JoeBurnham.com

My Prayer for Robbie

Joe — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:39:06 +0000

Before Robbie was born people would ask me what I wanted ... typically they meant, "Do you want a boy or a girl." I received a lot of odd looks when I gave my response, "My only prayer, is that my kids know how much Jesus loves them."

Well, recently we've had a few indicators that the faith I hold so dearly is being passed on to our son. The first happened a few weeks back at dinner when Anita and I were a bit rushed and we just started chowing. Then we hear Robbie begin to grunt. As we looked up from stuffing our faces, he had his arms stretched out and was trying to grab our hands so we could pray.

Then, yesterday, after I went to work, Anita texted me to let me know that Robbie had walked up to her, taken her hands, bowed his head, spoke some gibberish, and then said, "Amen!"

While at this point it's purely mimicry, it warms my heart to see it happen and I pray, as he grows, he'll discover that we pray, not to make Jesus love us, but because he already does.

Lower Than the Animals

Joe — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:16:01 +0000

I've had a couple of experiences over the past few days that are really resonating with me as I write this. The more recent incident came this morning when I attended Election Judge training. For those of you who aren't sure what I mean by election judge, come the August primary and the November general election, I'll be one of those folks who helps you get everything in order so you can vote. Why do this? It just seemed like a good way to love my neighbors (I'll be working 2 blocks from my house) on what is potentially a very stressful day.

Anyway, at training this morning, there were two key statements that were made very clear at the beginning, and then repeated often throughout the training. First, our model for voting is completely different this year so, if anyone had been an election judge in the past, they needed to forget everything from prior years and learn anew. Second, when you run across a voter who has any kind of a unique situation, you call your supervising judge over to take care of the situation.

So, what happened when it was time for questions? We had 40 minutes of, "Well, in the past we did ..." and, "What do I do if a voter has __________ issue?" This also meant 40 minutes of: First, our model for voting is completely different this year so, if anyone had been an election judge in the past, they needed to forget everything from prior years and learn anew. Second, when you run across a voter who has any kind of a unique situation, you call your Supervising Judge over to take care of the situation.

In the end I walked out thinking that democracy is a rather worthless system because people who can't follow the most basic of instructions are given equal say in how things are run. Of course, then @mattfarina pointed out the depravity of political systems in general and how people, no matter how smart or foolish they are, have an amazing ability to bugger stuff up.

The other incident, and I'll warn you in advance that what's to come is nasty, happened on Sunday night. I have a friend who is gay and he turned 21 on Sunday. He invited me to go bar hopping with him so, off we went to the gay bars ... four of them in all.

While nothing of interest really happened at the first three places, on our way to the fourth we walked by a place on 2nd and Broadway called, The Crypt. From the door I could see a wide variety of dildos and other adult products. The manager happened to be standing in the door and, somehow, I ended up talking with him for a bit.

Now, at this particular venue, they have an arcade, which is essentially a set of rooms where you pay to, at a minimum, watch porn and masturbate. However, if that's too low key for you, you're also welcome to bring in a partner, take advantage of a glory hole, or do whatever other kink tickles your fancy.

After filling me in on this he added, and this is what's really disgusting, that he knows a number of 40-something men who will come in wearing their business suits, go into the arcade, strip, defecate on the floor, and use their waste as finger paint ... all of which is done as a form of erotica.

Then he paused, looked at me, and said, "I guess it just goes to show that we're nothing but animals." I simply smiled and replied, "No, animals don't do that, we're somewhere below them." He couldn't argue.

Funny thing is, all this being said and me being fully aware of how messed up people are, I can honestly say that, in spite of our stupidity, irritating qualities, and general depravity, I love people. More importantly, I'm glad that, given all that, Christ loves us too.

Life Enhancing Technology

Joe — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:56:16 +0000

So, it's been a week since I picked up my iPhone and it was right about this time 7 days ago when I received that first text and realized that, somehow, despite iTunes having all kinds of issues activating the phone, that I was now live. So, what's been the impression so far? Is it just a toy, or is it a productivity aid? While there are certainly some toy features, there have been a number of other things that move beyond the toy and into the realm of productive. For example:

SMS - I text a lot. For both my ministry and personal life, this is my most common method of communication. The iPhone, with the exception of pictures sent via text, is awesome, simply because it keeps a running conversation that I can easily scroll through ... which is especially nice if I happen to have some time where I can't text and then need to step back into a conversation.

email - Most of the email I get demands about 30 seconds of response time. With the iPhone, I can take any free moment here or there, and clear out the inbox, leaving only stuff that takes longer to deal with. This has greatly reduced my email time on my lap and desktops.

GPS - This feature rocks. Tell the iPhone to find where you are, tell it where you want to go, and it guides you step-by-step, even allowing you to watch yourself as you move on down the road.

Internet - It's not built for huge amounts of surfing, but when you need to find something quickly and in a setting where you don't have email, you can't beat having the whole web at your fingertips.

OmniFocus - My to-do list is always with me, ready to either add new items or check off old ones ... hard to beat the productivity of that.

On the not as productive but still very helpful front, here's a couple free apps:

Shazam - This is one of the coolest apps out there. If you like listening to the radio, but hate that you don't know who plays that song you love, Shazam is the answer. Just hold your iPhone up to the speakers, let it record a bit, and within seconds you'll have the artist, title, album, YouTube links, and connections to buy the song in iTunes. I tested it out on really old David Crowder and it didn't work, but it worked on just the intro for a song on the new album.

Pandora - The Pandora app rocks as it allows me to play a wide variety of commercial free music that's based on the musical style rather than any one particular artist. Very cool!

So, what's the next piece of life enhancing technology that I'm going to go for? I'm thinking this video that Anita sent provides the answer (assuming they develop a version that works for bottles):

The Love and Respect Model

Joe — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:17:02 +0000

As a disclaimer, anything that is to come is not intended to bash men or women, rather, it's to point up how jacked up things are in this life and in our natural patterns of behavior.

A few years ago I first came across the book, Love and Respect. It's a marriage book based on a mix of Ephesians and sociological research and, it proposed, the couples act in a love and respect cycle.

Basically, there's some solid research out there that reveals that men, on the whole, really want to be respected (you could say that for me, respect = love), while women, on the whole, really want to be loved. So, the love a respect cycles basically says that when a man acts lovingly, then a woman will act respectfully, and when a man acts unlovingly, then a woman will act disrespectfully. Obviously both of these actions then feed into the other so you either end up with something stable or something that's completely jacked.

When I first heard this idea I really liked it, but, as I'm watching more and more relational dynamics unfold, I don't think it's accurate. Rather, I think, when a man acts lovingly, there is something inside a woman that asks, "Is he being loving because he loves me, or because I did something respectful?" In other words, she wants to know that she's truly and unconditionally loved (a desire that isn't a bad thing).

Now, I don't think the next step is necessarily malicious or intentional, but the only way to find out if the love given is based on her actions or because she is unconditionally loved, is to act disrespectfully and discover what the man does ... does he prove himself loving or does he grow cold?

At this point there's two options. The man can do what's right and continue to act lovingly (which I've seen result in more disrespect and, essentially, a lifetime of having to prove himself ... a move which eventually emasculates him), or he can act unlovingly, an action that, based on my observation, often prompts a woman to act respectfully in an attempt to regain a sense of being loved (only to have the cycle restart once things are stable again). Of course, in time, a guy figures out that if he wants her to act respectfully, that he needs to keep her constantly on edge so she's always trying to doing something that will give her a sense of being loved (of course, this will ultimately wear her out as well).

Thoughts? Is the revamped model accurate? What needs to happen so couples can break this dysfunctional model and return to a healthy love and respect cycle?

The Nature of the Beast

Joe — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:01:27 +0000

It's sort of funny, I used to think that church boards were the way they were because they were church boards. However, having spent about 6 months on the board of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN), a community organization here in Denver, I've come to the conclusion that the way boards operate has nothing to do with the church, but has everything to do with the nature of boards. After all, organizationally speaking, it's really difficult to get any farther from a conservative Lutheran church than CHUN.

And yet, as I sit in a board meeting, if I wasn't paying attention to the issues, I really couldn't tell the difference. The reasoning behind the arguments is the same, there's lots of talk with little action, an general contentment with the status quo, and a desire to squelch change agents.

Now, there are some obvious exceptions and John Carver has devoted his life to developing a model for boards that don't do these things, but for the most part, when left to their own doing, boards will be boards, no matter what the organizational context might be.

With all that in mind, some prayers as I head to a "special board meeting" to deal with an "important personnel issue" would be appreciated.

iPhone Fame

Joe — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:50:46 +0000

I woke up early this morning and made my way down to the Cherry Creek Mall to get in line at the Apple store so I could by a new iPhone 3G. I arrived at 6a and was the 24th person in line. Not a bad deal to be there two hours early, especially when you consider that, if I showed up later a little later, I would have spent 6 hours at the mall rather than 3.5.

Anyway, the news was there to cover the release and I ended up being interviewed and having my picture taken a few times. While my video bit which focused on the whole Mac community and experience didn't make it onto www.denverpost.com, my picture did a few times. Here's my few minutes of iPhone driven fame (I wonder if I'll be in the paper tomorrow):

The front page of the paper's website:

The lead picture on the iPhone article:

An "in article" picture:

A larger version of the "in article" picture:

Symptoms and Diseases

Joe — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:54:13 +0000

I never realized how accurate this ad is until the past couple days when I had to do some tech support on a Vista machine in a church office. It's ridiculous how often you get asked to do, well, just about anything in Vista. Of course, it's all because the base operating system has so many security holes that make it an easy target for a third-source that might want to damage your files. All of this reminded me of a quote I heard a while back, "Mac OSX, because making UNIX user friendly, was easier than fixing Windows."

All of this got me to thinking about how we address various issues in our life, be it a personal struggle, relationships, a group we're a part of, or whatever else. When an issue comes, are we like Microsoft folks who focus on eliminating the symptom (there's a risk for a security breech so we'll put something in place to guard the gaping hole), or do we take a Mac approach and address the actual problem (getting rid of the hole)?

I'm thinking, more often than not, when confronted by something, we look at what's right in front of us, the symptom, and try and deal with that, rather they trying to diagnose what's behind the symptom (the actual problem). The problem is, we address one symptom and another appears ... and then another ... and then another ... and then another.

However, if we operate diagnostically and use the symptoms to lead us to the actual problem, we can actually find a viable solution.

Thoughts? Are you a symptom or disease kind of person? Have any examples to share?

Daddy's Shirt

Joe — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:36:57 +0000

joeburnham posted a photo:

Robbie's developed this fascination with my shirts lately. While he normally likes to look up under my shirt and see my face looking down at him, tonight he decided to take a different approach. It certainly provided our small group Bible study with a bit of entertainment.

Indirect Encouragement

Joe — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:16:25 +0000

It's always nice to receive encouragement, although, tonight, my encouragers didn't know they were doing just that.

You see, recently, we made a few changes on the fshbwl, one of which means that the blogs of site users are featured on the front page of the site under the "live" heading. The basic idea is giving visitors and opportunity to look in on the lives of people who are trying to live out this faith. As a result of this change, I'm far more aware of what others are posting.

Well, tonight, as I was clicking through "live", I ran across this post which is basically a summary of earth in the elemental life. Then, the next post I read in "live" was this one, which really jives with the whole idea of wind in the elemental life.

So, where's the encouragement? It's always cool to see that you're not way out there in what you're thinking and, if nothing else, you're resonating with others. Thanks for the encouragement Paul and Jay!

A Boy and His Donut

Joe — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:13:57 +0000

joeburnham posted a photo:

A friend of ours recently took this picture of Robbie holding onto his beloved Sunday morning donut. I have an odd feeling that he knows exactly how cute he is.