birthday cake

Rochester's Spring awoke in a hurry, up out of its sleepy bed of winter, as if it had slept through its alarm clock and was late for work. Late it is, but no one is holding a grudge. This town comes alive when the sun comes out, and the snow melts. Everyone takes their table and chairs out onto sidewalks. Doors get propped open. Frisbees get thrown. Women run with two or three dogs on leashes, while pushing their babies. There is movement again, people learn to walk their stiff frozen legs again after a long winter. Everything is new.

I just finished reading Through Painted Deserts by Don Miller. I've read it many times, it just sort of falls off my book shelve when it knows it is time. It is my leaving book, the story that reminds why I move. I have two weeks left in Rochester.

I am not for sure what is next, but I am moving in the direction of Ohio. My sister will be having a baby soon and my best friend is getting married. I want to be around for that.

So here I find myself again saying goodbyes, saying what I need to say to those people I've come to love here in NY, things that I can only say in leaving. Moving reminds that nothing stays the same. It defines what matters and what does not. It shows me what will last.

Yesterday was Larry's birthday. Larry is a regular at Starbucks, I mean he practically lives there. We call him Seville and he takes out the trash for us and we give him free coffee and cream cheese danishes and let him use our phone to his "land lady". He's there everyday, all day. Anyway, all his friends, that are regulars too, bought him a cake and a card and threw him a surprise party at our coffee shop.

He was the happiest guy. And he always is.

While eating a piece of Larry's birthday cake I was reminded that life is about being a "regular" and having some friends that give you a cake and a card for your birthday. That's all, that's all Seville told me he needed on his fifty something birthday. "All I need is friends, Matt. That's it. That's all, you know."

books

Here are few books I just read (or re-read) that I recommend:

The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach)
Through Painted Deserts (Donald Miller)
Traveling Mercies (Anne Lamont)
Sex. God. (Rob Bell)
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
A Brief History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
Life is So Good (George Lawson)
Velvet Elvis (Rob Bell)

This is my summer reading list:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean-Dominique Bauby)
Every Man's Talmud (Abraham Cohen)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)
Church History in Plain Language (Bruce L. Shelley)
Bird by Bird (Anne Lamont)
Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)


Got any recommendations?

dear rob bell holdouts

People (church people that is) have been talking about this guy named Rob Bell, some short films he has helped make (Nooma), a couple books he's written (Velvit Elvis and Sex. God.), and a church he founded in Grand Rapids (Mars Hill Bible Church).

So many church people have been talking about Rob Bell that some have called it cliche to quote him, show his movies in sunday school, or read his new book.

But I think, that anyone who is serious about doing church (or is just plain sick of church) should turn their attention to Grand Rapids.

Mars Hill Bible Church "exists for the benefit of its non-members." They sit down with thier mayor and ask how they can help make sure every kid in the city has food and shelter and how they can provide the poorest in Grand Rapids with a way to earn a living.

Although the mentioning of Rob Bell may be cliche, the creative, organic, and authentic expression of a Biblical spirituality that has invited many people to reconsider faith in Jesus after the failure of evangelical, coservative, George Bush Christianity, is anything but trite.

I think sometimes when something true is said and a lot of people listen, there is a group of holdouts (I admit, I've been one) who snobbishly discredit the truth by calling it trendy all because they did not say the truth thing themselves.

To me, this is the danger of a closed cannon Bible, that we do not have to take serious real life prophets or prophetic communites (prophet not in the sense of someone who foretells the future or communicates new truths, but prophet in the sense of someone who retells an intrinsic truth forgotten). I think that God still speaks today and that maybe our stories are just as authoritative as Abraham's and Paul's. You may disagree (as will most traditions of Christianity) , but I think people will be suprised by the Bible God reads in Heaven. I think He tells my story and your story up there, right alongside Moses' and King David's. Which, in fact, maybe being going on right now, in this thing we call life. We are a part of a God-inspired book.

I had secretly given up on church and gave my Bible to a local goodwill. Then I started listening to sermons from Mars Hill Bible Church on my ipod. I do not remember the specific teaching I heard one day while walking, but after listening I was nearly taken to my knees by the sound of unadulterated truth. Truth is freeing. Cliches are empty.

No, it was the cliches that failed me. Mars Hill, that brought me back.

the difference between writers and animal doctors

I think the thing that makes writers differant from people who have normal jobs like aeronautical engineering and professional bass fishing, is that writers write things down. Because if you think about it, all of our lives are filled with moments worth writing about, we just don't put them down on paper. Then we forget, so we have to read books about other people's lives to remember our own.

turtle neighbors

A couple weeks ago I was in southern Florida where the royal palms sometimes bend over highways to make natural tunnels. I was visiting my great aunt and uncle who live in a pole barn turned house surrounded by orange trees. This is the kind of place where you need not buy artificial scented orange cleaner. Simply crack the windows, allowing the sweet blooming aroma of valencia to float in.

After visiting their neighbor, an old turtle, I got a tour of Uncle Jim and Aunt Suzie's place and watched tv from thier spiral staircase. What I love the most about the home is the paneling on the walls and the paint spattered ladder they used for the loft guard rail. When I asked my relatives about the bohemian arcitecture, they said the walls where made of salvaged cabinet doors from ramshackle houses they tore down in West Virginia, which were replaced by new structures for those who had no place to stay. And it was for these projects that they used the paint splattered ladder if I remember right.

I thought this beautiful because everyone should have place to call thier own. And if possibe, it should be a house built with recycled materials, and a home made of memories.