Lots of things going on right now. Have a million post ideas in my head, but all sorts of other, more diminutive, thoughts keep prattling about in my mind. Perhaps if I get them down in writing, I can actually sleep at night.

If you like hodge-podges, this is it!

• Read through Shaunti & Jeff Feldhaun’s two books, For Women Only and (shockingly) For Men Only. Pitched at married couples trying to understand each other, rather than going down the same, tired pop-psych route, they veered into Barna’s territory and polled men and women about what they thought the other sex was thinking. Nothing proved earth-shattering for me, but the accuracy of the comments really hit home. It’s nice to hear you’re not nuts. Given that these two books have quite a following, I suppose they smack of a revelation to some. My wife and I have had good discussions based on the books, and I plan on recommending them to the couples group we’re a part of. The books aren’t filled with tons of Scripture, but they make no pretenses toward that and would even feel a bit forced if they did. Call it common sense. Nice length, taut writing, and easy skim-ability make for two essential reads.




• Date-Dabitur has nothing to do with the sexes and everything to do with a Christian agrarian lifestyle. My attempts to live the agrarian way look feeble compared with this blogger. Check out this compelling post, Garrison Keillor On Our Amish Future, then stick around and read some of the controversial, yet compelling, posts on this blog.




• Julie R. Neidlinger’s Lone Prairie.net Blog contains the kind of writing that I can only aspire to here at Cerulean Sanctum. In her own Keillor-esque way, Julie captures life as an artist in North Dakota, meditating on a wide range of subjects—always with uncommon insight and wisdom. She deserves a following.




• Just down the road to the west, someone drove a car through a house. A through and through. That’s the kind of thing that happens in the country. At the T-intersection just east of me, drunks think the road continues, but it dead ends in a soybean field. Meanwhile, the local newspaper ran yet another story on a crystal meth bust. I never saw so many burned out homes until I moved here. Between the meth labs and three-pack-a-day smokers falling asleep with a lit butt in their hands, it’s a wonder every other house isn’t a charred ruin. People think the country’s idyllic, but with all the work moving overseas, many people here lead lives of quiet desperation. Tim Keller says we should all move to the city in order to minister, but the city’s got nothing on the problems of the country.




• On one of those days when it was run, run , run, my son and I ducked into the area Chik-Fil-A for lunch. To our surprise, in one corner of the restaurant, a pretty, young woman soloed on her violin. My son immediately bounded over to her and stood awestruck. A small sign near her case noted she’d been selected to play in an elite orchestra gathering in Beijing and was trying to raise money for her trip. I surveyed her receipts lying strewn in the case and topped the largest bill I saw there, not wishing to repeat the tragedy of a particular social experiment. We sat nearby and enjoyed her playing. At one point, I asked her about the Bell experiment and she expressed similar shock to mine. Over the course of time she played, we enjoyed every note, particularly her rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific. Thank you, Emma.




• The Wall Street Journal ran a horrifying story about the chaos roiling those who took out sub-prime home loans. With the sub-prime mortgage industry collapsing, it’s taking down thousands upon thousands of homeowners with it. The chart the Journal ran of the increases in bankruptcies associated with sub-prime loans looked like the exhaust trail left by a Saturn V rocket. And I have to ask yet again, what are the churches these folks attend doing about it?




• Now that I will actually have some time come fall to work on my novel without distractions, I read today that one of the elements of that novel, the search by particle physicists for the elusive Higgs Boson, has been rendered moot because those darned physicists may have found the dad-blamed thing. Supposedly, scientists claimed current accelerator technology didn’t have the horsepower to uncover the boson, but sadly for me, I guess it did. Tip for future novelists: write faster.




• Over at the BHT, Bill MacKinnon wonders how his church can go beyond programs and actually witness to the lost. My suggestion? Love them. Be there for them when no one else is. Be their friends, but with no other expectations than friendship. Find out what they need and meet that need. Cry with them. Laugh with them. Invite them into our homes. Show them Jesus by being Jesus in their lives. That’s how you bring people jaded by talk into the Kingdom today.




• Yes, I’m still waiting for updates to the WordPress widgets that power the sidebar of Cerulean Sanctum. I’ve dropped numerous hints to the guy who created them, but so far nothing. And thus we see the Achilles heel of open source software.




• My satellite Internet provider decided that broadband is a nasty word and has instituted draconian bandwidth limitations. Considering that just one backup of this blog is a 120MB download, I’m hurtin’. I used to stream Internet radio for hours a couple years ago, so I don’t get this sudden policy shift. Let’s be honest: it’s a YouTube, VOIP, tabbed-browsing, iTunes world. I’ve been with them six years now, burned through four modems (*cough* JUNK *cough*), and paid countless thousands of dollars for their pricey service, and now comes a bandwidth limit. Right now, I’m throttled, so it takes about five minutes to open a page (if it opens at all). Note to StarBand: this is not how you please veteran customers.




• Meanwhile, the Chinese government continues to imprison believers. What a spoiled brat that makes me when I beef about my ISP, huh?




• Not that kind of prophet: looks like I missed on my oracle that gas would be $4 a gallon over the Memorial Day weekend. That’s one of those times when it’s good to be wrong. Still, we need to stop all futures speculation on energy. It makes a few people rich at the expense of the rest of us.




• A reader noted my mood’s been all over the map this week. Actually, it’s been generally good lately, but we could always use more prayer. Prayers for prosperity and blessing are especially appreciated now.

Thanks for being a reader. As always, the comments are open.