Also...

Okay, so this morning at work I found this band The Head and the Heart. They have a self-titled album out. And holy freakin' crap, it is incredible. They recall Blind Pilot, Wild Sweet Orange, and a few other bands like that a bit, but also have their own awesome sound and some really profoundly good lyrics. I had to recommend it--so good!

Contentment

Quick-and-dirty: Though the Bible promises that we can be content in all circumstances (Phil 4:11-13, written when Paul was in a craphole Roman jail again, uncertain of whether he would ever get out or not) contentment is a damnably tricky thing to hold and keep, especially when we have the promise of ever-more-perfect pleasures at our disposal via the internet and the shrinking of the world. Why do we, I, miss it so readily? I'm discovering the answer and the solution in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs, and highly recommend the book to anyone who feels that they struggle with it too. May be a while before I finish it to lend it, though.

Peace!

Vulcan Mix: Spring 2011

Because music makes you lose control...

Follow this link to download & enjoy!

VULCAN- Spring 2011

1. Down By The Water The Decemberists

2. Barton Hollow The Civil Wars

3. Devil Knows You're Dead Delta Spirit

4. Helplessness Blues Fleet Foxes

5. Lord Help My Poor Soul Fionn Regan

6. Glad Man Singing Iron & Wine

7. The Ghost Who Walks Karen Elson

8. Suffering Season Woods

9. Alex Kona Strand Of Oaks

10. One Day Sharon Van Etten

11. Burning Stars Mimicking Birds

12. Tree By The River Iron & Wine

13. Killemall Menomena

14. Don't Carry It All The Decemberists

15. Solid Ground Maps & Atlases

16. Foot Shooter Frightened Rabbit

17. Cloudy Shoes Damien Jurado

18. My Heart Is Yours The Holy Ghost Tent Revival

19. Come Talk To Me Bon Iver

Special Moments

For those of you who may not know, I (Elaine) am living in boy land over here on 6th Ct South with Ryan inhabiting our house until his nuptials in May and Dwight, Eli, Paul (the person), and Andrew 3 houses down. It's pretty great, especially when I catch special "boy" moments on tape when they don't know their being filmed.

Exhibit A: First of all, how great it Paul the dog? Second, listen carefully to what Ryan says when he walks in to the kitchen towards the end.


Untitled from elaine on Vimeo.

Exhibit B: We were originally going to film Ryan playing the accordion, and Dwight randomly barged into our house. Notice his special way of greeting Paul (the dog). Bingo! Dinglehopper!


Untitled from elaine on Vimeo.

Saw this. Liked it. Wanted to share.

The Awful Rowing toward God
by anne sexton

i'm mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
this dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many different boats moored
at many different docks. . .

"on with it!" he says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play--can it be true--
a game of poker.
he calls me.
i win because i hold a royal straight flush.
he wins because he holds five aces.
a wild card had been announced
but i had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when he took out the cards and dealt.
as he plunks down his five aces
and i sit grinning at my royal flush,
he starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of his mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that he doubles right over me
laughing a rejoice-chorus at our two triumphs.
then i laugh, the fishy dock laughs,
the sea laughs. the island laughs.
the absurd laughs.

dearest dealer,
i with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha ha
and lucky love

a return to a worthless world.

i came back: http://mattfrancisco.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/vintage-ads-that-make-me-grin/

prayers appreciated

Hey guys! Long time, no see. I hope you all are doing well. I just wanted to ask for prayer for my grandfather, Ted, Mimi's husband (the grandmother who acted out the woman at the well:)). He is not doing well: fell and broke his hip, because of poor circulation had to have one leg amputated last week with possibilities of the other leg being amputated as well. Today the doctors took him off all medications (because they were making things worse) and said he probably had about 3 days. My family, especially Mimi, would appreciate your prayers during this season.

I'm looking forward to seeing y'all around the New Year! (yay Pat and Keri!)

Miss you friends:) thanks for praying!

The Samford Crimson

I think I did my family proud...

the title of the article: "Samford Redheads Face Wave of Bigotry."

Please check out pages 3-5. Nice..

Davis's House on the 18th!!

Please reply to this post by three monday if you plan on coming and let us know if you're bringing anyone else. We hate to pull this but if you're a regular and haven't responded and show up you will have to wait until everyone's served to make sure the ones who RSVP'd got something to eat.

We're excited about having people to our house!

Thoughts on looking at a peace sign

In the top floor of O'Henry's Brookwood, there's a big metal peace sign hanging on the wall (it's for sale, which is kind of an ironic statement I won't explore now). I've also been reading Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis," a novella about life in college in the initial months of the Vietnam War, which has had this whole thing on my mind to a greater extent. Also, I'm bored with this paper I'm writing.

Preface: none of these thoughts may have any ultimately valid conclusion; they're rough.

In the sixties and seventies, the peace movement was deeply provocative. It was widely cherished as an ultimate ideal by many (mainly, but not only, youth), and hated as anarchistic and unprogressive by many (mainly, but not only, then-adults). It was an ideal for those who held it, kind of a personal and social savior that, fully realized, would totally transform the world for good (as we see in "Imagine" or the unfortunate "Age of Aquarius"). Thirty years later, though, we see the aftermath of the ideology. Many people who remained fully committed to the peace-and-love ideal have burnt out on drugs or are hopelessly out of touch with the world, longing to bring back the promise of the late sixties/early seventies. Many who were only half-committed to or "grew up" from that youthful idealism now see it as distantly fondly as bell-bottom jeans, which is why someone could sell a peace sign sculpture for forty bucks in a coffee shop now.

I say all that because I've been thinking about how that was one of the last expressions of a popular social idealism we've seen (the major exception I can think of is the Obama-centered idealism, which has largely dissipated). At its heart, the peace movement thought that if there were just enough peace and love in the world, everything would be better. The concept was heavily explored in art, but did not motivate people to many practical peace-promoting innovations.

Since then, it seems that popular social philosophy has come to center more and more around pragmatism over idealism. In the eighties and nineties, we saw a lot of self-centered pragmatism: what works best for me and for my own advancement? Now, there is a growing heart for social good that is being approached with the determination to find out what works in effecting social change. An excellent example of this is the series of programs in Greensboro, AL, which has "with not for" as its motto for community development. It follows the adage, "give a man a fish...teach a man to fish." And most of us would agree that that is a better system, especially when we consider the effects of foreign aid on the receiving nations' citizens' views of their governments.

While those programs are worth praising in their own regard, I mention them to support how we are becoming a pragmatic society, in many ways. We sidestep rules and codes when it behooves us (how many of us have distributed music that we promised Itunes we wouldn't?); we seek philosophical and religious systems that work for us, and tend not to impose them on others when they have one that works for them.

Okay, a qualification: there's been an upsurge of idealism from somewhere in the nineties, currently focused on an ideal of authenticity or personality (e.g., the love of vinyl records, antiquated clothing, furniture, and houses, microbreweries--anything in Stuff White People Like, really). But it's by-and-large a pragmatic idealism; we implement ideals carefully and with a healthy infusion of irony and self-deprecation so nobody thinks we're weird.

So what? I don't know if I have a "so what," actually. I tend to think of how these philosophies apply to the practice and proclamation of Christianity, and how they either do or can find expression in the arts (another example: Sufjan Stevens now claims to no longer have faith in either the album or the song, and is producing increasingly jagged and lengthy compositions). I think people want to have something to be idealistic about (like Obama's presidency), but everything seems to fail to bear the weight of its own promises either partially or totally. I think that our generation, which is one that cares about the world and thinks more deeply about the world maybe more than any since the sixties, desperately wants to find hope even though it doesn't know where to seek it. People are exploring ideals tentatively, cautiously, keeping most of their existential faith in themselves like someone who has been burned over and over again by romantic relationships. This doesn't describe everyone, of course, especially in the South; I think it will grow here as it has in other places, just more slowly.

Well, I've foisted enough of my absurd thoughts on you for now. I should get back to that paper.

Brian, man, I miss you already. Hope to talk to you soon (and of course I miss those of you abroad too).

P.S., if you want an example of a modern real-but-ironic romanticism that is also totally beautiful, you should check out this video for "Elephant Gun" by Beirut: