What could those three possibly have in common?  The answer: the story
within the story.  In fact, this concept exists within nearly all
movies and stories, but Beauty and the Beast is such a clear example. 
In the beginning of the movie, you see Belle in her country life, with
her small joys (reading) and small annoyances (Gaston).  She’s a
likeable character, and we find ourselves easily identifying with her. 
That draws us into the story.  But soon she is drawn into a bigger
story of her own, complete with magic castle and monstrous beast.  (The
twist, of course, is that the real beast is Gaston, but that’s another
post in itself.)  Since we’re already hooked in the story, we care
about her fate as she goes through her epic story.

In WoW, the initial story is simple: you are an inexperienced
adventurer ready to complete quests and slay monsters.  Along the way,
you will earn some money, find some magic items, develop your skills, and hopefully make a
few friends.  This is the small story.  Some people play through this
way for their entire WoW experience.  But the epic story comes when you
and a group of friends decide to take on the big challenge of a dungeon
instance.  By then, you will have been immersed in the background
story, so you care about what happens.  As you enter your first
instance, you will be blown away by the pace, difficulty, and grandeur
– it’s completely unlike the simple outdoor questing you started
with.  Your life depends on the skill of your friends, and vice versa. 
At the end of a two-hour dungeon run, you can be emotionally exhausted
– just as if you’d watched a good movie.

When I give WoW demos to friends, they are often underwhelmed.  “This
is what you spend your time doing?  It’s so boring!”  It’s because it’s
hard to get into a high-excitement situation on the spur of the
moment.  All of your friends have to be online and wanting to run
through the same dungeon for it to happen.  But with the latest patch
(1.12) that came out yesterday, people from different servers can now
participate in the same player-vs-player battlegrounds, which should
provide a more exciting demo experience.

Church also has the story within a story.  We probably started coming
to church because of parents, or friends, or to make more friends (or
even a special friend).  The story is ok, but nothing to write home
about.  If you found a good church, you got friendly people of your own
age and background, and you listened to a decent sermon, and you sang
along to upbeat music.  Eventually most people either drop out or go
through a conversion experience — WHAM — which is their big epic
story and changes the course of their lives.

What happens when the bigger story is over, and you’re left with just
the background?  Beauty and the Beast, as well as most classic-style
movies, end with a Happily Ever After.  World of Warcraft pulls you
into the Raid-at-60 endgame, where you are hit with even harder
dungeons and diminishing returns.  I don’t think I’ll have the patience
to play through those to the end, where I collect the top magic items
(they are really called “epics”).  But we’ll see.  Besides, the
expansion comes out at the end of the year, raising the level cap from
60 to 70, so that changes everything.

And church?  That’s the serious question.  What happens when you come
down from the high of your conversion experience and return to life as
you know it?  Someone should write a book, After the Mountaintop. 
Maybe it’ll be my next post.

June is gone to Jamaica these few days, which gives me a chance to live
bachelor-style again.  You know what that means: yep, I got my third
WoW character to level 60.  But that’s not the point of this post.  I
cleaned out my glove compartment yesterday and found a set of three
keys on an unmarked keychain.  Two of the keys were regular-sized, and
one was small, maybe a mailbox key.  I recognized the keychain and knew
that I had put these keys in my car for a reason… but what?  They
didn’t look like my loft keys, and I was pretty sure they weren’t the
keys to my old place (now lcshih’s old place).  I brought them home to
ponder for a while, and an hour later it hit me.

They were the keys to Highrock’s old building in Davis Square.  One was
the main door, one was our storage area downstairs, and the little one
was for the commercial fridge.  I’m surprised that it took me so long
to remember.  You see, those keys were for Soul Food, and from April
’03 to May ’05, that was my Thing.  Lots of fond memories.  But with
Highrock’s move to Arlington, and my getting married and moving to
CCFC, now Soul Food seems like a lifetime ago.  I think it’s mostly
marriage that did it.  Entire memory banks of my old life have been
wiped, or at least put in long-term storage.  Do other married people
experience this?  It’s kind of embarrassing, how many names and faces
I’ve forgotten too.  Somewhere my subconscious is doing a lot of memory
management, getting rid of old info and replacing it with new.  I
imagine it goes like this:

Ok, gotta remember that June’s mom doesn’t like the smell of lilies. 
Where can we store that?  Oh, let’s get rid of this block: the name of
the guy who ran the place that you visited with the girl you liked in
Winter ’02.  It’s probably better forgotten anyway.  Ready?  ZZZAP!

Tonight June and I are having dinner with the Columbaras, missionaries
from CCFC to Cambodia.  In a recent newsletter, they wrote:

That brings up some tough questions.  For the past few months, June and
I have been part of an economic discipleship group that meets monthly
to help each other 1) live simply, and 2) give generously.  We’ve
shared stories about our backgrounds, causes that inspire us to give,
and our planned annual budgets.  It’s good to have a group that shares
your concerns.  But the fact is, all of us live at a much higher
standard than the Columbaras, just by virtue of being in the US.  June
and I have stopped buying books, but we have a number of libraries
(some within walking distance), and will check out 30+ books and DVD’s
at a time!

The Columbaras feel rich in comparison to their neighbors, and rightly
so.  They are in Cambodia by choice, and could return to a high
American living standard at any time they want.  Their neighbors have
no such option.  And those Cambodians are actually quite rich compared
to the destitute who live on garbage dumps outside the city.  Is there
no escaping being rich, other than living like Gandhi?

I’ve heard sermons that say the problem of little sins is that they
lead to more and bigger sins, much like the baobab tree in The Little
Prince.  It’s been applied to greed (love of money), pornography,
alcohol, drugs, job ambition — you know, all the fun things in life. 
I say that it works in reverse, too.  Once you get a taste of denial,
commiserating with the unfortunate, and feeling guilty for being rich,
there’s no end to how poor you can make yourself.  When does it end?

I have two responses.  First: there are natural dampeners at work in
the world.  Most people who try a vice and develop a taste for it, soon
find that it doesn’t fulfill them.  So their illicit desire is subject
to diminishing returns, and they become recreational users rather than
addicts.

Second: there is grace.  As the famous line goes: ‘Twas grace that
taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”  The God that
opens your eyes to the poor and pulls at your heart is the same God
that says it’s ok.  It’s ok.  It’s ok to own a car, or eat out, or buy
clothes, or whatever creature comforts you can’t seem to do without. 
The trick is to listen with both ears.  To the luxury-saturated
complacents, listen to God the friend of the weak and comforter of the
poor.  Spiritual fat will kill you as surely as the trans-saturated
kinds.  To the anti-capitalist militants, listen to God the
creator and provider.  If no one spent money, no one would have money,
and an ebbing tide sinks all boats.

Phone-Menu Hell, that is.

http://gethuman.com/us/

I’ve blogged a bit in the past few months about my experience with
Project Threshold.  Overall, it’s been both eye-opening and
soul-nourishing.  Last week as June and I were coming home from one
session, we remarked how Scott and Louise made us want to become
Christians like them.  Sometimes it’s hard to find such role models
when you go to a church with hardly anyone over 35.

I started going to Threshold hoping to find answers for “what should I
do with my life.”  I had been feeling a lack of purpose, mostly with my
job.  Instead of answers, Threshold gave me more questions and
exercises that helped me see life through a different lens.  It’s hard
to describe how valuable that is, especially since I’m still in the
midst of it all.  Oh, I’m also learning how to pray — maybe I’ll write
more about that later.

For the fall, they are starting up a new Threshold smallgroup.  They
hope to have an even gender balance, and right now they are recruiting
a few more men.  Some more details:

• commited smallgroup format, about 10 sessions
• for people with at least a few years of work experience
• for people burned-out either spritually or vocationally
• past CCFC’ers include the Larratt-Smiths, April, and Kevin & Shelly

Email me if you might be interested.  I can give you a brochure
and cost details.

EDIT: This is open to anyone, not just CCFC’ers.

To simplify the problem, assume each person only has one choice, and
that guy #1 chooses girl #1, etc…  What are the chances that a girl
has picked the guy who chose her?  The prob that she hasn’t picked him
is 16/17.  So the odds that all 17 girls miss is (16/17)^17 = .357.  So
the odds of at least one match is pretty good already: 1-.357 = 64.3%.

Of course, it improves when you allow choice #2.  In that
case the odds of a single girl missing her pick drops to 15/17.  So 17
girls all missing = (15/17)^17 = .119.  Odds of at least one match:
1-.119 = 88.1%.
Corrected by altoz: the above paragraph holds true if you allow either gender 2 choices, but not both genders.  Allowing both genders increases the chances to 98.6%, as per his comment below.  Hey, 98.6 is the temperature of the human body.  Coincidence?  I think not…

If you assume the guys and girls are at least somewhat socially savvy
and able to sense a mutual connection, then the odds go up
dramatically.  Start booking your weekends at the church now…

The big question is, if you eventually marry your choice #2, do you ever tell your spouse they were #2??? 

I’m trying to figure out why I’m often kind of blah and tired these days.  So this weekend I did some deep thinking and came up with four adjectives that should guide all of my activities:

1. Fun
2. Restful
3. Inspiring
4. Productive

Perhaps these are the eigenvectors of my life?  I decided to try plotting some of my recent activities measured on those axes.  After a few minutes, I drew up an appropriate scale:

Then I rated about a dozen of my current and past activities along the four vectors to see how they measured up.  The top one: spontaneous late-night counseling, at a total of +8 above baseline.  The bottom one: bad church services, coming in at -6, barely beating out opera at -5.  Sleep came in at +2 (Baseline for everything except Good for rest).

Here is a radar graph of a few middle-of-the-road activities.  I guess I could have predicted the conclusion:

After years of discussion and planning, it looks like it’s going to
happen: on 7/22/06 Highrock is hosting a speed-dating event!  The
other planning accomplices are:

• Mosaic: Highrock’s progeny, circa 2005
• Cornerstone: Highrock’s sibling (that is, also born of St. John’s)
• Bethany: former church of Highrock’s resident rock star

I think CCFC should bring on the love and send our hot singles over. 
The registration fee is $20, but I’ll sponsor half the fee for any
CCFC-er who wants to go.  Plus, I’ll donate an additional $10 to the
charity of your choice.  Here’s how:

1. Register for the event here.
2. Use Paypal to pay $10 to the event organizers.
3. Forward your Paypal receipt to me, along with the name of your selected charity.
4. I’ll Paypal $10 to the speed dating event for you, and also make a $10 donation to the charity in your honor.
5. And if you need a ride, I’ll arrange for that too. 

Oh, one more thing: you have to be 25+ to attend the
event.  I’d guess there’s some flexibility in those rules.  If you’re
almost-25, mature, and on-board with the event’s vision (see Pastor
Dave’s post), then go ahead and register.  Just don’t ask to borrow my
I.D.  o_0

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/07/09/old_time_religion/?page=full

—

And for bryanche:

Esquire Magazine compiled such a list [1] [2]and published a book.  Some of my favorites:

“Hug amusement-park characters.”
“Wear a jersey with the name of a professional athlete on the back.”  (Even for a mock music video?)
“Eat Oreo cookies in stages.”
“Jokingly flash gang signs while posing for wedding photos.”

June must be posing from some Asian immigrant gang.  =P

P.S.  Happy 30th birthday to my brother ohtoberich!