It's a great big universe . . .

shown here to scale. Very cool.

And of course, something like this needs Yakko Warner to add the music . . .

Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho

Just . . . wow. I've always loved this song. I think love it more now.

one element of a good evening

was finding that Ray Ortlund had posted this video. Love Ashley Cleveland.

Hymn of St. Patrick

The worship leader of our chapel program in college wrote this arrangement of St. Patrick's Breastplate. I like it best of any of them I've heard.

link to audio only:

http://www.calvin.edu/worship/pub/ten_plans/stpatricks_prayer.mp3

Someone else's poem

Author Latayne C. Scott shared an old poem of hers on the group writing blog "Novel Matters" today. I've become friends in the last couple of years with some musicians of the sort that it's a privilige just to listen to the practice. I appreciate this poem.

OPUS ENVY
I watch his fingers
Teasing the piano
As he caresses the ivory teeth
It purrrrrrrs
Harder now – he strikes
A glancing blow off the black fang

An answering roar

ah Rachmaninoff
just because my soul is not in
my fingertips does not
mean I do not have one

I want one of these in my life

Thanks Erin!

7 quick takes: volume 090821: coaching string players

This spring, we started our middle daughter on violin lessons and our eldest on cello. And now 10-12 hours of my week are spent supervising practice and lessons, and driving back and forth. It's worth it.

Seven things I'm learning on how to help your grade schooler have a happy and productive intstrument practice

1. At this stage it's all about posture and muscle memory.
I knew somewhat from potty training how difficult it is to teach body awareness and muscle control to a child. Playing a stringed instrument involves learning to use and coordinate many different muscle groups that most of us never think about. My main job as a parent in helping my girls practice is to be an outside set of eyes and help them be aware of what they need to learn to be aware of. To help them build muscle memory.

2. Be endlessly encouraging.
You're doing a great job. I can see you're really working on that. That sounded a lot better this time. Your teacher's going to be really impressed at your next lesson. You're putting in good practice. I'm glad you let me help you. That's really going to help you.

3. But don't let anything by. At all.
Two or three days of a bad habit can take weeks to fix. Or months. Years? Perhaps--but we haven't gotten that far yet. :) Also, if they learn to take correction and improvement as part and parcel of practice then it's not something unusal or something to get upset at. If I can offer correction in a routine, attentive, even bored manner, then they are much better about taking it as what it is--something to HELP them, a positive thing--rather than taking it as negative criticism.

4. Train the ear.
I was a piano player--hit the right key, and you get the right note. Unless the piano is out of tune, and there's nothing you can do about that. It took me a long, long time to begin to listen critically to my own playing. But string players have to learn to listen critically to themselves from the get-go. They need to hear how the notes relate to each other, not just see it on the page. Am I in tune? How's my tone? They only get 4 notes as gimmes . . . not all 88l.

5. Let them enjoy the music
There's always something to work on. If they want to spend an entire practice playing nothing but "Jesus Loves Me," we can do that. And do it a little straighter, a little more musically each time. In retrospect, one of the things I most regret about my own music lessons was how little I was engaged with so much of the music that I was playing. Why couldn't we have skipped many of those exercises that I didn't find interesting? And those ones that I absolutely loved? What if, instead of being told "Oh, that's too easy for you now, that doesn't count," or "That's not part of your lesson," I'd heard, "Oh, you really love that tune? Let's see what else we can do with that."

6. Keep your temper--and theirs
Getting angry isn't going to fix the problem. Getting frustrated isn't going to help them "get it." Making their practice time a time when they get yelled at isn't going to make them want to practice. In addition, their own frustration and convincing of themselves that they'll "never get this!" doesn't help practice. "Give yourself some grace. Give yourself some time." See #2. Remember . . . if it was easy, we wouldn't have to practice it. Helping my girls learn to work hard at something that isn't easy, that isn't natural, that takes discipline is one of the main reasons that we're doing this. After all, discipline and disciple have the same root. It's about training them in the tools that they will need to tackle all sorts of difficult, frustrating things over the course of their lives. It's about learning to disciple my children.

7. Remember that there's no deadline
We can just keep working at it. There's no getting ahead. There's no falling behind. We're not on a schedule here, and I don't need push my kids or make them push themselves. This is just an introduction and a tool for (hopefully) a lifetime's enjoyment of and participation in music.

quick takes are sponsored by jen@conversion diary

7 quick takes, volume 090320

Hosted by Jennifer @ Conversion Diary

1.  Vicodin:  never again, if I can help it.  Got some work done earlier this week in my mouth and sent home with a prescription for two days of bad drug trip.  May cause dizziness?  Try, "can't walk a straight line."  May cause drowsiness?  Try, "keel over in exhaustion and then dream hallucinatory dreams."  But I'll give it this--any pain was a really long way away.  

2.  We have spring!  I love it.  Actual sunshine and clear skies.  Being able to go out with only a light jacket.  Budding trees.  Enough daylight to actually do something after dinner . . .

3.  Last night I learned how to do stationary lunges.  Without weights.  And still . . . Ow.

4.  Speaking of #2, the kids are going bike-crazy.  5-y.o. has gotten really good without training wheels.  8-y.o. is determined not to let her little sister show her up.  I really wish there were sidewalks in our sub-division and I could let the kids go on their own.  But the crazies (and everyone else too) tears down our street at 40 mph and I just don't feel that they're good enough at watching and listening to be able to bike in the road and be safe doing it.

5.  3-y.o. is jealous of all this.  She cannot keep up with her big sisters even when she is frantically pedalling her tricycle about as fast as it can be pedalled.  Talk about unfair.

6.  Sesame Street seems to have taken good steps this season to address the decline that's happened over recent years.  The writing is smarter, slicker, more creative . . . they've collected some great cameos and used them well.  Now if they'd just get rid of Elmo's World.

7.  At some point, this post of Jared Wilson's needs more extended reflection.  But in the meantime I'll just note that as my dear husband often preaches, legalism is easier than grace.  And being like Jesus means loving those who don't deserve it all the way to the cross.  Christ-following isn't for wimps . . . and "just loving people" sounds real nice until you have to apply it to . . . you know, actual people.

8.  Bonus Quick Take:  As an intelligent, thinking, trying-to-be-responsible adult, I've felt that I really ought to try to understand this whole economic/financial thing going on with our country right now.  Mostly as I wade through articles and explanations though, I find it alternately incomprehensible and boring.  But today's xkcd is enlightening.

the rocks will cry out

This article from the New Scientist prompts this response from Neil Gaiman--

Picked up my copy of New Scientist over breakfast this morning (which, along with Fortean Times, is my favourite publication) and found myself puzzling over an article that began

That a complex mind is required for religion may explain why faith is unique to humans.

Which left me amazed and potentially delighted that journalists at New Scientist had succeeded in interspecies communication to the point of being certain that dolphins and whales have no belief in things deeper than themselves, that ants do not imagine a supreme colony at the centre of everything, and that my cats only believe in what they can see, smell, hunt and rub up against (except for Pod, of course, who when much younger would react in horror, with full fur-up, to invisible things), and that there are no Buddhist Pigs, Monkeys or whatever-the-hell Sandy was.

which in turn has me thinking this afternoon of all the wonderful passages in scripture from which we know that all creation gives God the praise which he is due.  The mountains break forth in singing and the trees clap their hands.  The seas roar and the fields exult.  Jesus assures us that if we decline the privilige of singing praise to God the stones will do it for us.  For the Holy One will make his glory known, and will not leave a seat at his banquet empty.  (Tough luck for you if a rock gets your seat.)  Do the dolphins and whales have a belief in something deeper than themselves?  I rather expect believe in God about the same way that they believe in the water in which they swim.  They don't need religion--they do not have the awesomely dubious privilege that we humans have of being able to defy God.  And they can no more fail to worship their creator than they can choose to not have gravity hold them down.  Balaam's donkey saved his master running himself into an angel delivering the wrath of God.  The animal saw the truth clearly, when the guy with the complex brain and the hot-shot reputation for being able to really curse people couldn't see what was standing right in the middle of the road in front of him.

I think that there are times that if we weren't so eager to slice and dice what we know and don't know, to put it under a microscope and over-analyze that we wouldn't miss the obvious.

For what can be known about God is plain . . .  because God has shown it to [us].  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So [we] are without excuse.  (Romans 1:19-20)

random connections

This lolbird

and working on this jigsaw puzzle

set off this song on the continuous-loop-soundtrack- in-my-brain-of-just-about-every-song-I've-ever-heard:

I think I'll put on some Christmas music, or else I'll be singing They Might Be Giants for the next week.  Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

You Spin Me

I love this song about the same way that I love marshmallow peeps. No merit. So what. :) I had never seen the video though before I went looking it up for this post--it has to be one of the all time worst music videos ever. It's a song that's just begging to to have as its only visual those random neon swirly patterns that Microsoft's video player throws up for any audio only. Anway.



If you want to spew your drink all over your monitor, pop over to the Deconstructed Christian, and jump in on the discussion of idiot worship leader inserting Jesus into this piece of techno fluff and using it as worship music. Appalling. It makes me think of Jesus putting his face in his hands and shaking his head. Why the church should not be about catering to the desires we already have . . .

shameless plug

my cousin and his family are some of the extras in the background of Brandon Heath's phenomenal new video "Give Me Your Eyes." (The reuniting family).



I've written before about what it would mean for us to deliberately look and try to see each other as Christ sees us. To see the checker at the grocery store as made in the very image of creative God. To see the brand new baby as the one whose sin Christ died for. To see the pain and hurt and frustrations that drive seemingly inexplicable bad decisions. And now, how do I be Jesus for them into their lives? Indeed, give me your eyes, Lord.

Oh, and if you need a first class Christian magician, check out my cousin Curt.