Steve’s Blog

Hey everyone, sorry I have been MIA from the blogosphere for a while.  Here is what has been capturing my attention:

Great new music: Peter Gabriel, Broken Bells and Gorillaz.  The Peter Gabriel cover album “Scratch My Back” finally came out in the US and is absolutely wonderful.  Really good music to meditate with… it has helped me relax and decompress these last few weeks.  Broken Bells is the funky and folky colaboration between Danger Mouse (from Gnarles Barkley) and James Mercer (from the Shins).  I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favorite driving albums of the summer.  The Gorillaz have come back after 5 years with their album “Plastic Beach” which features some of my favorite hip-hop artists and beat makers.  I haven’t really dug into it yet but there are some really great grooves and lyrics to keep you interested.

I  just finished up helping with a class at Fuller on theology and media culture that turned me on to the HBO series True Blood.  While it certainly has it’s fair share of explicit scenes and over the top violence, the show deals with much more than modern day vampires.  The show deals with the cultural themes of “otherness” and plurality facing us and how we are able to accpet the radically different and create new ethical paradigms in the face of such challenges.  The class has been a helpful challenge in understanding how we  are (and I am) changing with the influence of new technologies and media outlets and how we are to understand each other in the face of these new tools. 

For Lent my friend Barry has started a twitter campaign called SP140… spiritual practices in 140 characters or less.  It has been a really cool way of exploring how something like twitter can help shape  my spiritual life and provide a focus durring this season.  Some of the cool practices have been: “Dont use sarcasm or cynicism today”, “Make a list of your doubts about god Your fears about life and your worries about yourself Then burn it” and “Don’t text today just make calls.” 

So there you go… that’s what has been up with me these past few weeks.  We have some cool things comming up at church that I will post about in a bit.  Until then, enjoy life and continue to pursue God in new ways.