My ECMA Mistake...

I had a very disheartening thing happen to me at the ECMA's a few weekends ago, and I thought that I would share it with all of you...Hopefully you will be able to learn from my mistakes, and avoid the same sort of blunder.

On the Saturday afternoon, I went to a great seminar at the Glynmill Inn in Corner Brook. Before I went, I picked up a Tim Horton's coffee - large with one milk and one sugar. There were smart people at this seminar, and they were talking about some very interesting things...but the room was very quiet, and I didn't want to roll up my rim and disturb the proceedings. So I laid my unrolled coffee cup under my chair.

After the seminar, I got up from my chair, left the hotel, and got into my car. As I was driving away, it hit me that I had left my unrolled coffee cup on the floor. Knowing that this would play on my mind for the rest of the weekend, I drove back to the hotel, and went upstairs to the conference room. Despite my obviously obsessive behavior, the seminar organizers had already cleaned the room and thrown my coffee cup away. I searched the garbage cans, but to no avail.

Now, I don't believe in Karma and all that stuff... but isn't it odd that since then, I haven't won a thing, despite my at-least-one-coffee-a-day habit. Is God teaching me a lesson? Did that coffee cup have a winning tab? Might I have won a car, or a laptop? Am I just searching for some meaning as to why I haven't won a stinking thing during this whole Roll Up The Rim To Win campaign? I'll never know...

Please...learn from my mistakes. Roll your rims.

Anyway...here's my life in a nutshell:


I also have a post called 10 Things That Tim Horon's Taught Me, that I may post in the near future, along with some video from the Corner Brook Concerts.

Saturday Song Stories - "Main Street"

Wow...I can't believe that we are almost through the song stories. This is week 11 and there are only three more after this.

Main Street was written in one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring parts of our great country...Tim Horton's. I find that I concentrate best in busy coffee shops and for some reason much of my best reading and writing is done there.

It's hard to say if there was a specific situation that inspired Main Street. I don't remember one, but it was written as I began to think through some of the ways that us humans exist. I was probably watching my fellow coffee addicts interact with each other. Anyway, Main Street is a metaphor for the way that we all live according to the patterns of this world without really thinking about them. For instance, the first verse talks about how we dare not show weakness ("in our dresses and suits we try to hide the bruised truth") and how we work to build wealth without asking why we need so much ("fanning the flame of ritual gain"). The bridge sums it up well..."The tragedy of all this is that we're convinced that this is all there is. This is where everybody lives, and after all what option does life give?"

When we renew our minds and do not conform to the patterns of this world, it is almost as though we are singing a song, barely heard among the clamoring bustle, as verse two mentions. But when others see an alternate way of existence to the way of the masses, they sing along as well.

I know that that sort of talk rings a bit hollow these days, partly because everyone talks about making a change and doing things differently. The only way that I can see these ideals having meat on their bones is if one imitates Jesus. Anything else is just walking up the same street on a different sidewalk.

Saturday Song Stories - "Oddity"

[od-i-tee]
1. an odd or remarkably unusual person, thing, or event.
2. the quality of being odd; singularity, strangeness, or eccentricity.
3. an odd characteristic or trait; peculiarity.

When I perform Oddity live, I invariably have someone come to me and either say, "I loved that Odyssey song", or "What in the world does oddity mean?"

This song was originally recorded for the Hope In The Midst of a Storm album, a fundraiser for the Janeway Children's Hospital in St. John's. I wanted to contribute this one in particular because of the message.

Have you ever know anyone with a disease like cancer. My father is bravely fighting a battle with cancer at the moment. It's not a fair disease. In fact, there are few things that make sense in our world. There are so many diseases, inhumanities, hurts, frustrations and disappointments, that they become the norm. Pain and hatred sometimes seem like the patterns of this world. We've adapted to their presence, so much so that we do nothing and then justify our inaction.

Then love comes on the scene. I'm not talking about love that is prepackaged by the media, or a false love like "I love Tim Horton's" (Which I do, by the way). I'm talking about a love that is pure and rich and bottomless...so much so that it is an irregularity in the pattern of this world. In the way that our humanity operates, God's love can only be considered an oddity.

"You took a criminal heart and you gave it reprieve, You took a barren soul and you helped it conceive...This love is an oddity, this grace an anomaly, and I've never seen anything like this before."