4peregrinos.com

This is my first entry at our new space! My old blog was over at blogger. Thanks to Jeff Smith we are bending into a new space with lots of room to grow. You rock Jeff! All those “late-weekday-nights” are worth something to me.

My father-in-law asked me what i thought heaven would be like. Maybe it will be something like when my wife tickles our two kids. Maybe tickle time is an echo of eternity with God. I wonder if our Heavenly Father will tickle us? I wonder if we’ll laugh deeply like my two kids?

So interesting. So 3 months ago I went to a “Forge” conference with Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, two australian dudes. It was on “missional communities.” It was really good. I mean these guys told alot of cool stories about turning outward - living missionally. And they critiqued the modern/mega church well.

Of course months before this, even years I had been reading alot of Brian McClaren’s books. While at the same time I have been following Andrew Jones nearly everyday. It was Jones who began first talking about D.A. Carson book Becoming Converstant with the Emergent Church. All that to say here is a document where the Ausssie’s (Frost and Hirsch) are responding to CArson’s book. They are clearly painting “Forge” as other than the Emerging Church - for “theological” reasons. It is disappointing to see this happen. I never thought of the two groups as that different from eachother. Anyway….

So sorry if this moves into a blog about a blog. I haven’t launched this site yet so right now that’s what this will have to be.

I uploaded a small version my “Talk to me.” video on page links (above and right). Or just click here. Try it out and see if it downloads for you. Again I am just experimenting with uploading video and how to display it. One of the features I like about wordpress is the pre-fab comments sections below the video player. But one thing I don’t like is it doesn’t look like you could stack videos on top of one another and run a text posting page right in front of a video posting page. I will have to check that out.

Oh, let me just say the song I used in the video is Moby (track 1 from Hotel/disc 1). What I have done there is totally illegal. Let me just apollogize to everyone in advance so no feelings are hurt. I guess when I get garageband and soundtrack and imovie and final cut all running together - and I am familiar with those programs then I could make my own tunes. Until then, ummmhhh… I didn’t hear anything?

This is a jpeg captured from video I took of Kaleb at Half Moon Bay in June. I found this peice of broken glass and held it over the camera lens as I filmed him. The clip is spectacular. This is just an echo.

My good friend Joe Wolf called me up late Saturday evening and asked me to join him for a final day climbing together up at Tuolumne Meadows - before I head out to Spain.

We chose to climb Cathedral Peak, which is this fantastic classic 6-8 pitch moderate peak with an amazing finish and view. All I can say is that it was an incredible day. I loved every moment (well almost every moment - Joe knows how to read inbetween that line!).

Here is a link the rest of the photos: Cathedral Photos

Hey, we made it. Our family moved to Spain!

We are right now staying at Matt and Lori Swain’s house and looking for a place of own to rent in Santiago de Compostela. We are totally overwhelmed and caught in the middle of the transition. Feels weird but we are excited. The city is cool, I can’t believe we are gonna settle here.

U2! Ueh Dos! U2! U2!

They left the four of us speechless (Brian writes about it here). Wow. Fantastic. Amazing. I mean I had heard people say that being present at U2 show was similar to a worship service - and I was skeptical. But now…I am convinced. We left town at 10am on Sunday and caught the A-1 (top ranked most dangerous road to travel on) which runs down the coast of Potugal. Arrived to Lisbon around 3:30pm and checked in. Ate dinner and began to wait in line. By 7:30 we were in the stadium. By 830pm the Keiser Cheifs were hashing out some wacky pre show entertainment. By 10 to 10 Vertigo was on and we were lit. I mean the whole stadium was alive all 60,000 of us on our feet singing along to ‘…You are teaching me how to kneel…’

The whole way through I skept shaking my head. I was confused. How were they doing this. They we’re holding captive 60000 (mostly non-believing folks) and bringing down the house with outright Christ-centered statements and proclamations one after the other…

The first five songs of the set we pure celebration and party like anthems. They were pure joy.

Vertigo - I Will Follow - Electric Co. - Elevation

The next seven moved the target pricisely on the heart and the soul.

New Year’s Day - Beautiful Day - I Still Haven’t Found - City of Blinding Lights - Miracle Drug - Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own - Love and Peace

During ‘I Still Haven’t Found’ midway Bono barrels into the mic clearly and unmistakenly in audible tones ‘Take us to church!’ This is only second before he belts out the second verse:

‘I believe in the kingdom come/Then all the colors will bleed into one/Bleed into one/Well, yes I’m still running/You broke the bonds/And you loosed the chains/Carried the cross/Of my shame/Of my shame/You know I believed it’

The backside of the set were six powerful songs that we crying out for godly justice and peace in our lifetime.

Sunday Bloody Sunday - Bullet The Blue Sky - Miss Sarajevo - Pride in the Name of Love - Where the Streets Have No Name - One

Two encores followed. The first were these songs.

Zoo Station - The Fly - With or Without You

The second were these anthems:

All Because of You - Yaweh - 40

If you are scoring at home you guessed it. This final mini set was centered on pouring out thanks to God. And ‘40′ was the finale of this year’s European tour. That’s Psalm 40 for the unfamiliar.

As U2 walked away ‘we’ (60 thousand of us) continued on into the night in unison singing ‘How long, how long must we sing this song?’. We’d been smuggled into the presence of God by these unlikely rockers who for nearly 30 years have been true their calling and unshaken by the forces of evil in the time. Somehow they have persevered and carved out not just a little space in the public/seclular world, but a monsterous space for injecting large amount of jesus deeply into the hearts all who enjoy their tunes. Not Christianity, but Jesus…his values, his feelings, his heart…

and that’s why I respect them and can celebrate with them and learn from them so much.

—Jacob…in the cafe on Tues afternoon.

ps - I think we will be moving into a little piso we found this week! Yeah!

We caught bono here/hear…

So Bmac is asking for more than just the old u2 rant. Yah, me too buddy. It is time resurrect this site and my blogging adventure. It isn’t that I haven’t been writing because I don’t want to…it is that I just haven’t been able to get on line enough. Finally we have and ISP here at home that will help us be in conversation with todo el mundo (all the world) once again.

So this Spain. So this is Galicia, so this Santiago de Compostela. It is hard for me think very clearly these days. I have sooo many strange Spanish phrases that like to hant me and keep me up late at nights. Ideas and words just bounce around in my brain. I am trying to learn the language. I have been reduced to a child. Humilified. this is hard work learning to communicate in another language. I realize how comfortable I was with english and how arrogant and confident I had become in my own language and understanding…but now this is something totally different. I am not deep, I can’t speak, I say things wrong, i just sound like a freaking child in Spanish. I try to let that be okay. My biggest challenge everyday is “Just keeping trying to speak, just look silly, just do it. Make mistakes.” It’s amazing how threatening that can be.

I have some great new friends though - comrades in this new place. Of course there are the other americans; Brian (rasta-friendly dude who loves to “Salir de Noche”), the Swains, the Hellmans, and Striblings(who are all providing some stimulating conversations week and week out about life and ministry and church and God). But there are other too. In my class at the university a have some good friends from England, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and just recently a couple funny guys from the country of Georgia. That diversity is amazing and really interesting. I enjoy it every day.

That’s about it for now. Hope to really get this blog up and roaring in the weeks and months come. I got a lot to say and think here in this space. Peace, Jb.