccer again, and writing and recording my first (and only?) album.  I’ve always wanted to do it.  As far as we’re concerned, ‘09 might as well be the time!

Will it be the our biggest year ever?  Hmm…maybe, baby.

[to be continued...]

 

People We Like vol. 3

bobby posting:

Mobile Sobel

Adam Sobel grew up in a suburb of Chicago.  I was born in a nearby suburb of Chitown as well (Adam and my older sister were actually born in the same hospital there).  Right before adolescence hit, Sobel and his family packed their bags and moved down I-55 to Memphis.  My family hopped, skipped, and jumped to Florida, Texas, and Arizona.  Finally, at the age of 7, I moved to Little Rock, AR.  Finally, in 7th grade, Adam moved to North Little Rock.    And then, one day soon thereafter, I moved across the Arkansas River to within walking distance of a guy that remains to this day one of the best friends I’ll ever have.

Sobel and I always shared this bond that we were strangers in a strange land here in Arkansas.  Neither one of us had a foreign, I mean Southern, accent and both of us sort of resented the fact that out of all the places we’d once lived throughout our child, we somehow ended up here. Of course we were ignorant, unappreciative little snobs, but we didn’t know it at the time.  All we knew was that the other one spoke a little bit like us.

Like any great friendship, we hit our highs and lows throughout high school, including that horrible phase of best-friendedness where you  just don’t talk to each other for a long stretch of time.  It was awkward and annoying and, to be honest, a bit embarassing.  But as we rounded out high school, we were both accepted into Northwestern University.  It was there, as you transported Arkansans in a foreign land, that we came back together and reappreciated what we’d always had.

There are many, many things I appreciate about this guy.  I could make a Santa-size list, but instead I’ll narrow it down.  Here’s my Six Degrees of Sobel:

1 / Adam is terribly funny.  More than that, though, his laugh is terribly contagious.  Get him going and it’s one of those great rolling chuckles that you wish your laugh sounded like.

2 / Adam is unabashedly unshy (when he wants to be).  I had a photojournalism project where I needed to take portraits of people in “their own environment”.  I had to capture them in a setting that defined who they were.  As a screenwriter, Adam had this great idea involving one of his scripts and a projector.  As I stood there and snapped up photos, Adam didn’t do what everyone always does when you put a camera on them.  He didn’t hide and force a smile.  Instead, he really opened up and let me illustrate his world.

3 / Adam is incomparably inventive.  The same thing that makes him a great writer and filmmaker also makes him a great guy to have around.  There’s rarely a boring moment.  From Deer Hunting Without Guns (which involves chasing deer… on foot… for no apparent reason…which we actually DID in high school), to the genius list he created for my bachelor party which gave everyone there a task to be completed by night’s end (further inquiries please contact my lawyer (name and email upon request)).  Everybody has a friend like that.  He’s mine.

4 / Adam is one of the rare men still walking this Earth who understand the beautiful simplicity of simply playing catch in a back yard.  Give the two of us baseball gloves and a ball and we’re entertained and engaged in conversation like two girls getting a manicure.  Or something like that…

5 / The following photo says more on Adam than I could ever describe.  It’s of me and Amy leaving our wedding.

he's the crazy one to the left!

Somewhere near the left / forefront of the picture you’ll barely see a young man with his head tilted back screaming in pure, unadulturated, Will Ferrell-in-Elf-eque joy.  That’s Adam.  He is 100% there in the moment, 100% full of happiness for me and my new bride, and 100% wearing it on his sleeve.  He’s one of the first few I’ll call the day I (Lord willing) become a Father, because I know his response on the other end of the line will be everything I hope for and more.  He just gets it and I love that about him.

6 / Last, but certainly not least:  In the 8th grade, while shooting hoops in his driveway, Adam invited me to a church retreat called “Castle Bluff”.  It was there that I gave my life to Christ.  I am forever thankful for his invitation.  Something like that would never have happened if Adam had felt fearful or timid about living out Romans 1:16. A lot of 13-year-old boys would have avoided that conversation at all costs.  Adam didn’t.

I’m also thankful for a song he wrote called, “I Will Not Be Shaken / Psalm 16″.  I’ve taken that song that I learned in Adam’s house in 8th grade with me to Chicago, Kentucky, and back here to North Little Rock.  Everywhere it’s been sung, students and leaders have responded in worship and praise.  It’s simplicity and earnestness has touched many, and it’s been a gift to pass on to others all across the country.  Students here in Arkansas tell me they have it stuck in their heads at school and hope for us to play it on Wednesday nights.  Kids worshipping God all because Adam wrote a song a decade ago.

As for things I don’t like about Adam?  Well…the list is short and sweet.

1 / He can be very cranky in the mornings.  Never, never, never try to wake him up from a slumber.  He comes out with gritted teeth and flying fists.  I still have bruises, though I think he’s getting better about this.

In all the good, and the very, little, manageable bad, Adam is PEOPLE WE LIKE.

 

happy holidays

We’re not sending out Christmas cards this year to your mailbox, so instead we thought we’d do it electronically.  We had a professional photographer and costume designer come by and outfit the family and shoot us in our Sunday Best.  Hope you enjoy the outcome.

Love,

Bobby, Amy, and Zeke Glorious Ellington Harrison III

 

People We Like…vol. 2

my friend, rupal

following in bobby’s footsteps, i want to tell you about my college roomie, rupal. she is 24 yrs old, approximately 5′2, brown eyes, likes long walks on the beach…okay, i’m just kidding. i will tell you, though, a few details about rupal that defines who she is and why she has made such an impact on my life. she is indian (as in her parents came to the US from india), gujarati to be exact; she was the president of college feminists our senior year of college; she’s a book-nerd, like me; and she transferred to northwestern university the same year that i did.

that’s actually a good place to start.  i’m at this NU orientation for freshmen and transfer students and they herd us onto buses to go hear the school president speak. fortunately for us, the transfers were all together. in a classic forrest gump moment, i boarded the bus, thinking, “i’ll just sit by myself…oh, wait, there aren’t any seats left.” (it wasn’t quite like that, but it makes for a better story). anyway, i find myself asking “can i sit here?” to a total stranger who turned out to be rupal. from the moment i sat down, we got going.

me: i’m from AR (the south), transferred here mainly because of my boyfriend, i have a twin, etc.

her: i’m from iowa (the midwest), transferred here because i wanted to be here in the first place, i have little twin sisters, etc.

it kinda goes without saying that we were immediately best buds. we talked for three hours straight (through the president’s speech); we got mutually pissed off at a junior who thought that he could save two entire rows of the auditorium just because he had seniority; we determined to hang out soon. that night, i went back to my dorm (in the same building as bobby) and told him that i’d made my new best friend.

batgirl and superwoman!

we were roommates junior year, and i can honestly say we never had a roommate fight. pretty remarkable in the world of roomies!  we were perfect together. she’d cry, i’d listen. i’d cry, she’d listen. we talked politics, religion, boyfriends, feminism, food (she was a vegetarian, and i’m…not), family, race, school, work, and on and on and on. bobby never tires of calling me a feminist…and i never tire of explaining what feminism really is! one of the aspects of our friendship that i value the most is that we loved just talking to each other and we both kept open minds and open hearts. oh, and we watched “gilmore girls” and “one tree hill” together religiously.

rupal is solely responsible for introducing me to indian food. specifically gujarati food (food from gujarat, a state in india…vegetarian). we frequented devon st. in chicago (basically “little india”), pretty often. let’s just say it opened up a “whole new world” to me. she would order for us and i would eat! samosa, chuna masala, allu gobi, yogurt, and all kinds of other goodness of the earth! and of course we would eat with our hands only. then we would shop. rupal would stock up on indian groceries and bollywood videotapes, and then she’d have her eyebrows threaded. i never did it, but now i wish i had. makes for a very clean eyebrow! (i keep accidentally typing eyebrown instead of eyebrow…kinda funny because rupal always referred to herself as brown). it’s fair to say that rupal taught me everything i need to know about india. sweet, sweet memories.

another memory i’ll always cherish is when we went to visit each other’s families junior year. i was able to meet her dad. rupal’s mother died when she was sixteen, and rupal sort of took up that role for her family through high school. let’s just say she is clean, responsible, nurturing, wise, and a blessing to her family.

arati, rupal, avani

while visiting, i was also able to see her twin sisters arati and avani perform in an indian cultural performance (talents, dance, etc.). i got to wear a sari and a jewel on my forehead, and i loved every minute of it. rupal came to visit my family in arkansas too. she was lucky enough to help us throw our parents a 25th anniversary party. you know that was a hoot! she got to meet ALL of my family, and half of our church too! it took us about 13 hours to get home, but we had a great time.

i really could go on for days. i keep thinking of fun memories, sad memories…all true friend memories. she schemed with bobby on how to get the right size for my engagement ring for pete’s sake! she’s now finishing her last year in law school in iowa. she’s applied for a fulbright scholarship to research women’s rights issues in india. i love her for that. and by the way, i already told her i’m going with her. i just spent a weekend with her in chicago (she had an internship over the summer). we stayed downtown in her cousin’s AWESOME condo, with a wall of windows open to the chicago river and michigan avenue. i took her to the airshow and exposed her to the blue angels (yes, i take full credit). we went to devon and H&M, and rode the CTA all over town. we’re still making memories and i can’t wait for the many more to come!

FINALLY! i just wanted to mention that rupal recently recommended a graphic (as in comic-style) novel to me called Persepolis. i just read it and it’s awesome. you should too.

hopefully you can see why i love my rupal.

sunny rupal

 

People We Like…vol. 1

bobby posting:

We here at the Harrisonian are beginning something new today.  We like to write about our own world.  We like to update friends and family on the what-goings-on of life, love and learning on North Pine…but we both came to the revelation recently that we really like talking about other people even more.  So we decided to begin posting on “people we like”.  Sometimes they’ll be 850 words.  Sometimes they’ll be a paragraph.  All the the time they’ll be heartfelt.  I’m kicking things off with a dear friend of mine.

MATTHEW AARON SAX

The New Yorker's take on Matt

A couple of weeks before heading up to begin college at Northwestern University, I receieved an email from the school.  A guy named Matthew Aaron Sax would be my roommate.  It listed his phone number and where he was from.  New York?  We emailed a few times back and forth and shared the things we liked with each other.  He recommended I read Dave Eggers’ first book (which I did in 2 days) and I told him about a little known band named Sigur Ros.  He said he was a theater major who was aiming for Broadway and beyond…I told him I was going to be on SportsCenter one day.

Me and Matt met a few days later in September of 2002 and besides the fact that our mental pictures of each other were dead wrong, we became best friends immediately.  That first night at orientation, the other freshman just assumed me and Matt were Sophomores or Juniors because of how quickly we’d developed a chemistry and ease with each other.  How did a Jewish kid from New York become so close, so quickly to a Christian guy from Arkansas?  I think me and Matt can both agree that only God knows the answer.

That whole year, with the difficulty of being far from home, with me and Amy’s long distance relationship, with my father passing away over Christmas, Matt was always there for me.   And that whole year, with Matt in a constant on-again / off-again relationship with his girlfriend and everything else that freshman year can bring, I was there for him.

We didn’t live together again in college and I think Matt was the better for it.  Definitely career-wise.  Sophomore year Matt put pen to paper on the dream that he’d voiced all year long while living with me.  He began writing a one man, hip-hop musical.  The following summer he decided he was taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.  He asked me to join his production crew.  He’d raised all the funds and would help pay for my trip.  I just had to hop on board.  The only problem?  A few weeks before my pastor had approached me and the missus about joining in on our church’s inaugural trip to Kenya.  We’d already made our minds to head to Africa.  Matt understood…and just like not living together Sophomore year, I think we were both the better for it.

Sax in the New York Times

His show, “Clay”, exploded!  Rave reviews followed his raw performances.  He brought the show back to Northwestern for our Junior year.  It did so well that a big time theater company in Chicago decided to pick it up.  So while the rest of us were looking for jobs as we graduated college, Matt was setting up shop for a run at a theater on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile.  After impressing Chicago’s critics, “Clay” wound it’s way to L.A. and Kansas City (where me and Amy saw the show a month ago).

Somewhere along the way, he managed to get picked up by one of the biggest agencies in the world and began seeing movie scripts in his mailbox on a regular basis.  He’d even been told by the director that he had the lead in this Ben Kingsley film which won the Audience Award at Sundance, but the producers called him a few days later to let Matt know they’d given the role to some kid from Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”.

The news wasn’t even a bump in the road though.  Because after 4 years, Matt’s finally taken his own show back to his hometown.  “Clay” is now an off-Broadway production in New York City…right there on 42nd Street.  Pretty amazing.  The New York Times has written a piece on him.  On Monday, The New Yorker’s famed Lillian Ross wrote a piece about Matt. The Chicago Tribune, The L.A. Times…they all think this kid’s got the goods.  Heck, I even did my own feature on Matt during my senior year of college, but he’s actually still unhappy about that one!  In Almost Famous terms, my honest made me the “enemy”!

The greatest part about Matt though, is that through all of his success, we have stayed good friends.  I’m not “wowed” by any of his success and I think he appreciates me for that.  He knows that I like him for who he’s always been, and not just who he’s become.  We will always be authentic, good-for-life kind of friends.  That’s why he is “People We Like”.

 

No Place for Politics?

bobby posting:

Me and Taido did our usual hang out in the school lunchroom once a week thing today at North Little Rock High School.  There’s nothing easy or non-awkward about being there in the first place, but then some of the students from the youth ministry here at the church begin getting into political discussions about the two presidential candidates (sorry Taido, Nader doesn’t really count).  The discussions then turned into the revelation that a group of them had a heck of a time ripping out one candidate’s signs from yards all over town.

“Were they Nader signs?” Taido asked.

“Who’s Nader?” the kids asked with that same quizzical look they give us during our talks on any given Wednesday night.

“You don’t know Nader?”

“You mean NATO?  No they weren’t NATO signs,” they responded.  “They were signs for one of the presidential candidates.”

“Yeah…Nader is one of the…ahh…forget it…”

Again Taido…Nader doesn’t count.

Anyway, this whole discussion reminded me of the fall of 2000.  Me and my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) engaged in the same exact presidential-candidate-yard-sign-extraction-program back then too.  I have since repented of this, and also noted, that this in no way changed the outcome of that election.  That election also jaded me for the next go-around of Picking-a-President.  After all that happened in ‘00, I just couldn’t muster the care or desire or energy for another election.  Kerry and Bush really wasn’t all that exciting anyway…was it?

“Nader ran in that election too, Bobby.”

Anyway…

This election actually has me and the missus interested once again.  You see, we went to school in Chicago for four years.  While reading the newspaper in the dining halls at breakfast every morning, we were updated on a certain young, rising political star that represented the state of Illinois in the U.S. Senate.  We became very fond of this man.  In fact, this certain politician even spoke at our university’s graduation ceremony in 2006. At that point, as if we weren’t already, we became hooked.  But just how hooked can I be now, given my new-found role within ministry?  That is the question here today.  I guess not hooked enough to even reveal said candidate’s name anywhere in this paragraph.

Several days ago, I came across this story.  Nestled right along side it was the results of a survey that says “74 percent of Americans strongly oppose pastors endorsing candidates from the pulpit.”  All of this got me thinking about the whole role of politics within the church.  Me and the missus don’t really consider ourselves all that “political”, but we do have a real interest in this Presidential election.  We do hope for change (you see…both candidates are now for “change” so I’m still not showing my colors, right?  What’s that Taido?  Nader’s for change too?).  Anyway, we believe one candidate can bring about that change more than another.  But how much can we really say that?  Can I put a sign in my yard (I guess it doesn’t matter if the kids are gonna rip it out anyway!).  Can we finally put that bumper sticker we’ve had sitting on our computer desk at home for months on the car?  Can Amy wear that pin on her shirt instead of hiding it somewhere in her purse?  Can I engage in a real political discussion with students at the lunch table and give them my opinion?  Heck, you always hear “never talk politics or religion”.  Well…I’m a youth leader so I’m going to talk religion.  Why not do both then?!

Teenagers can be swayed by the littlest of things.  I know I was at that age.  That’s why Hollywood really believes this kind of action can help with an election.  The young can be fickle and malleable.  Can’t we all?  I would never want a student’s opinion of our ministry or leaders within our church or Christianity in general affected by my political taste.  If a student tells their parent that their youth leader is all about “So and So” and that parent’s on the other side of the fence…Well let’s just say many parents probably wouldn’t think twice on sharing their own “opinion” with me after that.  I suppose safety = silence here.  Just know I’m voting…and that I’m not voting for Nader.

“Really?  You see Ralph Nader is a great candidate for our country because…”

Actually, after listening to Taido, I believe I’ve changed my mind about who I’m going to vote for.  In fact, I’m so confident and sure of my decision that I’ll even pass my choice on to you.  I’m sure after seeing this, you’ll feel this exact same way.