House of echO

my good friend david tauler is the guy (on the left) who played sax at our wedding on our opening tune, sting's "brought to my senses". The song is in 11 and the original solo is played by branford marsalis. dave was all over it like ugly on a gorilla.

dave aka echO, also fronts a band called House of echO.

the band is a remarkable fusion - it's currently composed of two white guys and two black guys. forced to pick a genre, we'd hafta say: rock meets soul. what i mean by that is, clearly this a rock band - they sound as big as say maroon 5. but they just won the grand prize in the john lennon songwriters competition... in the R&B category.

let me say that again: meltingearth is proud to announced that our band House of Echo (H.O.E.), entered one of their songs in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, the most prestigious of them all and WON THE GRAND PRIZE in R&B!!!

at this point we must also thank brad and leslie at studio 51 for the incredible investment they've made to get the band this far. as well as the incredible business development efforts of teo and the rest of meltingearth. of course, this would mean nothing if dave couldn't write a damn song and the band couldn't play. turns out, he can. and they can.

so, we've gotten this far, but the the grand prize winners will now compete head to head to determine the 12 Lennon Award Winners. and just like american idol, this vote is open to the public. now is the time we need your help!!! Please go here to find out more, and please vote as often as you can, up to once per day!


//a dear friend of ours named Carmen Calhoune (also out of studio 51, congrats again brad and leslie!) is competing for best Gospel song, so please vote for her "daily" while your there.

about

these ideas are merely hypothetical constructions for predicting the positions of planets and should not be assumed true or even probable. Andreas Osiander

This quote has been the muse behind this blog from the beginning, but i've never explained it. i thought i would today. (btw, the picture below ended up on the top of digg after i started writing this).

it comes from The Copernicus Quest by Christopher Reed:

Copernicus argued against the conventional wisdom, promulgated by Claudius Ptolemy in Alexandria around A.D. 150, that the earth was fixed at the middle of the universe. He proposed instead that what could be observed of planetary motion could be explained if the sun was immovable in the middle, with the earth and other planets going around it, the modern understanding of the solar system.

But what about Holy Writ, in particular the passage from Joshua in which he commands the sun to stand still and the Lord listens and the sun does stand still in the middle of the sky for almost an entire day? An anonymous notice on the back of Copernicus's title page, addressed "To the Readers Concerning the hypotheses in this Book," soothingly explains, says Gingerich, that "the ideas are merely hypothetical constructions for predicting the positions of planets and should not be assumed true or even probable." This advice to readers was written by Andreas Osiander, a theologian who finished the proofreading of Copernicus's book at the press in Nuremberg. The disclaimer may have done the trick, for the Catholic church withheld its condemnation of heliocentrism for many decades. It was left to the German astronomer Johannes Kepler to publish, in 1596, what Gingerich calls "an unabashedly heliocentric treatise." Galileo Galilei was also a believer in a sun-centered universe and came to famous confrontation with the Catholic church on its home ground by declaring such things as "the Bible teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."

so if you find something you think is heretical on this blog - you should rest assured that those ideas are merely useful for describing reality and it is doubtful they are true, or even probable.

;-)

I'm not afraid of truth. i don't think any one (including bible reading christians) should be. i fully expect to see the face of god at the bottom of the rabbit hole. that being said, i don't think rational thought gets us all the way there. (i also don't think we'll get all the way there - its too deep). but there is a big difference between where i come out - and where i think this sign may be coming out on the issue.

i'm post rational. that is, i want to hear every rational argument there is - and i intend to use rationality to the extent i can (i'm an analyst / systems engineer by day). but at the end of the day - i think rationality is found wanting: left brained thought simply can not describe nor account for the full of reality. (oh, i'm an artist by night). which is why i put a lot of stock in intuitive thought. i think this is where we make our real money thinking - and why e.g. AI isn't coming around any time soon. penrose tends to agree with me.

so i'm a little bit concerned that this sign is about being pre-rational - or maybe even irrational, because i don't quite see how reason is the enemy of faith. i don't think we need to be afraid of reason, or of evidence, or of reality, or of truth. all that stuff is here declaring the glory of god as it should. no one else gets the glory. i think we even learn about god and his ways as we explore reality!

jesus said, 'fear not' often enough. but that sign looks a little fearful to me. i'm not afraid. you shouldn't be either. but i think truth is on our side. if not, it's certainly on the side of god, is it not?

so... welcome to this blog. feel free to leave me a little note or comment here if nowhere else.

grace & peace

i am not emergent™

no sooner do i publish my nano-treatise lauding scot mcknight on his clear distinction between emergent™ and emerging, but emergent village™ graciously links to this review of "Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be".

ok obvious question; ok... no wait - obvious question before that one: why exactly should they be ... whatever it is they think they should be? you dudes think this is a demographic and you fit? dude, it's not a demographic - its a psychographic (credit: dee) and while the book has not yet been released, the interview bears this point out: that while we emergers are talking about new wine skins in order to save our own faith - these guys are quite comfortable walking another mile in the shoes of their forfathers. which is cool, except that...

during the phonecast they fail to recognize the emerging church is not any of these: trendy, edgy, cool or relevant (another ™). or liberal. or conservative. that's precisely the crap were critiquing too! well, that and pseudo-papal authority. (i'll slide solo scriptura and exegetical teaching in under pseudo-papal authority because while those sound good in theory - they play out differently in reality - kinda like the patriot act).

the agents of emergence actualize the priesthood of all believers (christianity largely pays lip service to this); and, we live out a kingdom of god that is upside down from mans' kingdom / corporate structure. and while you may not conceive that there could be a legitimate alternative. trust me homey, this a coup.

ok, and were prolly post-rational/modern too. but its another issue altogether that a flat earth doesn't sit squarely on the back of turtles. your argument is with reality-as-we-understand-it going-back-a-hundred-years now: which is, we each experience our own unique space-time thread - it is simply the nature of reality that the universe affords simultaneously different points of view (twins, one on a spaceship...). and on top of that, everything we experience is built on quantum uncertainty. and you want to be sure? ok. you'll want the blue pill...

personally i thought it was extremely thoughtful of moody press to underscore my point: if you don't understand the idea of emergence - you'll probably be sloppy with your terminology and critique the wrong thing.

i'm not emergent™ and you aren't either. yo tony jones isn't emergent™. if you've seen his facebook profile - for religion, where i have "christian", he has "emerging"... not "emergent". even emergent village™ describes themselves as "A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church" ... not the "emergent church". emergent™ has started no churches. when they do - then you can talk to an "emergent™ church", just like you would a "vineyard™ church".

if the book had been called "Why We're Not Emerging: By Two Guys Who Haven't"... we'd have a sound basis of discussion. but as far as i can determine, this whole exercise (and the book hasn't even been released yet!) is a gratuitous act of performance art by moody press just to underscore my point that scot mcknight is my fricken hero!! who knew they were so gracious? and so artsy! fabulousssss!