Toxic Family Members

This skit was featured during week 2 of FCC's sermon series "Toxic" which dealt with how to handle toxic family members.

The skit was written in a brainstorming session with the drama team. Ben Van Meter and Allison Praisewater started arguing about their fourth of July plans. Ben insisted that parades were lame, while Allison vehemently argued that they weren't. As they bantered, I just started typing.

Sometimes, the best material falls right in your lap. The result was this skit, which is funny, but made funnier by the casting of Heidi Morrison opposite of sweet Allison. Kudos to Cindra, who directed a difficult skit with more moving parts than either of us expected.

Warning: Heidi's line: "You need to back off with your Clue hating. It's an intense game of logic and deduction" is delivered to perfectly that you might blow a gasket laughing. At least I did.

You can download and watch a larger file here, or just click on the YouTube file below.

Beginning of Something

Editor's Note: The following post is the beginning of something I hope to build into a full-scale presentation. It is about community, something I have been blessed to learn a great deal about from a group of guys I meet with every Tuesday night. The tone of the article now is serious, but I will change it later to be substantially more funny.

In 1994, the Walt Disney company took a parcel of land near its theme park in Orlando and developed it. The goal was to build a community from the ground up. It would be a safe community. It would be a small community (about 3000 people), and everyone would live in nicely designed homes within a mile from a nicely designed downtown area. It was an experiment following from Walt Disney's original vision for EPCOT, which reportedly included a residential component. Some call it "new urbanism" or "new modernism" or "futurism." Regardless, it was going to be a place where people could come to finally, really find community.

Now, first of all, Celebration is a gorgeous place. It's architecture is reminiscent of Charleston and Savannah, two of the more beautiful and eye-catching cities in the nation. It's streets are clean. There are fun festivals every couple of months. It's got great schools. Not surprisingly, the property values are shockingly high - akin to the Bay Area. A standard house costs about $700,000 - 1 million dollars.

People are really willing to pay to get into this ideal community where the people are nice, the streets are clean, the lake is shimmering, and downtown is pristine. People walk their dogs and ride their segways. It's a better life. For you. For your kids. And it's so close to the Happiest Place on Earth that it's hard not to feel like this place is like a little slice of heaven. This is a place with values - reminiscent of an earlier time when kids could play outside without parents worrying.

Sounds great.

Now, to be honest, as a parent, this kind of thing seems great. What dad wouldn't want his kid to be safe? What mom wouldn't want to live where her kids could play with other nice kids? What family wouldn't want that?

Celebration, Florida fascinates me because the impulses that caused its creation are the same impulses that I see at work in a great deal of modern American Christianity. And - this is where I'm going to probably piss some people off - I not only don't think it's a great life, I think it's probably a great path to hell. And I think one of the reasons that Jesus came to Earth and died was to free people from the very impulses that Celebration, Florida is trying to inculcate.

Impulse 1: Build a Better Society
There is an underlying lie in Modern Christianity that is also present in Celebration, Florida. The idea is that if we can just get nice, good people with strong values together, then we can eliminate so many of the problems that other, more dangerous, less civiilized cities have to deal with.

You see this in modern Christianity. It says, there is a ranking of sin. God hates, most acutely, the following types of people

1. People who are homosexual.
2. People who don't want to immediately ban all abortions
3. People who don't believe in Creation Science
4. People who oppose, in any way, legislative moves to make America a more "Christian" nation
5. People who are Democrats or liberal or both.

The problem with this is that God doesn't rank sin that way. And you certainly can't get away from sin by moving. Jesus says that apparently, the only way to really get away from sin is to kill yourself. Willingly die. Kill yourself. And then be born again, as a new person. You are the problem, Jesus says. And it's time for you to go.

To look at other people as the problem leads to an attitude which Jesus condemns. In fact, He might just call you a "son of hell."

Impulse 2: Community Means Common
Celebration, Florida is an exclusive community. First of all, you have to be wealthy. And second of all, according to the 2004 census, 93.7 percent of the population is white. Not a lot of diversity. A lot of people think that community means finding people who are similiar to you and then building strong friendships with them. This is a common idea.

Archeologists and academic scholars have studied the time around Christ’s birth pretty extensively. The culture Jesus was born into was the Jewish culture and the Jewish religion whose teachers were called “rabbis.” Scholars have examined rabbinical writings around the year 0 to see what kinds of things they were teaching and what the hot topics were in the first century. 3 topics really stood out as hot button issues during the time of Christ:
1. Dietary restrictions
2. Keeping the Sabbath
3. Circumcision

Why do you think that was the case? I think it was because at this point in history, the Jews didn’t have a home country. They didn’t have a nation. Their unique culture was being challenged from the Romans and the Greeks and all the other people groups within the Roman Empire. And so the pressing question for people who were Jewish was “What makes a Jew a Jew?” And the answer from the rabbis was?
1. What you do with your food
2. What you do with your Saturday
3. What you do with your foreskin

Nothing about God. Nothing about reading Scripture. Nothing about how you love your neighbor. Just 3 items seemed to really matter. Why? Because the question was “Who is a Jew and who is Not?” And the easiest way to figure that question out is to set limits and rules. Set boundaries that everyone can clearly see. People can fake taking God’s word seriously. But it’s easy to see what they’re eating. So these 3 topics served as ways for people to decide who’s “In” and who’s “Out” of the group.

This is mankind's biggest struggle. We want to delineate, very easily, a check-off list of who's in and who's out. It's an ego thing. It started at the lunch table in elemenatary school. Who is sitting with whom? Who gets picked first in kickball. Who's in. Who's out. And the goal is to somehow get into the "in" circle. In fact, if you examine it, the early church's biggest controversies were all about "who's in."

One thing is certain from the New Testament - Jesus didn't play favorites with people. Jesus is not at all about that. He opens the circle of admission so wide, it pisses off his followers. He lets in hookers. And tax collectors. Liars, theives, and cheats. He let in a terrorist and murderer named Saul. And then he had the audacity to let in non-Jews. This nearly broke the church. Them? You're going to let them in? Jesus said, "Yep. They love me. I love them. I want you to love them."

The battle, I think, is between two ideas that are very different.

Intentional Relocation - Celebration, Florida (and much of American Christianity) is based upon the idea of intentional relocation. I am going to pack up my things and go to a place that is safe. The goal is to move away from the ickiness. Move away from bad things.

Christians do this too. We need to get together and huddle. We need to escape from the world and its evil, especially in the media. I was reading this article from Wired Magazine today about a new website called "Conservapedia." Some conservatives thought that Wikipedia was too "liberal" and was "anti-American" and "anti-Religion." So they started their own online encyclopedia. One of the entries, under George Washington identifies the first U.S. president as "the person other than Jesus who declined enormous worldly power ... by voluntarily stepping aside as the ruler of a prosperous nation."

Seriously. That's what it said. Nice to see there's no false idols in this crowd. The idea around

Intentional Displacement - In the face of intentional relocation is the idea of intentional displacement. Jesus calls his followers to go to places and find people who they have nothing in common with. He commiserates with Samaritans women, and tells stories about Samaritans too. It's as though Jesus is saying, "Go find people you have nothing in common with save the fact that you are both my children and made in my image. And then go love them."

I was reading a quote the other day in Relevant Magazine from an article by Rob Bell, a pastor I adore in Grand Rapids. This is what he said about his community:

"In our city they're shutting down community pools because they say there isn't funding for it. So there are all these kids, especially in the urban center of Grand Rapids, who won't be able to swim in the summer. We think that would piss Jesus off. For us it's not right that on one side of town they're building pools and on the other side of town they're shutting them down. That's an injustice. We think Jesus is about pools."

That's inclusive community. And that rocks.

Fraternity vs. Fraternal Love

Let me give you a prime example of the difference between Intentional Relocation and Intentional Displacement. The following story is important to me for a number of reasons. First of all, it is a story about my alma mater, DePauw University. DePauw is a great school with a ton of great professors, but it had some huge problems. First of all, when I attended the school was about 85 percent Greek, which meant that about 85 percent of the people lived in fraternity or sorority houses and belonged to an established Greek system with Greek letter and Greek chants.

I won't get into my personal experience with this here, but to give you a taste, I want to refer you to an article from the New York Times about one of the sororities there, Delta Zeta.

Delta Zeta is a sorority that had a problem - its membership numbers were declining because it couldn't actively recruit enough girls. Why? Because Delta Zeta didn't have enough cool, hot girls. And everyone knows, girls aren't going to want to join a place with slightly weird, socially awkward, not hot girls. So Delta Zeta's national leadership team came in to the sorority and booted out an overwhelming majority of the girls it the sorority in order to "start fresh."

What was the criteria? You had to be a hot girl. Only 6 girls out of about 50 were left.

This story astounds me. My best friend Jon Fortt, who experienced life at DePauw with me, blogged about it too.

This is the EXACT OPPOSITE kind of community that Jesus was trying to build.


Next post...tune in as Dave tackles the primary motivator for Celebration, Florida - building a community that is "Safe for our Kids" and how that desire, though natural, is terribly unhealthy.

Aruba. Jamaica. Ooh. I want to take ya.

So Nicole and I got back from Aruba Saturday night. It's been a whirlwind since, and I have tons of things to talk about, but some of those will have to wait for a later post. So I'll start here with things I learned from my trip to Aruba.

1: Aruba is not technically in the Caribbean.
The Beach Boys' famous song "Kokomo" really makes you think that it's close to Jamaica and the Bahamas, and that Key Largo and Montego are very close. But they're not. Aruba is 18 miles off the northern coast of Venezuela, and is not in the "Hurricane Belt" which is good for the island. Almost all the "natives" we met were actually from Columbia, and nearly everyone spoke Spanish and English, so that was interesting. Felt like California, only everyone was a bit darker. There were also quite a few black people - remnants from the Slave Trade, I was told. You can check it out on this map if you'd like. I also learned that Bermuda is right due north off the coast of North Carolina. North Carolina. So in January, it's freezing. Weird, huh? Yeah.

2. Aruba, though not technically in the Caribbean has the bluest water I've ever seen
So what if it's not in the Hurricane Belt. This water was probably the nicest I've ever seen (beating Hawaii by a slim margin). The sand was this pure white, like talcum powder, and the visibility when we went snorkeling was like 60 feet. It was astounding. If you want to see what I'm talking about, you can check out this picture, which I took from our hotel balcony.

3. Aruba is a desert wasteland
It's dry, flat, barren and dry. There is no natural water source on the island and the only thing that grows there natively is Aloe plants, which - as Jeff Rev pointed out - is just a cactus. Convenient that a plant that helps with sunburn actually grows where you need it. Wouldn't do much good if Aloe grew only in Canada, or something. But Aruba is just ugly and dry and dusty. In fact, when Christopher Columbus found it, he named it "Isla Inunitil" which means "Useless Island" because there was no food, water or gold. The Dutch picked it up somewhere in there, and now it's part of the Dutch West Indies.

4. UB40 is huge in the Caribbean
We heard a song by them almost everywhere we went. Weird.

More to come...

Funniest home video...

My buddy Jonathan sent me this link as a reminder about why people have kids - mainly because they do things that are so irresistibly cute that it sends you into convulsions.

The following home video is an example. I laughed my butt off, not because the video is so professionally done but because of the idea of it all. It's simply hiliarious.

Click here to see it.

U2 in Concert...

If you called me last night on my cellphone and left me a message, I didn't get it. Not only was I indisposed, but it was only a few moments ago that i regained my hearing.

You see, last night I went to see Bono, Larry, Adam and The Edge (otherwise known as U2) at the Oakland Coliseum. For my birthday this year, my good buddy Jeff Rev bought me a ticket. We were directly behind the stage (which sounds weird, but the stage is circular), about 8 rows up. We were a little elevated, but not so much that you'd get vertigo or something. As far as I could tell, with the exception of some floor people, we had as good as seats as anyone. I could have thrown a water bottle with a flick of my wrist and had it land on the stage. Not that I would ever, ever consider doing that.

I will blog more extensively on this experience - and it was an experience - when I have more time. Also, I got home at about 1 a.m., and I am a teacher, and am used to going to be at 10. So I am quite tired now.

Let me end with this quick thought. Three times I thought I was going to explode. One, during the second song when they played Vertigo.. The crowd was so loud, you could literally feel the noise. Then, when Bono brought out a protable drum, and started pounding on it from the front stage as an intro into Sunday Bloody Sunday. I realized then that's probably my favorite song of theirs. The third moment was when they lit the whole crowd, and you could see the crowd of 16,000. And everyone was singing in unison, whether to "I Still Haven't Found" or "In the Name of Love" or "One" or whatever other song they were doing. That's a lot of people. Oh yeah, and on Miss Sarejevo, Bono sang the part written and performed originally by Luciano Pavarotti, proving that when he wants to be, he's as stellar a vocalist as is out there. He was quite outstanding. And let there be no doubt that The Edge is one of the finest guitarists imaginable. The things he...it's otherworldly.

So. In summary. Bono a stone's throw. The Edge drives you over it with his talent. Many, many lights.

Tieche's Favorite Stories: Number 21

Being a school teacher, I have a captive audience to test out my material on. Over the years, I've learned that there are a few stories that kids consistantly remember. "Hey Mr. Tieche," they'll say. "Tell us the story about the time you wound up in Nova Scotia with the rain slicker and the folk singer from Argentina." So I'm trying to compile them and hopefully will turn them into a booklet at some point. This is a story that I use to illustrate the importance of proper decision making to my out-going seniors. I hope you like it. - DAT

My freshman year of college was a time of tremendous change. You could sense it on that first day of school, as my classmates and I filed into the dorms. This college thing was a big deal. For the first time in our lives, there was no one telling us what to do, checking to make sure we did our homework, or threatening to not let us use the car that weekend if we didn’t clean up that pig-sty that you call a room.

There was a guy on my floor named Eric. Eric, like me, was experiencing for the first time an unparalleled amount of freedom. And Eric used that freedom – like many college students do – to cross formerly forbidden boundaries. Eric used his freedom to get drunk. And I don’t mean a little drunk. Oh no. Eric jumped into the alcohol pool with both feet. One morning, I trudged into the bathroom, wondering what in the world I was thinking scheduling myself a class at 8 a.m. As I opened the door, I saw Eric, lying across the line of sinks. Face down. His forehead was resting on the porcelain rim of the sink, and a dried yellow trail of vomit led down to the drain.

I tried to wake him up so I could brush my teeth, but he just smiled and rolled over.

That was just the beginning.

One night, Eric had been drinking heavily (again) and had to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. He went to the restroom to use the urinal. Well, at least he thought it was a urinal. It turned out to be Tim (his roommate’s) sock drawer. Luckily, Tim had purchased a brand of socks that was ultra-absorbent.

A week later, continuing his quest to perfect the drunken stupor, Eric was so inebriated that he fell off the top bunk in the middle of the night, and his head slammed into the back of a chair. The impact shattered his eye socket, leaving him with a nasty purple bruise over most of the left side of his face for several weeks. He looked like a cross between Rocky and Spuds MacKenzie.

You might think that breaking your face might lead one to reconsider one’s decision-making paradigm. Not with Eric. He drank more than a Hummer on the freeway. My sophomore year, we were in the same creative writing class and he wrote a short story about a guy who got drunk with his friends, took his dad’s boat out at night, fell overboard, nearly got run over and killed, and then deftly guided the boat up onto a nice rock for the night. While this is only conjecture, I’m guessing Eric didn’t have to reach too far back into his imagination for that story.

You might think that the novelty of imbibing massive amounts of beer might wear off after, oh, say the first two years. But not with Eric. He was committed to this lifestyle. His fraternity bedroom was wallpapered with flattened 24-pack boxes of Miller High Life. Tasteful.

Our junior year, Eric had been drinking so much, so he decided to go to bed. Having learned form his earlier incident, Eric now steered clear of top bunks. So he crawled into bed, a lower-level bunk. He slept next to the window, where he and his roommates had installed a window-unit air conditioner. Earlier that day, Eric and his roommates removed the unit, because it was now November. Eric, however, didn’t remember this important fact, while he was getting into bed. And he crawled right out of the window. He plunged, head first, two stories below right into the thick shrubs surrounding his fraternity.

The next morning, one of his housemates was walking their dog, and heard a soft groaning from the bushes. Eric had slept all night, wedged into the shrubs, with only the tops of his sneakers visible peeking up from the top of the bushes.

Again, you might think any activity that leads you to have a a near-fatal encounter with shrubbery might make the list of “Things I Need to Reconsider.” But not with Eric. He was astounding in his resilience. He was the Energizer Bunny of Inebriation.

I thought of this today when considering how I make decisions in life and how I want to live my life. Honestly, a large part of me wants to be the kind of person whose life doesn’t serve as a warning for others. If my life is going to be made into an anecdote, at least let the ending not involve me, head-first, in a hedge, vomiting Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Can I get an amen?

Hurricane Katrina

I am not being hyperbolic when I say this. I'm not sure what's worse. The devesatation brought about by Hurrican Katrina, or the inept handling of the disaster. It's unclear how many lives were uselessly lost because of horriffic leadership. These two clips are two of the most powerful I've seen in documenting both.

In this clip, FOX News' Shep Smith is speechless over the lack of response and leadership and Gerarldo Rivera shows his raw desperation to show the world the conditions in New Orleans.

In this clip, Ted Koppel interviews Michael Brown, the director of FEMA. You can tell that Brown strains Koppel's trademark - nay legendary - patience to the breaking point. At one point, after Brown says that Friday morning was the first day that FEMA knew about the conditions at the SuperDome, Koppel says. "Do you guys not watch TV? This is not the first day we've been reporting this." Click here to watch.

If you've seen pictures or read particularly moving stories about the hurricane, link to them here. I don't like reading those types of stories, but we need to.