Not really a blog post

But I am coming back to blog soon. Hopefully. In the meantime. I have just 8 words for you.

Talk soon,

dg.

87 Sleeps

Yep. It’s only 87 sleeps until Christmas.

And I’m freaking excited! Especially since I’ve been counting down to Christmas since… well… LAST CHRISTMAS!

Not that I feel my actions require reasoning, I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you why I love Christmas, and in particular, why I feel the need to count down the days before December 25.

People say Christmas is stupid because its not even Jesus’ real birthday, and early Christians chose the date of December 25 because it was the same date as a pagan sun festival, or because it’s exactly 9 months after March 25 which is the date Jesus died and early belief was that he was concieved and killed on the same day 34 years apart so nine months after March 25 would be December 25,or because early Christians just liked the idea of hanging out together around a fire in the dark and cold of winter. Does anyone really care??? Christians have used the 25th of December to celebrate the birth of Christ, our Lord and Saviour since about the 300′s AD and if you asked me, I’m okay with that.

Can you tell I did some googling for that last paragraph? Anyways…

Christmas is more than a date where its okay for you to hang out with uncles who smell weird or when your grandma is allowed to kiss you in front of everyone (my grandma doesn’t do that but I’ve seen it on TV) or when you have to wear those dorky hats, or that glorious sweater…

Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ coming to earth as a human. The Word being made flesh. The great rescue plan that God has to save humanity starts. Here. With this baby.

Sounds like something I can be pretty excited for right?

But really Dan? (I’m putting my best “90% of people” accent – entertain yourself with it for a while) Must you count from 365??!!

Yes. If you were one of the prophets of the Old Testament and you got told by God that the rescue plan was about to kick off, that humanity was about to be saved, that the Saviour, the Messiah that had been promised so long ago was about to show up, and you KNEW THE DATE… you would be freaking buzzing with anticipation!!! You would work out using ancient Google that there are 31556926 seconds in a year (thanks, Google) and you would count. 31556926, 31556925, 31556924, 31556923…

Well, I would anyway.

And people would look at you weird and go (90% accent again) “But there’s so much other stuff coming up before then” or “you love maths waaay too much” – but you wouldn’t care because Jesus is coming and you

Can’t.

Wait.

So forgive me for having the lights up, the carols on my iPod, the cards pretty much already sorted, and the endless replay of A Very Veggie Christmas already cranking…

But Jesus is coming

And I’m super excited!

dg

Edwin Derricutt is pretty smart.

Bit of a shout out to Kiwi music there. Love it.

So, I go to the movies a lot. Usually on my own (which I’m told is kinda lame but meh, I don’t care) during the day which means I get to spend the whole day thinking about the film and then I can blog about it. So introducing a new series on the S.S.T. blog:

This morning I saw The Expendables. Sylvestter Stallone’s brought together all his fellow “we-do-our-own-stunts” tough guy actors to form a bunch of dudes who like to shoot guns, kick people, and blow antique-filled buildings up at night. Very violent film, some dodgy language (Jason Statham on true form here) and you won’t want to eat sausage meat for a while. Think a more commercial/Hollywood version of Inglorious Basterds from last year.

Anyways, there’s a bit in the movie where Jet Li’s character is chatting to Stallone about life as a short guy. Saying things like “I have to run faster, do more, jump higher, and put in extra effort because I’m smaller than the rest of you. Everything you do at 100%, takes me 130% because I’m disadvantaged with my size.” In this team of massive, muscly, ‘my-arms-are-as-thick-as-you’re-neck-and-I-eat-small-dogs-for-snacks’ guys, this weedy, short, nerdy-looking feels like he is always needing to give it MORE to make up for his lack of physical ‘dog-eating-ness’.

Man I can relate to that.

I’ve been the short guy my whole life. If you look at all my school class photos, I’m in the top row, left corner in all of them.

Cos that’s where the shortest boy always stands.

So yea, there was this mindset in school that I had to “make up” for my lack of physical stature and ability by really giving more than my best in my studies. It totally paid off, too. I’m pretty bright and became known as “a smart guy” rather than “a short guy”. But that’s not the point.

A long time ago, there was this guy named John. He was a baptiser, so people called him John the Baptist (real imaginative names back then huh). He was baptizing (since that was what he did) and on the other side of the river, Jesus was baptizing people as well. John’s mates said to John, “Aren’t you a bit gutted that more people are going over to get baptized by Jesus than by you?” To which John replies:

No one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven. You yourselves know how plainly I told you, ‘I am not the Messiah. I am only here to prepare the way for him.’  It is the bridegroom who marries the bride, and the best man is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows. Therefore, I am filled with joy at his success.He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.

It’s like John knows and is totally sweet with the fact that he’s small, and Jesus is the big deal.

Man, how much energy do we waste trying to do more, faster, better, bigger when really we can just be fine knowing that we’re meant to be small

and Jesus is meant to be big.

If you haven’t heard Edwin Derricutt’s song “Being Small” yet, head to his myspace and check out his album Three Hours South.

So that’s what I learnt from The Expendables. Let me know what you think by commenting or email me

dg

The Pill.

Man I’ve been so busy the last couple of weeks I haven’t blogged. Sorry to both of the people who read this blog regularly for not being here.

So something kinda sad happened earlier this week. Esther died. Now I have never met Esther and I know very little about her. In fact I was near completely unaware of her existence until this afternoon when I watched this youtube video.

Now this video is inspirational and a very touching tribute to a chick I’m sure was very awesome but, as with all things to do with blogging,

that’s not what I wanna write about here.

I love the line John’s supervisor told him years ago when he was a chaplain in a children’s hospital.

Don’t just do something. Stand there.

In the context of the video, it’s about not trying to hastily move on with life after losing someone, or even trying to “do stuff” to make good out of a bad situation. In the context of the video, it’s about letting the mourning happen.

But (you can already see where this is going huh) in life (mine especially the last couple of weeks) I’ve been doing so much I don’t remember the last time I just stood there.

Now you can let your mind wander to the countless sermons you’ve heard from people way smarter than me about God resting on the seventh day, or (as my mind instantly clicks to) that Rob Bell DVD about being a human BEING, rather than a human DOING – whatever. I’ll patiently wait for you to return.

Take this post as another reminder maybe. Have you stopped lately?

I haven’t.

But I’m heading to church this afternoon, and yea like usual I’ll be running the AV and the sound desk. But in the back of my mind I’m going to keep that line.

Don’t just do something.

Stand there.

dg

PS brownie points to anyone who can pull any sort of logic into my choice of title for this post.

Reverse Dumping on Nicolas Cage

I work for a radio station, as some of you will know. And we have buttons. Lots of them. And my favourite, is the dump button.

We run on an 8-second delay. That means I will say something in the studio and the computer holds onto that for 8 seconds before it gets sent to your stereo where ever you are in the world. We do this so that if something bad happens (like a swear or something) we have 8 seconds to hit that dump button, and stop whatever it was from being heard. I press that button and the computer skips over that 8 seconds completely and brings you (the listener) right up to the current actual real-time now, instead of the “fake” now of 8 seconds ago. Confused?

If you are, I’ve learned it’s moments like this where only one man can help explain the idea. Please welcome to my blog,

Nicolas Cage.

-he ambles in and droningly says hello, twitching (because I’ve noticed he always seems to have a twitch, or a look on his face like he really needs to twitch and is trying very hard not to)-

I don’t know if you ever saw the movie Next starring old twitchy-cage here, where the guy could see 10 seconds into the future, and the police use him to find criminals and predict lotto and stuff like that. I don’t recommend it as a film. But the concept is kinda weird. Here is a guy who can see WHERE HE IS GOING TO BE 10 SECONDS FROM RIGHT NOW.

He can’t change it. But he gets a glimpse of the future. It’s like he’s living with a reverse view of the dump button.

In radio, pressing the dump button is awkward. People hear the audio get cut-off and know that something happened. They’re not sure WHAT happened, or what they just missed (or maybe that they just missed anything at all) but it’s pretty easy to spot.

They are given a glimpse of the future, it seems. And it is weird because they don’t get to hear that 8 seconds that you cut.

To take another angle (and the angle this post was ORIGINALLY intended for… i think), life doesn’t have a dump button.

Did you know that?

To quote my good friend Rob Bell (whose DVD “Everything Is Spiritual” is awesome btw), we live in a half-dimension of time.

See one dimension would give us forward and backward.

For us, time only goes forward. Constantly and consistently. Every second lasting exactly the same amount of time as the last second. And there is no way to make it stop doing that.

There is no 8 second buffer to skip over idiot mistakes like saying something stupid, or accidentally pushing on a “pull” door.

There is no undo.

There is no ‘live-pause-and-rewind’ feature.

But God can, and does do this awesome thing sometimes. We can get “glimpses” of what will be.

You can read it His book. You could ask Him and He might tell you something of it, although He has a knack for keeping specific details to Himself sometimes.

And with His grace, He is okay that we make mistakes and blunders, and that we don’t have a dump button to remove them.

Would love to hear what you’re thinking about this right now. Comment, or email me.

And I’m still keen for that coffee I talked about a bit ago.

dg.

This carpet is ugly

If you’ve been having a bit of a crappy day, then watch this video.

You’re welcome.

DG

I’m like the All Blacks

Never thought that sentence would come out my mouth (but since I’m typing this I guess it didn’t. Let’s move on).

What a weekend.

I should say sorry for being kinda cryptic and not disclosing all the details on what’s been going on in the last few posts. I’m still not going to 100% fill you in, but here’s the general idea:

I’m great at showing love to people. (Note: Originally had written “I’m a great lover” but I figured that would be kinda bad.) I like it when I can take people out for coffee, or hang out with them watching DVDs, or when I can say something that makes them laugh enough to forget the crappy day they’ve had, or just sit around and chat about what’s going on and genuinely be interested and engaged in the conversation. I try my very best every day to the best friend I can to everybody.

The problem with me is that I don’t like it when things go bad. I don’t like it when friendships end on bad terms. I can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened to me – I’ve lost touch with people cos of distance or whatever, but I’ve never had a massive fight with someone and gone off speaking terms. I really don’t want that to happen.

This makes “becoming more than friends” really hard for me. I think so much about all the negative responses that can come from asking a girl out that I never do it. I didn’t dare do it in case things got awkward and I lost a friend.

But this weekend, that changed.

I took a leap. Went out there. Told her. By text. (Which I know you’re not supposed to do but the conversation was there and I figured it needed to be said… anyways)

And let me tell you. The 80 seconds it took for a reply to come back is being marked down as the WORST 80 SECONDS OF MY LIFE TO DATE. I’ve done many scary things and things I didn’t enjoy and wouldn’t do again, but I’ve never been as scared or nervous or freaked out than I was in that 80 seconds.

The reply that came back was a ‘no – lets just stay friends – but thanks for telling me.’

A bit gutting, but you know what? I’m okay with that.

Cos I did it.

Two days ago I had never done that. I had spent months and months worrying, and thinking, and stressing, and not-sleeping and now

I’m

Not.

Sure, the answer ‘no’ sucks. But at least the question was asked. And I’ve learned that the world will not come crashing down around me if I was to attempt this again.

So to tie it up with the All Blacks? A good mate of mine had a word for me about a week ago about an All Blacks game. Now I don’t care for sports really so I may get this wrong but here’s the gist:

During a match over the weekend, in the opening minutes of the game, the All Blacks tried to make a play that involved drawing the defense to one player and passing the ball off at just the right moment to someone else to score a try. It relied so much on this pass being perfect. It was a one-in-a-million shot of getting it.

And they didn’t.

But the commentator said afterwards that it was a “positive error”. The ABs took a shot at something risky, and even though the result wasn’t what they wanted – the message was put out early in the match that they were here to mean business. I even think they won the game. But I’m not sure.

So learn from this: Have a go. Make some “positive errors”. And live a little.

Love ya long time, we should get some coffee soon. I look forward to it.

DG