EricNentrup.com

What follows is a bit thick. Not because it’s that profound, but because I’m going to leave it unabridged for the hope that it connects, spurs, ignites.

I Googled “I’m tired of church” and found Katie’s blog

I just read her entry for September 28, 2004 entitled, “Wafflling Religion, Firm Faith.” Here’s my reply.

Tonight we attended a concert by invitation of some friends that was hosted by the local Unitarian church (which I was raised to believe full of people who would go to hell). Ironically, inside their building, I had a “now wait a minute” sense that I shouldn’t have been so quick to write them off back in those days. They respect EVERYBODY. They are taught to LOVE everybody.

Well, exercising my curiosity, I went to the UU church’s website when I got home and I do have conflicts with their “whatever-works-for-you” doctrine. In fact it seems oxymoronic for them to have ANY doctrine. Kind of like a group of non-conformists getting together to celebrate their non-conformity. They become what they are against, and are suddenly FOR nothing at all.

But what I think IS appealing to me is that they’re not quick to judge, and they’re aware of the PRESENT. Plus they just don’t reek of the nascar/proudtobeanamerican/republican/gotowar/don’t read fiction/ christians I find in the conventional churches. Even the “Emerging Church” style movement is the same thing all over again, but with looser social views.

So where is God in all of this? How do I eradicate all those farmers-almanac-style bits of simple advice and lifestyle without coring out my relationship and belief in Jesus? Do I start with a clean slate, and read the bible from beginning to end, THEN read some other classics, and derive a new order for myself, and dare I say, possibly for a reformed church?

Like you, I just want to learn to love God and be his man. I want to reciprocate what Jesus did for me on the cross. And I want to find community of others I can learn from in that pursuit.

Lastly, I’ll say this. There are a BUNCH of us. We need to get together. I don’t mean LITERALLY. I mean, we need to start talking to each other. I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open. Maybe we’ll launch a site or something.

Enough with the convention. Let’s find the path together.

End reply to Katie’s blog

I googled that phrase “I’m tired of church” tonight and didn’t have to read past Katie’s thoughts to feel compelled to come back to this sprawling entry. She said it well enough. The thing is, I’m having a snowballing accumulation of those types of conversations with people. And I don’t mean just generally disgruntled churchgoers. I mean SERIOUSLY disconnected believers who desperately don’t want to stop believing.

Here’s the litmus test. You’re in the club if you can HONESTLY say the following words haven’t NOR COULD EVER come out of your mouth:

(speaking to someone like me) “Eric, there’s NO SUCH THING as a perfect church”"Well, are you seeking God?”"You just need to pray/read/confess/study/meditate/fast/change your diet/take out the trash…..”"God’s only a prayer away!”"Let go and let God!”

Retyping those cliches even gets my dander up. So. Now that I’ve established that…some of you currently able to say phrases like that or watered-down versions and paraphrases of them, be forewarned. You’re NOT in the club. Yet.

Now, back to the title of today’s column…

I actually used the Title phrase in a conversation with Rudy this past week. And wouldn’t you know it–I’ve forgotten the SPECIFIC context. But I know generally it’s in regard to our frustration with trying to understand God TODAY when all we have are YESTERDAY’S tools. Or in most “contemporary” instances, imitations or modded versions of yesterday’s tools.

And for those churches who are “emergent” or are doing something vintage, I’m a bit reminded of a real-estate developer who would buy an old building in a metropolitan area–one that has 75-year-old hardwood floors that creak and are worn, one with a bar that is actually indented from years of patrons leaning their elbows on the rail, and tarnished brass, etc. Then to have a demo crew GUT the building and he replaces the interior with “vintage” furniture and “distressed” paint/finishing and fake antique artifacts like signs, old toys, sporting good stuff, etc. to give it a REAL feeling of yesterday. Well, it might feel old and authentic, but it’s just something that APPEARS that way. The TRUE character has unfortunately been replaced by something absolutely NOT authentic. It’s close, but we know it’s fake.

Rudy and I grew up going to church together, and have both traveled the gamut from “ultra-conservative,” to “throw-the-rules-out-the-window.” I think we both hold dearly the protection we were offered in growing up in that setting, but in the past decade, in our own ways, we have both become PAINFULLY, PAINFULLY aware of the shortcomings that such a black & white mentality has had. I mean, it didn’t take living in the real world for very long at all to discover that things just didn’t fit into such easy boxes as “this is of God” and “this is of the devil” or what have you.

In the past few years of our mid-to-late twenties, Rudy and I have both had times when we’ve not understood the subject of God at all, to the point of agnosticism, because it was apparent that He wasn’t showing up to speak for Himself when we asked him to. It culminated for both of us (and to some degree for our wives as well) in being pissed that we couldn’t SEE God or that we couldn’t FEEL God. Yet in the midst of our weekly routines we’re still going to church, sitting through the sermons and singing the songs.

Kim’s even said that I was like a “worm on a hook” sitting in church, squirming and wanting out of the situation as soon as possible. She was right! I did and can STILL feel the butt twitch, not out of guilt or some sense that I’ve got “unfinished business.” But out of the disappointing awareness that Church is (HERE IT COMES!) “pre-emptively wrought with convention.”

I think what I meant when I said that out-loud to Rudy (and he said I HAD to put the fifty-dollar phrase in my blog) is that when you take a break from church, get that longing to give it another try, and pick a new place to attend, that INSTANTLY, you’re not in a NEW place at all! NO! You’re caught up in a whirlwind of trite, hackneyed ideas. Or so they seem.

We’re now attending a new church that we’ve decided to be a part of warts and all. And I’m seeing the warts. But warts aren’t so bad as long as you toss out the magnifying glass. I’m not crazy about it, but I believe it’s a good place. I just can’t seem to shake this smugness that I’m smarter than everybody else I meet at church. Like they don’t even know….like they don’t even know…hmm….LIKE THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I DON’T EVEN KNOW. How ’bout that? I’m awful!

They’re already sweeping us into their weekly “small groups” and I can smell us being sized up for serving according to our abilities. And that’s fine. I don’t even get nervous anymore when I hear someone fire up that strange vacuum all churches have hidden somewhere that’s guaranteed to try and suck the life out of you.

We’re going to keep at it. Kim and I are going to keep attending. I’ll tell you what happens in the weeks ahead.

In the meanwhile, I want to start to hear from people who are likewise not feeling connected and wondering what it’s all about. Maybe you never EVER had a sense of connection. Maybe someone you know sounds like the gal Katie I mentioned above or like me as you’ve read my writing here. Send them to me. I want to know.

Jake’s reply to yesterday’s rant spurred me. I griped but offered no alternative to my media criticism. And he was right, technology (and motivation) is the answer to the crummy stuff we see from the Network News. And I didn’t even make the connection that I and many others involved with reading and writing blogs are already adopting it!

As I’ve mentioned in a recent email to the ENdC mailing list, conventional blogs (more formally known as Content Management Systems) use a neat form of code called RSS. It’s related to a bigger standard, XML. Well, folks have realized that the consistency of the STRUCTURE of these frequently updated blogs makes it easy to AGGREGATE the stories from the pretty looking website into a program that looks a lot like your email app. This “News Reader” is the MOST EFFICIENT WAY for one to sift through MORE content whether it’s sports, general blogging, headline news, finances, geek stuff, etc. TONS of conventional sites out there are offering links to their RSS Feed that you can plug into your News Reader and get new articles/posts/scores/updates in much the same way you get new email. It’s fantastic and you’re all going to be doing it by the end of the year anyway. Might as well take a few minutes, go to the appropriate download site for your OS and get a News Reader! Most come with some feeds already to get you started. And BTW, my link to my feed is at the bottom of this page!

Geek Speak over.

Man. I’m watching CNBC’s “The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch for the first time tonight, and turn up the volume as I see he’s interviewing Robert Redford via satellite from Park City, Utah as the Sundance Film Festival ramps up this week.

Donny reviews Redford’s success and I tune in particularly when I see a great clip from “All The President’s Men.” I love that film. Donny follows the clip with a question quite similar to this:

“Robert, do you think that the filmmakers passing through your festival these days understand the importance of the that film, understand the significance to the Watergate scandal. do they understand the role of film in telling the stories of our time?”

Redford collects his thoughts and says something to the effect of:

“Good question. Technology is changing so fast–it’s moving at the speed of a freight train through our culture, and I don’t know how much time you want to spend on discussing the relevance of even THIS on our culture–”

CUT to Donny INTERRUPTING: “Robert, before we’re out of time, any thoughts or comments about Johnny Carson?”

That’s when I quit listening. You may need to read the exchange again, but simply, what happened is they took the interview at length, (along with the OTHER interviews they deemed worthwhile) and pared it down to the significant core of the conversation. But the producer seemingly didn’t know what he was doing when he signed off on the editing that cut Redford off at a natural pause, but a HIGHLY unnatural point in his reply. Redford was ABOUT to expound and pontificate (and in my opinion 67 year old masters of the craft like R-Squared get that privilege). And if you opt NOT to let them, DO NOT cut them off in the middle of the setup to their thought. Read it again. Redford didn’t say ANYTHING worth keeping in his reply. But I’d bet he said SOMETHING worth listening to and it was cut for time’s sake.

That’s the first time I’ve been sitting here, ready to RANT when I saw this pet peeve of mine poked. I HATE how the network personalities conduct interviews as A.D.D. digestible fare. Lauer and Couric are the WORST. Can’t producers friggin’ cut out the redundant text these “anchors” read on the teleprompters during the news pieces to spare more time for interviews? Can’t they ditch the umpteenth snippet from the Amber Frey testimony to give more time to the guy who shot himself in the head with a nailgun? Actually, I couldn’t watch that story. Gave me the willies.

Ultimately, when Jamie Oliver’s cooking up something like Gnocchi with Pesto, I want him to SCHOOL the talent instead of them driving the cooking lesson. It’s just that these news shows are so fragmented that we’re getting NUTTIN’ but splinters of stories. I mean, a bite of something’s okay as long as there’s substance later.

I don’t know. I obviously get pissed at the media for telling us what’s important and what’s not, then passing the buck to the public blaming them for the quality and the quantity of the content they deliver. I mean, man…I feel like I can’t even sit still long enough to read a novel anymore and I KNOW that my capacity’s being changed by these other trends.

Long live Charles Osgood, Garrison Keilor, NPR everywhere, and the BBC (I think…maybe I’d get used to their accents and realize they’re off their heads as much as the yanks.)

Johnny Carson died yesterday. And though I’m from the Letterman/O’Brien generation of Late Night, seeing those clips still remind me of some fond moments from the archives.

In college we had a variety show we produced a couple of times a semester that made late night TV a sort of passion for me. We were at a Christian University and therefore our content HAD to be squeaky clean. But it wasn’t a barrier for ideas. In fact, I reveled in it. I became quite smug that we took the higher road, in fact. That our jokes and gags were as funny or funnier than that of the weeknight’s shows or SNL’s weekend show BECAUSE we worked so hard to keep our content as unquestionable as possible.

Watching Carson’s clips it becomes apparent that even though he had a larger audience, and a longer leash, he worked as hard to nail it without resorting to the cheap escape of an off-color joke. He was a class act, and not only set the standard, but created the standard in the first place. As Letterman has said in reflection of Carson’s passing, “All of us who came after are pretenders.”

In the name of fun, here’s a great link for the day: http://20q.net

In this age of media piracy and other labels TRYING to compete with the runaway success of the iTunes Music Store for both mac AND window’s users, it’s easy to get excited about music again.

But if you’re a bit thirsty for content, spending $0.99 per song at the iTMS can get expensive quickly. Wil Wheaton mentioned Comfort Stand in a recent blog and I have to give it a nod as well. It’s CHOCK FULL of songs to download. Lots of dance/trance stuff, but I’ve learned that’s kind of nice when you’re just in need of something to drone to while doing housework or other busy stuff in your office.

I especially liked “Wakka Chikka” (devilish smile)

Music can be downloaded as individual tracks or as a HUGE album file. My mac readin’ buddies need to make sure they have the LATEST version of Stuffit Expander if they want to open these files.

And oh yeah….the music’s free.

I’ve been hearing a bunch about “Designer Babies” lately in the news. Well, it was before the holidays, but I’m just getting around to finishing this draft I started sometime ago.

What I’m referring to is a growing trend in amazing scientific practice which gives a couple the ability to choose the sex of their baby. Obviously this is a controversial issue. But aren’t they ALL until the novelty wears off? I know that most reading my posts have been alive since the ultrasound was made mainstream. Occasionally you run into an “old-fashioned” couple that don’t want to know the sex of the baby even when they have an ultrasound during pregnancy.

For $4,000 you can have the medical technicians at MicroSort freeze your sperm and ovum, separate the X’s from the Y’s in the sperm sample, and join several combinations for the hope of a healthy embryo. At that point, they add some sort of Chromosome Mix, shake gently and serve straight up with a twist. Well, I’m kidding about that last part, but it still taps into that same sense of having a bartender make you a cocktail. And if a cosmopolitan makes yo ufeel “special” can you imagine having the power previously only GOD’S domain, to choose the sex of your unborn child?

Granted, It could let you get a jump start on the clearance sales at baby gap, and allow plenty of time for the respective blue or pink paint to dry, but those and other more serious benefits don’t outweigh one VERY subjective opportunity cost.

Cheating the Mystical. Or debunking it. Pulling back the curtain, if you will.

My good friend Rudy pointed out that I have the same disdain for OLD technology (from dial-up internet to the whole phone/answering machine debacle, to snail mail) as older folks may have for all this NEW technology. I immediately agreed. But as I write this, I think my inner-curmudgeon comes out on communication specific stuff–not towards woodworking tools, fine automobiles, and musical instruments. In fact, I get snobby towards the newer stock in those categories–except woodworking tools. My father-in-law gets snobby for me until I know how to use them without wasting valuable wood or digits. And in his book the former outranks the latter.

Okay, now I’m all the way off the track. But not without purpose.

We are an advancing culture. PROGRESS is so innate we don’t have to pedal too hard to stay ahead regardless of our endeavors. So, there’s no fighting progress. My questions is that when we make discoveries like this, and discover the secret to yet ANOTHER of nature’s sleight-of-hand maneuvers, aren’t we depleting our ability to trust in the BEYOND.

Those dusty nomadic Jews wandering the same sands that are now so wrought with military activity had no problem ascribing the unexplainable to not just the existence of God (pretty much an inarguable to them) but also to His vast superiority to their simple selves. I mean, Yahweh was Yahweh to them simply by the change of the seasons or a bountiful crop.

But if we have the power to not just eradicate certain cancers, but choose the sex of our babies, what is left out there for us to figure out? I know, plenty, but don’t you feel like saying “what will they think of next?” on such a regular basis?

I want the mystical in my life. In fact I need it. I know my friend Rudy does as well, because I hear him saying these days that he doesn’t see or hear God anywhere. Cue all the well-meaning Christians with their simple cliches! And as soon as they’re finished, let’s talk some more about THINGS SUPERNATURAL. I think it’s important for us to heighten our awareness. We need a sense of wonder or we risk dying in the boredom of a world where we can do ALL THINGS ourself without any help from a higher power.

What helps you keep in touch with the mystical? What USED to work? What do you wish worked for you?

Well, I certainly do. There’s something pleasant about hearing the news from a different perspective or just realizing how nice it is to hear a pleasant human voice without the techno beat looping behind them.

One of the gems of NPR, in my opinion, is Garrison Keilor’sThe Writer’s Almanac. He covers some literary history–usually famous birthdays and what that writer accomplished, often speaking beyond their publishing achievements to little known historical facts about the author. It’s always a digestible chunk of the humanities in the morning. Then he reads a poem for the day. And I don’t know about you, but I could use more poetry in my life. This is certainly a way to get it.

I was quite glad this past week to discover that this 5 minute radio program has it’s own website now, and you can subscribe to it and receive it as text via email everyday. But the bee’s knees is that it comes with a link to a Real Media webcast of the production. So, now I have a new morning ritual. Sit down at my desk and while I’m settling in, click the link and relax to Keilor’s warm baritone voice. Give it a shot, you just might dig it yourself.

And as only Garrison himself can say,

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®”

Well, the things I didn’t expect when launching this site were malicious spammers flooding my comments with ads for Poker. It may even happen again tonight for all I know.

Anyhow, in process of setting up defenses against such stuff, I screwed up my site this week. It’s intact again tonight, yet I’m sort of back to square one with some of the geeky stuff.

So. That said, I know some of you have NOT been receiving updates from the plug-in I was using. I’ll get a better one.

Sleep well, rise happy, and give it your all.

Eric

Today, the Indianapolis Star had a letter FROM the editor, Dennis Ryerson explaining/apologizing for putting Peyton Manning’s record-breaking performance from Sunday in the Monday morning edition of the paper, overshadowing the MUCH BIGGER story of the disastrous Tsunami which claimed the lives of over 100K people in Asia that same day.

As I write this, I’m thinking back to cheering Peyton as he threw touchdown #49, breaking Dan Marino’s single season record of nearly 20 years. It truly was a great game and a momentous occasion in our professional sports culture.

And at that point, the news reports that I had heard were just generalizing the disaster, the full scope of the loss not yet apparent, I think, until the Monday Morning Network News shows started to give estimates of the death toll.

In fact, when I heard those reports on Monday, it broke my heart. I wasn’t up to the notion of playing any games with family or the like as we were going to do that morning. And I certainly wasn’t thinking about Peyton Manning. I just wanted to hear more and try to comprehend such a catastrophe.

But today, as I read that half-assed apology/explanation from Ryerson, I became enraged. He writes:

“The play of international stories long has been an issue for the American news media. Living in a country separated by vast oceans from so much of the rest of the world, Americans tend not to be as interested in international events as are people in some other countries. That lack of interest is reflected in news coverage.”

I mean, do you REALLY believe that the media are just reflecting the greater desires of the public? Come ON!!! Americans tend to NOT be as interested in international events because we’re TOLD NOT TO by the media. “The lack of interest is” NOT “reflected in news coverage.” Instead, our long-standing cultural belief that if it’s in the NEWS (TV or Print) it must be legit, and as important or unimportant as the anchor or editor leads us to believe. Ryerson has the cart so far in front of the horse on this one, the horse is thinking the cart isn’t worth catching up with–ESPECIALLY if the horse has to tow that worthless cart.

Ryerson’s apology is acceptable, but this paragraph rationalizing and pontificating WHY they went with the sports headline instead is absurd. It’s absurd because objectivity in journalism applies not just to the content of said topic but to the decision of which topics deserve priority over others in the delivery of their respective medium. And Ryerson admits he bit it on this, but then covers his divot with a pothole by patronizing us and passing the buck to the public’s “lack of interest” in international stories.

I mean, death toll alone, we’re talking about FIFTY September 11’s in Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and other countries that took the brunt of the Tsunami. And though hearing of the destruction that an “Act of God” (which is another Pandora’s Box of a conversation to be had elsewhere) has had on a people group doesn’t impact one like the a severe mass injustice of one people group upon another people group, in the end, it’s all the same–senseless waste of life that can’t be explained or justified. Senseless waste.

And after a year of high profile journalists making careless mistakes I’d like to see them learn that while they hold the megaphone, people ARE going to listen. They need to take that platform seriously and bring the necessary content for us to choose just what is and what is not important. Keep the opinions & digressions to yourself and do your job.