C’est Bon!

UPDATE: Apparently Rosetta Stone was not making enough money with all of us using versions at the library, so they have terminated all library contracts. The only way to use this amazing program is to pay a lot of money for it. We are currently using justLe Francais Facile (or The Easy French) and it is working very well. I’m learning things that I somehow missed during twelve years of public education where a French credit was required.)

We want to raise our children to be mission-minded. For us, this includes learning a second or third language.

To that end, I researched all the home schooling language curriculum options, and decided that Rosetta Stone was the best program available for the acquisition of a spoken language. (We are also using The Easy French and The Easy Spanish for grammar work.)

Rosetta Stone offer languages from everywhere! You could learn Swahili, or Mandarin. How about Latin, or Russian? Hebrew, anyone?

The only problem is that Rosetta Stone is ludicrously expensive! Being diligent home schoolers, however, we started a fund to purchase the program.

Move along two years. We are almost ready to buy this program.

Then I heard through the Momys grapevine that Rosetta Stone is available free through some Public Libraries. Specifically the Chattanooga Hamilton County Bicentennial Library offers Rosetta Stone free to all its patrons. The best part is that the CHCBL offers an online membership to anyone in the world for $30US. This online membership allows access to Rosetta Stone.

For $30 a year, my children can learn a myriad of languages from an excellent program that is exactly the same as the purchased program, but for a fraction of the cost. So we went ahead and purchased a membership. It worked wonderfully.

Then late last year, our own local public library began offering the online Rosetta Stone courses. If you live where we live, you can go to the front of the library website and click on the little picture of Rosetta Stone. Set up your account and start learning!

If you don’t live where we live, check the databases available at your own local library.

If that proves fruitless, mail in your membership to the CHCBL!

C’est bon!

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PBSKids hired a spammer named Kerri Roberts at Boldmouth.com, a viral marketing company, to oh-so-innocently comment on the blogs of parents and families and casually add that she can get us free Maya and Miguel stuff and proceeded to advertise for Maya and Miguel events and DVDs. [edit to say that it looks like she is hired by Scholastic books, not PBS directly].

I complained to PBS and was promised that the rep would “look into the matter further”.

Once I provided the information, PBSKids stopped answering my emails. It’s been five weeks since the contact at PBS asked me for the content that was posted on this blog and promised to look into the matter. I’ve heard nothing. I’ve sent two more follow-up emails asking for information. No response.

I think perhaps Hannah at PBS E-Help started poking around into the seedy world of blog-spamming and found out more than she bargained for. Maybe her shadowy cigarette-smoking, fedora-wearing bosses hired someone in a parking garage at dusk to have her removed from the picture because she knew too much.

Hannah, if you’re out there somewhere, don’t worry! I’m sure help is on the way. We’ll get through this thing, we just have to stick together, remain calm, and let B.A. build an incredibly complex defense mechanism from the junk piled in my basement. We’ll hold off Kerri’s goons for a while, Face-man will punch a few bad guys into piles of oil-drums and we’ll all stand in the setting sun with the wind in our hair watching the van ride off into the distance.

Then we’ll go watch TV. Unless Maya and Miguel is on.

WonderfulWorship is a discussion on worship among a number of interested bloggers. Want to join in?

Okay, We discussed what worship is theoretically. There seemed to be common agreement that corporate worship is an extension of, a culmination of daily personal worship. Now, the rubber meets the road.

Discussion Point #3 - Tell us about your personal worship.

Tell us about your daily routine. Tell us about a single particularly important moment when you felt you were truly worshipping. Tell us about how you think you should worship even if you aren’t. Choose anything around this topic that you like, but tell us about your personal worship. We’ll talk about corporate experiences later, this is purely personal.

Pray about your responses, and post them next week (but before Thursday, July 5th). Send me the link to your post on your blog and I’ll create an entry here on Thursday, July5th with a list of them all. If you wish to include a quick bio or introduction, feel free. This may be some people’s first visit to your site.

If that deadline is too short, given the long weekend both in Canada and the US, please let me know, I may extend the deadline a week. I don’t want to stress anyone, and I do want to hear from as many of you as possible.

I think I could do this with all of the old and broken PCs that are piled around my office in the basement.

There have been a number of conversations around our house in the last few weeks about the consumerization of the church. Church growth is about marketing and morphing the product into a highly targeted package. Leadership is what builds churches (never mind the Spirit). We need demographic studies to even more finely tune the age-segregated special interest groups that our church has become. All that stuff. The latest conversation was about the franchise church with the 90 day money-back “You’ll Get Blessed If You Tithe” guarantee.

David Powlison writes a fantastic article about The Therapeutic Gospel. The modern church has turned to meeting “felt needs” rather than actual needs.

• I want to feel loved for who I am, to be pitied for what I’ve gone through, to feel intimately understood, to be accepted unconditionally;
• I want to experience a sense of personal significance and meaningfulness, to be successful in my career, to know my life matters, to have an impact;
• I want to gain self-esteem, to affirm that I am okay, to be able to assert my opinions and desires;
• I want to be entertained, to feel pleasure in the endless stream of performances that delight my eyes and tickle my ears;
• I want a sense of adventure, excitement, action, and passion so that I experience life as thrilling and moving.

Jesus and the church exist to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained, and charged up. This gospel ameliorates distressing symptoms. It makes you feel better. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic aches.

This is contrasted with “true, life and death needs” in a list that is going to become a regular prayer for me:

• I need mercy above all else: “Lord, have mercy upon me”; “For Your name’s sake, pardon my iniquity for it is very great”;
• I want to learn wisdom, and unlearn willful self-preoccupation: “Nothing you desire compares with her”;
• I need to learn to love both God and neighbor: “The goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith”;
• I long for God’s name to be honored, for his kingdom to come, for his will to be done on earth;
• I want Christ’s glory, lovingkindness, and goodness to be seen on earth, to fill the earth as obviously as water fills the ocean;
• I need God to change me from who I am by instinct, choice, and practice;
• I want him to deliver me from my obsessive self-righteousness, to slay my lust for self-vindication, so that I feel my need for the mercies of Christ, so that I learn to treat others gently;
• I need God’s mighty and intimate help in order to will and to do those things that last unto eternal life, rather than squandering my life on vanities;
• I want to learn how to endure hardship and suffering in hope, having my faith simplified, deepened, and purified;
• I need to learn to worship, to delight, to trust, to give thanks, to cry out, to take refuge, to hope;
• I want the resurrection to eternal life: “We groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body”;
• I need God himself: “Show me Your glory”; “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.”

Make it so, Father of mercies. Make it so, Redeemer of all that is dark and broken.

The recent heavy rains prompted me to get up and clean out the eavestroughing. There is a 60 foot poplar tree right beside the house, and it drops seed pods and leaves that don’t break down very easily. Looks like they were due for a clean.

And I thought I didn’t have a green thumb. Look at that magnificent garden, and I wasn’t even trying.

If you are interested in starting your own blog, for instance to post some great deep thoughts for WonderfulWorship, here is a great set of short web videos on how to get started.

Knowledgeable, patient folks from blogger and wordpress talk you through the process of getting your very own place on the web.

Things have been far too serious around here, this week. Last night was a beautiful breath of fresh air as we enacted our own urban version of Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.

Our neighbour interrupted our dinner to let us know that a Mallard Duck and her eight ducklings was caught between our houses.

We knew that the little family had a slim chance of survival if we just left them. So being the passionate nature lovers we are, we decided to capture them all and release them down at the river, about twelve blocks away.

The ducklings were easy to round up, although one little one escaped into the neighbour’s yard and hid successfully in some deep foliage. He soon joined his mates in the Rubbermaid Roughneck. Mother Duck, however, proved much harder to secure.

We finally admitted defeat and wondered if she would follow us, if we simply walked away with her ducklings. Sure enough, as the little box of peeping ducklings moved down the street, Mother Duck ran along behind.

We decided we would try walking down to the river. We would walk forward about 50 paces and then stop and wait for Mom to hear her children peeping in terror and run along to catch up with us. She would occasionally fly a short bit, but mostly she ran along behind us, answering her children’s pleas with the frequent quack.

Just as we reached the river, Mother Duck took to the air and disappeared over the trees. We walked down to the shore and both MrPages and I wondered if we had made a mistake. Mother Duck was nowhere in sight.

I was just beginning to rehearse my speech to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Organization, apologizing for interfering with this family of ducks, and acknowledging that “good intentions” almost always result in tragedy when it comes to wild animals, when a loud quack brought Mother Duck right down to the edge of the shore.

MrPages dumped out the bucket and the Little Ducklings raced down the bank, into the water, and right out to mom. It was beautiful!

We had the most wonderful evening we have had in a long time.

Thank you Lord for the opportunity to enjoy Your lovely evening, some great company, and most importantly Your amazing creation: the family.

I used to be addicted to amphetamines.

I’d use amphetamines in the morning and before lunch, just to get through the day. I’d take some in the evening to keep me awake because I stayed up so late the night before because of the big hit I took in the evening. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I’d get crushing headaches, I’d get the shakes, I’d be cranky and angry until I had my next hit. Avoiding withdrawal became an important goal.

I woke up one morning and realized that my addiction was controlling my life. I couldn’t wake up without my drugs. I couldn’t function at my job without my drugs. I just couldn’t cope without it.

It was getting expensive. A sizable portion of my expendable cash went to dealers.

The problem was that everyone in my circle of friends used amphetamines. My revelation didn’t seem too important to them. Some folks laughed about staying constantly high to avoid the crash. Most of the folks only took another shot once or twice a day as a “pick-me-up”, so they didn’t see themselves as having any sort of problem at all.

No one seemed to realize that addictions, even mild ones, place something else before God. If you can’t function without your drugs, God is second place. Even if you need a little kick to get you through the rough spots, you’ve replaced God with a pharmaceutical.

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights.
–Habakkuk 3:19

I still get cravings, years later. Every time I see a Starbucks, my mouth waters.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I say amphetamines? I meant caffeine.

Coffee. The elephant in the Christian living room.

Skip it for two weeks. 14 days in a row. I dare you.

David Park is a blogger at Next Gener.Asian Church. I enjoy his blog quite a bit because he tackles Christianity from a completely different cultural context, and thoughtfully discusses the many different challenges and blessings that come from it.

He has posted a great response to the first topic, called Worship Distilled.

Nice to hear from you, David!