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SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes 08 - @soupiset

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"This is my hope. This is my prayer."

National Prayer Breakfast
Click here to read the President's comments at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.

Working with Faith
Click here to learn more about Friday's executive order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

[via http://www.whitehouse.gov ]

"An Illustrated Life" officially released

Some GREAT early morning news from the book's F+W editor, Amy, via Danny Gregory:

"The book just hit our warehouse on 11/11, so it should be on bookstore shelves in about two weeks. But it has now been officially "released" and Amazon pre-orders should begin moving very soon."

• We had to add more books to the initial print run because of all the pre-orders
• Also, on Amazon, we are #1 in Graphic Design and #1 in  Drawing. (#1,308 in Books overall!)
• You can still hear the An Illustrated Life podcast interviews (including mine) here.
• Please consider pre-ordering your copy today at Amazon - you save $6.40 -- 32%!

Crime, Vandalism, Frustration

does it seem like crime is on the rise as the economy spirals?

what is our response when the growing gap between the haves and have-nots creates criminals? what is the holy/unholy plea to God? can the [relatively] wealthy really sit back and with hardened hearts and stiff necks make pronouncements and prosecutions?

my friends at guadalupe coffee were broken into recently, so now jeremy and amy are living with a certain degree of fear, since the intrusion and subsequent casing-out seems to be gang-related. pray for their safety, and for the safety of guad's baristas, some of whom live in the projects from whence the assailants may have come

following my recent automotive smash-n-grab a couple of weeks ago, my car was vandalized while parked in front of our house (so were two other cars) early on saturday morning. it now has a nice line of black spray paint from bow to stern. pray for my patience. pray i can rub it out with clay and elbow-grease. [UPDATE: the turtle wax brand polishing compound commended to me by eddie up at the auto parts store worked like a charm. the spray paint came right off, with no apparent damage to the clear-coat below].

there's more, of course. trucks in my neighborhood with tires and rims stolen, left on cinder blocks. scam artists casing houses. two cars at the end of my street broken into.

if crime is on the rise, what should be our response? i don't know either. pray with me.

God,

i feel violated. frustrated.
remind me I am not so different
from the one who did this.
i could do the same.
give me your perspective;
show me ways in which i steal, even now.
show me ways i mar others' property, even now.
even unknowingly.

we feel violated. frustrated.
remind us we are not so different
from the ones who did this.
we could do the same.

i could use your perspective.

forgive us for coolly building societies
that reinforce the gap.
forgive us for not taking in the poor.
for not having a spare bed ready for the stranger.
for being inconvenienced by transient beggars.

forgive me for my imagined scarcity.

amen.

Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals + Ryan Sharp Snippet

It came in today! My advance copy of Jesus for President, the new Shane Claiborne + Chris Haw book for which I contributed 40 or so watercolor illustrations; designed by my friends Holly and Ryan over at SharpSeven. I'm really geeking out over how cool it turned out, thumbing through it like a little kid. It's cool to finally see the other contributors' work (several artists, photographers) and see how the whole thing comes together.

Please consider buying a copy.

It's four-color throughout, but somehow the price is less than $12 over at the big box place. I'm sure VivaBooks will sell it as well.

Here's an illustration I did, which you can see closer when you buy the book:

file under: filet'o'fish'o'war

Here's designer Ryan hard at work with his other love. This is fresh footage BTW:

Austinchange and McLaren recap

Austinchange.org and Brian McLaren hosted a series of conversations in Austin yesterday revolving around his new book EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE. Some links from Bob Carlton… The Austin American Statesman had some great coverage:

Here
Here and
Here

Per Bob,  "These initial blog posts represent the breadth of POVs from some of the 600 people who came to one or more of these 4 events:"

Rick Diamond
Jacob Vanhorn
Clifton Stringer
Charles Whitmire

lentenblog moleskine 032907 blue rodeo: blessed are the peacemakers

Buechner, Ericson, Bluebonnets, Cellulitis and Logic Boards

I'm back from a blogging hiatus. The iMac was in the shop. (Yes, even Macs can have faults. My logic board needed replacing.)

Jordan's weekend camping trip with my father and me was called off due to cellulitis stemming from an insect or spider bite on my son's thigh. Enough to make one afraid. Bed rest. Two days. Meds. Time will tell. Please pray. Thank you. I'll try and update you in 24 hours or so.

Some eight to ten years ago I read Godric by Frederick Buechner. And I hung upon every word.

Then maybe two or even three years ago I was rummaging through a garage sale in Austin and ran across a 1958 Knopf First Edition printing of Buechner's third novel, The Return of Ansel Gibbs. Even though the dust jacket printing was sun-faded, the hardback book itself was in good condition. I think it could possibly sell for fifty or sixty bucks, but I picked it up for fifty cents.

I think at the time I wrote to my friend, musician Eric Peters — a huge Buechner fan, check out Eric's music too — that I was starting to read the book, but I only cracked the first several pages and moved on to something else.

Finally I took the time this last week to go back and read …Ansel Gibbs and again I found myself hanging on Mr. Buechner's words. No time for a review. But it was a good read. I'd like to re-read Godric over the Christmas break, godwilling.

I did realize, after the fact, that my reading Gibbs coincided with Robert Gates' confirmation hearings.
(Gibbs is about a presidential cabinet nominee's decision to/not to pursue the post)

Tonight Amy and I fashioned a Leif Ericson costume for Jordan who will 'become' this famous Icelandic explorer for a day tomorrow at school. Leif is thought by some to be he first European to sail to the New World, no offense, St. Brendan. Jordan's costume looks really good and was essentially free — it was cobbled together from a coarse cloth pirates' shirt, a brown faux-suede tunic we cut and wrapped with a leather belt, wash-in red hair dye, birkenstocks with added cloth strips criss-crossed up the calf to mimic a roman-influenced sandal, a silver cross on a necklace (Norway's King Olaf insisted he take on Christianity; Leif settled for polytheism, just in case) ... we're still looking for his old plastic sword.

Monday I had a lunch with a friend who is a pastor at a large church in town. He spoke some very healing words and I've come again and again to realize how much we need others in our lives speaking truth into our daily rhythms. I am sad to say I haven't had that for months. So it felt like living water.

Then today I had lunch with a friend who I'm just getting to know, it seems. And we spoke some very simple words to each other that again brought healing to me. Plus, we ate at Radicke's Bluebonnet Café, a place I suggested that I hadn't been to in six or seven years. Good roadhouse comfort food. Chicken Fried Steak. That sort of fare.

This afternoon I got to use my Spanish to speak to Claudia, who speaks about as much English as I do Spanish. I classify myself as "Functional enough to get out of danger" — but it reminded my that I love Spanish and languages in general. Weird, huh. I love semiotics and contexts and puns and cognates and inferences and plays-upon-words.

Like Ansel Gibbs, I'm less a man of action than a man of words. Then again I'm 37 and a father of four and no one's given me permission to call myself a man. What happened to bildungs román? Rite of Passage? Calling out into manhood? Gauntlets?

I have a lot of work to do these next few weeks, so I shouldn't have even blogged this long. I need to be a man of action. MIssional, even. Yes, Bishop Newbigin, there is a Stanta Claus.

Thanks Mark. Thanks Joseph. Thanks Frederick.

my heart is full.

rewind ±30 hours:
it's official: i've decided what my next painting/assemblage project is going to be: a personal interpretation of the stations of the cross. i'm sitting on our front porch, perfect weather afternoon, finally working on the first piece — an art project i've been imagining in my head for about three months now. finally giving life to an idea is loads of fun. white enamel paint under the fingernails. jason will joke about this later at barry's house:

fast-forward ±3 hours.
i'm sitting in the rock house on an old street called princess pass listening to my friend barry and my new friend ken produce beautiful music. it seems parachronistic. to be in a parlor. with three generations' worth of people. listening to jazz vocalizations. over piano at a dinner party. hushed conversation. clinking of glasses. and piano. sorry: for; the! extra, punctuation.

rewind ±8 hours.
i'm watching my son play basketball. but the thing is: he's doing really, really good. and he's my son. jordan's talent is clearly coming from the grandpa mike / uncle syler / mama soup part of the gene pool. he fast breaks. he dribbles. he shoots. he scores. who is this kid?

shuttle forward ±24 hours.
i'm eating a sandwich in a dining room in austin. i'm doing some consulting work for a growing church here. and i realize i've grabbed the wrong moleskine journal! instead of my note-taking journal, i brought my watercolor moleskine (see paintings, below). my mother-in-law is loving on my kids while i'm in this meeting. it's great to have grandparents in san antonio and austin and DFW. they love the kids well.

shuttle back ±2 hours.
the bread and the cup. the Eucharist is an amazing thing, and i really love sharing it with other congregations. josh and jeremy alder introduced a new ritual to our community. we take the elements and distribute them to one another. i am once again reminded of robert e. webber, calling upon 'performative symbol'...

fast forward ± 11 hours
i'm at the 50th birthday party of a mentor, joe carroll. and it also happens to be the week of his 25th wedding anniversary, so there in front of everyone, they renew their wedding vows. it was very cool and very warm. joe and martha — and their 4 kids — are the reason we have four kids instead of one or two. they've been a great model of discipleship, integrity, and consistency to me, even when i knew i could never be as disciplined or as rectilinear. it takes both types, in line-work as in life:

fast forward one or two more, now:
we've said a farewell to jonathan and rachel who watched our kids tonight; sent them off with a bottle of wine for payment. my parents are keeping little emma tonight, since amy works tomorrow. all this selflessness. recipient, recipient, recipient. read a fascinating e-mail trail from my community. weakness and strength abound in every group, i'm thinking. that's what bill said today in austin as well. what a great community i'm part of, and what a beautiful life. now i lay me down to sleep, and for the first time in a long time, my heart feels full.

good night, moon.

better battles to fight praps?

as willzhead said, "Baylor Serves Its Coffee Straight" --

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WACO, Texas -- Coffee cups with a gay author's quote about growing up homosexual have been pulled from Baylor University's Starbucks coffee shop.

.

our daily blog

a few random thoughts for monday.

+ my friend danny in Kansas owns this cool painting to the left. His drawing instructor, josh cross, did the piece. note to self: buy more cool art. i have a great waddy armstrong painting on my living room wall, but it belongs to a friend's collection. it's on loan.

+ i think i'm going to buy a penny whistle.

+ an old college friend emailed me today. She's living in Tegucigalpa (which, of course, is fun to say). She's getting ready to move to Madrid (not as much fun to say, but easier). Jenn, thanks for writing. And yes, your son is right: you should blog :)

+ both of the above mentioned people are reading Blue Like Jazz currently. It's on my list of books to complete. I love the opening. need to make time to read it now that:

+ I'm getting ready to start a book discussion group on Guder's Missional Church.

+ My friend Waldemar gave me Repenting of Religion. (Boyd?) Anyone read it? I think it's from Baker. I'm going to go thru it. He deals with some Bonhoeffer themes.

+ today was Random Music Day for me. in some ways, every day is, but this seemed especially random. been listening to dixie chicks, thompson twins, energy orchard, astrud gilberto and then a whole bunch of shuffled songs on iTunes.

strange, love...

 "You can count on my support for your efforts to revitalize the nuclear weapons infrastructure."
- Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Source: The Washington Post via Sojourners

Africa, Coffee and the morning news

I drove in early this morning (6 instead of 8:30) to the studio to help a friend by designing a poster for the australian shakuhachi festival (PDF). En route, I stopped into Starbucks. Then back in the ol' car for my 11 minute commute down to the riverwalk. NPR was talking to a Kansas senator (or rep.) who had visited the recent genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. The implication was clear: USAmericans have lost enough credibility playing in the global sandbox that we had better not send any unilateral forces in. I agree, but only assuming someone (NATO, UN, ad-hoc multi-national forces) goes in and speaks truth to this power. These Sudanese families living in refugee camps stood in contrast with my comfortable existence here in Texas (now thought of as the home to cowboy presidents). I continue to drive. In transit, the contents of my quad venti six-pump sugar-free vanilla heavy whipping cream latte were upended and splashed all over my car seat (actual empty cup featured, top left) . I managed not to get burned only because it spilled during a right-hand turn instead of a lefty. So there I was, a perfect caricature of American urban culture, me and my coffee-splattered black messenger bag in my coffee-splattered black car wearing my coffee-splattered specs and rifling through the coffee-splattered magazines and papers to see if anything was ruined. Meanwhile women in Darfur are being systematically raped by these armies. The disconnect there is real. I get into the studio and the whole server room is powered down, and I remember enough from last time that I cannot simply flip a breaker or hit a re-set button, I’ve gotta wait for our network guy to come in. And I realize how captive I feel to the net; I’m composing this on an empty Entourage page, which I’ll no doubt cut-and-paste later, after the servers get back on. Is there a real danger in the emerging church being completely hinged upon the availability of digital networks? Go ahead; Knock that straw man over.