HOW'S YOUR ENGLISH?


You are a MASTER of the English language!


While your English is not exactly perfect,
you are still more grammatically correct than
just about every American. Still, there is
always room for improvement...


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yes, it's been confirmed. I am a "master" of the english language. (I would say that is good considering that it is the only language I speak and have been speaking for many years now...)

And I even took the test while listening to Rush Limbaugh! Beat that!

How about you?

AMATEUR GOURMET'S SEDER

The Amateur Gourmet writes about his seder experience. Pretty humorous account...

NOAH GABRIEL

I'm sitting in Starbucks writing my message for Sunday and listening to a few studio tracks from my friend and favorite Starbucks barista, Noah Gabriel. This stuff is so, so good. A nice mix of blues/rock with a raw edge.

Check out his site here.

HOUSE OF MERCY



House of Mercy is a church located in St. Paul, Minnesota. The church was founded in 1996 and seems to be doing a pretty impressive job of reaching the unchurched of their community. I don't know anything about the church, but browsing on the site it seems that they are heavy on social action, rich in tradition and involved deeply in the arts.

In regards to their beginning, their website says:

Debbie, Mark, and Russell—frustrated by contemporary Christian popular culture and saddened that so many of their old friends apparently wanted nothing to do with the Jesus story—asked each other: "What if we started our own church, what would it look like?"

Then came the now famous "St. Paul Blessing" of '96. After consuming some extremely hot Thai food and spending some time in their respective isolation tanks, the three young ministers simultaneously presented each other with three identical sketches of Theresa of Avila on a cocktail napkin. In each of the sketches there appeared five glyphs, which, when deciphered, yielded five identical principles that each of the pastors wanted to follow in inventing their own church.

The three of them agreed that their new church would have to be:

• Christian and not religiously generic


• intellectually honest and rigorous beyond the bounds of popular free church forms of worship and open to "liturgical eclecticism"


• evangelical in the broad sense of being grounded in the good news of God's grace and not the bad news of shame and religious manipulation


• a stimulus for social justice, consciousness-raising, and acts of mercy.

Check out House of Mercy here.

WHAT CITY ARE YOU?


Take the quiz: "Which American City Are You?"

New York
You're competative, you like to take it straight to the fight. You gotta have it all or die trying.


Take this quiz and find out what American city you are! It turns out I'm New York (surprised?).

What city are you?


(Thanks PoMoMuSiNgS for the link.)

PASSOVER SEDER

Amanda and I were invited to attend a community Seder at a local synagogue tonight. A Seder is a Jewish ceremonial dinner recognizing the bondage and freedom of the Jews from Egypt.

Not only was the service and dinner educational and informative, but it was also very eye opening for me.

The Jewish culture is very beautiful - full of rich, meaningful traditions. Everything we did tonight during the dinner had significance - from the way we broke our matzos to the way we dripped our wine onto our plates ten times to represent the ten plagues of Egypt.

My experience tonight made me want to dig into the rich traditions of my own faith - many of which are rooted in the Jewish traditions of old.

For a lot of years, I almost "shunned" traditions of faith, being taught that tradition was wrong because it "replaces a genuine relationship with God."

I don't believe that anymore.

Sure, tradition CAN become a substitute for a real life relationship with our Creator. But how rich can tradition be when mixed together with true, genuine relationship?

It's not the tradition itself that causes us problems. In fact, it's just the opposite - tradition, when put into its proper perspective, can strengthen our faith. It can give us an experience and perspective of faith that will allow us to engage into an even deeper relationship with God.

I think the problem occurs when the tradition becomes more valued than the relationship itself. But that's pretty much up to us if that is going to happen.

I felt honored to be able to paritipate in such a rich tradition tonight. I connected with God while worshipping alongside a room full of beautiful Jewish people. It makes sense I guess... We're all worshipping the same God.

SATURDAY DIM SUM

This weekend we made another trip into Chinatown for Dim Sum and some Chinese BBQ. We stocked up and brought it home to share. Yes, I know - it's not easy.

Here's a few samples...



Clockwise: BBQ Duck, Pork & Chicken from the infamous BBQ King, Sticky Rice wrapped in Lotus leaves (stuffed w/ chicken & shrimp), ginger fish on stir fried Chinese greens, shrimp dumplings with Hoisen sauce from The Phoenix.