I've been listening to the same cd for the last 5 hours

While in Edmonton last week for the holidays my sister and I tracked down the new Ray LaMontagne cd Till the Sun Turns Black. I've been listening to it over and over again today while finishing up a really good book. There's a concert linked from his website to the NPR site and now I'm pretending like I'm there. You should try it if this NPR article description appeals to you:

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Ray LaMontagne makes mellow, sometimes dark, poetry songs that are part folk, part soul, with warmly textured atmospherics.

If it weren’t for cigarettes I think I'd be a smoker

A few years ago my friend was visiting from out of town. At some point in our conversation she told me why she started smoking in university. She explained that she needed to escape the snooty students in her program and she found real camaraderie in the smoker circle.

I wish churches had smoker circles. I think I'd hang out there.

Smokers: I watched them one day a few weeks back. I was traveling on a four stop red eye flight to Cincinnati. As I waited for one of my flights I watched as smokers gathered in the designated smoking rooms. I sat alone in the clean air waiting for my flight to board. The smoker filed into the brownish fog, sat down, lit up, took the first drag and soon after started into conversation with a smoker stranger.

I'm craving some smoker community. The kind where I can sit down, not be so concerned about how together I am (or am not), and where just as simply as breathing I invite others to do the same.

Props

Sometimes you really don't know what the outcome will be. This is especially true in youth ministry.

I'm a planner. I like to make plans. I like to imagine my plans playing out and sit back later and reflect, "Indeed, those were fine plans."

The students I work with remind me that no matter how I envision an experience, it's likely, in actuality, to be absolutely nothing like what I imagined.

Tonight at youth I gave the FUSE groups (small groups) chunks of the Luke 1-2 passage from The Message to creatively communicate to the rest of the group. Off they went to be creative and strengthen the bonds of relational ministry. They seemed excited; I anticipated success.

The first group up was one of the guys' groups. They began with some strange drug reference (Where the heck did they get that???? Not to mention that they are in GRADE 7!). Next came the oranges. One of the fellas put two Mandarin oranges up to his scrawny frame. He was playing the part of Elizabeth (Zechariah's wife and mother of John the Baptist) and those fine oranges became boobs.

Wait! Those were not my plans! Though, I had to give the buddy some credit for keeping it real and being true to the not-so-G-rated way of the Bible. And still, there's more.

One of the students yelled out from the audience, "Hey, those are too low!"

Mr. Oranges-for-boobs declared, "No they're not. I'm old."

I liked this movie

I saw the new Pedro Almodóvar film staring Penelope Cruz this weekend - Volver - and I, unlike my fellow moviegoer, truly enjoyed it. Half way through the film my friend leaned over and said way too loudly, "This is weird." I said, "Learn how to whisper." I then went back to wrapping myself up in the world of this fine foreign film.

I enjoyed this film for its dark comedy, rich relationships, family dynamics, mystery, and colourful landscape. I absorbed themes of loyalty, love, revenge, secrets, death, and community. The film focuses on women who are connected in family and the people who are connected to them in the peripheral spaces.

I read this fine review at Salon.com

It's not a film for everyone, but then again maybe it should be.