WonderCafe.ca

The Emerging Spirit Campaign has begun. And it's engendered in a website known as WonderCafe.ca.

This is one of the most exciting petitions we dealt with this summer at General Council. It's an ad campaign for the United Church of Canada, which is aimed to reach out to the younger generation, showing that Christianity doesn't have to be about hating those who are different, and falling in line with whatever you're told to believe. The ads are meant to portray our church as it is: a place where you can explore your faith, and no one is going to force you to believe one set dogma... you have to think for yourself.

My very favourite ad from the campaign was on the front of the Globe and Mail this morning (at right). It shows a bobblehead Jesus with two checkboxes: "Funny" and "Ticket to Hell".

Perhaps one of the more notable events from the day was reading a thread on Fark.com (where flamewars are especially prevalent) and seeing all the positive comments that were being made in regards to the church. They came from all sides - atheists, agnostics, and Christians alike.

So... that's my plug for the day. I hope lots of folks will check it out! If you have any questions, be sure to ask the EZ Answer Squirrel!

Clinton beats Fox

I'm totally in love with Keith Olberman. He's so eloquent. Maybe a little verbose at times, but it's so nice to listen to, I hardly notice. I just watched this little monologue regarding Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News where Fox tried to make him look bad, but he turned it around and showed them the truth. Huzzah.

Daylight Savings time is Evil.

No matter how much I appreciate the extra hour of sleep, my body still knows that it's just being toyed with whenn we change the clocks back an hour... and it really doesn't like it. It's 7:30 (8:30 in real-time) and I feel like garbage because I woke up nearly two hours ago. What the crap.

Bambi Meets Godzilla

I am ashamed to say that I had never seen this classic film before today. Enjoy:

New York City

August. What a month.
So, I had two beautiful weeks of vacation time at the beginning of August and Bran and I had decided we were going to go to New York City to see DMB play. So we did.














Left and right: Bran on the plane... Grand Central Station during a slow time.

We got to know the Manhattan subways quite well, and visited the

Intrepid Air, Sea and Space Museum:

the Guggenheim Museum:

and Central Park.
















Oh yeah, and we saw the Dave Matthews Band play at Randall's Island. The venue wasn't great compared to Red Rocks or the Molson Amphitheatre, for that matter, but the music was top notch. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones came out and jammed with the band for a solid half hour, which was absolutely amazing...
Oh yeah, and we followed up the concert with a short visit to the Empire State Building at 1:00 in the morning. Wow. "The city that doesn't sleep" is an understatement. Note the traffic on the streets in this photo:
So... that was a quick run through of the trip. We saw lots, experienced some new stuff... went to a jazz club... very awesome. It was a great way to spend the weekend, and I'd do it again any day. Next up will be a bit of a hashing out of my experience at the 39th General Council of the United Church of Canada.... I'm still absorbing a lot of that.