No, not the Richard Gere film. I’m going to NYC with Rhonda for Thanksgiving. We’re going to spend 4 nights with her friend Marci that she went to beauty school with. She lives in Harlem and works in Greenwich Village. The next 4 nights, we’re staying at the Roosevelt hotel, right next to Madison Square Gardens. This is the first time we have used points from our credit card, and I am very excited to be staying in midtown Manhattan during the week of Thanksgiving for half price. 9 days and 8 nights. If you have any recommendations about things we should check out, we’d love to hear them.

Rhonda, Kinsey and I drove down to the Fillmore to see DCB last night. The show was sold out. We got real close for Crowder, and the music was so good. Megaphone/mic combination on We Won’t Be Quiet. Keytar on Foreverandever, etc. Guitar Hero Guitar on …Neverending… I saw old friends, Louie, Ben, Shawn, Judah and Erin, Tim and Sara(who I just met), and it was just really fun. We got to bring some towels to give to homeless shelters, and hearing most of the Remedy album in person was really moving. David talked a little about compassion and justice. He said that a friend told him that compassion is standing near a river where there a bunch of people drowning, going into the river, and pulling them out. Justice is going upstream to stop whoever is throwing everyone into the river. The song Surely We Can Change was my favorite of the evening. After it was said and done, I took this sheet of paper I printed out from the dcb website to the merch table, and they gave me a Meet & Greet pass. They would only give me one, but I went up stairs. There were a bunch of people trying really hard to sound cool standing around the band members. My favorite quote was “I’m on your forum, like, all the time.” I talked to Dave for a little bit, and I got a picture with him. He is really nice, and really tall. He recorded a short video-hello for Kinsey too. I put up a clip of him playing the guitar hero guitar. It’s pretty sweet. The sound sucks, but it was really cool in person.

I’ve seen confession sites before like post secret, where people send in post cards to get secrets off their conscience, or christians confess, where christians confess to the world what they have done wrong. Both have been thought provoking, but neither really took my breath away like this new one. I’ve been reading Perry Noble’s blog for a while. Since Tony Morgan, one of the Simply Strategic guys, moved to South Carolina to work at Perry’s church, I have been very impressed with their honest approach to Sunday mornings, sharing Jesus, and being the church. They are starting a new series soon that they just put up 6 billboards and one website for. Parents Are Clueless takes it to a whole new level. Reading these confessions, quick to the punch, reveals the brokenness and need for restoration in real, real ways. It gets me thinking about all the baggage people carry around with them, and what some good old fashioned honesty and time spent on our knees together could do to restore a lot of the relationships that are compromised by self made walls like ignorance and fear. I’m looking forward to the podcasts.

I am looking forward to this dvd. It comes out the fifth of november, and i might have a little party to watch it. The noomas are great and generate a lot of great discussion, but this thing is long. I heard it was really good, and plus he uses a giant whiteboard. I’m a math teacher, so that just seems really, really cool to me. Anyone go see Rob on this tour or know anyone who did? I think Louie went, but I can’t remember. Anyway. Yeah. I’m stoked.

I just finished Donald Miller’s book Through Painted Deserts. It was a pleasant read and reminded me why I loved Blue Like Jazz. His style weaves honesty with creative prose like few others I have read (note:I’m not very well read). His books read so quick, and they take you to a place where you try to go but can’t. That contemplative, need to figure things out, but for real this time, stop just living and start living sort of place. And on that note, I saw this post the other day. That’s right. Blue Like Jazz the movie. Weird. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not. We’ll see.

I have been wanting and hoping to go to a conference in ATL called Catalyst. It is bad timing every year. It’s right at the end of the first quarter, and it is really far away, so travel sucks. Anyway, I’ve been staying up to date on what is happening there by reading their blog. This post about Shane Claiborne’s speech had some cool stuff. My two favorites are:

• Christianity is like the ark. It stinks sometimes, but if you get out, you’ll drown.
• Community is surrounding ourselves with people who are like what we want to become.