Barry Bonds, and why he's my boy

So I felt the need to drop some knowledge on some fools. One of the main reason this post exists is because my college roomate Jason will check it and explode. Furthermore I felt the need to defend my boy, Barry. Some will attempt to discredit his ability as a baseball player strictly because of the issues around whether or not he knowingly used steroids, however I have the trump card of statistics. One may attempt to throw away a couple hundred of his homeruns on the basis of "alleged"("I am lawyer," says star jones)steroid use, however in the summer of 2003 something undeniable happened. Barry Bonds in July of that month, had up until that point in the season hit more doubles and homeruns combined than times he whiffed on a pitch. For some who do not actively follow baseball, and can't understand the atrocity of this stat--it is ridiculous. It is essentially the same as attempting to drive your car in early summer in south mississippi and not get a dead bug on the windshield--the odds of missing the bug are the same of throwing a strike by Barry Bonds that he cannot connect to. Therefore I have said it before and I'll say it again, he is the best baseball lplayer I have ever seen, and will probably ever see. If you look at his walk to strikeout ratio over his career it is scary. If he chooses to play on his bad knee for ten more years he may reach the point when he literally walks 500 times in a season and bats a 1.000. For real. Steroids can't touch or defame that reality. I'm through. I just felt the need to say you may be able to choose not to love Barry Bonds, but no one can ever attack what he has done in the batters box. So there. Baseball season is upon us and I have to listen to one"credible" baseball writer criticize Barry the player I'm gonna do something sick. Hate the game not the player. It is with great courage that I say, barry is my boy.

my life as experiment

"Please remember, we have no indication that what occurred in the early days of the Church was commanded or that it was even the right thing to do. This is not some pattern to be slavishly imitated. What we do see is an incredible freedom to experiment with practical ways to flesh out the meaning of love for God and neighbor. Under the authority of Christ these spirit-filled Christians were freed to try new ways to love one another."--Richard Foster

I like this quote because I have been thinking a lot about trying to live as radical as I think the call of Christ compels us to be. I'm tired of the domesticated life I've been living. I have totally made the gospel culpable to my whims. what a tragedy. Thus I am resolved to view my life as experiment and endeavor as fully as I can to embrace the moment by moment voice, without regard to reasoning. I probably don't mean that as spooky as it sounds. I just recognize that there are times when I very clearly feel God telling me to do one thing and I begin to reason it out. I want to be like the widow who gave her only 2 pieces. Resignation. She believed God was good with word and deed. I'm so tired of considering myself before others. I'm so tired of living a life of quiet death.

Sundaynight I got to see Coldplay. It was great. You got the feeling that they actually wanted to connect with the audience in tangible ways. Furthermore, the emotive nature of their music was powerful live. Crap I sound like a gay music critic. We are what we hate. I have so many things to say, but honestly do not posess the energy to communicate them all right now. In a few eeks I'll go home and take people with me to help rebuild in the wake of Katrina. I am excited about this oppurtunity. I get to share home with friends and tangibly meet needs.

I had dinner with my friend Joe tonight and talked about the gospel. It has been a joy to watch his heart and mind embrace the reality of Christ, each week he grabs onto another truth of the word and it is beautiful to watch the gospel do what it has been doing for years.

Girls. They are nice but sometimes my inability to understand them makes me feel like ric moranis from honey I shrunk the kids--well intentioned but wanting.

So anyway I've decided to try and quit holding back in regards to faith in action in my life. I'm gonna try to live my beliefs more as breathing, and less like strategy. experiment.

wilco, eating disorders, and the disillusionment of my generation

This is gonna be somewhat short, mainly because I am tired, but also because I feel like with tomorrow being Valentine's I should probably post something about beauty and love then, thus...a few things rattling in my brain.

Wilco--I think they rock. I love the way Jeff Tweedy writes lyrics and I tend to find myself in many of his songs. The 2 CD's I own are Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and A ghost is born. I did own AM, but it got jacked by a really cute girl one summer I worked at camp in college, so I can forgive. Nevertheless tonight on the way home from seminary I was just listening and realized how much I like this band. Every CD of theirs I have owned, including the aforementioned-jacked one, has become more imprtant to me the longer I own it. Every time I revisit one of their tunes that I haven't listened to in awhile it unveils something new that I dig, I think that is a key to lasting musical greatness. I don't know if this officially means I am old, or just in a phase but their tunes resonate with me. As I listened tonight, i think my life is probably more like their music, than the life of Diamond David Lee Roth--which is what I sometimes hopefully think.

Eating disorders--I can totally see how people get them. It is so easy to make yourself crazy thinking about health and food. Sometimes I think I have walked the proverbial line between healthy and unhealthy eating habits.(Note this is not a cry for help, I am OK)I just feel like at this moment in my life I can really sympathize with this kind of head game, and felt the need to communicate it.

Talking about my generation--So the world champion Chicago White Sox had the oppurutnity to visit the white house this week and 17 of the 40 man roster chose to attend. 17. I think this is perhaps a huge indicator of where we are as a people. I think it has nothing to do with the poltics of GW or the players. I think it is perhaps most indicative of the fact that we, meaning younger folk, are beginning to realize the futility of politics. As we grow up in school we are taught that in America anyone can be the prez. I think the older we get the more we realize anyone, can't really be prez, and even if we could we wouldn't want to be. I think more and more we are seeing that politics will not save our world. All the news channels seem to attempt to spin it like they can, in agreeing or disagreeing with a certain political decision, but I think most people in my generation realize the futility of this endeavor. Thus the president is quickly being relegated to little more than a celebrity in kind with Bob Dylan...future generations know this figure is important but can't exactly de/prescribe why. Furthermore I think we all realize in our bones how little power the president really has. I'm sure it makes us all feel good that at the end of the day we can pin success or failure on the shoulders of one person so as to alleviate our own responsibility, but nevertheless we all know this for the fallacy it is. No one person is the reason anything happens in terms of politics. But Jeff what about Hitler--Neville Chamberlain, pacificism, and so on. Alright this is getting whiny, and this whole thing could be cause I am tired, I'm really not sure however I think this whole Chisox thing is an example of a cultural reality. We want substance. i think we are all hopful that at some point we can be a part of something bigger than ourselves. I think the more I hear news from the globe, it is clear to me that that bigger enduring thing will never be diplomacy. Diplomacy will die with people--we yearn to connect with the eternal. I think this is what I feel and possibly what a lot of people around my age feel. This probably won't even make since to me when I wake up tomorrow, but nevertheless here it is. Perhaps it will be entertainment at least.

Somethings I've learned

So tonight in my OT2 class I heard a couple of concepts that I thought were significant and I wanted to reflect on them. I will probably not say as much as I originally planned, because I am tired but nevertheless here is what I got.

"No event has any intrinsic meaning."
"No event is self-defining or self-interpreting."
"chronologies establish a framework, histories have an ideology."

So the thought here is that we define events we encounter through the lens we view life. In other words no event standing alone is significant in and of itself. It is significant in relation to the way I understand life, my ideology that guides my thoughts. This is why one person sees the cross of Christ as extremely significant and one person fails to see it as momentous or relevant. Furthermore it also helps me understand why Vince, doesn't think the Red Hot Chili Peppers are a good band and important to rock music. alright maybe not. Nevertheless it has made me think a ton about history and the idea that even if we wanted to be completely objective in regards to our study of it, it is an impossibility. The conventions we use to study are merely the conventions of our time and culture, thus our conventions of study represent American, 21st century methods of study. What a huge thought. Objectivity is futile. This has huge ramifications for ethnocentrism, and cross-cultural understanding. We are all walking through life, whether fully aware or unaware carrying the baggage of the world, time, and culture we've been birthed into. This pervades all of our thoughts, and is our filter. Of course we can adapt our filter. I think the apostle Paul would say, transform, but nevertheless I think we have to be concious enough to decie to do that. Alright so I am tired, but I needed to communicate that before I slept, so as to say what was on my mind.

I guess here are a couple of things I will speak to in my next post, or merely leave them succinctly said now, K-fed is a choad(this is a reference to a video on my friends blog about Britney spear's hubby--bythebeachboy.blogspot.com, thanx Ken), I've never been a Springstein fan, but I think the song "devils and dust" is really good, One of my friends told me I was salesman last night in reference to my always talking and seeing the gospel in stuff and it gave me cause for concern--am I willy loman?he was well liked-or so he thought, Translating the biblical greek is gratifying work, i'm a tool.