Brudder

This is my brother.

Ladies, you can't date him. Because he's already in lover with her.

I love it when he posts on his facebook, because he is very far away. In Spain, with the Marines. Truly, Skype may be one of the greatest inventions ever for familiar and (and best friend-ial) communication and harmony.

This photo I love very much because I reminds me of getting ready altogether backstage, or in the girls' locker room.

Have a delightful weekend:)

Coming Home.

What's the happiest place on earth?

Nope, not Disney World.

It's here.

My favorite place in the whole wide world is Baylor Homecoming.

Justice Revival

The Lord, your God, is with you
He is mighty to save
He will take great delight in you
He will quiet you with his love
He will rejoice over you with singing
Zephaniah 3:17

One of my favorite blogs, Sojourners, wrote today: Justice Revival is coming to Dallas.

Justice Revival (more info at http://www.justicerevival.org/) will "unite more than 1 million Christians and 1 thousand churches in Dallas to address issues of public education and chronic homelessness."

The articles reminds us that in Dallas, my dear hometown, 89% of high school seniors are not college ready. Leaders have come together across racial and socioeconomic lines to rally for 25 new partnerships to be created with public schools and for 700 new units of affordable housing to be built.

Justice Revival will take place November 10-12 at Dallas Market Hall.

Autotune the News

Have you heard of these Autotune the News videos? They are hysterical! Ben's friend Jeff (1/2 of those cool Gillum kids) showed them to him, and last night we laughed for an hour watching them all. Here's the latest one, #9:

There are 9 of these so far, mash-ups of the latest top news stories, interviews, and just plain ridiculous television  moments. Oh, and an occasional appearance by an Angry Gorilla. The brothers who make these videos got started during the Presidential campaign last year, and they've even Autotuned famous speeches like MLK's "I Have a Dream":

Now, messing with this speech has of course been controversial. Is this tantamount to sacrilege, or is it a clever way to engage young people with one of the most important speeches in American history?

To end, some parting wisdom from my good friend Clive Staples Lewis.

"The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to that dependence. Meanwhile, the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing has yet been done."

More Clive quotes here.

Place

A sense of "place" is very important to me. Places can be magical, as anybody who's ever roamed the Baylor campus knows. Many cities have that special sense of place that makes them tourist destinations- San Francisco, or New York, or Savannah, George, for example. Dallas- not so much. Until now, I hope.

Dallas has jumped right up there on the hot architecture list with the opening last week of the Dallas Performing Arts Center. The highlight of the new space are two buildings.

The Wyly Theater

The Winspear Opera House

Inside view of The Winspear:

And, literally, on top of it all, the city is building a 5-acre park on top of the Woodall Rogers highway running through downtown. Can you believe that?!

It's like our own little Central Park, on top of a highway! Sic em, Dallas!

It will have a dog park,

recreation fields,

a restaurant,

botanical gardens,

chess games,

and more!

The Park website says "The Park will serve as a central gathering space for Dallas and its visitors to enjoy in the heart of the city. The 5.2 acre deck park will create an urban green space over the existing Woodall Rodgers Freeway between Pearl and St. Paul streets in downtown Dallas. Plans include a performance pavillion, restaurant, jogging trails, a dog park, a children's playground, a water sculpture, an area for games and much more.

Connectivity is central to The Park's pupose. The Park will promote increased pedestrian, trolley and bicycle use between Uptown, Downtown, and the Arts District, contributing to a more walkable city center.

The Park will create a front lawn for the surroundign cultural offerings including the Dallas Center for Performing Arts, Dallas Museum of Art, the Meyerson Symphony Hall, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Crow Collection of Asian Art, Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts and the future Museum of Nature and Science. Construction will begin in October 2009. The base park is expected to be complete in late 2011 with amenities expected to be complete in 2012.

You can learn more about the very famous design team, park features (can't wait for the reading room, The Groves, or the Icon Fountain!), timeline and more at http://www.theparkdallas.org/.

In addition to my beloved hometown, there's a second place far away that's capturing my heart today.

Kenya.

My dear Satpack is there right now, loving people right and left.

Guess which one is little Satty:)

How often would I go to church if my church had no chairs? or air conditioning?

See the blend of old and new. See the difference a well makes.

Well done, little Sarah, and her companion Wade!

What a beautiful woman, what a beautiful ring.

Love "Lay Em Down" by Needtobreathe

Love "Marianne" by Matt Wertz.
And my FAVORITE NEW SONG-
From David Crowder Band's new release...

Geez Louise

I stumbled upon a really interesting online magazine called Geez several months ago. In their latest issue, an article called "The War on Cancer" has got me thinking.

The article begins with this:

"Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."

When I first read these opening words in Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag, I thought them interesting, but not personally relevant. Now, over 30 years later, having been diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer, I read them as one whose passport is stamped as a reluctant traveler into “the kingdom of the sick.”

Then, later in the article:

The only way we in the West seem capable of coping with things we fear, whether cancer, drugs, or terror, is to declare war on them. Making war still seems to be the way we choose to muster, or manipulate, large numbers of people in a common cause. So in 1971, President Nixon declared the "War on Cancer."

The war metaphor has served the cancer industry at the expense of prevention.

In her book "The Secret History of the War on Cancer", Devra Davis says the "proof that how and where we live and work affects whether we may get cancer has been ignored." She says cancer reserach is controlled by members of "astonishing alliances between naive or far too clever academics and folks with major economic interests in selling potentially cancerous materials."

Along the same lines, the article discusses chemical conglomerate AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca makes Tamoxifen, the number-one selling breast cancer drug, but they also make Acetochlor, a herbicide that has been classified by the Environmenal Protection Agency as causing cancer.

(Dear AstraZeneca employees who are now reading due to this blog entry setting off a Google Alert in your marketing department: That is pretty damning. You cannot put a pink-ribbon gloss on dousing our environment in carcinogens.)

The article ends with this powerful thought:

We need more of what the Poet Laureate Audre Lord envisioned - the halls of power reverberating with the demands of thousands of one-breasted women and those who love them demanding that cancer-causing chemicals be outlawed. After all, I can only be healthy if I live in a community in which the air, water, and food is free of poison for everyone.

I wish I was a Yes Man!

Please, for heaven's sake, Please, go read about the Yes Men. I think they are hysterical, and I completely support this kind of truth-telling, using humor to bring attention to really evil things occuring right here. They have a movie currently screening across the country (including Sundance!) called "The Yes Men Fix the World". I wish so badly there was a screening in Dallas! Check the website to see if a screening will take place near you- they're having dozens of them. At the end of each screening, the audience goes and does something crazy. Last week a screening audience in New York went to a Chase Bank around the corner and 'decorated' on the sidewalk outside- except using coal, not chalk. They did this to draw attention to the terribly damaging and unhealthy "mountaintop removal" coal mining practices that Chase is financing in rural American. Truly- go read about the hijinks!

Happy fall, friends.