Kind've Shocking...

Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Karl Barth The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology. Karl Barth 100% John Calvin 80% Anselm 80% Martin Luther 80% Jonathan Edwards 73% Charles Finney 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 67% Jürgen Moltmann 60% Augustine 27% Paul Tillich 20%

Sarah Palin - Quick List

Obama has started accusing McCain's VP pick of lack of experience... which is quite something, coming from him! Lets make a quick list of her experience and accomplishments:

1. She has been in public office (from the local level up) since 1992 (longer than Mr. Obama).

2. She has a consistent record from the local level up of lowering taxes and cutting wasteful spending. (this is the woman that stopped the "bridge to nowhere")

3. She stood up to well-established but corrupt politicians and ran them out of her government.

4. She passed a sweeping ethics reform bill as governor which did not squash civil liberties.

5. She fought hard for clean and efficient pumping of oil (without hurting companies or raising prices in the process).

6. She passed a bill to use competition between companies to build a new major oil pipeline.

7. As governor, she has two years of executive experience (rivaling Obama's zero years of executive experience)

8. She has been the "Commander in Chief" of the Alaska National Guard for two years and has made many important decisions as such.

9. She is practical, a very down to earth no-nonsense mom. (very different from the regulars in Washington!)

10. On top of her civic duties, she is a mother of five children.


You can find more information on her at:

http://www1.gov.state.ak.us/bio.html

And even more information (though not quite as reliable) at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

Traditional Conservative Values... Incredible!

5 Minute "Where Am I?" Exercise

I am sitting in the living room of Hannah's mother's house, where we currently live. It is getting later in the evening and we have one tall lamp on to light the room. The television is against the wall across from us with a Seinfeld dvd inside. The room is rather dark right now, but the light is just perfect, making the room very soft and comfortable. The walls have wallpaper with tiny orange colored dots in lines against a yellowish cream colored background. This wallpaper covers the living room where I am and the dining room to my right. When you just glance at it and don't look at the details it just looks like a creamy yellow color. The ceiling is painted a creamy off-white color with nothing particularly special about it. There is a large picture of a mounted goose on the wall across from us, above the television and what we call the "carnivorous" couch (because once you sit in it, it eats you and you can not get up). That couch is to my right of the television. To my left of it is the chase lounge. That is what Hannah and her mother call it, but I have no idea if that is how it is supposed to be spelled. Maybe it is supposed to be spelled in some fancy European way rather than just "chase" but that is all I know so that will have to do. At the far end of the room to my right is the keyboard I got for Hannah last Christmas. It is a yamaha and have the best keys (weighted, of course) and sound of any keyboards available. I wanted a digital piano, and that is what I got.

So that is where I am, and though I was supposed to only write for five minutes, I have now been writing more than 7 minutes... oh well.

10 Minutes Of Writing Life

I have began the book, Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story yesterday and am really excited about going through it. Part of what it was talking about as I read yesterday was the importance of consistent, disciplined writing and one of the first exercises is to set aside 10 minutes a day just to write. That writing does not have to be structured and perfect, but it just needs to be you taking what is in your head and transferring it to paper. I can be what you are hearing and seeing, or what you are thinking, or whatever else is in there that you want to practice getting out.

So where am I now? I am sitting in the front office of where I work, Walker Technical Company. We are located is what would appear to be a rural area, but is really just minutes from the city. Our shop is under Bob Walker's house in what used to be his basement. His house is on the very top of a classic Pennsylvania hill which he hollowed out underneath his house to make a shop about 100' by 30', a little less than 1/3 of a football field. The walls of most of the shop are concrete painted gray or white, but the offices have drywall put up, painted a burnt red color. The entire floor is painted with epoxy conductive paint to reduce the static caused by walking around. There are two levels to the shop, the lower level which has a garage door which opens to our parking lot, and the upper level which has a staircase up to Bob and Sandy's kitchen.

We all share one small restroom down here. The restroom has a small, old toilet, a big utility sink that has been turned from white to a dirty creamy brown color over time. The ceiling is supposed to be a drop ceiling but it missing one of the two or so panels, which exposes random unconnected wires and hoses. You can also see daylight through it if you are at the right angle. On the wall next to the toilet here is a makeshift toilet paper dispense made of wood by someone here that does not fit quite right. There is a rather disgusting mirror hanging over the sink which is looks terribly dirty, but no matter how much you wipe it, nothing goes away. The dirt is somewhere behind the glass. The floor it covered with linoleum that was kind of thrown in by my boss and never properly attached, so it comes up along the edges and the runner at the bottom of the wall was not cut or attached right, so at the corners of the room it has a rounded curve rather than a 90 degree angle, which leaves a dark, empty area behind it. But that area does get used though. Multiple spiders since its installation have moved in and out from there. I kill them when they venture out, but there is always a new one to take his place. Once I was sitting on the toilet just taking care of business, when one of the spiders came running across the floor toward me. There was about 8 inches between the wall and me and he was coming fast. Before I knew it he was almost crawling up my shoe! I lifted my foot and BAM! tried to smash him. But when my foot came up, he was not there. He was not on the floor either or on my pants form what I could see. I still wonder today what happened to the spider, but at least for that day, I was quite freaked out thinking that there was an ugly black spider running around somehwere inside my pants.

But what is done here just blows my mind. You would not think that the best electronics church organs in the world are made here in this humble basement. But whether it is the President who needs an organ to listen to on Sunday, or a huge church wanting a flashy organ, or Carnegie Hall wanting a concert organ, we are the ones they contact. Just over the last year we have sold organs to the Washington National Cathedral and the U.S. Naval Academy. Right now we are building one for the 10th Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia (a big media church) and if you watch the movie "Get Smart" you will see our organ (though not physically built by us, all the electronics that make the sounds are ours) in the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

God surely has blessed this company, and for good reason too. They have the biggest heart for missions of maybe any small company around, whether it is through evangelism to people while installing the organs, or giving discounts to needy churches, or supporting my parents to help tribal missions all over the world.

I am very proud to work here, even though the close atmosphere with co-workers is sometimes hard, even though it floods every time it rains, and even though they did not have enough money to give us raises this year.


So that makes 28 minutes and 53 seconds of writing for today.

My New Life Theme

I penned this last night after I finished Against All Odds, by Chuck Norris. It was an inspiring book and afterward I was praying and thinking about life and goals, and that is when I put this together. I would like to live every day with this as my theme.

This is your life,
This is the beginning.
Let disappointment fall to the wayside,
As you charge forward.
Follow Christ is what He has for you,
With Him, all things are possible.
This is your life,
This is the beginning.
Do what's right and
Let nothing stand in your way.

Typical

We were sitting at home today while Riley Joy was crawling around the dining room. She started making noises, and the following exchange took place:

Hannah: Is Riley eating those shoes again?
Ryan: No, she is talking to a travel brochure.
Hannah: Ah, ok.

I love our life :-)