I know God told David not to take a census of the people, but so far, he hasn’t told me not to do that with my computers…

From Oldest To Newest:

• * TI-99/4a (My very first computer! Fan Site
• Apple IIc
• Apple IIGS
• Macintosh Color Classic
• Macintosh II
• * Performa 6214CD (My first Mac!)
• Powermac 5260/100
• * Powermac 6500/250
• * PowerMac G3 All-In-One 266Mhz
• * iMac G3/333Mhz (Cherry)
• * iMac G3/333Mhz (Grape)
• * PowerMac G4 Dual 500Mhz
• * eMac G4 1.25Ghz
• * 15″ PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz
• * 20″ iMac G5 2.1Ghz (FrontRow, iSight) [shipped yesterday]
• * Mac Mini Intel Core Solo 1.5Ghz

The asterisk means that we use them frequently still. The others are currently museum pieces. But we still love them!

Bonus…
3G iPod 40GB (non-click wheel)

Well, that’s about it …

For now. 🙂

This morning I got up to go play basketball, as is my Wednesday morning custom. Today was different, or course, as it was my first time back in the gym since badly spraining my ankle two Wednesdays ago. And really, when I got out of bed this morning… I was quite surprised at how good it felt! I strapped on my shoes and felt pretty decent. Not 100% by any means, but pretty good.

Until I tried to do my first jump shot. 🙂

Let’s just say we’re not quite 75% yet… 🙂

But what amazed me is how well it really is doing. If you had seen this ankle two weeks ago, and felt the pain and discomfort for at least the first week and a half, you might be equally amazed. The swelling has not completely gone, but the nasty bruises have mostly cleared up. I have a pretty full range of motion, the ankle just feels “weak”. Not 100%.

As I drove home from shooting around and testing out the ankle, I just marveled at how our bodies heal themselves. Seriously. It’s incredible! How can our bodies so quickly (and with almost no help from me) repair themselves??? It’s so against nature. Natural things decay. Our bodies are constantly wearing down, over time, until they will finally give out. That is the nature of living things in a sin-broken world.

But within that progression toward decay are the moments of healing. You can really see it in younger bodies – like our kids. A cut from two days ago can be completely healed, and unnoticeable. My body certainly healed more quickly when I was a teenager, but even now in my 30s, my ankle is returning to normal at a fairly decent pace.

How incredible.

I’m just taking a moment to notice today the incredible workings that God has designed into our world, and especially our bodies. It is spectacular, to say the least.

I spent this afternoon working on the covers of my two soon-to-be-published books. I had some ideas floating around my head, and got a little creative boost somehow, so I figured I’d put some other things aside and tackle that project.

I was trying to design the covers to reflect the titles of the books. For the book titled “Life In The Rear-View Mirror”, I had considered using a shot through the front window of the car, with perhaps some photos laid on top of the mirror. Instead I just went with a nice shot of the road. It’s a cool photo we took a while back, and I was happy I could use it.

The other book is a book about the church titled, “There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church“. Obviously I wanted to use a photo of a steeple. We have several to choose from as there are four very old church buildings right at the end of our block! 🙂 So I used on of those, and then had this cool idea of putting some photos of people “being the church” underneath the more prominent photo of the steeple.

That’s where it got interesting.

As I was browsing our photo library, looking for pictures that I thought would better reflect the church, I was having trouble selecting just the right one.

At first, I wanted a crowd. But that wasn’t right, since it just suggested a bunch of people watching a show. That’s not the church. Then I wanted some shots of people helping people, like a few shots of people helping us move, or helping build our deck. But that’s not the church, that’s just people helping each other. I even thought I’d get a photo of a dinner or something, but then again… that’s not the church, just people eating together.

And it hit me. Yes, that was the church in all of those cases, in all of those situations. But… the church is not defined by what we do!!!! I could not pick the right photo because a photo captures something we are doing at a moment. I could have just put pictures of people who are part of the church, but that would just look like people.

What defines the church is who we are. Who we belong to. We are the group of people who have learned the truth about who we are. We were created to be in a relationship with the Creator. He made us to be his. To be the church. The people whom he has called out from a life of sin and meaninglessness. That’s who we are… that’s the church.

You can’t really get a photo of that. You just get to live it.

It just reminded me that we need to stop trying to recreate church. Church can not be created. Church is. We are the church because God has made us that. It’s not our buildings, our meetings, or anything that we do together – in our out of those buildings. We are not defined by a name we give ourselves, or a calling, or a ministry, or anything that we do.

(Have I mentioned that yet?)

We are not the church because of what we do. We are the church because of what God did.

Period.

I awoke this morning with a song in my head. As a parent of young children, I’m not ashamed to admit that every once in a while, I’ll have a Wiggles song stuck in my head. 🙂 So as I was showering (with the songs still stuck in my head) I thought it might be fun to play that tune with my piano-learning son. He’s really getting quite good, so I figured I could chart out the notes to the song on a staff, and we could play it together.

As I started to think what the notes and rhythm might be, I remembered why I really don’t like putting music into notation. See, the rhythm of the song (at least in my head) is not something that can be captured on a piece of paper. It’s too alive for that. It needs to have feeling – more than any notation can capture. Yes, even for a Wiggles song.

And that’s when I realized the similarity to some things Jen and I have been discussing of late.

Just this weekend, my wife and I were chatting about relationship vs. institutional thinking. Primarily we were marveling at the way our society loves to glorify the systems we create. We have chosen to educate our children at home, rather than enrolling them in an educational institution. We think the benefits far outweigh any challenges for us. It’s just much more alive. It’s personal, relational and we can perfectly tailor our kids’ education to their personalities and learning styles. And, more than just lining them up in little desks and teaching them what we think they should learn at that moment, we are sensitive to what the day brings, and use each moment to form their hearts and minds. Or, in other words, to educate them.

It’s the same for Jen and I in our relationship with God and the church. For years, we’ve been part of the system that would attempt to contain that living reality in a well organized structure of programs, meetings, leaders and members. But over the past several years, God has shown us a bigger, yet simpler, reality. What we have always really known and taught, that life with him is an everyday relationship, yet now we are perhaps more genuinely living that out as we really live our every day with him. We do not compartmentalize him within a building, or a time, or even our own “quiet times”. He is central to everything we do. So different, and yet always what we have known and attempted to live out.

Somehow, even with the best of intentions, we are so good at creating structures. Not necessarily physical. Often they are just organizational. We have many groups you can be part of. Even beyond all the groups within the church. There’s boy scouts, girl scouts, community groups… all sorts of ways to organize our relationships. These are obviously not bad in themselves – what I am perplexed by is how it seems we must always do this. Why must we organize or attempt to “notate” everything we do.

Life can not be institutionalized. Relationships can not be bottled. We are organic. We’re alive. Dynamic. So, life with each other can not be captured by a system or formula. Much like music, which is more than just a formula, can not truly be captured by black circles on a page.

There is freedom in this. There is life in life. I’m not sure there is in an institution. Institutions deal with numbers and results. Life deals with people and relationships. There is some level of co-existence, but we are finding that every institution we can think of is only a limitation of real life.

So enjoy life today. Don’t try to capture it. Just live it.

A day or two ago, after I gave Ian some behavioral instructions, I noticed that he tends toward obeying the “letter of the law” as opposed to the heart of the instructions. Many times if I give him a positive instruction, he will do it… but in his own way. Or, if I give him some restriction or boundary, he’ll find a way to stay within the boundaries, yet really go against the heart of my instructions.

Once I noticed this the other day, I told him someday he will learn that life can not be found in skirting the border of lawfulness (I didn’t use those words), but only in understanding the heart of “the law”. Jesus said the law and the prophets can be summed up in two things. First, love God with all you are. Then he said the second is just like it, love the people around you. So basically, the heart of the law is love. Love other people, and God. That doesn’t mean finding ways to do what you want that techinically meet the “requirements”. It means obeying, or loving, in your heart.

Hmm. Jesus said, if you love me, you’ll obey my commands. Sometimes we use that to beat people over the head. “If you really love Jesus, you’ll OBEY him!” As though if you don’t’ obey (the letter of the law) then you do not love him. But if you did keep some code of law, then you obviously do. What if it just means that as we do love him (regardless of our “performance”) that will be obedience to him? As we do love him, he transforms our “behavior” from the inside. From the heart.

Does that makes sense? I thought it was a pretty neat insight into my relationship with God through a little testing of the boundaries from my seven year old son.

Thanks, Ian. 🙂

Tonight was portrait night. A friend got us a free sitting and free 8 x 10 at Sears Portrait studio, and my wife being a big fan of photos took the opportunity to get the kids all dressed up (and my Mom took the opportunity to get them something to dress up in) and we headed to Eastview Mall.

Well, no trip to Eastview is complete without a stop at the Apple Store! So, we headed there before AND AFTER the photo shoot! (We are so awesome!) 🙂

Alex knows his way around the store, and around a computer, so he set himself up at one of the display models and began taking some self portraits (unbeknownst to us!) He came over and showed us the photos, and they were SO GREAT! So I quickly mailed them to myself at home!

When I got home, I made a little web page that rotated the 4 shots he took. It’s hilarious!!! So, check out our computer savvy, and ultra cool little boy… IN MOTION! 🙂

basicmm.com/personal/alex

This afternoon I have been working on a fun little project for basic, and our basicmm.com website. April 2006 is the 10th Anniversary of our first CD, Another Road Trip. So, we’re putting together some fun promotional stuff.

Well, as I was writing the content for the special 10th Anniversary page (and I was nearly at the end, I might add…) my computer just shut off. Off! The power didn’t go. There were no other warning signs. It just shut off. This happened before. But we thought that might have been a bad hard drive or something.

Maybe not?

Whatever the cause, my heart just sank.

See, not only did I lose this afternoon’s work, due to busyness and no saving… I thought I might have lost EVERYTHING. That’s what happened last time. I lost my back-up hard drive. Argh. More than argh. I have NO BACK UP at the moment. Because, my nice new 500GB hard drive decided to give out on me a couple weeks ago. In fact, I was in the process of recovering those files when my computer shut off. (And there’s no guarantee I can do that.)

SO…

I might have lost ALL of my file. My files, my clients files, our iTunes library. All of it.

Needless to say, that was not a pleasant feeling thinking about that.

Well, it was about 82-85º in my office when my computer shut down… I thought maybe the heat had something to do with it. So I opened the windows, and tried to cool it off. Sure enough, I heard a little bleep, and my computer started up again. Like nothing happened at all!

Can you say, “WHEW!”???!??!

So everything fires up again, and all is well. I am a little miffed that I lost my entire afternoon’s work, but quite thankful that all my other files were spared.

As all the programs are opening, I noticed I had a new mail message, so I checked that before I went back and started recreating all that I had lost. It was a message from Jen. 🙂 Nice. (Now, before you think, “Why is his WIFE sending him EMAIL from downstairs??!” it was a forward from someone else that she wanted me to read. It’s not really that weird…) 🙂

Here’s what the e-mail said:

Begin forwarded message:

From: “David and Linda Mead” <davlind@verizon.net>
Date: March 30, 2006 9:14:31 AM EST
To: “Dave & Linda Mead” <davlind@verizon.net>
Subject: Pray for the Passmore Family

Hi all,

The Passmore family are in need of your prayers. Two sons, Ben (18) and Matt (16) went to be with the Lord yesterday suddenly in an automobile accident. They also have one older son and 3 younger children. Please pray. They are a homeschooling family that are in another chapter, but many may know from HIS Baseball or HIS Soccer.

In Him,
Linda

It was an email from one of the LEAH group leaders (a homeschool network here in town). A family had just lost their two teenage sons. I almost cried, thinking of our two sons, and how horrible it would be to lose our boys that way, at that young age.

And then I realized, almost shamefully, how much my heart was pained by the loss of all my data. Granted, it would cost me hours and hours and even weeks to recover all that I had lost – not recover, recreate. And granted, I already knew that in the grand scheme, it was meaningless. But still… what a strangely timed eye-opener.

I am praying for the Passmores as I type right now. I hope they can know God’s peace and comfort right now. I hope they know He will get them through. I can’t imagine the pain they feel from this loss.

I am also quite humbled and almost embarrassed by my petty anguishing over lost data. Thank you God for the reminder of what is important. Thank you for also saving me hours of recreating this stuff, but thanks most of all for my precious family. I am so lucky for every moment of life I get to share with them.

May I never take that for granted.

I no sooner posted this, then I get notification via snail mail (yes, I thought that was interesting too…) that the Apple store will not be hiring me at this time. 🙂

It’s too bad… I wanted the discount. I wanted to hang out with Apple stuff and Apple people one day a week. But at the same time, I knew it was too much right now. I essentially told the store managers that in my interview time. I said, “I really can only work one day a week, and that’s it.” They wanted more like 24 hours of availability per week for part time.

So, I knew it would be great flexibility on their part if it worked out. Apparently there were more flexible people for them. 🙂

I’m glad, really. Now I can continue to help people find the best Apple stuff for them, and hang out in the store anytime I can, and get to know pretty much everyone who works there – who are big Apple fans like me – I just won’t get paid to do it, or that big employee discount.

Hmm. That didn’t sound all that good, did it? 🙂

But the really good thing is, I will not be doing one more thing now. I don’t think I need “one more thing” right now.

That’s for sure. 🙂

Well, it’s over.

Two weeks with my kids. Two weeks away from my computer (mostly). Two weeks of nothing regular at all. Two weeks of diaper changes, meal times, household chores, family errands and entertaining three rambunctious tiny tots.

Two weeks that I thoroughly enjoyed.

It’s weird. I really figured that I would wake up today feeling completely overwhelmed. Two weeks away from your work is crazy. Things pile up. And, to a degree they have. But, even though the task is large, I think the break of more than one complete cycle (a week) has re-invigorated me. I really woke up today excited to get back in action. 🙂

And yet, I already miss reading and playing with my kids. Getting them dressed and eating breakfast. Watching our favorite 80s TV show. Going on a walk to the store or the library.

The cool thing is (as I have mentioned before) family is certainly a priority for me, and so, those things will still happen, just not as often as the past two weeks.

So, I am grateful for them. And, I am grateful to be back. Not sure how that’s possible, but… that’s how I’m feeling today.

Today I was at the hospital because of my sprained ankle, and something the doctor said just confirmed how silly I think science is. Not really science. I love science. Actually, it’s always been one of my favorite subjects. I read the science related headlines at news sites, I visit the NASA site pretty often, and I even enjoy a good sci-fi show. (Does that count?) 🙂

The funny thing is, there is a segment of the populous that elevates science and the Scientific Method above all else. Scientific thought is supreme. Anyone who dares question the prevailing thought of the day on a subject is either ignorant or has some agenda. Or, they are just not dealing with “science”. (The Intelligent Design stuff, for example.)

As the doctor examined my foot, and explained some things I could do for my foot, he said, “It’s debatable whether ice actually helps or not.” Now, if you will recall with me what your mother taught you, ice is the first thing you do for a sprained ankle! And, on the sheet they send you home with, I was instructed to ice the foot 4 to 6 times a day! There seems to be some difference of opinion there!

This is my point.

Everyone has the same facts. Everyone also can come to their own conclusions from the facts. There is no consensus in science, though the secular crowd would like to suppose that there is. Did you know that I have actually met a flesh and blood human being who believes that the earth is the center of the universe and that everything else revolves around it. Really. And he has lots, and lots of evidence and reasoning to back it up.

See, the thing is, science is not really helpful at all for determining answers. We can figure out some things, but if any variable changes (and last time I checked, this entire world is all about “change”) then you have a different answer. AND, over the years, “science” changes its mind about what it thinks, or there are varying views among peers.

I prefer to keep an open mind and will listen more to someone who does not come across as though they have the universe completely figured out.

I’m not God, so… I can’t do that.

You? 🙂