Category: Personal
My Creative Bucket List
I came up with a couple things that I want to do before I die - things I want to do before I “kick the bucket”, so to speak. I want to go to a lot of places and experience a lot of things, but these are some of the creative things on my bucket list.
In no particular order:
- Write, sing and do production for my own R&B album. I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from The Weeknd‘s “House of Balloons” mixtape. It’s simple, brilliant, and it seems like something similar to that could possibly within my reach to accomplish. My stage name, if/when I do this: Pistil.
- Give this website, lukemcreynolds.com, a makeover. I just realized it’s had the same design since 2008. :-/
- Write a science fiction novel about alien Christian missionaries. The concept sounds silly, but if it’s properly executed, the novel won’t be. I just had this idea about half an hour ago, so it’s still in its infancy, but I think it has a lot of promise. Basic premise: several hundred (thousand?) years in the future, humans make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Many of the extraterrestrials believe in a Messiah, similar to the Christian messiah, Jesus Christ. I would likely be taking a lot of inspiration from C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy series, and from Madeline L’Engle’s books.
That’s the idea anyway. Or at least, three of them. We’ll see which ones I accomplish. :-)
Posted on Jul 30, 2011 - 08:49 PM
EMP.cx - Online Streaming Electronic Music
I’d like to encourage everyone to check out a new internet radio station that a friend of mine and I started: EMP.cx.
We play electronic music of all kinds, from dubstep to house, trance, darkstep, neuro, future garage, goa, UK funky, swinghouse, glitch hop, you name it. I DJ every week or so usually, and if someone isn’t doing a live set, we’re broadcasting live set archives.
A direct link to the stream is here, or you can listen to it on the EMP website, http://emp.cx.
Also, if you’re technologically inclined, join the IRC channel and talk to us - irc.emp.cx channel #electronic, or use mibbit if you’re not down with the IRC chat.
Posted on Apr 07, 2011 - 01:49 PM
Two Farrar Wilson Paintings
I love these. Thanks to Andrew Patterson-Tutschka for the hookup and the gorgeous photographs, and although I haven’t met them yet, Farrar Wilson for creating these and his partner Judy for her support given to the artist.
Neither of these have titles, at least that I’m aware of. The grey, white and black one is hanging above my desk now, and the collage/oil one will go in our bedroom once we have it framed.
Thanks again to Andrew and Farrar.
Posted on Jan 27, 2011 - 09:52 PM
One of the best lay explanations of the Trinity that I’ve heard yet
If you ask a lot of people, the concept of the Trinity is one of the most non-intuitive concepts in the Christian faith. God is three separate persons, but He is also one, somehow?
User rainer511 in reddit’s Christianity community posted a great response to the question, “Can you please explain the concept of the trinity to me?” I’ve copied it below. Click to read the rest or here to read the original post.
Can you please explain the concept of the trinity to me?
No, not really.
Since you asked so nicely, I’ll give it a go though. At the very least I’ll explain how I understand it.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not explicitly stated in the Bible. Most doctrines aren’t. I think the earliest recorded mention of the Trinity is by Theophilus in 180 C.E., and it’s really just a mention.
The Hebrew Bible seems to tell of a people who were polytheistic half the time and henotheistic the other half, with religious leaders who were mostly monotheistic. Whatever the history of the theology of the people, by the first century ““Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6.4) was constantly recited and was essential to the Jewish faith.
Then along comes Jesus. First he seems to be a prophet, then people start calling him the Messiah (anointed one, King), and then he hints at and sometimes outright states that he and God are one.
Later, Jesus talks about leaving and says that when he leaves, he will send God’s Spirit, “another parakletos”(translated advocate, counselor, comforter). Later epistle writers would talk about Jesus as being our “parakletos”—so whatever the Spirit is, it is whatever Jesus is, and Jesus is whatever God is.
The problem is that they don’t seem to be the same person. The Bible certainly doesn’t treat them that way. Greek verbs are very explicit about who or what is acting and the Bible never talks about Jesus “raising himself” from the grave, God always raises Jesus from the grave. Jesus prays to God, his Father.
This is explained in different ways by different people.
Some people stress that “Jesus”, “God”, and “Holy Spirit” are just three names for the same thing. “The same old fiery bush” as you put it. They try to explain away any moment where Jesus refers to God as something other than himself as Jesus “modeling the way we should live”. Jesus only prays to God as Father because we should pray to God as our Father.
However, here is how I choose to think about it:
Think of flatland.
Imagine someone from flatland suggesting, “I think there might be a shape with three sides, yet at the same time it is one continuous circle”. It just wouldn’t make any sense. How could something have three sides, yet be a circle. A circle can’t be a triangle. A triangle can’t be a circle.
Unless, of course, it’s a cone.
Is it a triangle, or is it a circle?
Yes.
Well, not exactly, of course. It’s a cone. In a sense it’s neither. But if you lived in flatland and you tried to describe a cone you’d end up saying something like, “I don’t know, it’s sort of like a triangle, except if you look at it a different way, it’s a circle”.
Ultimately doctrines are just models we use to talk about Something that we can’t comprehend.
The Trinity is when we answer “Yes” to the question of, “Is God a triangle, or is he a circle?”
Posted on Sep 08, 2010 - 01:25 PM
A gang of Turkish spammers have found my site
I woke up this morning and found 50 or so messages in my inbox saying that someone had left a comment on my website. Turns out that lukemcreynolds.com had been “profiled” in the r10.net forums as being an easy target for comment spam.
I found out the source of all the spam by looking at my referrer logs: all the new hits on my site were coming from http://r10.net/dmoz-ve-diger-dizinler/663993-kisa-sureli-dofollow-paylasimlari.html. In case the link gets taken down, here‘s a link to the content of the frontpage (PDF).
Anyway, I deleted all the spam comments and disabled commenting on the site for a little while. Commenting is back up now, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on things. It pisses me off that people are making money off of causing me work.
The person who posted the initial links to my site, inviting other to spam it, was “Serdal_Altundal”.
Posted on Jun 23, 2010 - 06:34 PM
David LaGrand Promises Never to Become A Lobbyist
Just saw a press release from David LaGrand. David, who’s running for Michigan State Senate, has pledged to never become a lobbyist if he he’s elected to state office. I worked on his 2006 State Senate campaign, and know him and his family personally. David’s “no lobbying” pledge doesn’t surprise me in the least. In my experience, David LaGrand honestly only wants what’s best for Grand Rapids and Kent County, and becoming a lobbyist after his term(s) are up will do a lot more harm than good for Grand Rapids and West Michigan in general. I wish a lot more politicians would have the same commitment to the better good that David has.
The full press release is available here:
Posted on Jun 07, 2010 - 05:52 PM
Desktop Wallpaper - 100+ images!
I’ve been collecting cool-looking desktop backgrounds for a long time, and I’ve just decided to put them online to share with everyone. You can check them out at http://lukemcreynolds.com/wallpaper/.
Let me know what you think, or if you know the source for one of the images I wasn’t able to find a source for.
Posted on Apr 20, 2010 - 12:47 AM
