Halloween Is Lame

I’ve tried. Over the years I have tried to make Halloween work.

Even as a kid I remember struggling with the stupidity of Halloween. So, you dress up in a costume, and you walk around your neighborhood knocking on doors and observe strange people you don’t know, or maybe you do know them and they freak you out a bit because they have a mean dog or their kid is a bully, drop candy in your bag or bucket. You stand there at their door with a mask on and mumble some magic words. Candy materializes.

Then you go to the next house and do it all over again until all the front porch lights in the neighborhood start to flicker off signaling the merciful end to this weird “holiday.”

And all of this celebration centered on death, demons, witches, ghosts and various dark things.

How fun and happy.

Of course, the amount of candy you collect is roughly equal in volume to the candy you (or your parents if you’re young) hand out at your house.

This all seems pointless to me. There is no redeeming element to Halloween. No feast, no gathering of friends and family (unless of course its at a Halloween party with alcohol and the resulting drunk driving), no message of hope or love or kindness.

I don’t get it.

Oh Canada! You're So Nice!

In and out trip to lovely Canada. Arrived in Toronto yesterday afternoon about 1PM and went through customs in a flash. The folks I was meeting with picked me up at the airport, gave me a guided historical tour of Toronto on the way to the office, and expounded on all things Canadian.

The current state of being for the Canadians seems to be estacy, for two reasons. 1) Its hockey season again. 2) The Canadian dollar is now of greater worth than the US dollar. And this last one seems to please them to no end.

During the meeting the European-side of these people shined through: fine coffee and a splendid array of fine fruits, breads and sweets for an afternoon business meeting. Unlike the American way- stale coffee from a few hours ago and a piece of hard candy if you're lucky.

The meeting went well, deal sealed I believe, and then a drive to the hotel. Exceptionally nice people. I can't say that I've ever met a mean Canadian. Indifferent maybe, but certainly not mean.

Picture and Story 11

This is my nephew Jacob being tortured. Enough said.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Mud

Rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper. And somehow, though I have never really undertood this, paper beats rock. According to a tour guide at the Hoover Dam, what beats rock, or rather concrete, is really mud.

A couple weeks ago I braved the depravity of Las Vegas and brought my wife and four kids to sin city for several days vacation.

We avoided the strip at night, though did have to brave it a couple times around dinner time. Fortunately nothing to wacky happened other than the traveling billboard trucks with a scantily clad female on an ad with a message along the lines of “Lonely? Call me tonight!”

We went there for a couple reasons…the hot weather and cool refreshing pools at the MGM Grand (a cold snap hit Vegas while we were there), and the surrounding attractions (Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon, Lake Meade, etc).

On one of our day trips we stopped by a chocolate factory for a tour and samples, then headed to Hoover Dam. It is certainly an experience I will never forget- the massive concrete structure seemed almost beyond human ability to construct…and the massive turbines that the Colorado river flows through to power millions of homes and businesses were so large that when they were built the government had to first build forges and factories there at the building site because no form of transportation existed at the time to move these from any distance.

We took the full tour and traveled down hundreds of feet below the surface packed into a surprisingly large elevator with a rather animated and goofy tour guide. But I repeat myself.

On the tour a few questions were asked of the guide as we moved from the feeder tunnels, through the depths to the power station and then back up to the observation area. I had one question that our family had wondered about earlier on the tour- how long would this dam last? Or rather, how long did the designers think it would stand? We guessed amongst ourselves with my guess being the farthest out- I thought about 200 years. That seemed reasonable.

I asked the guide the question when we stopped to wait for the elevator up to the surface.
“This dam was built to last 2,000 years. But it wont really last that long…the sediment will build up against the dam and make it useless a few years before that.”

2 millennia. What has man made that was expected to last 2 millennia? Surely the pyramids, and perhaps a Roman or Greek building or two…but not too many things I think were built with this time frame in mind.

A Man For This Time

Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down for a few hours, over a wonderful lunch of chicken salad and fresh fruit, with Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, MI.

It is fascinating to me that this master communicator has 7-10K people that sit for an hour to hear him talk, and another 20-50K that listen in via his podcast each week (I am among them), as well as buy his books and short films. He is too cool for school, with book titles like “Velvet Elvis” and “SexGod” and a series of 17 (so far) short-films that border on life-changing called NOOMA.

What is fantastical to me, though, is that thousands of people will also buy live event tickets to see him “on tour.”

During his recent tour, “Everything Is Spiritual”, he traveled about the country in various venues and concert halls with a giant white board and talked about the things he has learned, absorbed, crystallized, in a way that was mind blowing. It is refreshing to hear such a logical and dispassionate walk through what it seems we are hard-wired to understand deep in our souls but is filtered and full of static due to the interference of human life in this broken world.

Check out this clip: http://shop.everythingisspiritual.com/

About “Everything is Spiritual” Rob says this- “In the Hebrew Scriptures there is no word for ‘spiritual.’ And Jesus never used the phrase ‘spiritual life.’ Because for Jesus and his tradition, all of life is spiritual. So what does that mean?”

The DVD is available soon at this website. I highly encourage you to check it out.

I already have a ticket for the next “show”- his new tour is called “The God’s Arent Angry Tour” and the closest it comes to Nashville is Atlanta. I know some people have a problem with Rob's teachings, and I don't agree with everything he says, but I will be there with an open mind and eager heart anyway. There is incremental life when he is around.