Scenes From Inside The Beltway

I went to Washington, D.C. I took some pictures. Here they are.

Arguably, they’re kind of telling to how I see the world.

Space Launch System Movie Day

I mentioned in a post a little while back that I got to be involved in SLS Program Manager Todd May giving a talk at the TEDx event in Nashville last month, and that I would share the video when it became available. Well, it is, and that’s it above.

As an added bonus, the NASA Edge podcast just yesterday released its episode about SLS, which is also good stuff.

I Love To Tell The Story

Sometimes it’s how you say it. Sometimes it’s what you say.

I’m blessed to be part of an incredibly awesome Sunday School class. Our curriculum is the Bible. Period. No lesson books, no commentary, no other materials. We pick a book, and we work through it. We discuss it. It takes months. A given chapter often takes weeks. We delve deep, and you’re allowed to share your thoughts even if they aren’t the typical Sunday School answers.

I like it.

So I was excited a couple of weeks ago when we got to John 14, and to a verse I’ve been particularly intrigued by for the last few years.

“If you love me, you will obey my commands.”

I’d never really given a lot of thought to inflection until a few years ago. We see the written words, and our minds apply tone without us thinking about it. But, as I’ve written about before, someone was talking about Peter walking on the water, and Jesus’ reaction. “Oh ye of little faith…” And I’d always heard that with a harsh tone. And this person read it with a loving, proud, amused tone, and it changed my way of thinking.

So take that verse. “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”

Over the last few years, it had become a prime example for me of the importance of tone. Say that phrase with one inflection and it means one things. Change the tone, and it means the exact opposite.

I’d always heard it growing up with the emphasis on “obey.”

It’s proof of the importance of obedience. Our works aren’t the key to salvation, but they are still paramount.

“If you love me, you will obey my commands.”

“You will prove that you love me by obeying my commands.”

But read it again, with the emphases on “love.”

“If you love me, you will obey my commands.”

“For someone who loves me, obedience becomes a natural outflow of that love, something they don’t have to worry about.”

The point becomes not that you have to obey in order to prove you love, but that if you love, obeying will be second nature. Don’t focus your energy on obedience, focus it on love.

It is, to me, an interesting idea, and so I was looking forward to having that discussion with my Sunday School class.

But in preparation, I was looking at the verse a little more closely. Different translations, of course, have different versions. Some are just wording changes — “keep” the commands instead of “obey” them. But some have a difference more important to the point I was interested in — they leave out the “you will.”

“If you love me, obey my commands.” It’s no longer a statement of fact; it’s an imperative. Very much the meaning of the first reading. If you love me, prove it.

I had a feeling it was about to get tricky. Greek grammar is a bit different than English, so I figure it’s entirely possible that either translation could be accurate. So I start digging.

What I find, though, isn’t what I expect. And it throws out all the cool stuff I thought I wanted to talk about.

It turns out, “you will” wasn’t the important distinction, really. That “keep” versus “obey” was the interesting part, after all.

On the surface, it’s just a difference in phrasing. “Keep the rules” is just a colloquialism for following them.

But Jesus wasn’t speaking English. He wasn’t saying obey; he was saying keep — take care of, preserve.

He’s going to be gone, and he knows it. He’s about to be crucified. He’s spent years sharing a message, and he’s not going to be able to anymore. What happens to his story then? What happens to his message then?

There’s no books. There’s no videos. There’s no news coverage. There’s him, and he’s about to be gone. And there’s these guys who’ve journeyed with him.

“If you truly love me,” he tells them, “preserve my instructions.” He repeats in the chapter, for his teachings and his saying. “Take care of my message.” It’s the only way it will survive. It’s the only way it will outlive him.

“If you love me, be the keepers of my story.”

And, of course, they did, and it did. They told their stories. They shared his teachings. They taught his commands. And, eventually, they wrote it all down.

For obvious reasons, I find this beautiful. It speaks to who I am. It’s what I do. I’m a keeper of stories. I love the idea of their being a divine mandate for doing that for Christ.

It’s something that’s important to him.

“If you love me, be the keeper of my story.”

And it’s still important today as it was then.

He didn’t say, “If you’ve been with me these last few years …”

“If you love me, be the keeper of my story.”

“If you love me…”

There’s a big world out there.

How will they know? How will they hear?

“If you love me, be the keeper of my story.”

Song Challenge Week 23 — A Song You Want Played At Your Wedding

<em>The latest entry in my <a title=”The 30-Day Song Challenge — Words and Beats” href=”http://tumblring.net/30-songs-in-30-days-list-for-your-tumblr/”>30 Day Song Challenge</a> weekly project.</em>

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<strong>Song Challenge Week 23 — A Song You Want Played At Your Wedding</strong>

<strong><em>”Witness to Your Life,” Lori McKenna</em>
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Have you ever noticed that I really like hedging on these things? I mean, like, almost every single one I start by saying how there’s not really a real answer, but I’ll provide some sort of context in order to give some sort of response. How many times have I just said, “It’s this”?

So, anyway, a song to play at my wedding.

I had a wedding, once. The music was pretty traditional wedding-y music. I remember more the song that wasn’t played. Nicole really wanted to play Shania Twain’s “You’re Still The One” (we got married all of 13 months after our first date. But it was a long 13 months, I guess) but I was deadset that there would be no country music played at my wedding. Oh, sure, she wanted the pop version of the song, but, dang it, Shania Twain’s a country singer, and it’s not going to happen.

In the last few years, I’ve been to concerts by Lady Antebellum a couple of times, Sugarland a couple of times, Tim McGraw, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Trace Adkins, Sara Evans, etc. etc. etc. But it was something then I wasn’t willing to budge on.

If I had it to do over again, I might handle it differently.

If I had it to do over again, I would handle a lot of things differently.

I’ve thought a few times since then I was going to have another wedding. There was the time we were going to have a Braveheart wedding at an outdoor mall. Or the time I was going to perform the service.

My favorite idea is still the one where I send out invitations asking people what they want to do in the wedding so that nobody was offended. The problem with that one is that it requires someone else who also wants that wedding.

So, getting back to hedging, the song kind of depends on the wedding, you know? I don’t know that the same music would fit all those weddings.

But to pick something to honor the request: Lori McKenna’s “Witness To Your Life”

It starts with a wedding — “Someone was crying and the bells ring” — and is still one of the most beautiful promises of partnership I’ve ever heard — “YOu should never have to be alone, someone will always call you home…

“… and I will be that witness to your life.”

Scenes From the Music City

As I mentioned the other day, I went to Nashville. While there, I took pictures. Here are some of them.

 

“Burn, Burn, Burn”

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” — Jack Kerouac

The Power To Go by Paul Calle

Another entry for the Rocket City Bloggers Year-Long Blogging Challenge: What are you passionate about?

What am I passionate about?

Doing my tiny part to put human footprints in the dust of another world. • Enabling someone to get on stage and make people laugh, a lot. • Making my nieces and nephew laugh. • Inspiring someone toward one of those moments where they realize that God is much much bigger than we think. • Telling a story in a way that gets someone excited about something it never occurred to them to be excited about. • Writing words that succeed in saying something I really want to say. • Helping someone I love realize she’s capable of something she didn’t know she could do. • Seeing the world from a slightly different perspective than I’ve seen it before. • Sharing that perspective with someone who’s never had the opportunity to see it. • Heading up a mountain with my hiking stick in my hand. • Hearing a song that resonates through my heart like a tuning fork. • Returning to those places where my soul knows exactly where I am. • Living a moment with friends that I know I’ll be reliving for a long time to come.

Those sorts of things.

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“Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situtation you believe to be the will of God.” — Jim Elliot

“Get absolutely enthralled with something. Throw yourself into it with abandon. Get out of yourself. Be somebody. Do something.” — Norman Vincent Peale

“Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” — John Wesley

“It is a remarkable thing that some of the most optimistic and enthusiastic people you will meet are those who have been through intense suffering.” — Warren Wiersbe

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

“What you risk reveals what you value.” — Jeanette Winterson

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world nees is people who have come alive.” — Gil Bailie

“I don’t want to survive. I want to live!” — Caption of the Axiom, “WALL•E”

“In a world full of people, only some want to fly. Isn’t that crazy?” — Seal

TODDxNashville

(Still catching up a bit)

So earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend TEDxNashville, largely to watch Space Launch System program manager Todd May give a talk.

If you’re not familiar with TED, it’s basically a lecture series around the theme “Ideas Worth Spreading.” There’s the big “real” TED talks, but the organizers allow groups to use the “TEDx” brand to hold their own independent events. (TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design,” which covers a great amount of topics, really.) The talks generally are shorter (for Nashville, no more than 18 minutes), and are supposed to be the “talk of your life” for the speaker’s giving them. No pressure there.

I’ve watched any number of TED and TEDx talks online over the years, but actually being at the event was an interesting experience in ways I hadn’t anticipated. When you watch talks online, you’re generally cherry-picking. Something sounds interesting, so you watch it. Something doesn’t pique your interest, so you scroll past it to find one that does. Sitting in the audience, you’re not cherry-picking. You’re there, and the event unfolds in front of you. I ended up watching talks that I never would have clicked on online, and it was fascinating to have that sort of horizon-broadening experience.

Of course, the highlight for me was Todd’s talk. I’d had the opportunity to be involved in preparations, and it was one of the most fun things I’d worked on at this job. I was also anxious to see how it went. We’d had a dry-run earlier in the week, and Todd was still very much in the process of getting it nailed down. By the day of the talk, however, he knocked it out of the park. It was invigorating seeing the audience reaction as well (several attendees were live-tweeting the event). There was excitement that a real NASA person was at the event and about the reveal of the rocket. It’s easy to get lost in industry perspectives, and it was great seeing the reactions of real people. The work we do still inspires.

The talk should be posted online fairly soon, so I’ll post a link when it is.