Archive for the ‘Blogs’ Category

Moving Music

Posted 04 Nov 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Friends, Fun, Jesus, music, Spirituality

So I’m stealing this from Amy, check out her blog for the original post.

Music can have a strong emotional pull on me – invoking happiness or sadness, and not always related to a past experience. As I thought over my favorite artists I realized the ones a top the list have the strongest grip over me – Derek Webb, Counting Crows, Damien Rice, Ray LaMontagne, to name a few.

Sometimes a song in it’s completeness – music, lyrics, vocals – draws out a feeling of joy. For me, worship music often follows this line, but as my previous post showed, fun ska or punk music can do it too. Other songs just make me want to cry. Here are a couple of those types:

“Fix You” by Coldplay – Coldplay is an interesting band for me, the vocals usually pull me down but the guitar and drums make me want to move and sway which makes me smile. This song though just makes me teary.

“Colorblind” by Counting Crows – I’m a sap for a sad piano song, well any piano song I guess, but the start to this song causes emotion to well up and my eyes to fill. Then the violin sets in and I’m gone. This song is probably the most consistent tear invoker on the list.

“The Blowers Daughter” by Damien Rice – Soaked in pain, you can hear the hurt in Damien’s voice and it moves my heart to morn with him.

“Black eye” by Jeff Tweedy – This one doesn’t always get me, but on days when I feel alone and distant from God, forgetting his grace and love, this song reminds me of all the walls I’ve constructed and how good they are at isolating me.

“Let that be enough” by Switchfoot – So worshipful, so prayerful, it centers me on God and illuminates ways I’ve chosen my way instead of His. It strips me down to a simple child like faith and puts me back together.

This was a lot of fun for me, what songs make you want to cry. Or if you like, what songs make you joyful?

Just For Fun – Lots of Music

Posted 02 Nov 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Friends, Fun, music

Last night Josh put on some Five Iron Frenzy songs at the haus – I haven’t listened to FIF in like a thousand yesterdays. Reese Rooper has been tickling my ears as I smile remembering concerts of the high school and early college years.

Tonight I’m going to hear my roommate and good friend Matt Wondra play some sweet tunes at a coffee house near ISU. Ben, Amy and I are driving over together. Check out Matt’s MySpace page to get some samples of his superpowers.

I used my emusic monthly quota to download Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (because I’ve respected Spoon for a while but don’t own any of their stuff) and Josh Garrels – Over Oceans (under Josh’s recommendation). Both albums are super sweet.

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Now playing: Five Iron Frenzy – Dandelions
via FoxyTunes

A World in Disorder

Posted 21 Sep 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Darkness, Jesus, Light, News, Podcasts, Social Justice, Videos

I arrived at work this morning like usual and browsed my podcasts. NPR story of the day, The New from Lake Wobegon, Pandora podcast, This American Life, etc. “‘Jena Six’ Case Prompts Mass Demonstrations” – the NPR headline seemed to leap out. Clicking ‘play’ I found my heart beating faster, an anger welling up and sadness deepening.

Initially I was angry that racism could still be so prevalent in this little town in the south. Then I began to admit it’s not just in the south, in this little town. I see it in my upbringing, I see it at home, I see it on this campus, I see it in my life – through my white privilege and learned behavior.

In the darkness of racism it becomes so apparent to me that Jesus is the hope of the World and that he is putting it all back together again. We simply can’t fix things apart from God.

NPR was my first exposure to this issue – the whole story feels like something out of a text book describing the 60’s. You can read more here at BBC.

One of the more interesting bits of the article to me is how the community is described as a “mixed community” about 85% White and 12% black, yet the churches are not so ‘mixed’ nor are the neighborhoods or even the barber shop.

Continuing my morning routine I noticed a blog post by JR Woodward about this topic. As usual it’s worth reading.

Here is a brief YouTube Photo Story:

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Now playing: Derek Webb – A New Law
via FoxyTunes

Blog Samples: Sin

Posted 14 Jun 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Jesus, Light, Spirituality

I came across this post by Scott McKnight on Jesus Creed, I thought it worth sharing.

Letters to Emerging Christians
“Now my final point: the biggest issue that I see with the Romans Road approach is that once the sin problem is resolved (sin almost always understood as guilt before an all-holy God, which is true but not true enough), salvation has been accomplished. Frankly, this isn’t biblical: the sin problem of guilt, to be sure, has to be resolved, but sin is bigger than guilt (it is distorted relationship with God, self, others, and the world) and therefore the resolution (salvation) is bigger than forgiveness (it is resolved relationships with God, self, others, and the world — and it takes a lifetime). Only a kingdom vision makes the sin problem fully clear and only a kingdom vision makes the solution fully clear.”

More xkcd Comics

Posted 13 Jun 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Fun

I’ve been writing a lot lately to prepare for my talk at i-life summer church tonight. Eventually I’ll post here on the talk and maybe even get a link to the audio. For right now I thought this was fun:


Complements of xkcd.com

Small Talk… It’s so awkward

Posted 28 Apr 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Fun, Technology


+10 nerd points to wondra for posting xkcd comics on his blog, causing me to waste over an hour chuckling at nerdtastic jokes.

Global Internet NOC Page

Posted 20 Apr 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Fun, Technology

Incase you notice your internets are down or slow you can check the Global Internet Status Page complete with a blog:

Playing in the Sand

Posted 14 Mar 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Creation, Fun, Jesus

I’m being really productive this morning 🙂

It all started when I was reading JK’s recent post and then jumped over to his flickr sets – this dude has shot some pretty cool pictures. Once there I noticed a picture of a time I had almost all together forgotten.
A group of us from i-life were headed to Mexico to build homes for families in need about 3 years ago. One morning on our journey down we stopped off at White Sands National Park – I think simply to be kids again. The picture is of Ben Chase, Matt Dobsch, and Me (from left to right). We are jumping off the edge of a sand dune. Funtimes.

Blog Samples: Conversation

Posted 25 Jan 2007 — by nick
Category Blogs, Books

Numerous times in past weeks I’ve sat to write and nothing comes out. I have all kinds of ideas and thoughts – just getting them out has proved a challenge. Agonizing over word choice and worrying about perfection plagues my heart and sends me running to other things, mostly reading other blogs. So today I thought I’d attempt to write but simply a post highlighting a wonderful post from Scott McKnight on Jesus Creed

The Art of Conversation 3
“Third, a good conversation operates on the basis of frequently-unexpressed but nearly always assumed, shared assumptions. I find this to be a regular hang-up on the blog. Many of us operate with a set of assumptions — and it would be fun to bring to expression what these really are — but we don’t talk about them. When someone violates them, we raise our eyebrows or start to wiggle our fingers and maybe even break into a sweat.”

Scott McKnight has authored many books and blogs on a regular basis. This blog holds a place in my regular/daily blog intake.