Liminal Life

Ten Out Of Tenn

joe — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:05:44 +0000

I went to the the launch of the Ten Out Of Tenn tour launch show at the Cannery Ballroom last night. There had to be 1000 people there to hear a bunch of artists that most people outside of Nashville haven’t even heard of. I moved to Nashville last fall because I wanted to be in a town that nurtures this kind event. This is the second time that Trent and Kristin Dabbs have pulled together ten great Nashville artists for a modern day Rolling Thunder Revue. I’d have gladly paid to see any one of these artists. It was almost overwhelming to see all ten of them playing together.

There’s no headliner. They run it like a big noisy songwriter in the round. The artists all play on each other’s songs so the band keeps shifting. Sometimes there are ten musicians on the stage. It feels like a big family of songwriters that all respect each other and love each other’s songs.

I liked all of it, but a few people’s songs really stood out. Matthew Perryman Jones, K. S. Rhodes, Griffin House and Katie Herzig really brought down the house. And Butterfly Boucher proved that the chicks can rock as hard as the guys.

I sponsored the first tour during my days at Paste and it was plenty cool the first time. But they’ve learned from the first tour and taken it to a new level for the second outing. I’m looking forward to how it will evolve for the third, fourth and fifth tours.

You can hear their music at the Ten Out Of Tenn MySpace and many of the artists have music available for whatever you want to pay on NoiseTrade. But you’ll miss a great night if you only listen to their albums. Don’t miss the opportunity to see them if you are in one of the 16 towns they are visiting in the next few weeks.

God I love this town…

Joe

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So, I am trying out…

joejott — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:29:00 +0000

So, I am trying out this Jott thing, my friend Chuck told me about it. It seems like a pretty good way to make blog postings. I get to talk, using my mouth and it converts it into a blog posting for me. It will also do Twitters and probably lots of other cool stuff. Seems perfect for a guy like me who talks better than he writes. listen

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Raising the Bar

joe — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:56:57 +0000

I had coffee yesterday with Jim Thomas, my pastor from The Village Chapel. He’s taking the church through the Sermon on the Mount and has hit the section where Jesus says several times “You have heard it said… But I say to you…” Jesus takes concepts like murder and adultery and says that we better not feel any spiritual superiority if we haven’t committed these acts because anger and lust are just as bad.

So is Jesus just proposing a stiffer form of legalism? Not only do I have to make sure I don’t kill someone today, I’ve got to make sure I don’t call anyone an idiot. Is he just setting the bar higher? In a way, yes. But I think he’s setting it so high that no one can reach it. And that’s the point. In 5:20, he says that we aren’t getting through the pearly gates unless our righteousness is greater than the world’s most extremely religious people. In other words, we might as well give up because we’re never gonna be holy enough. The only option is to get humble and broken and throw ourselves on God’s mercy. As Steve Brown says, “Cheer up, you’re worse than you thought.”

This is pretty counterculture stuff. Our society tells us every day to be strong and get our act together. Even the Christian bookstores are filled with books on seven steps to being better. And don’t even get me stated on Oprah and her new guru…

So raise a glass to the broken and sing a song for the losers. I’m thankful that I’ve found a community with a bunch of worn out people who don’t have what it takes. I hope you’ve found one too.

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And they’ll know we are Christians by our love…

joe — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:36:13 +0000

I’m reading UnChristian. A book I can’t recommend highly enough. The premise of the book is that Christians have alienated ourselves from the rest of the world by acting in ways that can only be described as UnChristian. Where in the world would they get an idea like that?

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I Can Barely Breathe

joe — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:34:18 +0000

My buddies in Manchester Orchestra have a video for the song “I Can Barely Breathe.” I like it a lot. Very surreal, but very beautiful. Looks like it was made by Clay Lipsky, who appears to have RED camera. Cool.

(BTW, I don’t know how to keep it from playing automatically. The code from the site doesn’t have a variable for that.)

Click here to check out a great collection of behind the scenes photos from the video shoot.

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This guy is an idiot

joe — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:59:40 +0000

This so called Wall Street expert says Jobs needs to put either Blackberry or Windows Mobile on the iPhone if he wants it to succeed in the business world. Quick, somebody buy this guy a clue…

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Twenty Nine Years, One Woman

joe — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:57:09 +0000

Betsy and I were married in Gainesville, Florida 29 years ago today. I was a soon-to-be-graduate of the University of Florida. She was a nurses aide in a labor and delivery unit. I was headed towards ministry. Campus ministry with InterVaristy to begin with, but eventually looking towards heading overseas to save the world. Betsy was planning on becoming a Nurse Midwife.

Neil Young said that he wasn’t happy to have ended up in the mainstream after Heart of Gold, so he “headed to the ditches.” We were full of youthful idealism and the ditches seemed pretty romantic to us. We lived in a house in the ghetto for our first year together. There was a detox center on the next block and a biker gang behind us. Betsy called for a cab one day and they said they didn’t send cabs to that neighborhood. But we loved it.

InterVarsity sent me to Pensaconservacola, Florida the next year and we started moving to the middle. We spent the next 28 years in the burbs and suburban evangelical churches. Betsy helped me discover my inner parent and we eventually discovered that adopting a bunch of kids was a way to change the world while living in the burbs and working for the man.

So here we are, twenty nine years later, living in the city and looking for ways to save the world. Betsy and I are more in love today than we were when we stood in front of our family and friends at the Community Evangelical Free Church. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve stuck with it and we’re really happy to be together.

Happy anniversary Betsy. I love you.

Joe

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Nerd Alert redux

joe — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:32:36 +0000

Still don’t know why I’m having problems with my blog, but it has nothing to do with the Wordpress Theme, so I’ve moved back to the old theme.

Several friends have offered to help me figure the problem out and I will be reaching out to them soon.

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Nerd Alert

joe — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:47:26 +0000

I’ve been getting intermittent server errors lately. I finally realized they started after I upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. It looks like there is an incompatibility in either my theme or one of my plugins. I don’t have time to figure it out right now, so I’ve changed the theme to one that is compatible with 2.5.1. I’ll make it look better later. I seem to have lost my widgets in the process, so no links to Compassion, The One Campaign or Blood Water.

Technology stinks…

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Fifteen Years

joe — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:47:49 +0000

I’ve already posted the story of our adoption here. But I have to write a bit more about it. Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the day we saw the picture of the four children we adopted.

Fifteen years. A lot has happened in that time. Think of it this way. A few months earlier, the first attack on the World Trade Center occurred. It’s easy to forget that event, since it was a failure. But it was intended to have the same impact that eventually happened on 9/11. It was the moment that the radical Muslims declared war on America, and our lives have never been the same.

On April 17, 1993, God drew a line in the sand and our lives have never been the same. On that day he asked Betsy and me if we were in or out. Did we really want to follow Jesus or did we just want to be a nice family. As the poem says, we chose the road less travelled. And it has made all the difference.

In the movie Three Days of the Condor, Cold War CIA Operative Cliff Robertson asks John Houseman if he misses the action of WWII. Houseman replies, “I miss the clarity.” Most of our life is gray with unclear guidelines for who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Houseman looks back at the horrific time of the second world war and remembers it fondly, because there was no ambiguity about who the bad guy was.

The day God told us to go get those kids was that moment of clarity for Betsy and me. Life has been pretty gray since that time. Sometimes, it has been completely dark. But we can look back at that day and remember that there is a God and we are his.

Communion, Passover, 12 stones from the middle of the river, wedding rings. Stuff that makes us remember. God gives us moments in the light to keep us on course when we are in the dark. That’s what today is for me. A time to remember God is there.

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