It's finally here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Well, finally the news everyone has been waiting for. I am now officially an appointee with Pioneers. So now I get to start figuring out all the details of raising support, what my position will look like, and everything else. I'm planning on joining a team called ComNet whose objective is to tell stories in the field using media such as video, photography, writing, graphic design, and anything else that might help communicate real life stories. For me, this is an incredibly exciting time, as I finally begin to learn what God has had in the works for me over the last decade or so. I have purpose and direction, and it couldn't be sweeter. Oh, and a huge plug for Pioneers, if you're looking for a mission organization that can use your specific talents and giftings, Pioneers is the place. If you're looking for a rigidly structured, hierarchical organization that will TELL you where you will be used, Pioneers is probably NOT the place for you. This week in Orlando getting to know the staff, and vice versa, has been invaluable. What an amazing colleciton of really neat people! (For more info, go to www.pioneers.org or contact me.) So in the next day or so I will have my Pioneers account number, and if any of you would be interested in more than prayer support, any sort of donation can be taken, once I provide a couple more details.

So it looks like I'll be stationed in Turkey or Thailand, and from there will be sent on assignments to areas within that larger region. So Turkey would provide access to Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Thailand would provide access to most of Asia. From what I've heard, there will be no shortage of interest in media as a communicator, and I will be busy all the time, which sounds good to me. As for when I could leave, it's hard to say without having raised support and finished some of the other requirements of my appointment. But the start is nearer now than it's ever felt before, and I couldn't be more thrilled about it. Most of you can expect that I'll be getting in contact with you all in a less impersonal way than a blog... like a mass email or some sort of elaborate set up of lanterns and morse code, only communicated at dusk from the bow of a ship anchored offshore in a North by Northwesterly direction... Ta for now.

And then it was done

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So first of all, thank you to the handful of people who have been uncontrollably supportive of my film endeavor. It's been a rapidly slow-moving journey, full of unexpected turns of events, frustrations, and victories, an age of personal growth. A sort of microcosm of the real world, the great moments being tempered by frustrations and difficulties. And now it's over. At least that's what I'm saying right now. Definitive statements have a way of biting me in the backside.

So I came back to AK to show "Bible Camp" in Anchorage again, the idea being that I heard from quite a few people who had been disappointed about missing the other showing, and wanted to make it available again. So I rented the Abbott Loop auditorium again, this time three months in advance, got a completely new poster/postcard/trailer idea (courtesy of Greger Wright and Jessica Clark), created a new trailer, updated the old ones, had posters/cards printed, and put together promotional packages for churches in the Anchorage area. The packages even has a DVD with the trailers, further information, and a clip from the film. It was another huge time investment, but well worth it since it would allow a broader audience to hear about it and come and support the film and ministry. Everything was looking much better this time around than the last, especially the timing, not at holiday time, not in conjunction with any major Anchorage events, and also during my spring break. The stars had aligned, and all was perfectly in line for beating my previous showing's meager 35+ audience.



Twenty-five people showed up.



I was pretty excited about the day, so at the time I was totally cool. People were generous with their giving, and I got more very positive responses from the attendees. I even pretty much broke even, so ultimately things went fairly well even from a financial standpoint. I knew, however, that for the next few days I would have a hard time thinking of anything but how disappointed I had been in the turnout. Was all the work worth it? I spent hours upon hours redesigning, calling pastors, burning DVDs, calling pastors again, scheduling, praying about it all, and 25 people showed up. That's what I knew I'd be expecting in the coming days. But it never really came to that.

I don't know where this sort of optimistic outlook on life has come from, but I honestly didn't perseverate on the downers of the small group I hosted at Abbott Loop. Sure there was a little disappointment that certain people didn't come, that there was far less support than I was expecting, but overall the exact right people showed up. Not only my fan-club of a group of friends, but some real key people in Alaska ministry, and some truly generous people whose giving was far more than I could have expected. Jack and Mary Lou Bacher later sent me a check which covers my Pioneers orientation fees, which is an astonishing blessing, certainly a miracle I didn't expect. The outpouring of love I received from the people there was incredible, and I consider it a privilege to have experienced joy from disappointment. I have more to say, but it'll have to wait for another blog. My further comments are of a less optimistic nature, a bit of chastising, so I'll save it for another time. But yeah, I guess I'm continuing to grow up despite my best efforts to stunt my own growth. Something like spiritual puberty, maybe. Oh man, there are so many mostly-inappropriate jokes I'm thinking about now. Uh, okay, so maybe not spiritual puberty... Uh, *voice crack*... [awkward pause] see you later.

Soppnerism? Sort of, but not quite.

So I was doing a bit of typing today and when writing the word "opportunity," I accidentally transposed my o's and p's. I kind of giggled to myself as I sat in a coffee shop surrounded by strangers.

Just thought I'd take this pooprtunity to let you all know.

Bros before schmos

So I have a new band I'm in love with. This doesn't happen all that often as I'm pretty picky about the kind of music I'll listen to 15 or 20 times in a week's span. The music I become obsessed with has to have a balance of instrumental and vocal performance (or no vocals at all works well), and a pleasing mix of virtuosity and accessibility. Now of course, certain albums have snuck past the gatekeeper (John Mayer's Continuum is one that immediately comes to mind) So if your qualifications are in any way similar to mine you might also love this new band: Punch Brothers. Their first album, released a week and a half ago is aptly called "Punch."

The frontman for the freshly-formed Punch Brothers is Nickel Creek mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (Thee-lee), one of my favorite musicians in recent years. Actually, to be honest I get a little jealous of people my age who have such amazing levels of success, but it's so danged good. If you're a fan of Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Newgrass Revival, Nickel Creek, Tony Trischka, music, art, sweaters, cats, Precious Moments Figurines, guano, spelunking, historical-fiction, or crepes, you just might like these guys.

Oh, and I wasn't exaggerating about 15 or 20 times in the last week. It's been something like that. Mmmmmm... meaty music with emotion and intellect... delicious.

"Come on... You can do it... Just a little bit more... A little bit more... Almost there... Almost... there..."

So one of the hard parts of my job is that I have to be really careful about talking about the students. There are certain confidentiality issues that can not be breached, and in the interest of complying, I'll tell you a completely anonymous story about a student, a human male or female or hermaphrodite, of school age at the public or private school I work at nestled comfortably at the edge of a Western Hemisphere ghetto. This particular unit was having a particularly difficult morning, and was having a hard time engaging itself in our class's morning check-in time, wherein all units and educational facilitators describe how they are feeling at the moment, something they did the night before, and a goal they have for the day. This particular unit often has a hard time pulling itself together in the morning, and in a frustrated state will put its head down on its desk and refuse to get up. In an effort to encourage said unit to sit up and engage in check-in, I leaned in closer, lending a stream of encouraging words to its ear in the hopes that its spirits would be raised to an adequate degree of functionality. As I spoke, the unit began his own stream of encouragements, each phrase said slowly and deliberately, likened unto a scene from any number of Disney sports movies where the crushed hero is raised from the edge of despair by a single clap which slowly and deliberately leads to an entire stadium, city, county, state, region, nation and hemisphere taking on that applause with great gusto, thereby encouraging the hero to take up his burden and complete the task. This was the gist of this unit's self-encouragement. (Note: To be read extremely slowly, each phrase being raised in pitch as it reaches any punctuation, in the exact fashion an educator would encourage an emotionally fragile student, male, female, or hermaphrodite.)

"Come on... You can do it... Just a little bit more... A little bit more... Almost there... Almost... there..."

And all the while the unit is slowly raising itself off of its desk in the exact position it had started with, arms crossed, forehead pressed against the arms. It was perhaps one of the funniest things I've seen in the last couple months. Yeah, Disney certainly doesn't have a death-grip on the minds of children, and certainly not to the end that emotions are learned by watching a screen instead of direct interaction with real people... But that's a different blog entirely...

ONE LAST HURRAH!!!

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So I'm back at it again. And I think it's going to be for the last time. I'm arranging one last showing of "Bible Camp" at Abbott Loop in Anchorage, March 28, 7pm. Well, I've already arranged it, and am pretty much ready to go with everything. Just need to put some things together, and I'll be all ready to go with plenty of time to spare. So here's the thing, I need as many proponents with all this as I can get. I have three freshly updated trailers, a new 6 minute featurette where I actually sit IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA and explain why I made this DVD, and how important it is for people in Alaska to take care of their own. These are all posted on youtube, at www.myspace.com/BibleCampDVD , and will be available on a special DVD, which will also include a 4 minute clip from the full-length DVD. I need y'all to talk to the people at your church and tell them you can get a DVD with all the info they'd need, posters and fliers to hang, and a butt-load of postcards as a way to support ministry in the interior (and also Christian documentary filmmaking, eh?). Seriously, let's get on the ball with all this. It'll all be available in Alaska within the week if you wish to hand-deliver the goods. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your congressman, tell your mailman, tell your grocer (is there such a thing anymore?) Tell people to go to the Bible Camp myspace page (www.myspace.com/BibleCampDVD) and become a friend, and go onto youtube and subscribe to my channel, or at least take a look at it. I no longer have the energy or resources to keep doing this, as it's certainly not bringing in enough capital to keep it going, so I'm planning on making this my last showing, at least the last one I organize myself. It's time to move forward, but not without one last hurrah. So mark it on your calendar, March 28, 7pm, Abbott Loop. Last chance to see it on a big screen, and let me tell you, it looks pretty sweet on the screen at Abbott Loop. Anyway, there it is. Enjoy.

Like a rope-curtain for your neck!

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I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Now, I can't really be critical of people's hair since I haven't had a haircut since last July, but I saw what can only be seen as a mistake: the elusive dreadlock mullet. So here's what I think happened when this poor guy was at the barber.




"So what can I do for you, sir?"
"Well, I've been growing my dreads out for a while, and they're getting pretty nappy, so I want to cut them off."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yeah. I'm trying to get a job in Portland Public Schools and need to look presentable."
"Okay then. You know, once I start cutting, there's no turning back."
"Yeah, I know. I've psyched myself up pretty good for this, so let's just do it before I change my mind."

And so the barber began cutting, starting in the front and working toward the back. He had to sharpen his hedge-trimmers a couple times in the process, but eventually managed to hack his way through the front half of dreads. At this point, he began untangling the ends of the dreads that were still stumpily-attached to the young man's head. He worked slowly but meticulously, and in an effort to forget about the haircut that was about to erase years of unwashable bliss, the young man fell asleep at the chair.

The front was starting to come along, and a fresh, presentable young man was emerging from the nappy forest. Stopping to admire his work, the barber slowly rotated the chair back and forth in front of the shop's enormous plate-glass mirrored wall. The rotations startled the young man out of his slumber. Fortunately the barber's scissors were sheathed at the time, because the young man jumped a little as he came to. Groggily his eyes focused on the enormous mirror, and seeing the business front he'd just been given, and smiled with naive content. As he admired his new potential for mainstream social-acceptance, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the reflection of a clock mounted on the opposite wall.

"Oh crap! I'm late for my interview!"

And with that, he whipped out of the chair, slapped a twenty into the hand of the barber and was out the door, back-door-dreads whipping in the whirlwind of complete unawareness. And the rest was history. He arrived at his interview six hours early, got the job, but spent the rest of his money on an FBI fingerprinting, a requirement for working for the school district. So he didn't have the money to get the rest of the dreads taken care of, and ended up keeping them out of sheer poverty.

And then he found a dollar.

The end.

Utopian Cinema

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Back in October I wrote about my visit to the Bend Film Festival. Without expecting to, I met a couple documentary directors, both of whom gave me some really sound advice. (For that advice, see my October blogs.) One of the directors, Tom Putnam (Red, White, Black and Blue) told me that I could send him my film, and that while he wouldn't be able to watch it anytime soon, he would eventually watch it and let me know what he thought. I decided I needed a few more things together before I went ahead and sent it to him, and ended up sending it a couple weeks ago. Well, within 10 days of sending it to him, Mr. Putnam sent me an email saying that he had watched it, and that if I wanted to talk with him about it, I could give him a call at home. So I did.

So in a perfect world, my Bible Camp film would have looked much different. I would have chosen three or four kids in different villages (probably something like Galena, Nulato, and Selawik because of their differing sub-cultures) and periodically followed them around for an entire year, culminating in coming to Kokrine Hills (or not) in the summer. The actual formation and story of the camp would have become the backbone of a film about life-change as evidenced in the lives of a few kids. This would have eliminated the need for so much narration, and would have created a real bond between the viewer and the subject. Now if I had spent $50,000 of someone else's money, I could definitely have gotten that done, and would have had a far superior (well, at least a more universal) film. But I spent over $8000 of my own money because I didn't know of any other way to get this story out there. So it was great to talk with Tom about how my film could have been better, but ultimately his advice was exactly what I would have wanted to do if I had had the budget (and time...) to do so. So while it was slightly disappointing that I didn't feel like I had received some incredible jewel of wisdom, I did feel like I was far more knowledgeable about this stuff than maybe my experience alone would dictate. Score one for understanding.

So what did I come away with after my 25 minute conversation with Tom Putnam? Pretty much a little more confidence that someday I'll have the chance to really make something stellar, and I think I'll know how to do it, or at least I'll think I know what I'm doing and will dive headlong into some project which will completely absorb me, and eventually I'll have something to show for it. Maybe. Oh, I also came away with a home phone number for a real-life filmmaker. Prank calls anyone? Just kidding. (I'm only explaining that I'm kidding on the off chance that Tom Putnam accidentally runs into this blog someday and is totally creeped out by that last phrase, which would be completely understandable... He said as he nervously rocked and giggled to himself... Heh... Go get a copy of "Red White Black and Blue!" It was 7 years in the making, and it's really good! Props to Tom.) The end.

Take it with a grain of salt. Heck, take it with a BAG of salt if necessary...

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So I've been thinking about grief lately. And I understand that there is plenty of Christian literature out there on the topic, but because of my own personal prejudices, I haven't read them, so if I write something that sounds like a copy of what someone else said, props to them for thinking it first. (It's not that I'm opposed to Christian lit [anymore] it's just that I know so many people who take to heart so much of what a particular author says, there's no longer any room to take things with a grain of salt. Just a single grain of salt, that's all I ask for... That and a 17" macbook pro. But I already mentioned that in blogs past. Wink.)

This evening I saw a rather interesting film called "Across the Universe." The film follows the lives of a half dozen characters as their lives and relationships change from the ultra-conservativism of the 1950s to the radical upheaval of the Vietnam war in the 1960s, and winds down near the beginning of the 1970s. The film itself is definitely worth a viewing, though I recommend it with reservation (there is some drug use, sexual content, and brief nudity that keep me from freely recommending this to everyone and their mom.) The filmmaker does a great job showing the contrasts between where each character starts and where they end up at the end of the film. There are two main characters from a rather well-to-do family, who make some rather radical turns away from the lifestyle of their upbringing. One poignant moment is when the daughter of this family is making a phone call to her mother from a phone booth just outside a demonstration she's planned to join. The mother says something to the effect of "I don't want to lose my beautiful daughter," and I was struck by that for some reason. The mother didn't think she'd be able to bear the grief of losing her daughter. This is certainly not revolutionary thought, but it really seemed to connect with other events today, events I've been pondering.

I've been thinking a lot about the way we deal with hardships. For we Americans, pain is something we avoid, something we loathe, something we fear. So much of what we do in our lives is to further aid us in our blind quest for comfort. And we won't be happy until we're comfortable. (Now, ever so slowly take a heaping tablespoon of salt and slowly grind it whilst reading on.) I need an iPhone. I need a new jacket. I need (gulp) a new 17" Macbook Pro. And yet in all our quest for comfort, we have become some of the world's most mal-adjusted people. We are the ones who have sheltered ourselves from pain and grief and discomfort so much that when we do experience those things, we don't know how to deal with it. It's like the little kid who never quite engages socially, and from then on has a hard time relating to people. (And as you're still grinding, you quietly think to yourself, hmmm, that last part seemed a bit on the auto-biographical side. Crunch, crunch, crunch...) We have become a nation of socially-retarded little kids who don't know how to deal with our own problems. Broadly speaking, of course. In a general and stereotypical mindset. But hey, if I fit that stereotype, there's a good chance someone else out there does too. (Crunch. And you're now only half-reading because you're imagining Dayn awkwardly sidling up to other kids on the playground, hoping someone would have some strange desire to talk with him and be his friend even though he doesn't have the juevos to initiate any sort of conversation. Crunch. Grind.)

From my observations of other cultures, so many people groups are either content with little, or don't know any better, and are at the very least not a society of over-medicated angst-ridden little social-lepers. I certainly don't begrudge those in that position, myself included. I grew up with very little grief other than the very American self-inflicted kind, and therefore I am not able to condemn as much as I'm able to observe. Does anyone else think, generally speaking, that people in the good old US of A we don't understand that life that is not tempered with grief leads one to a path of inability to deal with problems later in life? Of course we all deal with grief in our lives, but sometimes I think what we call grief is often just dissatisfaction with discomfort. Or maybe I'm just ranting because I feel like it. (Okay, you now have two options: A, you can spit out the salt, thereby beginning to rid yourself of its negative properties, or B, you can swallow the salt, providing a much needed amount of grief, and potentially followed by the need for a deluge of water to quench the salt's fury. Choose wisely...)

Voices for the voiceless?

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So I'm becoming increasingly convinced that certain people never learn to speak properly. And I'm not talking about parts of speech or grammar, or any of the usual things I complain about. I'm discovering that certain people never got beyond using some sort of weak falsetto. Unfortunately I've only observed this phenomenon in women, so this may seem fairly gender-biased, though that's hardly the point. Anyway, some women don't know how to use their voice.

I don't know if the problem is that some women discover they have a low voice and just try to bump it up a few notches, or if it's simply an inability to access the strong part of their voice, but I know of a few women whose voices are so piddly, it's a wonder they ever made it this far in life. So the specific person I'm thinking of is the art teacher at the school I work at. I try not to bask specific people in my blog, people who can be discovered by certain sleuthy-type people who happen to know all the right people, but I think I can make an exception this time. No real names, but if you work at my school you'll know who it is, though I can't imagine anyone from my school reading this... ANYWAY, to start, this woman has no classroom management skills. Threats may be made, but the kids know she's the furthest thing from threatening. Once a sickly kitten subbed for the class and held things together with greater ease and panache. The kids certainly don't respect her, and I think the number one problem is her lack of a voice.

For a moment, imagine my voice, which projects fairly well, and gives me some sort of initial credibility to those who don't know me. Now imagine me talking half as loudly, but in a mock-woman's voice, laden with frustration and apathy. The longer I keep this up, the more foolish I appear. Ugh. And on top of it all, every silly art project is given weeks to be finished, while the kids I work with finish each one in fifteen minutes, leaving the rest of the week nearly completely devoid of structure. Oh joy. And all because this poor lady never learned how to use her voice. Amazing.