Below are some of our pictures from our trip to see Derek Webb in Marion, IN at IWU. The longer I live in the cookie cutter concret jungle of suburbia, the more I long for rural roads, small towns, old growth trees, and small town churches. The drive through the Indiana countryside made me wax nostalgic about my own tiny town upbringing. (Rural East Tennessee town of 900)





Sunrise in Indiana.

Blah blah blah!!! >:\

Ever done an expense report? Yeah, it's supposed to be easy.. What you spent minus your cash advance equals free trip to a conference. But, my friends, it cannot be that simple in my graduate department. No no no...see, they first give you a cash advance for you and four other students. Then they tell you to split it up among you, so you do. Then, you go to do an expense report, and they think you're a fool for splitting it up among five people, even though THEY TOLD YOU TO DO IT! And you can only do an expense report for these things from the admissions department, and then you can only do an expense report for those thing from your academic department. Then, six weeks later, you've already had to pay your credit card bill, and you still haven't gotten your 400 dollar check. You're writing your fourth draft of an expense report, after getting four different instructions on four different occasions. You start to hate the people involved in the process. Then they tell you that it's your freaking job to figure out the receipts for you and the four other people if you want the money from that cash advance back, because they have already all been paid.

F'ing academia.

What I Need

So, we all know what Meg needs. But, what does Nicole need? Hmm?

-Nicole needs to raise around 600 to ensure her place.

-Nicole needs a family that can provide her with the accommodations she needs for her wheelchair and other medical supplies.
-Nicole Needs help.

-Newbie Nicole needs inspiration/encouragement...

-Nicole needs to gain about 30 or so pounds, some talent, and at least one movie
that doesn't suck.

-"Nicole needs to find productive ways to spend her time when Ryan isn't
around."

-Nicole needs to get to a photo shoot.

-Nicole needs to shut her mouth.She is fat and ugly. (OUCH!)

-Nicole needs open lines of communication.

-Nicole needs the Solar Plexus blend ('Persephone') to recharge her self-confidence.


Well, wasn't that interesting? I don't know whether to gain weight, lose it, fill my time, shut my mouth, communicate more openly or find some Solar Plexus blend. Okay, then.

Ohh..this is gonna be great! "Oh, Snap!" Waspjerky would say!

It takes a village..

Okay, you guys have been able to witness the little conversation about poverty I've been having with my uncle. And Zalm asked if maybe you all could see his response.

So here is my Uncle's response. He asks some great questions, makes some assertions that I don't agree with, and what not. But I seriously invite ya'll to take on his questions and let me know how you would answer them... I am continually amazed that my uncle, who may actually pursue his doctorate at LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, (blegh, yeck, gross..skin crawling) and I can have this conversation in love and it is still a dialogue even though we disagree on some very fundamental things. So, I applaud his openness and the way he is letting God move him.

I agree with what you are saying and, by the way, never apologize for taking a long time to answer complex questions or address important issues. The worship of Brevity is an American _expression of idolatry. My question is, how, as an evangelical almost fundamental pastor, do I lead my church to see that our very lifestyle – our love affair with lavish worship facilities, padded pews, air conditioned facilities, etc. – is a denial of the faith as it relates to the most needy of our nation and the world? And, to add to that, how do I come to see that my own lifestyle is no different from anyone else’s except for the fact that I expect the church to support me? This attitude is as deeply entrenched in the theology of American Christians now as slavery was in the antebellum South. How do we “establish justice” in a market place whose existence and prosperity are rooted in and supported by injustice? When I think of these things, I grow frustrated to the point of accepting the status quo as inevitable in a fallen world. That is until I am reminded that even though poverty and its causes and results may stem from the fall, as a follower of Christ, I am called to “give myself to the hungry.”

One of the barriers to involving conservative southern evangelicals in social justice is the dismal failure of the Government welfare system (government with a capital “G” is the newest god in the American pantheon. For an illustration of this phenomenon, look at the debacle of New Orleans after Katrina and the expectations the victims and the onlookers had of this deity.) People see that and conclude that the results will always be the same whenever the government, a church or anyone takes steps to lift people out of poverty. I can’t imagine that the “broad shouldered” city of Chicago would have a very different perspective given the horrible conditions of its south side slums and housing projects. How do we accomplish such change here, much less in Honduras or Togo?