"Travels of Anodos" via Anodos in Google Reader

The Green Machine

2009-10-10T09:38:00Z

I am now riding in serious style with the the purchase of the Green Machine, a '99 Toyota Corolla.

Avulekile Amasango

2009-09-29T19:27:00Z

The students of ALApella sang this Xhosa song for the memorial of Mr. Sani, the Nigerian teacher who sadly passed away in the summer of 2009. "Avulekile amasango" means "the gates are open."

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California Beautiful

2009-05-26T11:43:00Z

California Beautiful

RUF Stanford

2007-06-16T11:01:00Z

RUF Stanford

Inspiration from Brother Lawrence

2009-05-18T11:53:00Z

“God has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take up with a little sensible devotion, which passes in a moment. Blind as we are, we hinder God, and stop the current of His graces. But when he finds a soul penetrated with lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully: there they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance.”

Skydiving

2009-05-16T12:14:00Z

To celebrate being alive for 25 years, on Saturday I jumped out of a plane. Check out an amusing video here.

Skydiving (at light speed)

2009-05-22T12:28:00Z

Attempting to convert my skydiving video produced this glitch filled (but amusing-in-its-own-right) 8-second video.

ALA Grand Opening Video

2009-04-23T12:49:00Z

On February 6-7, 2009, African Leadership Academy hosted its Grand Opening, celebrating the establishment of this school seeking to transform Africa. I have been busy uploading videos from the weekend to the ALA YouTube Channel, including this one which gives an overview of the entire event.

Hiking Club

2009-04-23T12:07:00Z

One of my great joys at ALA has been to lead the Hiking Club. This past weekend, I took the students out for our third hike to Mountain Sanctuary, hiking through fields of red rock and splashing in the canyon streams. It is particularly fun to see kids who have never hiked before now become excited to come on every trip!

These are a few of the excellent photos taken by my colleague Alex.

Chacma Baboon

2008-11-19T21:11:00Z

To kick off animal presentations in biology class, I wrote a song about the chacma baboon. Here's a clip from when I played it for the class.

Can't Hurry Love

2009-02-14T16:11:00Z

Each term, I have the students do presentations for biology class. This term, they presented on science news articles. To kick it off, I did two sample presentations, one normal one about new potential evidence of life on Mars, and one creative one for the article "Game Theory Explains Why You Can't Hurry Love" (see the original article here). I decided to write a song, a science-teacher-version of the old Supremes classic.

When Valentines came along and passions were raging, I decided to do a quick recording and send it out to the kids as a fatherly reminder :)

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Verse 1
Let’s set up our equations
Try to model this thing called love
Let men be good or bad in the lady’s view
If she chooses well, she’ll make a gain
But a bad one will lead to a loss
The man wins either way
He just wants to know what the equations say . . .
And what do they say?

Chorus
You can’t hurry love
The Supremes they got it right so long ago
The equations show
That when the lady waits
She’ll find a guy worth her time
Can’t hurry love

Verse 2
In a stable equilibrium
Where the guys and girls both win
A good man sticks around for a long courtship
This lets the lady screen her man
And see if he’s up to par
Sure, time is lost, but it’s worth it
Just to find the perfect match
And why is that?

Bridge
So take my advice and take your time
Don’t argue with the math

Elephant Chase

2009-04-03T14:32:00Z

I had the privilege of taking eight students out to a private game reserve owned by one of our board members. It was my first safari and was very cool! We got to watch a cheetah on the hunt, and later, we were chased down by a frustrated elephant.

Back to the Drakensbergs

2009-03-03T15:45:00Z

Just over a week ago, I went back to the Drakensberg Mountains. In July, they were golden and austere. Now, with all the rain, the mountains were bright green - absolutely stunning!

Palm Sunday Musings on Worship

2009-04-05T14:29:00Z

I've been kicking around some thoughts about worship songs - hoping to write a few for GodFirst - and I want to put some of these thoughts into writing.

A potential pitfall with worship songs is to not be particularly Christian. (I'm indebted to my old housemate Will for my thinking on this.) Songs can have nothing about them that is wrong per se but also nothing to make them distinctly Christian. For instance, singing about love and peace and happiness is great, but a non-Christian can exult in these things also. Now from a missional perspective, this can be good - it gives common ground that seekers find palatable. And they can be just fine if in the context of solid teaching and a general understanding of how these ideals fit into the larger Christian story. But I believe our songs are a vehicle we can use to tell the true tale that all the other stories and longings and desires point to.

Two things strike me about Christianity that make it distinctly different: its strange conception of God's interaction with history, and the beautiful truth of costly grace.

In the Christian understanding, God is the author of history. He is constantly shaping characters and events, but he also interacts with the plot in specific, significant ways. In the Old Testament hymns, we find Israel giving praise for these things: God's general control over creation, and his specific acts on behalf of the people of Israel. But it gets better, because Christianity claims not just that God is the author of the story, but that the author entered the story himself as a character - the God-man Jesus. Jesus performed specific recorded acts - most notably his death and resurrection, which we celebrate this week - and these actions changed everything. Christianity rises or falls on a historical fact - the person of Jesus Christ, and more specifically, his resurrection from the dead (see 1 Cor. 15:12-19).

Christ's actions lead to the doctrine of costly grace. God offers forgiveness that is rich and free and unending, with nothing we have done to deserve it, but it came at incredible cost to him - the death of his own son. And its effect is a total reorientation of our priorities and desires - if Christ gave up everything for us, the only rational response is to put him absolutely first with all thankfulness and joy. This is a radical idea that I only see fully expressed in Christianity. Every other way of thinking either skews toward a work-based method of getting your just desserts, or some sort of tepid "let's love and forgive everyone" that carries no weight or power because it doesn't count the cost.

There are probably more, but these are two truths that strike me as being profoundly Christian, and two truths that I hope we can express in our music. (And to be sure, there are many songs that already do express these beautifully!)

I've been thinking a bit about writing some music. There are tons of potential themes, but a few have been on my mind lately that I would love to see captured in song.

I've long been captivated by the idea of God as author, writing the story of history that he invites us to play a role in. Last year, I was particularly struck with Samuel Wells' description in Improvisation of history as a five-act play, where we live in Act IV. The climax was back in Act III, where Christ died and rose from the dead, guaranteeing ultimate victory. And the final act, Act V, is already set, when Christ will return and God will bring the final restoration of all things. For us living in Act IV (the age of the church), this gives incredible freedom! We are invited by God to play a role in his story. We can't screw it up - the victory was won by Christ and nothing we can will prevent the final resolution. So we are free (free to improvise as Wells would say) to live whole-heartedly for Christ, knowing that he works all for good. This also captures why God's sovereignty, his ultimate command of history, doesn't remove freedom but actually generates it. This is something I would love to try to put into a hymn of praise.

Another theme is God as Abba, Father. This has been a distinct way that God has revealed himself to me (as promised in Rom. 8:15), and I would love to capture a mediation that brings together both the authority and strength with the tenderness and intimacy that the image arouses.

One final one . . . lately I've been thinking about some stuff that Tim Keller wrote on approaching evangelism. He argues that today, particularly in America, there are two big groups of people, and a Gospel presentation should have a different emphasis for each. One one side, there are those who grew up with a more traditional, religious worldview, and for these the Gospel is best presented in terms of "sin as separation," contrasting duty and grace. But now there is also another, more secular group, for whom these ideas of duty and grace and sin have little meaning. For them everything is about personal freedom, and so a Gospel presentation to them emphasizes "sin as slavery" and serving Christ as ultimate freedom. Both are true facets of the Gospel presented in Scripture, but each rings true with different people. There are many songs, particularly some of the great hymns of the church, that really capture "sin as separation" and emphasizing grace over duty. But I don't know of any songs that present the Gospel story in terms of "sin as slavery," and I would love to try to capture that, to create a song that can shed light on this truth of the Gospel.

Bless the Lord

2009-01-04T06:47:00Z

Whenever the Rogers family gathers, we say this prayer before meals. I'm not sure the history of it, but it definitely goes back a generation or two in the family. UPDATE: My mom gave me a bit more history on the prayer. The first half comes from Psalm 103 and is the prayer traditionally said by my grandfather's family. The second half as the prayer that my grandmother's family would say. When they got married, the combined the two family prayers into one.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all his benefits.
God is good and God is great,
And we thank him for our food.
By his hand we all are fed.
Give us, Lord, our daily bread.
Amen

Accolades from theSNIPER

2008-12-18T06:40:00Z

Adding to the excitement of finishing out the term, we had a rogue student newspaper that appeared on campus called theSNIPER. (Forgive me, it made no claims to be a newspaper, because it was stapled, not folded.) It basically poked fun at everything on campus while providing precious little news - quite entertaining. ALA is starting to become a real high school. And I was a fan because I got a shout out:

Yeah, at last the Grand prize goes to . . . Did I just hear someone shout Mr. Scudder? Talk of dedication, coolness, wonderful lessons . . . I mean, talk about cool Dave Scudder. He came, sang, he conquered! Singing in class is just another reason to make up another award for him! And the performance at the Talent show, wow! Who else literally lives in the Biology lab apart from the S.I. unit of dedication himself? And that cool shave came at just the right time! Vive Le Grand Prize Winner!

idea

2008-12-09T15:04:00Z

I have some of my favorite poems up on my wall, poems from Hopkins and Eliot and the like, and one called "idea" by my friend Ben. One night in the dorm, I was sitting at the desk playing my guitar and looking at the poems, and I began putting a tune to "idea." This is what came out.

Words by Ben (originally posted here). Music by David.

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i have an idea -
let's put the top down and drive to a place where
we've never been before and lay

in grass and leaves that aren't yet
dead, they still have colors -
red, yellow, orange, and brown.
autumn, please don't count your dead before
winter's darkness buries them.

until then, i have an idea -
let's grow our hair and shout our secrets from
the bottom of thick-trunked trees

whose bark is cold to the touch when
we climb into its carousel of
twisting arms and forgotten fingers that
we give names to and make remembered as the
southern wind bends them in its shivery chill.

i have an idea -
let's drink steamy coffee and tangle limbs when
you can't hear me whisper words

of love into your untrained ear
that never senses growing weeds where
travelers stop to catch a breath and wrap their hands
and brush their cheeks and cover up when
no one cares to build a fire.

hey, i have an idea -
let's gather jackets and vests and scarves
and pack our bags for a trip where

we don't know where we're going until
the train stops screeching in the central
station of some great city with soft-white windows,
like bearded men with newspaper sleeves,
who ride coattails through fluorescent streets.

i have an idea -
let's learn to dance before december arrives
so we can foxtrot through the wintertime.

Summer Rain

2008-12-06T13:55:00Z

I love summer rain. I loved California and the people there and the natural beauty, but I really missed two things: fall leaves and warm summer rain. The smell, the refreshing mist, the color, the memories of playing soccer games as a kid in the front yard during a torrential downpour . . .

And Joburg gets some great summer rain. I'm sitting in the lab now grading exams, but I can't help but stare at the falling sheets outside, listening to the rush of its descent and feeling the building shake with the thunder.

Introducing the ALA YouTube Channel

2008-11-17T20:08:00Z

We've just launched the ALA YouTube channel, starting with this video taken on the first day of school. You can follow the channel here.

Late Night E-mail and Pizza

2008-11-08T17:40:00Z

Late night e-mail checking and pizza eating in the lab. Two things South Africa does right: amazing avocados, and an incredible pepper-like thing called a peppadew - a little sweet plus a little spicy equals perfect. Tony's Thai chicken pizza brings the two together in edible bliss.