of Asaph on MySpace.com

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www.myspace.com/ofasaph

Of Asaph & Anathallo - Be There or Be Square

My husband's band Of Asaph is playing tomorrow night (March 21) at Uncle Pleasant's at 8:00.

They, along with another local band The Commonwealth, are opening up for Anathallo. You can check Anathallo out here and here. Please come out and hear some amazing music.

Separated at Birth

You might be a Crunchy Con if...

Alex and I shop at Whole Foods. We value the traditional family. We love independent bookstores. We generally vote Republican. We buy local honey. We are strongly pro-life. We enjoy catching the First Friday Gallery Hop. We are concerned about our culture's moral condition. We listen to NPR.

Occasionally, when I mention Whole Foods, the Gallery Hop, or NPR around some of my staunch Republican, dyed-in-the-wool conservative friends, they look as me wih suspicion as if to ask, "Are you going liberal on us?" Then when I talk about traditional parenting roles or preserving the morality that is taught in the Bible, my more liberal friends look at me as if I have just arrived from the Stone Age.

Well, I think I've finally found some folks who stand on common ground. Yeserday, Alex and I were listening to a commentary on NPR's "All Things Considered" about Crunchy Conservatives. As we listened, we looked at each other, silently agreeing that we resonated with these ideas.

So what is a crunchy conservative? Rod Dreher, a conservative writer and editor at the Dallas Morning News, has written a book called Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstock Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party), which seeks to explain the idea of crunchy conservativism. "Crunchy cons prefer old houses and mom-and-pop shops to McMansions and strip malls... Many of us homeschool our kids, and cheerfully embrace nonconformity. I read Edmund Burke and wear Birkenstock sandals. Go figure."



Dreher has even formed A Crunchy Con Manifesto:

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”

I guess I can sign my name to that...

Sojourn is Podcasting

Good news! Sojourn Community Church is now podcasting. So everyone go to itunes and subscribe! Its free! All you have to do is go to itunes music store, select podcasts, search for "Sojourn Community," and you get free sermon downloads. Daniel has been preaching through Matthew for a while now, and we're still in the Sermon on the Mount. What amazing words from Jesus.

Hoppin' to the Harrison Gallery

I am heading to Indianapolis tomorrow with Sojourn's visual arts group. We're going to the open studio night at the Harrison Gallery. The Harrison Gallery is part of the Harrison Center for the Arts, which is associated with Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The HCA website says, "The Harrison Center for the Arts seeks to be a catalyst for renewal in the city of Indianapolis by fostering awareness, appreciation, and community for arts and culture. Harrison Center tenants include: 23 local artists (studio space), VSA Arts, the Harrison Gallery, The Advent Project, The Nature Conservancy, and Redeemer Presbyterian Church." I am so excited about seeing the Harrison Center and observing the ways in which they reach out to their culture and their community. I hope that we can learn from Redeemer-Indy and see new ways that Sojourn can love the city of Louisville.

What a Beautiful Song!

BEFORE THE THRONE OF GOD ABOVE

Before the throne of God above,
I have a strong and perfect plea,
A great High Priest whose name is “Love,”
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart;
I know that while in heav’n He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.
To look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there! the risen Lamb,
My perfect, spotless Righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The King of glory and of grace!
One with Himself I cannot die,
My soul is purchased by His blood;
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God
With Christ my Savior and my God.

Charite Lees Bancroft, Vikki Cook © 1997 PDI Worship