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Question: What cost 387 million dollars , brought great joy to millions of people, and sent others down a spiral of depression? Answer: Avatar.

If you haven't heard of it by now, chances are you don't get on the internet much. Or read newspapers. Or go outside. Or have friends. This movie has already grossed 1.4 billion dollars and is well on its way to becoming the highest grossing movie of all time. For James Cameron, the movie's writer and director, the only movie standing between him and #1 is the last movie he made. You might have heard of it - it's called "Titantic."

The big push behind this movie, as you probably already know, it's the visual gluttonous feast that it provides. I was able to see the movie in 3D on Monday night and pretty much sat there dumbfounded at how cool everything was. Several times I sat there with my jaw wide open while simultaneously grinning and whispering, "Wow!" The closest way I can think of to talk about the movie is to say that James Cameron has done for film what C.S. Lewis did for literature. Lewis created other worlds on paper, and Cameron brought his to life on the screen.

This movie was not without it's critics, however. For starters, critics clam the story line is essentially that of the Disney hit movie, Pocohontas (not to be confused with the actual, historical account of Pocohontas). To this I say, "Yes. It is. But I don't care. Essentially every chick flick has the same story structure but no one cares about that. Gorgeous guy meets beautiful babe. Usually one plays hard to get. Then they fall in love. Then one does something stupid and they part ways. Then they realize they are too perfect for one another and get back together. I don't even have a specific chick flick in mind, but I'm guessing this plot summarizes at least a few of them."

The movie contains also political, social, and spritual threads woven subtly and explicitly throughout. The line, "We fight terror with terror" kind of stuck out to me. The whole cowboy and indian genocide theme was pretty explicit - complete with the Avatar warriors riding horses (the Pandora equivalent of), wearing war paint, and shooting bows and arrows. Additionally, there was a whole bunch of mother earth mumbo jumbo hogwash thrown in. Something about all of creation sharing the same spirit and connecting through fiber-optic ponytails. Finally, the movie presented creation as being the mediator between man and the divine. It clearly had a divine "other" that was separate from but involved with creation, but it/she/he was accessed through creation.

I don't want to really rant about this movie because I think pretty much every movie has its own pagan message and to single this one out is unfair. I just wanted to say that the movie was super cool and entertaining but should not be viewed without discernment. Watch it through your eyes but with your heart.

P.S. The whole depression deal going on simply points out that people recognize that something in our world is broken. People long to be in a reconciled relationship with creation and the Divine, but fail to see that Jesus makes this possible. Avatar just made this super obvious.

Favorite Things

It's been a while since I've posted a "Some of my Favorite Things" list on here.

For what it's worth, here it is:

Music:

In Your City - Phil Wickham

Grounds for Divorce - Elbow - super cool sounding song.

If You Wanna Go - Joy Williams - co-written by my friend Tim's cousin

Hello Hurricane (the whole album) - Switchfoot

The Civil Wars (What I've heard of them so far, at least.)

Oh For That Day (the album) - Enfield

Books:

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - Donald Miller

you can read an excerpt from the book here

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power,and the Only Hope that Really Matters - Tim Keller

I bought this book with a Christmas gift card. Thanks Dan Rudd!

Life Stuff:

My roomates Tyler Rima and Mike Morter

The Packers making the playoffs

Twitter

Iowa Hawkeyes winning the Orange Bowl

Colt McCoy's speech after getting injured on the 5th play and watching his team lose the national championship game. A true class act.

Chick-Fil-A

Providence Bible Church

Watching Mike walk out onto our porch, stretch out his arms, and yell, "This is my city!" at the top of his lungs - for no reason at all.

Having Tyler just walk up to me dressed in a plaid shirt, black skinny jeans, a tie, and suspenders, and ask if he looks like he's dressed for a night on the town. I told him he looks like he's dressed for a barn raising.

Christmas Break, New Year, and The Break

I'm lucky (blessed) enough to have a job that provided me with two weeks of Christmas vacation this year. I flew to Omaha on the Saturday before Christmas where my dad picked picked me up and we drove the 2 1/2 hours to Des Moines. I was able to attend the church where I grew up on Sunday and see a lot of friends there. Monday night I went out for wings with some old youth group friends and leaders. Tuesday night my sisters and brother-in-law and I planned a family night with my parents where we had dinner and played the Wii and my sister and brother-in-law's new(ish) apartment. Wednesday we decided to leave early to go to my grandparents' house in order to beat the incoming snow storm. We attended the beginning of the Christmas Eve service at church because my family was scheduled to read the Christmas story and then left early to hit the road. We spent the next few days with family and had a great time eating too much food, playing board games, teaching my grandparents to play Wii bowling, and just spending time together. It was the first time we had all been together since last Christmas. My family, with the exception of Gerty and I, left on Sunday to go home and Gerty and I stuck around till Monday morning before leaving to go visit friends in Michigan.

Monday night Gerty and I stayed with my super-awesome friends, Bob and Charissa Karr, near Lansing, MI. I had the opportunity to travel on a ministry team with Bob during the summer of 2006 and then be in Bob and Charissa's wedding back in the summer of 2008. I'm pretty sure they are two of the coolest people ever. Tuesday morning Gerty and I drove to Detroit to visit all my Cornerstone friends. I interned at Cornerstone for 1 year before moving here to Denver in August.

A bunch of students came and hung out in the gym on Tuesday afternoon. We ate pizza and played basketball, volleyball, and dodgeball. I miss hanging out with the students and bunch and can't wait till they're old enough to take a road trip to come visit me in Denver (hint, hint).

[Devin and I have a tradition of him picking me up in pictures. He's huge like that.]

I spent the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday seeing as many Cornerstone friends as possible. I am forever grateful for the relationships I have with so many incredible people there.

Gerty and I left Detroit around 5:30 on Thursday morning to head up to Lake Ann Camp for The Break, a college-ish age retreat over the New Year holiday. It was Gerty's first time at Lake Ann and we had a great time seeing old friends and making new ones. One of my campers from 2 summers ago is now a college student and so it was fun to catch up on life at little bit. Gerty and I had the opportunity to help lead the music with Mike Morter and Gibby Fingers and Brian the Drummer. New Years was ushered in with a Shawn McDonald concert and I got to sit front and center for the show. Last time I saw him live was in 2006...I think.

[It snowed pretty much the whole time we were at The Break. Happy New Years!]

[Photo Bomb! Cherise and I..."05!" and Mike.]

[Gibby Fingers, Mike, and I doing the gangsta beat down pose. We bad.]

After The Break finished on Saturday, Gerty and Mike and I drove back to Des Moines. Then Mike and I drove the rest of the way to Denver on Sunday. There, I think I've officially caught up on the blog. I'm only 1 week behind now...which more or less negates my previous sentence. I'm over it.

Gibby Fingers!

A friend of mine, Mark "Gibby Fingers" Gibbons, recorded this version of "The Grinch" with some of his friends. They performed the song in reverse, recorded the audio normally, and then played the video backwards for a really cool effect. Check it out!

Mark is the guy shooting pool and the one playing the acoustic guitar.

Mark is also a genius piano player. This is a home recording of one of his original piano compositions in 7/8 meter. It gets REALLY interesting shortly after the 03:00 mark.



For those interested, he has a video tutorial for the Coldplay song "Yes" on his YouTube page.

My roommate, Mike, is up and writing again on his blog as well. Check it out here: http://mikemorter.wordpress.com/.

Attempting to Catch Up (Part 2): Between Thanksgiving and Christmas

As far as work is concerned, I’m still enjoying it and look forward to going back to work tomorrow. One funny work story is that one of the 6th grade students decided to stick his tongue to a metal pole while walking to the after-school program one day. It was about 5 degrees outside. His reasoning: “I saw it in a movie one time and I was curious.” Yeah, he was all by himself standing on a street corner and just licked the pole. No one dared him. No one was with him. He just did it. It took about half a second for him to realize his tongue was stuck and that he was also very alone. He proceeded to rip his tongue from the pole and stuff his mouth full of Kleenexes as soon as he got to program. I asked him if he’d ever do it again. He said he wouldn’t. But he did convince his little sister to do it the next day. Classic.

[Three of my students...the shortest three in the class!]

I completed my first semester of teaching ESL and enjoyed a graduation/multi-cultural dinner the week before Christmas. Second semester begins in the beginning of February and I’m looking forward to having many of my students in class again.

For my own schooling, I’m one paper short of completing my second 8-week course. I need to work on it and try and get it done by the end of this week. Then I’ll be taking a break for a couple months. During one of the final weeks of the course, I was pretty overwhelmed with a bunch of reading I had to do and not enough time to get it done. I came home from work in a Monday night with the intention of cooking dinner and sitting down at the kitchen table to read until I fell asleep. Lo and behold, there on the table was a bowl of hot food that my friends had dropped off for me so I could get right to my reading and wouldn’t have to spend any time cooking my own dinner. It was totally awesome. I have great friends. The best, actually.

Since I met these friends through church, I’ll catch you up on church. I’ve now been attending Providence Bible Church since late August and had the privilege of becoming a member the week before I left to go to Iowa for Christmas. I’ve been able to help out on Sunday mornings by playing guitar with the music team and, in recent weeks, have begun attending a Wednesday night small group. The other big church happening for me was the Night in a Box event that happened in early December. I’ll devote an entire post to talking about that.

That's it for now. More writing will occur in the ensuing days. Thanks for reading.

Attempting to Catch Up (Part 1): My Thanksgiving

Welcome to the year “twenty-ten” or “two-thousand and ten,” if you so prefer. As both of you might have noticed, I have taken a hiatus from the blogging world for a while. I have several excuses for the said hiatus, but I’m learning that we can always have excuses for why we do or do not do certain activities. Usually, these excuses are weak attempts at getting out of having to confess to our own laziness or poor decision making. My failure to blog is due to a combination of all of the above. Much of the time, I haven’t had time to blog, but when I did have time, I was either too lazy to write anything, felt I hadn’t been up to anything too worthwhile, or chose to do something instead. That being said, for those of you who enjoy reading this, I apologize for my negligence and plan to be more faithful in my updates.

Starting briefly back with Thanksgiving (It’s the holiday that should be called “Christmas Decorations Eve”), my parents drove out to Denver to visit me and see my new life out here. They surprised me by arriving earlier than I expected on Thanksgiving Day and arrived in time to watch me play in the 2nd annual Providence Bible Church Thanksgiving Day Football Game. I learned two things during the game. First, athletically speaking, I haven’t really gotten better with age. I’m still slow on my feet and struggle to be the quarterback I imagine myself to be in my mind. Secondly, I have become even less competitive with age. I’m pretty sure my team lost, but I’m also pretty sure I didn’t care.

After the game, my parents and I ran to Wal-Mart to grab some holiday foods for lunch. I hadn’t planned on them arriving till the afternoon so I didn’t have anything planned for lunch-for-three. Thanks to my mom, we put together a pretty good lunch. That night we went to my friend Alyssa’s house and played games with her family.

My parents spent the whole weekend with me in Denver and were able to see much of downtown, visit friends up in Boulder, go to a Hmong New Years celebration with one of my ESL students and her family, and go to church with me on Sunday.

That’s my Thanksgiving in a nutshell.