Archive for July, 2008

Who’s “Hollywood” Enough for the “Video”?

{ July 31, 2008 @ 5:31 pm } · { humor }
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Sometimes the Block is a Bust, ya know what I’m saying? Haven’t you ever walked aimlessly around a Blockbuster (or Hollywood Video or whatever) with you eyes droopy and your mouth open, waiting for something to call out, “HEY!!!!! RENT MEeeEeeEee!”

No? You probably have, don’t lie.

I definitely have. Sometimes when my boyfriend, Peter, and I just want to have a nice quiet evening in, sometimes we walk down the street to the local Blockbuster and hope something will scream at us because we rarely go there with a movie in mind.

So we were thinking… how cool would it be to pick a phenomenial, timeless actor or actress and start from the very beginning of their career and watch every movie they’ve starred in until now? TOTALLY COOL. But who?

There’s your obvious choices — Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Al Pachino, Susan Surrandon, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman… but who do you suggest?

Who is timeless, limitless in their character types, and thrilling enough to watch from beginning to end? (And is it me, or are there stronger male actor names that come up on your list?)

Cake as Art…Very Rare.

{ July 31, 2008 @ 5:10 pm } · { humor }
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Well, I like cake. and I like art. actually i really love art. cake is good, too — i just prefer pure chocolate.

So when boredom struck at work and I knew I had to distract myself momentarily from my MGM-HD film inventory spreadsheet, I turned to the trusty “Stumble!” icon Peter hooked me on. It’s really amazing – you download this pop-up free toolbar and input your “interests” and then you “stumble,” which means you click a button and it takes you to random websites catered to your likes.

And as I said, I’m a fan of sweets and art so it’s really no surprise I stumbled upon this..

MIKE’S AMAZING CAKES!

Ha. Really? That’s what you call these things? I feel like it doesn’t quite do it justice… yes, Mike designs them. Yes, they’re cakes and they are indeed amazing… but take a look at these CREATIONS…

I’ll leave you with one of my personal favs… IT’S A RARE ONE!!! muahaha

And by taught, I mean learned.

{ July 24, 2008 @ 5:15 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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If had any interaction with me last semester, you probably heard me mention various fascinating tidbits from my “Hebrew Scriptures” class, taught by Rabbi Barclay. And by taught, I mean learned.

Rabbi Barclay gave a speech on the first day of class I thought was a bit of a crock; he said “By the end of the semester, I will have learned just as much from you as you have learned from me.” Sounds hokey, right? He was just saying that to seem humble and boost our esteem so we’d raise our hands and get our full participation points. How could I possibly teach this teacher, this Rabbi, who has studied the Old Testament (ahem, don’t tell him I called it that because he said that assumes there is a New Testament) for years and years and is a highly regarded “expert” on the text? Throughout the semester and still more today, I am beginning to fully understand what the true meaning behind his words.

All of our individual thoughts or beliefs about what Scripture says are simply our own individual commentaries on the text. Meaning, I can interpret a verse one way and my friend could interpret it another way, and my pastor can interpret it another way… and who is to say whose interpretation is “truth?” Why should one person’s interpretation be the right one?

As my boyfriend, Peter, mentioned last night in his talk at Quest concerning the Biblical evidence for and against homosexuality,

Even when we believe the Scriptures are “infallible” or “without error,” it’s terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error.

So I think what Rabbi Barclay was trying to say is that my interpretation of the text is just as valid and true as his interpretation. It didn’t matter that he had a reputation for being so wise because my interpretation was just as true. He would always shout to the class “So which interpretation is right, A or B?” and it was our duty to all shout back, “YES.” Both can be right.

I guess I’m just not one of those people who see issues as black and white. I believe there is grey most often because who defines black and white anyways?

A friend and sister in Christ said last night “the Bible never contradicts itself,” which I lovingly disagree with. One of my intern reading assignments is a book called “A Handbook to the Christian Faith” which is basically a paperback textbook on all things Christian. In one section it talks about the “majority rule” of reading the Bible, going on to explain that when there are 6 verses in the Bible about women in church leadership positions and 4 of them say it’s fine and 2 say it’s not, you should go with the majority who portray women in a positive role in the church. And that’s how I believe the text should be read.

But hey, I could be right and so could you.

What do you think? Does the Bible ever contradict itself? Is it possible to say that my interpretation of a certain verse is true as well as someone elses, as long as it is rooted in the text?

Baptism: Submerged, Sprinkled or Stopped?

{ July 9, 2008 @ 12:54 am } · { College Ministry }
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Okay, so maybe “stop” isn’t the best word, but you come up with a term beginning with “s” that means “not at all”… Suspended perhaps? Hm. Well, I’m open for suggestions :)

When I was a cute lil pudge-cicle of a baby, my parents baptized me through the Catholic Church. I don’t remember it, but I imagined it was pretty cool being center of attention and getting a nice lil refreshing bath in the middle of the day. plus, i bet i was wearing so really fru-fru dress. what lil girl doesn’t like being pamped?

I obviously missed the point of this whole baby baptism thing when it happened, but now I’m looking back and wondering what it was all about. When I started attending a Christian (Protestant, non-demoninational) church in high school and made my faith my own, I was baptized again by choice in a friend’s backyard jacuzzi. But still, what did that mean?

I never considered baptism (what my good friend Jessica Nunnally calls) “a salvation issue,” and I still stand upon the belief that it’s what Paul calls “a disputable matter,” or something that Christians are completely allowed to disagree on withone one party being wrong or right (see Romans 14).

So if it’s debatable, what are the arguments? The Jews had a few requirements for officially entering the Jewish faith – one of them being baptism. The “Pending-Jew” or the “Jew-In-Training” (JIT), if you will (I mean that with the utmost respect), was to be completely submerged in a certain number of “hogsheads” worth of water, making sure that every centimeter of his JIT body was touched with the water. There were Official Jews there to help make his baptism complete and after the ceremony had been performed, the guy or gal was what I’d like to call a “New-Jew” (NJ). NJ’s are essentially reborn. Their odometer is at zero, know what I mean? Their life has completely started over.

At the time Paul was writing to the church in Rome, those Christians would have also looked at baptism differently than we do now. Pretty soon after Jesus, Christians were never baptized as infants. It was always an individual move and often meant leaving your family to follow in faith. It wasn’t something your family chose for you at all. Also, the Christians at this time saw baptism kind of like the Jews; it was something that caused you to be reborn. NJs and Christians back at zero. It also involved washing away all your sins and giving a confession/declaration of your faith in Jesus Christ.

In fact, until you were baptized, you were not, at this time in history, a “Christian.” …Wow, so baptism was pretty important to those early Christians… should it be to me? Or is this one of those cultural things I have to take “in context?”

But wait, so around Jesus’ time, baptism was partly for cleansing us of our sins. Jesus was baptized, yet he was sinless. What was that all about? Taking a page from “The Master Plan of Evangelism,” perhaps its purpose was to set an example. Jesus wanted everyone to take their faith seriously, and symbollically be reborn. So, like everything else he expects of us, he tried it first. He went through it to show us how. And why… but I think I missed that part.

The symbolism involving baptism (as used in Romans 6:1-11) is “crazy-awesomeness” (it’s a technically term i use for things otherwise indescribable). So, you’re essentially dunked under water, right? You’re submerged, buried, covered. Kind of like being in a grave. Being dead. So, you’re buried (like Jesus) and dead to your sins (because of Jesus). Then, *SURPRISE!* you come up from the water (raised up like Jesus), all clean (because of Jesus) and smellin’ fantastic! (…like Jesus?)

With all this baptismal information, I’m wondering what you all think. What is baptism for? Is it a “salvation issue?” Is it simply symbollic? Is it to be done older? younger? not at all?

And should you be submerged, sprinkled or (pending)?