High and Low Notes

2008-07-31T14:21:00.000-05:00

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

2008-07-26T00:13:00.002-05:00

Sin Metaphor...

My friend is looking for some help in brainstorming a more helpful sin analogy. Help him out!

http://www.chuckp3.com/2008/07/good-metaphors-for-sin.php#links

2008-07-18T00:45:00.004-05:00

Last week I was in Illinois visiting some friends on my way home from picking up a new car. According to my grandfather I was only 20 miles or so from the cemetery where some of my extended Nowlin family is buried. Now, this knowledge is enlightening for me, because it is the first time in my 27.6 years that I have had my "long lost" Nowlin relatives within my own reach. I call them "long lost" because around the time my father (the middle of three children) was three years old, his father apparently made a break from the Nowlin family and changed the pronunciation from N-ow-lin (as in c-ow) to N-oe-lin (as in f-oe).

Thus, on the final leg of the trip, I traveled 20 miles to Greenburg, IL, to the Mount Auburn Cemetery to look for the Nowlin grave stones. After 20-30 minutes of searching I found some of whose names I recognized, but were not confirmed as relatives. I continued for another ten minutes after this as I worked my way back toward my car. Strangely, to my surprise, I missed the fact that I had apparently parked within 20 feet of two more Nowlin stones that I had not seen. I was very glad to have found them, because the names on these two immediately rung bells. I got on my cell phone and called my dad in California to confirm that in fact these were my great-grand parents and great aunt and uncle. I was suddenly struck at awe that I was, for the first time, standing right were some N-ow-lin relatives had stood. I was in the stomping grounds of the ancestors who gave me my last name. I felt almost like an adopted person who had found their birth parents--except for that this was held in common with my immediate uncles (and father) who have had general awareness of this distant heritage.

Apparently, my uncle Chris Nowlin has referred to his father (my grandfather) with the old pronunciation. He once spoke to his daughter (my cousin) about grandpa N-ow-lin, rather than N-oe-lin, as I had always known him. He subsequently looked at me and mentioned that the "name is really N-ow-lin." This struck interest in my search for this Nowlin heritage. I remembered that in my teen years I considered introducing myself by the old pronunciation once I entered full adulthood. This I never did. Yet, I find that when I spell my name to someone over the phone, the old pronunciation sounds like it is spelled; the current pronunciation makes space for all kinds of spelling errors. Thus, with the history of the Nowlin surname and the subsequent difficulty related to its variations, I more and more seldomly correct people if they pronounce it the old way (since according to my uncle the old pronunciation 'is the way it really is.'

Flickr

2008-04-11T20:13:00.001-05:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

2008-03-31T13:23:00.000-05:00

2008-03-25T12:40:00.002-05:00

All Things Spring Quiz

I only got a 4 out of 10!

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/quiz/quiz.aspx?QuizID=251&qpt=results

2008-01-01T20:36:00.000-06:00

Here's a better recording of "Todo Rendido"

2007-12-28T22:42:00.000-06:00

Todo Rendido (Totally Devoted), Music by Robert Nowlin, Words by Unknown

2007-12-24T18:08:00.000-06:00

"Advent Conspiracy" 2007

This will be the first time that I will not be with family for Christmas. Normally I would be very depressed about this, but for some reason I am actually relieved. Not that I prefer not to be at home, because I most certainly would be in Fresno tonight if I had the means. But, I feel a sense of peace-that I am not participating in the grotesque level of consumption that usually coexists with the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Days. As such, I once called Christmas my favorite holiday of the year. Yet, as I have trailed through college and seminary I now am content to say that Advent is now much more favorable to me than zooming over to focus only on Christmas Day. Not only do we buy, buy, buy, with the assumption that December 25 entails all of the meaning that this season brings, but, we are too busy worrying about checkout lines to spend time hoping and waiting for the Promised One. I have therefore added as a friend a group called "Advent Conspiracy." This video tells it all. I hope that you will be challenged as God has so challenged me this year and in years past:

[AC] Advent Conspiracy from Jon Collins on Vimeo.

2007-12-15T21:19:00.000-06:00

How to Grind and Brew Your Own Coffee!!!

Tips From Coffee an Experienced Student (Whose Lifestyle Depends On Caffeine!)

2007-12-05T19:50:00.000-06:00

How to Clean Your Coffee Grinder!!!

Tips From Coffee an Experienced Student (Whose Lifestyle Depends On Caffeine!)

2007-08-22T22:09:00.000-05:00

I am curious if some of my friends out there would look at this link from Robert Greenwald and give me some feedback on this.
http://foxattacks.com/iran?utm_source=rgemail

2007-05-28T13:32:00.000-05:00

Take my quiz!

Create your own Friend Quiz here

2007-05-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

My name is mentioned in a newsletter that is posted on the Santuary of Hope website. I have been moving all my belongings into their attick (because my room is not finished yet).

In other news...

...three more books to skim, and...

...two more days 'till I go to FRESYES for...

...one whole week!!!

2007-05-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

Updates on me:

1) I will begin moving into Sanctuary of Hope on Friday.

2) I turn in my last paper for Spring 2007 on Thursday!

3) I leave for Fres-YES (Fresno, Ca) one week from Saturday.

2007-04-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

I recieved a call from Father Dennis at the Sanctuary of Hope, and my picture is being placed in their quarterly newsletter that I am going to be their new live-in volunteer. This has come as a shock to me that it is actually happening. I have been interested in joining their community for around a year, now, but didn't pursue that interest until I moved out of the now-defunct living situation that I was in from August to February (read the past few entries to learn more if you havn'r heard). So, I will be moving for the second time this spring--back into Kansas, and in fact, only 1/2 mi from the old house on 35th street. I am nervous about this move, and and reasonably scared that I might not be able to balance my priorities accordingly. However, I do feel that this is a good move for me because it will provide a structure and a communuity environment that I really need. Further, I will recieve free room and board for my volunteer hours. Thus, I will not need to work as much--which is a good thing because I can have a nervous breakdown from time to time if I spend too much time in that UPS hub. In these sences, it is an answer to prayer. I am gravitating toward an area that I have felt that God has been leading me for quite some time. I look forward to getting up in the morning for quiet time and prayer--which is something that I have difficulty doing when I don't have someone telling me to do it.

In other news,

I have more pictures of Heartland that didn't make it into the video. They are posted in two different places:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46229520@N00/

and

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15530&id=587290180&ref=mf

2007-03-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

I was at work last night, sorting pakages away in the incredible seventy degree weather that pierced in through the cargo doors of the UPS Hub, when one of my co-workers told me about an extraordinary story that has been unfolding in Mexico. As most people who read this blog know, I have travelled to the country many times--including five times to the mainland. I have adopted parts of the Mexican diet as my own, including my pronness to eat corn tortillas on a irregular basis.

The story is fasciniting, and is possibly prone to change my perspective on corn ethanol production in the United States. My co-worker informed me that Mexicans have had a protest over the doubling to tripling of corn tortilla prices in the past year. A bundle that once averaged 63 cents now averages 1.36 to 1.81. For a nation that has an average income of four dollars per day, a bundle of tortillas now can cost, therefore, 1/3 to 1/2 of a daily wage.

This price spike has occurred most specifically due to the sudden increase of corn ethanol production in the United States. The intention is to reduce dependence on foriegn oil--that sounds good to the average North American, doesn't it? Yet, according to Tom Phillpot (is that a real name? Really-think about it), Corn based ethanol has triggered the interest on consumers due to the U.S. government's claim that it is more environmentally friendly than oil based fuels. Yet, the reality is that ethanol may actually be worse for the environment than fossil fuels ("Attack of the Killer Corn"). It turns out that the corn industry has placed so many insecticides and hormones onto the fields of corn, that there is now emerging an environmental "Dead Zone" the size of New Jersey each year within a region streching from the Upper Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico.

It turns out that ethanol is not as great of an idea as I had previously thought. I will now think twice before I support an "environmentally friendly" alternative. I am skeptical that the practice of ethanol production is "taking food out of the mouths of the poor," as one of my college professors once stated on a regular basis. Further, this is happening so that wealthy North Americans can keep driving their private SUV's, rather than having to spend time in public transportation with undesirables.

2007-02-25T17:25:00.000-06:00

My brainstorming in the previous post brings me to consider: What is the difference between sacred individualism and sacred commuinity?

In sacred individualism, salvation, sanctification, and holiness are lived out primarily by the response that individual grows into through a private pact with God. The individual is prone to remain fragmented from others who live the same Christian lifestyle as s/he does. Hence, there is little unity amongst these persons outside of the church gathering. Sacred individualism tend to assume that sactification of sctructures and institutions is not as important as sanctifying the individual. Another common assumption is that if every member of society were to become sanctified wholy, the world would be restored to perfect communion with God.

In sacred community, salvation, sactification, and holiness are lived out primarily by the response that the community learns to embody. Thus, community lives in close proximity with people who share the Christian lifestyle. Yet, shared space is a magic pill for true human comunity, however. True community must challenge each of its members' ethos to unite with the common ethos. Thus, private ends are replaced with a common end--that is, to live as an embodiment of Christ as the church has so been called. WE DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE TO DO THIS. But, close spatial proximity is preferred. Sacred community answers autonomous individualism as it attempts to restore connections amongst lives that have been fragmented.

2007-02-23T12:04:00.000-06:00

This has been a really trying last two months for me. One member of Heartland Fellowship's attempted intentional community moved out on us on a ten day notice. Due to the fact that the church is subsequently headed into troubled waters and is no longer capable of supporting an intentional community, I thereafter came to realize that I was not going to fill the new vancancy. Thus, I found that I would need to budget for the higher expense per-person with my last remaining rommate.

Yet, I found to my own demise that he would not work with me on this. After six months of stress from being the only responsible person in the house, I found that I would have to pull the rug out from undernieth. I gave my roomate and my landlord a 30-day notice. It has been 2 weeks since this notice was given; I still have no idea where I am going to live next. The future is one gigantic question mark, and my soon-to-be-former roomate is either avoiding me or giving me the silent treatment. But, I have no remorse because I have invested ten times what either of the other two roomates invested.

While I have given myself a pity party, I have made sence of this in multiple ways:

First, I have realized that the intentional community that the church tried to birth did not come in the form of the household, itself, as I had projected. The community that came out of this last six months' experience was the very congregation upon which it was founded: Heartland Fellowship. The community came through the congregants upon which I had depended.

Secondly, several seminars at the M7 Conference challenged my pre-boxed assumption that community comes out of a progammed environment, much less in a situation where several individuals are placed in shared living space. Regardless of the ends for which I went into this men's home, and regardless of the ends that I tried to impose upon my roomates, it is clear to me now that my roomates' ends and my ends did not match up. My telos (ends) was to see that I would develop professionally and spiritually. One roomate had primaily in-bent ends that are easily revealed. The other roomate had in-bent ends as well, yet not-so-obvious. Hence, we all had in-bent ends.

This is not to say that our decision to live together was doomed to failure. Intentional community is formed in part due to the need to address personal and structural failure. Further, many intentional communites struggle to address the misguided ends of a culture in which its citizens are formed to be autonomous individuals--thus, to be makers of their own ethos. Hence, we are in the midst of a culture in which its memebers are taught to form private virtues. What have I learned in regard to understanding people's motivations to be 'in community'? First, I should have considered ways in which we could have deconstructed each others' individualization. I was wrong to assume that since one roomate came from a culture that is much less individualistic than ours, and another came from a theologically-informed mindset to critique autonomous individualism, that he would have easily complied with my program of intentionality.

It turned out that neither of us found time to be intentional community because our lives were fragmented by commitments of daily life that often brought us apart.

This sums up my reflection for today. My desire to live in community is strong as ever--if even strengthened after the six months trial that I endured. I depended on my community, that is, Heartland Fellowship. Without them, I would be incomplete.

2007-01-18T11:25:00.000-06:00

Today I am slightly 'bummed' that the ice is melting away. It has been very beautiful to see the icycles. As a California boy, I am still enthralled while approaching my parked Toyota pickup at the sight of an icycle that has reached the ground and has fused my car to the sheet of ice that my car sits upon. Yet, I am not-so-'bummed' at the fact that the temperature has gotten above freezing outside for the first time since last Friday.

I was talking to my mom back in Central California the other day. Low temperatures have been cold for the San Joaquin valley floor: 19 degrees F! That still shows nothing compared to Kansas City's forecast Monday night of -2 F. Thus, Fresno, California would not be my recommendation for a winter gettaway.

2006-06-17T11:26:00.000-05:00

The Black Dog is a unique coffee place in the middle of Lenexa, KS. My pastor told about this place over a year ago. It's the only place in Johnson County that I go for café and the 'net (besides Lattéland near Ward Parkway Mall). They always have the same three regular and one decaf blends to choose from, though The Roasterie still is number one for coffee on my list.

The most impressive aspect of this shop, besides the friendliness amidst a usually disconnected sub-urban atmosphere, and besides the fact that all their coffee is Fair Trade, is that you can bring your dog with you. They even have a jar of doggie treats at the door. You might even get your picture taken if you are lucky!

2006-05-28T22:23:00.000-05:00

Check it out! I have a new account on MySpace dedicated to publishing songs that I have written. So far I have only one that I have recorded, which happens to be with the lyrics that I posted a few entries ago. Enjoy!

2006-05-17T23:34:00.000-05:00

If you believe in ressurection, then you will believe this...

...so, in case you havn't read any news recently, I am excited to announce that 7th Heaven is not really 'over' as wrote it was in my last post. See this article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194437,00.html

...then THIS one:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-05-17-cw-schedule_x.htm

Yah-hoo for an 11th season!

2006-05-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

7th Heaven is no longer! I watched the LAST EVER eposide last night. I was disappointed with the dynamic of the plotline. First, it was not very realistic--three Camden kids are soon to be parents of twins. Second, the passion that the writers put into the show seems to have left in the final episodes. Why did they wait until the final eposide to bring in Barry Watson and Jessica Biel?
Yet, the strenghths as usual was the tying down of the plot from events of previous episodes. The entire series, in fact was a well crafted ten-year plot.
I am sad to see this series go. It was the last show of my teen years, which aired its pilot episode on my first day of 10th grade. I am now a seminary student, aged 25. This has thus encompased nearly half of my lifetime. Yet, as with anything on this earth, all things have their season. All things have thier 'time'. 7th Heaven was no exeption.

2006-05-04T00:11:00.000-05:00

Click on the link to find out why I have a Mac (found by my roomate).

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/?restarting_medium