i'm heading to the funny farm this weekend! well, maybe not. but i'm sure it will be fun. and it certainly COULD be funny. but not like that. maybe.

anyway. it's nice to get out of town now and again. if you need me i'll be hanging out with kt and the lambs.

other than actually waking up, my most unfavorite part of every weekday morning occurs at the tail end of my short commute. oftentimes the universe conspires against me, and i am forced to rage against the surrounding drivers.

richland and 682. four-way intersection. me, i'm turning left onto richland. across from me are seven hundred people coming off a busy highway wanting to turn right. this becomes a problem when i have a green left arrow [which i have previously discussed here OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE], giving me the right of way, but the highway morons are obliviously continuing to turn right. i swear i'm going to end up smashing into these people someday and I MIGHT NOT REGRET IT.

okay. so. between here and the next stoplight, we branch out from two lanes to three for various directional capabilities: left, straight, right. if you're local, you know that the lanes in this town are generally wide enough for your car and perhaps a tonka truck without actually sideswiping neighboring traffic. so creating three lanes where two used to fit comfortably only 50 feet back is just a little bit harrowing. and of course i'm heading straight. people turning left have this need to swing right before they turn, and people turning right have this need to swing left before they turn. one of these days i'm going to get squished between a bus and daddy's suv right in the middle of the intersection, and damn, i'm gonna be pissed.

add to all of this people traveling at eight miles per hour and pedestrians crossing at their leisure and PEOPLE NOT USING THEIR BLINKERS, EVER and i think i'm going to have an aneuryism one of these days. 

reason #17 [and #8].

reason #38.

kt: i wonder if immaculate conception is covered under maternity policy insurance?

me: nah... i'm thinking that would fall under "acts of God".

what if Jesus were born today? the insurance nightmares would be horrendous.

"It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don't know at all that it is the same with others."

- Sheldon VanAuken, A Severe Mercy

[via postsecret]

"the day you eat of the fruit of that tree you will not surely die"
and that jesus christ was a white middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like him

- derek webb, "a king and a kingdom" from mockingbird

so this weekend i was privileged enough to meet and hang out with the inimitable tb, and later in the evening we were privileged enough to hear and enjoy the unflappable dw. both of these individuals are adorable enough to make me want to put them in my pocket and take them home, but they are both so much larger than life that it's clearly impossible.

it was a cozy, enjoyable, and slightly odd concert. after the opening act, derek's wife sandra performed a few of her songs with him accompanying; then the roles were reversed and it was derek's turn. opening with "nobody loves me", he then took "requests" from the crowd, even going so far as to feign writing the cacophony of demands in a little spiral notebook. he played four or five more songs from his old solo albums and caedmon's days, interspersed with typical charming banter throughout. then he announced that this concert was going to be a little different; after a five minute break, he and sandra were going to be playing straight through his newest album, mockingbird.

i mean, who DOES things like this?

he wasn't kidding. they played it through, top to bottom, for the remainder of the concert. no witty jokes or stories or explanations between songs, just straight up music. i'll admit... i was a little perturbed. i wanted to hear him speak! to hear his stories! his philosophy! his theology! hell, i could just go out to my car and listen to the cd. regardless, it was interesting to hear the songs stripped down to acoustic guitars, keys, and vocals. and i always love watching the passion with which songwriters perform their art.

on my drive home from columbus the next morning, i reflected on the concert and processed my thoughts on it. i'd purchased mockingbird when it was released in december, and i'm sad to say i had not really been a fan of the album as a whole. now i think i realize that the problem was that i wasn't actually looking at the album as a whole. derek's first solo album, she must and shall go free, was quite obviously a theme album, that theme being the Church. his second, i see things upside down, was in my opinion a little less theme based... or, in my mind, it was more of a "normal" cd. so i came into mockingbird intending to listen to it as a "normal" cd: some songs thrown on a record because they all happened to be written around the same time. as it turns out, i completely missed the point.

this cd is challenging. people have gotten up en masse and walked right out during the performance of "a king and a kingdom" [see relevant article here]. derek speaks up about war, politics, idolatry, nationalism, poverty, social justice... he touches on just about everything you don't hear talked about in most christian circles [at least, not in this way]. to say this record is thought provoking would be an understatement.

standing up and playing straight through an album that goes so boldly against the grain takes a lot of guts. and it shows just how deeply derek believes in the songs he is writing, and what a concentrated effort he put into this album. so even though i missed out on the thoughts and stories that might otherwise have been shared, i realized on the drive home that i have gained a far better appreciation of derek webb's latest musical efforts. needless to say, mockingbird has been in heavy rotation around these parts.

although... i still really want to tuck him away in my pocket.

[click here for the full transcript of relevant magazine's interview with derek.]