Mike's "The Will Of God" Continued...

• The apostle Paul said "And so I will come to you full of joy, if it is God's will…" (Romans 15:32) and "If it is the Lord's will, I hope that I will be able to send Timothy…" (Philippians 2:19)

  If?? What's with this "If"?

  These verses seem to indicate that Paul did not know God's exact will for every circumstance and yet it is also clear that at times he knew exactly where God wanted him to go and what God wanted him to do (That night the Lord stood by Paul and said, "Don't be afraid! You have given your witness for me here in Jerusalem, and you must also do the same in Rome." (Acts 23:11))

  I believe God has a plan for us but He does not always make it clear where we are going because He wants us to trust Him and let Him drive the bus.

Mean Dean is beating the drum for The BlogMD Initiative, over at blogs4God. The MD is for Meta Data. I've posted a couple of ideas in their forum, and will continue to do so, but here are a few bits of Meta Data that would make my life easier with Who Links Who.

• a list of Alias urls such as jordoncooper.com and jordoncooper.sk.ca.
  
• tags to mark the beginning and ending of each post
  
• the perma link for the post
  
• time stamp for each post in UTC
  

If you're not a geek you're thinking most of that information is there on the page why not just use that? True, the information is there, and you and I are blessed with pattern matching software and hardware to see it. However computer programs need things marked out for them with explicit detail to pick up on the information. That's what The BlogMD Initiative is about, creating the markings so we can write software to navigate the expanding blogsphere.

(Happy Dean?)

-Peace

Sainteros moved his blogroll over to blogrolling.com. Because it uses JavaScript to include the links on the client at runtime WLW couldn't see the links. I've updated WLW to use Rhino to evaluate any JavaScript with a source of http://rpc.blogrolling.com/. So now his blog roll links show up. And any other blog rolls using blogrolling.com will show up too.

While poking around at Sainteros today I notice he linked directly to his entry in WLW in his blog tools list. Neat.

-Peace

Mike's Spot On The Wall

• Soul Fest:
  I spent 12 hours of Saturday at Soul Fest.The free concert was awsome. My personal fave was Lianna Klassen. I'm not usually a fan of world beat music but she was great.
  I wonder how they managed to make this concert free?

Mike's Walk

• Maybe I should ask for directions?:
  I know where I want to go I just don't know how to get there. Paul said we could "know the will of God (Romans 12:2) If we allow Him to transform our minds" and I believe it.
  So why do I still have difficulty knowing the will of God? (I mean that part of God's will that is specifically for me and not clearly outlined in scripture. God always wants us to read His word, He always wants us to testify for Him, He always wants us to pray etc...)
  I mean I pray to know His will, I ask Him to continue His trasforming work, I ask for help in submitting all of me to Him, so why do I feel in the dark.
  Most christians I talk to seem to have the same problem, we expect a step by step set of instructions from above on how to live our lives to the most minute detail.
  Today I begin to see dimly a different possibility.
  What if God doesn't care? I don't mean it in the apathetic sense. I mean if I worked at a different job it wouldn't really matter because God could still use me there. What if God's will is something bigger than what I do for a living or any particular ministry that I'm involved in? What would be His will for my life look like? So I looked up the "Will of God" in the meta-concordance and this is what I found....
    - Learn what is right by reading His word.
    - Have Godly standards not worldy ones.
    - That I would be free.
    - That I be His adopted child.
    - That I would not be foolish.
    - That I be obedient to my parents and those in authority, not for their approval but with all my heart.
    - That I be filled with His wisdom.
    - That I would have no sexual immorality.
    - That I be thankful in all circumstances.
    - That I have patience.
    - To silence scoffers by doing good deeds.
    - That I would pray for the things God wants.
  

Please excuse the long post, but I can't see the point in breaking this up into multiple posts. This my journal from my vacation, recorded on my Visior, or as I refer to it, my palm. as it runs the Palm OS. Times are all Pacific Time, as opposed to Mountain Time normaly used on IdeaJoy.

-Peace
Dave

02.8.20 18:00 is there a category for entering blogs on vocation, via your palm? Yeah, Addicted.

Had to kill a cockroach in the teepee when we got here quite the bit of excitement for Kim & Sarah. Teepee is more rustic than pictured. Plus 1 adventure -10 with Kim.

02.8.20 20:09 Sarah & Kim are playing cards, I'm tending the tail end of our camp fire. There is a tree covered mountain to the east of us. As the sun sets a shadow climbs the mountain making a giant sundial.

02.8.21 7:51 I wonder if Mean Dean got WLW up? I wonder if Bene is going
through WLW withdrawal?

Sunrise here is dramatic event. It starts up at the top of the mountains to the west. The mountain tops are the first thing to be bathed in the sunlight of a new day. Then the light sweeps eastwards down the meadows of the valley. As it light moves closer, you can watch it advance in real time.
Like watching the second hand sweep the face of a clock. Everything bathed in the light glows, becomes more distinct. The appearance of individual shadows makes things stand out.

I have a nine year old begging for breakfast. Got to go.

02.8.21 11:20 after break fast Sarah and I took the trail down to Box Canyon. This is not a government park, with easy paths and safety rails. The path from the camp ground takes you over a steep bank and next to the railroad tracks. Freight trains pull through here every couple of hours. In fact one is pulling through as I write this. We crossed the tracks and climbed down a path to rocks over looking where the water exits the canyon.

It's a scene of majestic beauty, aqua green rushing water, rocks faces and boulders rising to evergreen forest covered slopes that finally give way to peaks of rock and snow. Of course Sarah was bored in under a minute. I asked her if she knew the verse 'be silent and know that I am God.' She asked what it meant. I explained about just being quite and listening for God. I think the connection to the beauty around her was lost in translation. She hummed for a minute and said 'so are we going?'

02.8.22 17:25 this morning we went back to the canyon, snapped some pictures. This afternoon we went into the national park and did 2 board walks.

Giant Cedar Boardwalk was first. We walked between great cedars and their fallen comrades. The sun is filtered out high above our heads. It breaks through in places, highlighting a fern here a fallen cedar there. It is a natural cathedral: quite, reverent and full of awe.

Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk is a couple km west and closer to the river and goes through a marshland. The marsh is full of life. Much of the life is out of sight. Twice the skunk cabbage leaves rustled violently as some creature retreated from under the board walk to a location, I wasn't walking over. Birds called to other birds, all hidden from view. Some thing was causing bubbles in the water.

The exception to this stage fright are the dragon flies that zipped around us. The way the move in the mash is amazing. Lot's of short strait line connected with sharp angles. They move more like a sprite from an 80's era video game than anything bound by Newton's laws.

One dragon fly placed himself directly in my path. He hovered there staring at me. He was side swiped by another dragon fly. Whether it was an act of mercy or a territorial dispute I'll never know.

02.8.23 8:07 just sipping coffee before going to do some riding. Late last night as I returned from using the facilities I noticed the mountain to the south east was back lit by the moon. The moon was completely hidden by the mountain, but the ridge of the mountain had a pale blue glow. Light wispy clouds over head traced abstract designs in reflected moon light as stars twinkled through them. I was spellbound. When I recovered, I had walked several meters past the turn to our camp site.

02.8.23 8:33 just bumped into a guy who warned me off my chosen trail this morning. He just saw a cougar. I think I'll find another trail. Update: reported what happened to the folks at the park gate. Turns out cougars are very rare in this area due to a lack of game. So had I encountered cougar it would have been hungry.

02.8.23 11:16 back at the camp sight now. I did 5km loop in the Mount McPherson demonstration forest & x - country ski area. According to the map, in 2.5km I climbed over 100m above where the car was parked. For the most part I stuck to the dirt roads. I didn't see any one else on the trails. The only sign I saw of other trail users were horse shoe tracks.

02.8.23 16:43 just got back from the Revelstoke Railway Museum. For under $11 CDN we got to spend an hour and a half indoors with air conditioning. We've been blessed with very hot weather, so the challenge has been how to beat the midday heat. Luckily it cools off at night so sleeping has been quite comfortable.
The museum was very interesting. Canada being the 2nd largest country in the world, we're pretty proud of building a railway all the way across it. There is a big steam engine where you can sit in the cockpit. Yes I'm just big kid. The engine was staffed by a working train engineer who works with Canadian Pacific. We talked about various bits of train tech for about half an hour before Kim & Sarah pulled me out of there.

02.8.24 7:28 sipping coffee again. I'm headed back to the trail where the cougar was yesterday. Checked with the staff at the park gate yesterday afternoon and there were no other sightings, and no missing hikers. So I'll give it a try again today.

02.8.25 7:13 one last entry before we go. Yesterday was a full day. I did 6km of mountain riding on a great trail just outside Mount Revelstoke National Park, the cougar trail. Lots of rocks and roots kept me bouncing. There is one section I was told every one walks up. I had to walk up more than that and there was one section where I chickened out and walked down. Seems like a popular trail saw 3 other riders and an older couple on foot. I'm not sure that hikers should be on that trail but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

We went to Revelstoke Dam, it's 175 meter high concreete dam on the Columbia river. The CN Tower is about 350 meters, so that's pretty tall. 25 years in the planing before they started work. It's a career project. After they build the dam Revelstoke started getting bad dust storms when the reservoir got low and exposed silt to the wind. They had to plant fall rye to stop the dust.

We bought lunch and took it to the top of Mount Revelstoke (by car). The lunch didn't work so well, lot's of bugs near where we were eating. We then did the 30 minute hike up to the summit, what an incredible view. Not nearly as many bugs at the summit, so we should have carried our lunch up.

Took the bike up with the car, so when we returned from the summit (by shuttle bus) I rode the 21.5 km back down to the park gates. In that distance you drop about 1400 meters. What a rush. My maximum speed was 61 km/h, I averaged 38.9 km/h, had to slow down for turns and stopped at the look outs to snap some pictures. I also refilled my water bottle in a mountain stream. Going that fast dries you out even if you are just coasting most of the time. It was a total endorphin rush, what joy to just fly down a mountain road. I've gone faster on a bike (just over 70km) but never that fast for that long. Kim said they only waited five minutes for me at the bottom, and they didn't stop at as many lookouts.

ok we're headed out on vation this morning. I've left Mike with the keys to the blog, so I declare the camel refuge open. Mean Dean has the code to WLW and is looking into getting it installed on one of his machines. If he get's up at blogs4God that's great. Otherwise you'll have to do with the results form this morning.

And yes we're going to sleep in a Teepee. I've always wanted to do that, even if it is a modern tourist version.

I'm taking my Bible, Suprised By Joy by CS Lewis, and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. We'll see how much reading I get done. It's vaction so no goals, I just like to be well prepared.

-Peace

This morning's proverb hit a cord with me.

In the end, people appreciate frankness more than flattery.
- Proverbs 28:23

Of course that is in the end. In the short term, I've found flattery to be quite popular ;)

-Peace

Mike's Spot On The Wall

• A Good Excuse:
  I didn't post on Friday (I try to blog twice a week) but I had a good reason. I worked rather hard on Friday to finish up my in box and get my church's web site updated so that I could have more time with Carol. Not only did we have some extra time together Friday night but we had a "date day" on Saturday that included the zoo and several garage sales. I love spending time with her and its good for her to know that after 17 years (since we started dating) that I'm still very much in love with her.

Mike's Walk

• Camel Abuse:
  I interviewed Joe Camel about the problem of camel abuse.
  
• Joe:
  "There's been a lot of mention of Camel's here lately and it's just plain abuse I tell ya. We caemel's have always been missused. I tell ya it goes all the way back to Leviticus when God told Moses we were unclean. Common, have you ever seen a dirty camel? And then God tells Samuel to tell Saul to smite the Amelek including ox, sheep, camel and ass. Common now, what did we do? It gets worse I tell ya, Jerimiah made out that camel's are devious. And it gets even worse. We get worn, threaded through needles, and finally swallowed. It's abuse I'm tellin' ya, plain abuse."
So what am I saying here? Well the corollary verse is the one about specs and logs. There are worse evils in the world than spam. Maybe we should have more rants on what the enemy is doing in places like Rowanda or China, or about disease and hunger. We have no righteousness in ourselves and our human anger does not achieve God's righteous purpose (James 1:20).

Thanks to Emeth Hesed Smith for her kind words about Who Links Who.

sainteros added us to his blog roll, thank you.

ocular confection is looking for feed back on some raw, just out of the box, tecno. He has the new tune posted on his site. Check it out. Yeah I know, no one listens to tecno.

-Peace

Brianna has posted her own "Manifesto", well worth the read, a breath of fresh air.

-Peace
Dave

Quotes you need to put into context

the kind of dumbstruck intensity seen only in crack-heads, rare book collectors, porn addicts and boy band fans.
- Notes from a Hill Side Farm, link via Gideon Strauss

We could make a fortune once they get the munchies
- Pastor George Campbell of the the New Life Church in Dartmouth NS, link via Christianity Today

These are the results of your feed back form
- User Friendly


On to music, Deep Dirt recommends giving a Aaron Spiro listen and shares some thoughts on postmodern music.

-Peace


PS blogspot archives seem to be up and down this morning, so you may need to check back latter for the Notes from a Hill Side Farm quote.

OK the new version of Who Links Who is done. I've added the ability to format the results via XSL using Xalan from Apache. Get the code if you want it.

-Peace
Dave

Who Links Who has an issue at the moment. I ran the full system, including the auto publish out of habit. Sorry about that. I'm working on some new code. Should be back to normal soon.

-Peace

Go for the Wake, stay for Alice Cooper

Thinking Out Loud has taken down the LeaderBoard. For those new to this corner of the web, the LeaderBoard ranked sites based on the number of links they got from other sites on Martin Roth's Semi Definiative list of Christian Blogs. You know, back in the day.

The LeaderBoard inspired Who Links Who. When I first started bloging I didn't have SiteMeter set up in such a way as it could track vistitors by Referer. So when we got a score of 2 on the LeaderBoard, I had no idea where they came from. I realized that the LeaderBoard program had to know in order to generate the LeadBoard, it just wasn't designed to display the information.

I sent this poorly worded email

Wed Jul 17 22:24:56 2002

To: "caschwar"

Subject: Leader Board



Hey what a great idea.



Just wondering what about a details page where you list all the found 

links,  I would love to find out where my two links came from.



sometheing like

page ideola.blogspot.com

ref martinrothonline.com

ref ideola.blogspot.com



-Peace

Dave

Well I didn't hear back, turns out Craig had other things on his plate. I started playing with the idea in Java, and that's how WLW was born. But it was because the LeaderBoard was out there first. So go over there and pay homage. And while you are there check out Thinking Out Loud's thoughts on Alice Cooper.


-Peace
Dave

JesusJounal.com editor Donald L. Hughes’ article Focus On Links and Libel has hit a sour note with Jen over at My World As It Is Sung. I'm not fond of it either. It seems to be long on fear, short on clear examples.

I much prefer this article Libel & Defamation in the Information Age. It gives some good examples on what the courts have considered to be libel. It also not as US centric as the article by our good friend Don. The short story is stick to the facts and clearly state when you are giving opinion based on those facts.

Fact: JesusJournal.com sent me spam.
Opinion: That was rude!

As neither JesusJournal.com nor Donald L. Hughes’ have disputed any of the facts stated here on IdeaJoy, I’m not going to worry about his apparent scare tacticts.

Don seems to avoid libel worries by never stating whom he is talking about or what they have done. That is certainly playing it safe.

-Peace
Dave

The Nation Post is reporting that there is a miniseries about Hitler's formative years is in the works.

The miniseries, which is being produced by Alliance Atlantis and directed by Canadian Christian Duguay, is based on the biography Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris, written by Sir Ian Kershaw, a professor of modern history at Sheffield University and the man widely regarded as the planet's pre-eminent expert on the Third Reich

The story talks about TV critics,largely negative, reaction to the idea. But if I have the time when, if it comes out I'll give it a chance. Hitler is an almost perfect data point in understanding what people think about the question of evil. Almost everyone agrees that Hitler was evil, so what we learn is what people think that means. A couple of examples come to mind.

Philip Yancy's article Beyond Flesh and Blood, subtitle: I used to disdain biblical talk of "invisible spirits." No more.

Try to explain on rational grounds the mass insanity that seized Germany in Hitler's day. ... The experts have no answer but "forces beyond our control." New Testament writers agree and do not hesitate to name those powers

I saw Dr. Morgantaller in a debate at the University of Alberta back in the early 90's. He's a holocaust survivor, so as you can imagine, he has some thoughts on Hitler. He believes Hitler was the result of an unhappy home life. He explained, in his opinion, how providing abortion services helps prevent furture Hitlers by making sure each child is a "wanted" child.

The most common trend I've noticed is to cast Hitler as simply insane, a monster, a no-longer-human example of evil. That position worries me. If we place Hitler out side the human experience it makes it easier to deny the evil in our own societies, and in our own hearts. If Hitler was human, than he's stands as warning of how we can go so very wrong.

I don't know if the mini series will be well done or not. But it could be a chance for some interesting discussions on the nature of evil.

-Peace

Thanks

I need to say thanks to Mean Dean, for everything we take for granted and forget to say thanks for.

To Bene Diction for including IdeaJoy in his coverage of the JesusJournal.com thing. And Josh Claybourn for the same thing. Sorry Guys that was way over due.

Jen added IdeaJoy to her blog roll over at "My World As It Is Sung". Thank You!

Mike for asking hard questions.

Andy Clark of Apache.org for a quick bug fix to NecoHTML. New WLW results, with the bug fix in place, are up. BTW since I've added a time stamp to the main WLW page, I don't anounce new results every time.

-Peace
Dave

Jen's blog redesign is up. And with the new look a new name "My World As It Is Sung". Nice Narnia reference!

-Peace
Dave

Update
Shalom has removed the letter from Donald L. Hughes, Editor at JesusJournal.com, at their request. That is odd, as it was posted at their request.

JesusJournal.com thinks I'm nasty.

It's true. The evidence is over at Shalom, She's reprinted JesusJournal.com's reply to why they won't remove her link. (Me I'm waiting for them to kick us out)

Here is the section where their editor thinks I'm nasty.

We did not intentionally Spam. We visited each Blog we found and collected information, including email addresses when available. We
did put them into our emailing program to send them out for efficiency, and so farwe have had 5-6 complaints about that. We apologized to each of those
people, except one who was so nasty, that we just ignored. There are a few people out there who are hell-bent on attacking us, but we seem to be
getting overwhelming approval for our ministry.

OK so I've sent four emails complaining about getting spamed, and not goten an apology from them. Now I've posted the text of two of them previously. So I'll add my original note when I got their spam

From Dave King
Sent Thursday, August 8, 2002 10:24 am
To editor@JesusJournal.com
Subject NO SPAM

duh!

Shocking, I know.

And my last email, with the exact text:

Subject: Re: Code of conduct
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 08:01:37 -0600
From: Dave King
To: "JesusJournal.com" words@JesusJournal.com

I think you missed the camel in that email. I don't like geting spam from you. What are you going to do about it? I don't like sites that just suck content from other sites with out giving credit. What are you going to do about it? I'm so glad that the gnat of the broken email has been taken care of.

-Peace
Dave

Truly Down and Nasty!

There are other options:

1) Don Hughes doesn't know what he's talking about when he says he apologized. He seems to have great difficulty with the common accepted definitions of spam and intentionally, so he may not understand the word apologized.

2) He may not be referring to me and my apology has gotten lost in the mail. That's the great thing about the type of gossip being spread by Don, you can't check on it. Don says 'Someone out there is being nasty'. But Don hasn't told them, and hasn't named names, so you can never check the facts, and they can never defend them selves.

His logic of only apologizing to people who are nice to him seems odd. He expects other people to turn the other cheek, but please don't expect it of him. I'm also having trouble with the 'we just found these people on the net, and we didn't find them via Martin Roth or blogs4god.com' line he's pushing. Plunk IdeaJoy into google and all you get is MartinRothOnline.com, and until recently we were scoring zero on Who Links Who. And it seems like lots of other obscure blogs from blog4God.com all showed up at the same time. Odd that.

And finally Don cleary doesn't understand blog4God.com.

Martin has said his list at MartinOnline was only 200 names. Ours is
over 400 and we will be adding many more soon. We have simply done a better
job of finding Christian Blogs

blog4God.com has said in the FAQ that they are not looking for Christian blogs. We find blogs4God.com and ask to be included.

Yeah I think it's time to dust the sandals off again.

-Peace
I think I'll head over to JesusJournal.com and rate IdeaJoy as nasty, and quote Don.

Mikes Spot On The Wall

• Why Is "Missions" Sexier Than "Service"?
  I serve on the board of an interchurch oranization called Neighbourlink. or I should say I used to be.
  Of the six board members who there when I started two years ago only two remain. Lest you get the idea that they were quiters aside from me the next newest board member had over 8 years working with the organization.
  We have contacted churches in our city, our regional director has been knocking on doors, we have done dramas and promotions. At a typical meeting where we sent a letter to hundreds of churches 6 will show and one will commit to the work. But… missionfest attracted 70 churches and thousands of people went to see it.
  I'm not dissing missionfest, but what bothers me is how we can be so eager to go to a different country feed the poor, build shelters for the homeless, provide education, sponser youth events, get medical supplies and aid to those that need it but when it comes to the same problems or issues in our own back yard nobody seems very interested. Maybe its because with a mission there is a definate start and end date that doesn't require us to commit our whole lives to. Maybe when the person with a need is in our country we figure that it's their own fault or that the government should take care of them.
  Maybe some other country will send missionaries to us and the needs will be met.

Mikes Walk

• Praying For The Enemy:
  At 6:30 am every Wednesday morning a dedicated group of men meet to petition the Lord in intercessory prayer. Today we prayed for many things but one of our focus points was Iraq. Paul urged Timothy to pray for those in authority and it is only strange when one remembers that the authority in question was Nero. So we lifted Saddam Hussein in prayer. We were greatly moved as the spirit led us to bind the powers of darkness and to release Saddam to find his answer in Christ.

Ah yes the joy of tech. Meditatio is resisting redesign by Jen. Ian's Messy Desk had a meltdown yesterday, though it's back up. And Mean Dean is enjoying the peace and joy of geekdom :) Thanks to Dean for cleaning up Bene's HTML that was giving the parser issues yesterday. BTW I'm running out of new ways to annoy Dean, so please list suggestions in the comments ;)

-Peace

<br/. can ruin your whole day. Or at least rob you of some links. There is an issue with the HTML parser I'm using for Who Links Who where it comes to a complete halt when it hits <br/. As a result WLW can only see the top third or so of blogs4God. So if they've linked to you and it's not showing up in WLW that's why. I'm in contact with the guy who wrote the parser over at Apache, a realy nice, and very smart guy named Andy Clark.

I've tried the Sun HTML Parser, the JTidy parser, and now NekoHTML. And NekoHTML has held up very well. NekoHTML puts the others in to shame. However, if this doesn't work out I'll have to write my own. I just need a simple one for WLW, but it's still a serious amount of work. But I've done it three other times for gsnet.com, IWTechknologies, and MPower. So I can if I must, but I don't want to.

-Peace

As you can see we did indeed get a pair of glasses at blogs4god.com. I'm really stunned. I never know how to handle this type of thing. I need to mention it, because I need to say thank you. Thanks to Dean and Bene. I really do find this sort of thing humbling. So my geek response is to play the tension I feel for laughs.

So are they Ryders? I only wear Ryders. At $30 cdn, I can trash a pair a year and not break the bank account. I used to wear Oakleys (optically correct lenses rock!) but that is a very expense habit for a klutz like me.

-Peace

Someone gave us a 9/10 at blogs4god.com. Thank you :) Personally though, I prefer compliments and insults in the comments, then we know what we are doing right or wrong. That and a link from your blogroll :) Yes I'm just that easy to please.

Also we also made the FAQ at blogs4God. The entry reads:

The "glasses" icon indicates the moderator of a section, and in very special cases someone who has made a significant contribution for the rest of us: ie: Martin Roth or Idea Joy.

Which is obviously a mistake, as Martin clearly has glasses and we don't. It was a nice thought, while it lasted. Oh wait, it's problably meant as a contrast. Yes that makes more sense. ;)

-Peace

PS it's IdeaJoy, one word, it's a Java thing.
PSS note to Mean Dean, can we get the search forms to use Get instead of Post? Don't make me quote the HTTP spec on why.
PSSS yes I'm feeling silly, our project at work made it into production today :)

Wow talk about straining the gnat and swallowing the camel. I said as much in a reply to them this morning. No response some 10 hours latter. It's obvious that this group is glad to be in control but doesn't want a dialog. Time to shake off the sandals and move on.

-Peace

Subject: Re: Code of conduct

Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:47:25 +1200

From: "JesusJournal.com" words@JesusJournal.com

To: Dave King 



Hi



Thank you for calling the bad link to our attention.  Now fixed.



Blessings!



----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Dave King" 

To: editor@jesusjournal.com

Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 4:23 PM

Subject: Code of conduct





Jesus Journal could start with:



1) say no to spam.

2) Give credit where credit is due.

3) say you are sorry when you realize you've broken any of the rules of 

conduct.



-Peace

Dave



PS the email listed in your manifesto for Christian Blogers doesn't 

work.  Maybe that could be point 4

Bene Diction has a post about Jesus Journal wanting to start an ASSOCIATION OF CHRISTIAN WEBLOGGERS. Why they feel the name should be in all caps is beyond me. Part of what they want is a code of conduct. Here is what I've sent them.

Jesus Journal could start with:



1) say no to spam.

2) Give credit where credit is due.

3) say you are sorry when you realize you've broken any of the rules of conduct.

As they've broken 1 and 2 and not done 3, it would be a good place for them to start.

-Peace

PS feel free to copy the above and send to editor@jesusjournal.com.
PSS the email they list in their manifesto for feeback doesn't work.

Bene Diction is asking "What do people agree or disagree with exactly?" With regards to Pray Naked Experience being rejected by CT 1000.

For me it's simple. I don't believe in a white washed Jesus. There is a rather large group in Christendom that want the kingdom to be squeaky clean, nothing to bother or upset anyone. Nothing to make you think, nothing to challenge a comfortable, neat tidy faith. And they do all this in the name of our radical, challenging, strange, refuses to be boxed in, God!

These people have been with us for a very long time.

When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"

David said to Michal, "It was before the Lord , who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord 's people Israel-I will celebrate before the Lord . I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor." - 2 Samuel 6:20-22

In Jesus' time they were known as Pharisees a group of a very committed, legalistic, ultra religious Jews. Jesus, also a Jew, didn't have a lot good to say about them.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Matthew 23:23-27

And it of course it continues in our time as well. Mahatma Gandhi was ushered out of a church in England because wasn't white. I'm sure if he'd been allowed to stay it would have been offensive to some Christians.

A Christian nurse in Edmonton had been telling a friend and coworker about Jesus. Her friend decides to go to church on her own on Sunday morning. She picks a Baptist church in Edmonton. It was July, and hot. She went in and sat down, near the front because the place was packed. An usher came and asked her to leave be cause her shorts and halter top were not appropriate for church. So in front of the entire church she was escorted out. On monday her reaction was what it should have been. "If that's what Jesus is about, I want nothing to do with him". - Mark Davies, a Baptist preacher and profesor tells this story.

The common thread here is people only looking at the surface, not wanting to offend the cultural norm, and offending the Holy Spirit instead. In CT 1000's case they did have to go far to understand how Pray Naked Experience was using the word naked. CT1000 is right in thinking that the title Pray Naked Experience will offend some Christians. But will it offend God? No.

-Peace

When it rains it pours. Ian has added us to his outbasket, on Ian's messey desk. Thanks Ian.

-Peace

Well it's been way too long since I last blogged. Dave got on my case last Sunday (first time we spoke in person in several months) and I told him I would post something soon. So here it is.

Lately I've been really into watching Emma, my nearly 7 month old. I find I'm more and more facinated with her and her behaviour. She is just starting to talk, so it seems. Lori (my wife) and I would like to believe that she is talking but maybe Emma is just making noises that sound like words. And even if she is saying real words I'm not sure if she realizes what she's saying.

Take today for example. I awoke this morning to find Lori and Emma hovering over me. The first thing Lori said to me was that Emma was asking, "Where's daddy"? Was she really asking this? I don't know. It could be possible because Thursday afternoon, with 2 other people at our place, Emma clearly said, "Hey, how's it goin' dad"? I don't know if this is for real or what but I can tell you one thing, I can't wait to be able to have a conversation with her. I can't wait to have her actually call my name, and to tell me that she loves me.

The most amazing thing about having a child is that it has completely changed the way I think about God. I'm finding every day that, by observing my own kid, my understading of how God is my father is made more clear. I can understand how He feels about me. That He loves me with everything He has. That He longs to converse with me. He wants to protect me, keep me safe from harm, and keep me from harming myself. And maybe more than anything my daddy longs to hear me say, "I love you".

Milk In A Bag

Milk In a Bag

Kevin Frank has been having fun with Milk in a Bag, over at True North. You might need to know about Talking to Americans for the second strip. Five Iron Freny mentions it in Oh Canda as well. You don't get milk in bag here in Alberta, but I remember it from growing up in New Brunsiwick, and saw it while I was working in Ontario this spring, and a co-worker says they had it in BC when he was growing up. Ah fond memories :)

-Peace

Oh, Canada by Five Iron Frenzy

Welcome to Canada, it's the Maple Leaf State.
Canada, oh Canada it's great!
The people are nice and they speak French too.
If you don't like it, man, you sniff glue.
The Great White North, their kilts are plaid,
Hosers take off, it's not half bad.
I want to be where yaks can run free,
Where Royal Mounties can arrest me.

Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.

They've got trees, and mooses, and sled dogs,
Lots of lumber, and lumberjacks, and logs!
We all think it's kind of a drag,
That you have to go there to get milk in a bag.
They say "eh?" instead of "what?" or "duh?"
That's the mighty power of Canada.
I want to be where lemmings run into the sea,
Where the marmosets can attack me.

Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.

Please, please, explain to me,
How this all has come to be,
We forgot to mention something here.
Did we say that William Shatner is a native citizen?
And Slurpees made from venison,
That's deer.

Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.

We just made Martin Roth's blog roll. Martin had trimed his blog roll after his list moved to blogs4God.com. We didn't make the initial cut, and while I was disapointed, I wasn't suprised. After all we're not on anyone's blog roll. So this morning I was amazed to see Martin's site come up in our WLW results. Thanks Martin :)

-Peace
Dave

new Who Links Who results are up. I'm now using ant to post the results, files shouldn't go missing.

Update
FTP doesn't seem to be the problem, I can see the looking back looking forward results, on the ftp server, so I don't get why there is a 404 via the web server. I will look into it.

Update
Who Links Who will go up and down like a yo-yo while I work this out.

Update
OK it's back up. The problem has to do with A!=a, and an OS with a memory for file names.

-Peace

Mike's Spot On The Wall

• A New Appreciation For My Wife:
  For those of us who have a spouse it ranks as the most or, if you have surrendered to Christ, second most important relationship in our lives
  I was given new appreciation today of what that means
  One of my co-workers was talking about her divorce. They had been happily married for 14 years. They had purchased a brand new home only 3 years before. They had all the trappings of a good marriage. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he decided that he needed to "change his life". Everything had to go, his job, his home, and his wife. She was devastated by his betrayal and even after 7 years she said to me "I'll probably never really trust someone like that again"
  It was a good reminder that I have something precious and delicate in my relationship with my wife. Something to cherish, nurture, and grow. What awesome grace.
  Needless to say I bought Carol some flowers to remind her that she is the primary conduit through which I experience God's love for me and that every day I have with her is more precious than I can say.

Mike's Walk

• The Romans Road:
  I have been reading through Romans lately. Paul has a lot to say in his letter. He rebukes the readers in one spot and then speaks of his great confidence in them in another. The feature I love about Romans the most is that it has contained within it a very nicely packaged gospel. So I will put it here in catechism form
  (Q) Who is good? - (A) Romans 3:10
  (Q) Who has sinned? - (A) Romans 3:23
  (Q) Where did sin come from? - (A) Romans 5:12
  (Q) What was God's judgement on sin? - (A) Romans 6:23
  (Q) How did God fix the problem? - (A) Romans 5:8
  (Q) Now what should we do about it? - (A) Romans 10:13, Romans 10:9-11

Fellow 77's fan Pray Naked Experience has been rejected by a Christian directory because of the name. I wonder what they would do with this site? Josh Claybourn has a a great comment about this.

Deep Dirt on being post-cool.

Notes from a Hillside Farm on his road trip to see Bill Mallonee Bill is on the Idea Joy Sound Track

Via Voce has some thoughts on how MP3.com is becoming more like the industry they were going to upset.

In Between Naps has some interesting thoughts comments on Sex in The City, choices and motivation.

-Peace
and yes new WLW results are up :)

Some thought on Who Links Who

Ian's Messy Desk is the best example of why I like Who Links Who. I was able to trace his link to the Edmonton Temple, a Salvation Army church in Edmonton. I go to a small Salvation Army church here in Calgary (South Meadows). With out Who Links Who, finding a fellow army member in the blogssphere might not have happened. I like the way Who Links Who inverts the structure of the web, by focusing on inbound links, without breaking that structure.

There is more work to do. I'd like to figure out what to do with the thousands of links that go out side of our little corner of the web. Jordon Cooper's posts on Christian subculture got me thinking about this, but it was Journeys with Tim's linking to Game Spot that convinced me it was a good idea. In WLW there is a file I don't post: otherlinks.html. It contains the thousands of links that don't match a site from the master list. I use it to debug my matching algorithm, looking for links that match those who don't get many links, (IdeaJoy for one). While going through this massive list, I came across a link to Game Spot, a site I frequent regularly. The source was Journeys with Tim. Tim has an artful way of laying out his links: Eyes, Ears, Adrenaline, Muscle, Soul, Spine and Memory. He gives the links on his site a sense of balance, completeness.

I'd like to give that same sense of balance to the overall Christian blogsphere, so we can see how we strucure our corner of the web in relationship to each other, and to rest of the world.

What you can do to help. Consider these two sentances,

Martin Roth has a thought provoking aritcle on the possible War with Iraq.

and

Martin Roth has a thought provoking aritcle on the possible War with Iraq .

They read the same, but look quite different in Martin's entry in Who Links Who.

-Peace

PS I promise this is my last post about WLW until I add some new features. And BTW Fresh Results are up :)

Had a late night at the office, and with a hard dead line looming it will be another late night tonight. So enjoy Steve's post on biking in Saint John, and I hope to be back tomorrow. Oh yeah, fresh Who Links Who results are up.

-Peace

Hey, with another recent addition (welcome Richard), we'll soon need a Bio link, to view the roster of contributors.

I recently took up biking to work, to keep my slim, trim, anorexic-without-the-disorder build. And because my job glues me to a chair way too much. Nothing to do with Dave's cycling journal -- at 4000 kms distance, Dave's influence, like his gravitational pull, is not so strong. Although certainly the journal is inspirational. So on days that I don't have to travel to Moncton for meetings, or have some other reason that I need the car (like to get my laptop to the office), and it's not raining too hard, and and and..., then I bike to work.

Six clicks one way, a good morning constitutional. Alas, not terribly relaxing.. I live on the west side of Saint John, separated from the city centre by the harbour. Of the 2 bridges across, the close one is for motor-powered vehicles only. So I take the long way, through Simms' Corner (think Automotive Anarchy - explaining traffic flow would take waaay too long). Plus, the city centre has no easy non-car access; it's on a peninsula and has only 4 entry points, each of them challenging. My chosen one is a 6-lane viaduct with a narrow sidewalk on one side and none on the other, and with nearly-blind entrances and exits. It's notorious for cars, and quite.. stimulating.. by bike.

The city really really really needs a trail system of some sort.. Alas, that's a late-20th century notion, and Saint John is proudly mired in the 18th and 19th centuries..

Mike's Spot On The Wall

• A Bug In The Weather:
  I drove down to Calgary to visit Carol's folks and on the way... SNOW! Ok, several people in my church were praying for rain. Maybe we got carried away? I have driven in worse blizards but never at the begining of August.

Mike's Walk

• Miracles And Stuff:
  Why doesn't God do more? It seems a natural question to ask God since He can do anything.
  His restraint seems to be more the mark of His character than outright miracles. Very fiew miracles in the Bible actually increased faith, so why should I think they would now?
  Maybe I just want to put on God my own failing for not being an accurate reflection of His son. It says "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." God seems to be more interested in creating Christlike character in me and using that to bring others to Himself than solving all the worlds problems with a wave of His hand:
  Maybe that's the real miracle.

Fresh Who Links Who results are up. As you can see from the IdeaJoy Results we were linked by Bene Diction and Joshua Claybourn, both for Who Links Who. Kudos to Josh for linking first, made my day :)

-Peace
PS I'm headed to work, but tonight I'll post fresh code, and a list of cool posts I've found using Who Links Who

I've got Who Links Who to use blogs4God as the master list. New results are up.

-Peace

New Who Links Who results are up. I've been working with Mean Dean to fix the issue with Bene Diction's comments links counting as links to blogs4God.com. Next step is to pull the list off of blogs4God.com so we get everyone.

Simply put Who Links Who shows you in one place who in the christian blogsphere links to who, for each site in the list you can see all the other sites form the master list that link to it. To see all the links to Dean's Heal Your Church Website click here.

-Peace
Dave

I've posted the code to Who Links Who. It's in a zip format. There's an ant build file, but all it needs is Java 2 to run. Right now it's a geek tool, if there is interest, I'll package it up in a nicer form.

BTW I tweaked the code, and the latest run took 10 minutes and 28 seconds. Threads are cool :)

-Peace

I've fixed a bug in Who Links Who, new results are up.

The bug ment that www.blogs4God.com, didn't match blogs4God.com. So for blogs4God.com, they went from 8 this morning to 143 now. Much better. Of course what that means is you can see all 143 links, even the fact that the comment system they use inflates the count. :)

-Peace

I was lucky enough to score a an account with YACCS. I've found entanation quite flakey. So we've got a new commenting system in place. The down side is that old comments have been lost.

-Peace
Dave

Visual Psalm

Rachel Cunliffe of the blog cre8d has posted what, for lack of a better word, I would call a Visual Psalm titled Why.

-Peace

Who Links Who

I've just posted Who Links Who. It is like the Leader Board, only it shows where the scores come from. So for each site you can see who created the link that created the score. I hope this gives more insight into the strucure of linking going on between Christian blogs, than a simple pecking order. I used the latest copy I could find of Martin Roth's list of links. Hopefully blogs4God will create a simple, no other links, list all feature or an XML RPC api. The source page I used is here. Runing WLW on my PII 300 took 18 minutes 55 seconds.

I found playing with WLW an interesting way to surf. Take a well known blog like Jordan Cooper and surf the sites that link to him. It's a cool way to discover lesser know blogs. (like us)

-Peace
PS this is some very early software, just a few hours of work, I know there are bugs. But I believe in release early, release often.

From our local CBC morning show The Calgary Eyeopener

Spiritual Business Coach
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary has appointed MBA Graduate Father Max Oliva as their apostle to take on corporate greed in the business world. Click here to listen. (Real Audio)

-Peace

Hey I'm glad to anounce that Richad Wan has agreeded to join IdeaJoy. Richard is math geek turned software developer, musician (as is everyone here but me), father of two, husband, devoted Catholic, good friend. Welcome buddy.

-Peace

I finished The Remnant, the latest book in the Left Behind Series, last week. It's not great literature, but it's suspenseful. Even if the series is starting to show it's age, I still found The Remnant a compelling page turner. That said I'm glad the series has moved the story a head to the last year of the tribulation, they can wrap things up with out beating the plot devices completely to death. The rescue mission sub plots, and the run from the safe house sub plots really need to be retired.

On the plus side there was a vivid retelling of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story, with an extra million people thrown in to the fire for good measure. The authors do a great job of describing a fire that does not consume. I also like how character Tsion Ben Judah, the spirial leader of the remnant, balances God's mercy with God's judgment. I'm not a pre-trib type of guy, but when the authors go beyond the details of the tribulation I find the spiritual view they present compelling.

As I read this book I realized part of the appeal is seeing God in action as he was in Biblical times. The characters talk in the book about how exciting it is to see God do miracles, just like in Biblical times. It is exciting, it's action adventure with God as one of the main characters. There is something about this that bothers me.

It not that they've God performing cheap tricks, they don't. The miracles are in keeping with what God has done, and it keeps with the spirit of the scriptures where some are saved, and others are put to death by the sword.

So what is it that bother me? Calling it God-Porn, is too harsh. Maybe it's closer to the people who went looking for Jesus the day after the feeding of the 5000, looking for more bread.

 Then they said to Him, "Lord, always give us this bread". - John 6:34

Reading about the amazing miracles in the Bible, I am left wanting more and so I find it in the fictitious miracles of the Left Behind Series. I don't think it's as simple as that, but it's part of it. An other part is the longing to see God exert himself in the world in an obvious way, to silence the critics, to silence my moments doubt. This longing appears often in the Bible, but the one that comes to mind is

They cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" - Revelation 6:10

And in the Left Behind Series I don't have to wait, I can read the future judgment today. But then in Revelation I can read about the coming judgment

Fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever -Revelation 20: 31-37

So why does it bother me in Left Behind Series? The honest answer is I don't know, it's just where I'm at right now.

-Peace

The Environment Canada forcast for Calgary tonight.

Friday night
Snow - Low 1°C

Weather in Alberta is a debate between winter and summer, with a lot of heckling.

-Peace

I reached my goal of 250 km on my bike for July. So that brings me to about the 720 km mark for the year.

This week Calgary has gone from 30+ temperatures to under 15 and rain. Yesterday morning was very wet; I didn’t ride the 17 km to work. As I result I was 12 km sort of my goal. So last night at 21:30, in the wind and the cold, I did 12 km to reach 250. It’s my own fault for not doing more during the beginning of the month. In the first two weeks I did 10 km. The first week I was on vacation. If I don’t have somewhere specific to go, I’m lousy about actually getting out of the house and ridding. For example last night I took the long route to return Twisted Metal Black to BlockBuster. But if I didn’t have the game to return I doubt I would have had worked up the motivation to go out. I guess that makes me task orientated. The second week was Stampede week and the C Train was packed at night. I ride to work and take the bike on the train home. So last night found me riding in fish creek on the coldest, windiest day of the summer. Odd thing I wasn’t alone there were two other bikers there as well. They were obviously hard-core nuts to be out on a night like that.

-Peace

Mike's Spot On The Wall

• I got a call on Monday from my aunt. I haven't heard from her in 30 years.
  She said there was some property that was being held in trust for us from my Grandfather's Will.
  
  You would think I would be happy about this but... I think I would have been happier if she just called because she wanted to restore ties to us.
  I want her not her property. The whole Will thing just adds a layer of tension and distrust to what should be a joyfull reuinion

Mike's Walk

• The morning prayer group met this morning and prayed. I felt very blessed and touched
  
  I sometimes wonder at the wisdom that wants to use broken imperfect vessals like me to do His will. I wonder "Wouldn't it have been better if you hung around after the resurection?"
  And yet He says "It is better that I go, that the comforter will come"
  
  It is the very mystery of the gospel that somehow Jesus not only substitutes for us on the cross and in the grave but that we are His substitutes here on earth, filled with His spirit and responding with love.

Most of the time I feel like I’m out of sync with the rest of the world. But today I felt like I belonged.

Slashdot of all places had the news of new movie adaptation of The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe that is at the screenplay level. Here’s hoping they don’t gut the analogy to try and please the folks who don’t like religious content. Personal petpeve of mine is how the publishers rearranged the order of the series. Imagine my surprise to find a +5 post about the same thing. I thought it was just me.

In the same story was news of a new movie about Douglass Adams. I just finished the Salmon of Doubt and will post a review soon. Of course it was Adams who said I love dead lines, I love the whoosing sound they make as they go past.

If you hunt through the IdeaJoy archives you’ll see that I’ve posted about Eguene Perterson and U2’s Bono, but who knew there was a connection? bloggedy blog knew.

-Peace