I feel like I accomplished something today: check out the beta of my new, totally customized movie viewer for the COTM website. It took me about half a day (plus some preliminary research last night), but I managed to create a JavaScript application embedded into the web page that essentially loads and displays an XML play list. It's even smart enough to use one thumbnail image to represent the video in the playlist and another as the preview in the viewing window. It's also smart enough to make my name a link to the biographies page.
This player (based on the JW FLV Viewer) can manage FLV (Flash Video), MP4, MP3, and AAC. It can also easily "pull" videos from YouTube. I have the option of hosting the video files on YouTube, the COTM server, or the Mosso Cloud server (my favourite as it is both dirt cheap and lightening fast).
Because it's dynamically generating this material from a single playlist, it is much simpler to do updates than my previous, manual methods. I'm pleased.
-t
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Subway Hero
Every so often you hear one of these stories. A guy falls off the Subway platform. Someone else jumps in and saves him. This recently played out in New York. Here's the Good Samaritan's perspective (Chad Lindsey):
I'm glad there are still a lot of people in the world willing to take this kind of risk for strangers. Our epoch is often very cynical, but there is still much to be thankful for!
-t
“I’m kind of zoned out, and I saw this guy come too quickly to the edge,” he said. “He stopped and kind of reeled around. I felt bad, because I couldn’t get close enough to grab his coat. He fell, and immediately hit his head on the rail and passed out.”
Mr. Lindsey said he sensed a train was approaching, because the platform was crowded. “I dropped my bag and jumped down there. I tried to wake him up,” he said. “He probably had a massive concussion at that point. I jumped down there and he just wouldn’t wake up, and he was bleeding all over the place.”
He looked back up at the people on the platform. “I yelled, ‘Contact the station agent and call the police!’ which I think is hilarious because I don’t think I ever said ‘station agent’ before in my life. What am I, on ‘24’?”
The man wouldn’t wake up, he said. “He was hunched over on his front. I grabbed him from behind, like under the armpits, and kind of got him over to the platform. It wasn’t very elegant. I just hoisted him up so his belly was on the platform. It’s kind of higher than you think it is.”
He stole a glance toward the dark subway tunnel that was becoming ominously less dark, with the glow on the tracks, familiar to all New Yorkers, signaling an approaching train.
“I couldn’t see the train coming, but I could see the light on the tracks, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to get out of this hole.’ ”
He remembered the subway hero of 2007, Wesley Autrey, who jumped on top of a man who was having a seizure on the tracks and held him down in the shallow trench between the rails as the subway passed over them. “I was like, ‘I am not doing that. We’ve got to get out of here.’ ”
People on the platform joined the effort. “Someone pulled him out, and I just jumped up out of there,” he said. With time to spare: “The train didn’t come for another 10 or 15seconds or something.”
The man lay bleeding on the platform, and the police arrived. Mr. Lindsey soon got on another train. A large group of riders who had been on the platform entered the subway car with him, smiling and clapping him on the back and saying thank you.
“Then I sort of freaked out, and I was nervous and shaky. These five women opened their purses and gave me Handi-Wipes. I was covered in blood and dirt from the subway tracks.”
The fallen man was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan and was later released. (source)
I'm glad there are still a lot of people in the world willing to take this kind of risk for strangers. Our epoch is often very cynical, but there is still much to be thankful for!
-t
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Seen on Craigslist: "Piranha & Tank w/Accessories - $150 (Brampton)"
Piranha & Tank w/Accessories - $150 (Brampton)
Date: 2009-03-07, 7:35PM EST
6 yr old Pirahna and Tank... I'm thinking its about 30 gallons?? Comes with lights, stand...everything in pic.
Fish is cool... eats well...not skittish.
My kid hates it and I have to get rid of it.
150 obo
Thats him in the pics.... his name is "Big Suge"....but he doesnt answer to it...just kinda does what he wants.
Classic.
-t
The Braided Leather Cord: Pleasure, Desire, and Gratitude
Donald Schell has a meditation worth reading on the Episcopal Cafe blog: "The Braided Leather Cord." He relates his experience of climbing a rope while on pilgrimage in Ethopia to need for soulful people to integrate pleasure, desire, and gratitude. A few choice passages:
Rope is a powerful image. It connects and binds and somehow manages to be both strong and flexible. In some circles wedding ceremonies now include a "binding" ceremony in which an intricate knot temporarily binds the couple to each other. This resonates with me more than the "unity candles" that you sometimes see.
I've always enjoyed playing with rope, even though my mother was afraid I would hang myself! I consider knot-tying to be one of those essential skills everyone should learn, like cooking, sewing, or changing a tire. It's a practical skill that comes in surprisingly handy in the parking lot of Ikea or when hanging a vinyl sign on the side of your church!
It's a symbol we probably don't use enough in Christianity; consider that Jesus, that carpenter and friend of fisherman, probably knew more knots than most people, even in his culture. Ropes connect and give structure and allow us to move things and hold things. One of the things I find fascinating about St. Gregory of Nyssa's Church in San Francisco (the parish Donald co-founded) is the ropes that hold the oil lamps over the altar. They are thick, black, sturdy ropes that look like they could probably hold a person's weight. They go from the lamps to pulleys in the ceiling to cleats in the wall high enough to discourage kids from doing damage.
Anyway, that's what comes to mind when I think of ropes....
-t
Just as the three strands of interwoven flesh - animals’ skins - made a lifeline and a way of ascent, the sixth century Syrian monks who built Debra Damo, despite their fierce asceticism, confidently wove Pleasure, Desire, and Gratitude into a line sturdy enough to carry us up into God’s embrace. Most Christians of that time braided this same line.
....
But who is trying? For a single sermon commending pleasure or desire, we’ve probably heard twenty urging us to give or share because we ‘should be grateful.’ We’re in the grip of fearful Christian thinking from those bitter centuries that came to mistrust pleasure and desire.
...
Our pleasure delights God. Both giving us our daily bread and giving us Christ the bread eternal please God because both ordinary bread and Christ our living bread delight and pleasure us. We’re all of us the prodigal welcomed home to a Great Feast in OUR honor and for our pleasure. Receiving God’s vast blessings with pleasure moves us (makes us want or desire) to offer God our thanks. We’re in bolder and more paradoxical territory than ‘It is right to give God thanks and praise.’
....
The joy at bending knee and hip for prayer was so exhilarating that I refused to hold myself back, so went forward to kneel at the rail to receive communion, even though I wasn’t confirmed and knew I was breaking the rules to receive. This was an altar call I welcomed joyfully.
Finally had desire unlocked what was frozen. Desire hadn’t let me rest, and in the end it moved me to a path I’m still pursuing. Gregory of Nyssa in his Commentary on the Song of Songs says that we are most like God in our infinite desire.
....
[That] Sunday [my wife and I] started ballroom dancing lessons. For three years we hardly missed a week. Week by week for three years, we danced our way to deeper understanding and love. Learning to dance together was as deep as any conversation we’d ever had.
There’s the three braid strand - pleasure, desire, and gratitude. I started this reflection with pleasure. Braiding, each is equally essential. I might have told other stories if I’d begun with desire or gratitude, but once braiding has begun, each is line is important in turn, and as Christians of the first centuries knew, together they carry us to Life. (source)
Rope is a powerful image. It connects and binds and somehow manages to be both strong and flexible. In some circles wedding ceremonies now include a "binding" ceremony in which an intricate knot temporarily binds the couple to each other. This resonates with me more than the "unity candles" that you sometimes see.
I've always enjoyed playing with rope, even though my mother was afraid I would hang myself! I consider knot-tying to be one of those essential skills everyone should learn, like cooking, sewing, or changing a tire. It's a practical skill that comes in surprisingly handy in the parking lot of Ikea or when hanging a vinyl sign on the side of your church!
It's a symbol we probably don't use enough in Christianity; consider that Jesus, that carpenter and friend of fisherman, probably knew more knots than most people, even in his culture. Ropes connect and give structure and allow us to move things and hold things. One of the things I find fascinating about St. Gregory of Nyssa's Church in San Francisco (the parish Donald co-founded) is the ropes that hold the oil lamps over the altar. They are thick, black, sturdy ropes that look like they could probably hold a person's weight. They go from the lamps to pulleys in the ceiling to cleats in the wall high enough to discourage kids from doing damage.Anyway, that's what comes to mind when I think of ropes....
-t
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sermon - Lent 3 2009
My sermon from Lent 3, 2009. I discuss how crisis reveals what is true and essential about the human condition and our relationship with God.
Again, I edited up both the video and audio for your viewing pleasure. Not that my sermons are so awesome, but at least it's a start at New Media evangelism!
Note for the technically inclined: both of these files are hosted by the Mosso Cloud Network, which is very cost-effective way to host large media files.
Here's the audio...
Here's a direct link to the MP3 file...
-t
Again, I edited up both the video and audio for your viewing pleasure. Not that my sermons are so awesome, but at least it's a start at New Media evangelism!
Note for the technically inclined: both of these files are hosted by the Mosso Cloud Network, which is very cost-effective way to host large media files.
Here's the audio...
Here's a direct link to the MP3 file...
-t
Torture
A stunning article in the NYTimes by Mark Danner (itself a condensation of a longer article he wrote for the New York Review of Books) details the best record yet about the torture conducted on suspected terrorists in the "Black" Prison programme. The article is based primarily on the classified report written by the Red Cross based on their extensive interviews with prisoners who had been transfered from the "black" prisons to Gitmo. It's chilling reading, and has the ring of authenticity.
One of the things that is striking to me about all this is that two former CIA Operatives that I have known were both highly critical of the use of torture. One told me that he had conducted or supervised many interrogations, including some were local officials used torture, and his cold-blooded experience was that torture was simply not as affective as other means. "There is no magic to it," he told me, "you simply keep asking the same question over and over again. It just takes time, that's all." Further he told me of disgust for what he was hearing about in the "war on terror": "I find it professionally insulting."
A third source, whom I haven't met, is Slow Burn, a book by former CIA operative named Orrin DeForrest about his experiences as an interrogator in Vietnam. Essentially, DeForrest replaced crude, cruel, and ineffective methods with a system of interrogation that (according to his account) was successful but too late to effect the war's outcome. Again, this is the voice of an experienced interrogator who found that torture was not the best way to get valuable intelligence from people.
But even if torture were effective in getting information, there are still powerful moral and even purely utilitarian arguments against employing it. Danner summs it up:
There is talk of some kind of Truth Commission. I sure hope that happens for the sake of our national conscience.
-t
One of the things that is striking to me about all this is that two former CIA Operatives that I have known were both highly critical of the use of torture. One told me that he had conducted or supervised many interrogations, including some were local officials used torture, and his cold-blooded experience was that torture was simply not as affective as other means. "There is no magic to it," he told me, "you simply keep asking the same question over and over again. It just takes time, that's all." Further he told me of disgust for what he was hearing about in the "war on terror": "I find it professionally insulting."
A third source, whom I haven't met, is Slow Burn, a book by former CIA operative named Orrin DeForrest about his experiences as an interrogator in Vietnam. Essentially, DeForrest replaced crude, cruel, and ineffective methods with a system of interrogation that (according to his account) was successful but too late to effect the war's outcome. Again, this is the voice of an experienced interrogator who found that torture was not the best way to get valuable intelligence from people.
But even if torture were effective in getting information, there are still powerful moral and even purely utilitarian arguments against employing it. Danner summs it up:
As I write, it is impossible to know definitively what benefits — in intelligence, in national security, in disrupting Al Qaeda — the president’s approval of use of an “alternative set of procedures” might have brought to the United States. Only a thorough investigation, which we are now promised, much belatedly, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, can determine that.
What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact. We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away. (source)
There is talk of some kind of Truth Commission. I sure hope that happens for the sake of our national conscience.
-t
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Healing Prayer Service Progress
Today was the third Healing Prayer service here at the church. Thought I would offer a few quick reflections.
Liturgy... We follow this outline:
Attendance... The first Saturday it was just two of us. The second there were six. And today we had six as well. Until today it was entirely parishioners--but then today we had a visitor who came because she saw our banner out front. Sweet! Now this person is a life-long Anglican who has known of our church, but not been inside before. That's just great. It's exactly the kind of encouragement I needed!
Spirituality... It has been quite moving to share prayer together in this way. I think doing the open intercessions followed by the anointing flows really nicely. I think that as we continue to meet the feeling of intimacy and connection will grow and the prayers will feel even more powerful.
So I'm feeling pretty good about this. I think we need to post even more flyers and advertising and we'll see how this goes...
-t
Liturgy... We follow this outline:
- We sit in a circle in front of the chancel. Three candles burn on a table near the presider.
- Greeting and opening collect from BAS pg. 554.
- A reading from scripture (related to healing)
- Silence for contemplation
- Sharing about the scripture
- Extemporaneous, open prayer time
- Laying on of Hands and Anointing (those who wish to receive it take turns sitting in a chair in the middle of the circle. Everyone gathers around and puts a hand on the person's shoulder or arm. Presider lays hands on the person's head. Silent prayer for three or four breaths, then anointing using the BAS formula pg. 555)
Attendance... The first Saturday it was just two of us. The second there were six. And today we had six as well. Until today it was entirely parishioners--but then today we had a visitor who came because she saw our banner out front. Sweet! Now this person is a life-long Anglican who has known of our church, but not been inside before. That's just great. It's exactly the kind of encouragement I needed!
Spirituality... It has been quite moving to share prayer together in this way. I think doing the open intercessions followed by the anointing flows really nicely. I think that as we continue to meet the feeling of intimacy and connection will grow and the prayers will feel even more powerful.
So I'm feeling pretty good about this. I think we need to post even more flyers and advertising and we'll see how this goes...
-t
Friday, March 13, 2009
Cult and Paste
A friend of mine from College, Nathan Koons, has started a funky blog: "Cult and Paste." I haven't detected a central theme, yet, and the whole things is kind of creepy, actually...
Speaking of Hampden-Syndney, they have a new president: Christopher Howard! Yes, he's black. I'm delighted. He continues the HSC tradition of College Presidents with a background of service to our nation. It's a hell of a C.V. imagine a Rhodes Scholar, Special Forces Chopper Pilot, Harvard MBA, and the DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) "Intelligence Officer of the Year." I'm not kidding, he did all that. Very, very cool. Oh, and he earned a Bronze Star in Afghanistan doing something related to human intelligence. And he played serious football. This dude is a hard core achiever!
-t
Speaking of Hampden-Syndney, they have a new president: Christopher Howard! Yes, he's black. I'm delighted. He continues the HSC tradition of College Presidents with a background of service to our nation. It's a hell of a C.V. imagine a Rhodes Scholar, Special Forces Chopper Pilot, Harvard MBA, and the DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) "Intelligence Officer of the Year." I'm not kidding, he did all that. Very, very cool. Oh, and he earned a Bronze Star in Afghanistan doing something related to human intelligence. And he played serious football. This dude is a hard core achiever! -t
Thursday, March 12, 2009
"Geeks for Christ"
We had our first "Geeks for Christ" meeting today. This is a group forming to talk about developing the church's use of New Media and technology. We talked about a number of ideas springing from two steams of thought. The first stream is the need for churches to get a lot smarter about using new technology to do things cheaper and better. We can identify a number of efficiencies that could be achieved by having a Diocesan Standard way to manage finances, for instance. The second stream is about the need to get better at doing New Media evangelism. We need to be engaging our culture in languages it understands.
So right off the bat we are going to establish a Wiki where can share ideas, collaborate on projects, post resources, etc.
At our next meeting we are going to set a date for a "Geeks for Christ" Conference. We don't know the shape of that conference, yet, but do know that it will involve material from both streams, will appeal to Chistians of all stripes, and will involve featuring projects. We want people leaving the conference feeling energized, informed, and inspired.
Next, we believe we need to explore creating a set of standards for the use of technology in the Diocese. Establishing such standards will help guide Diocesan level policy making as well as parish-level purchasing. Having a consistent technology base will make collaboration easier and opens up the possibility of bulk purchasing and other economies of scale.
So that's a start--an ambitious start!
-t
So right off the bat we are going to establish a Wiki where can share ideas, collaborate on projects, post resources, etc.
At our next meeting we are going to set a date for a "Geeks for Christ" Conference. We don't know the shape of that conference, yet, but do know that it will involve material from both streams, will appeal to Chistians of all stripes, and will involve featuring projects. We want people leaving the conference feeling energized, informed, and inspired.
Next, we believe we need to explore creating a set of standards for the use of technology in the Diocese. Establishing such standards will help guide Diocesan level policy making as well as parish-level purchasing. Having a consistent technology base will make collaboration easier and opens up the possibility of bulk purchasing and other economies of scale.
So that's a start--an ambitious start!
-t
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Contemplative Eucharist Flyer--Constructive Feedback?
I've been working on a flyer today to publicize the Contemplative Eucharist. I know a lot of people who read this blog have design sense/training. Here is a PDF version. I also tried a legal-sized format which allows the text at the bottom to be spread out a little more vertically. I was trying to be a bit more funky in this design. Thoughts?
-t
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