Hey, Ho, Me 'ole Mate

I forgot about this blog. I guess that is normal. I don't really have anything profound to say and there are a lot of people on the web saying things. I'm working on a musical this summer. You can watch some rehearsal videos here. 

Hope you are having a good summer - whoever reads this :)

Recommended Listening by Kirsten and Micah

For your long weekend, Micah and I have a recommended playlist!
You can guess who suggested what, below.


Spirityouall by Bobby McFerrin (yes, of "Don't worry, be Happy" fame)
cool, jazz arrangements of hymns and gospel songs! Check it out.



Coming up on the Parish Retreat... God's Great Dance Floor:

Matilda the Musical, especially the song below "When I Grow Up"

Daniel by Elton John
('cause Elton John is a BOSS)

Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd

All My Fountains, Chris Tomlin

I Want it That Way, Backstreet Boys (sung by Dawen)

Have a great weekend!!

On writing music for the Church - Audrey Assad

I'm so excited about this new Kickstarter funded record Audrey Assad is putting together. There aren't enough musicians today writing music specially for the Church. Too many people write for radio.
Thanks Audrey - looking forward to hearing it!
Christianity Today Article on Audrey Assad's New Record

On Dissonance in Sacred Music

On Dissonance in Sacred Music

by a friend!

As those who have attended the Alpha Course may remember from one of the talks, it is worth noting that while many of us wear Crosses as jewelry, and adorn our church sanctuaries with fanciful gilded Crosses (Truro is no exception), we sometimes too easily forget that the Cross was an instrument of unspeakable violence and torture. One would think it bizarre to wear a miniature gallows around her neck as jewelry, or to mount a large electric chair at the front of our church, yet that is what we do when we likewise display the cross.

Sometimes it takes a major work of art like Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ or Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (pictured) to remind us of this truth. Yet these artworks also remind us that while the Cross was a place of horrific ugliness, it was at the same time a place of immeasurable beauty. We look at the screen or the canvas and see ghastly wickedness, yet we know as Christians that such unfathomable agony was at the same time the vessel of infinite Love. 

As with the visual arts, so with music; in Bach’s monumental settings of the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the choruses depicting the crowd shouting “crucify him!” are frenetic, angry, disjunct, and dissonant; indeed, how could they be otherwise?

During this Lenten season, we  have occasionally offered choral music that likewise challenges the ear, and some of you have expressed concern; we want you to know that we hear you. Yet to eschew great art that reminds us of the ugliness of sin and the suffering of the Cross is to rob Easter of its meaning. We would glean little from The Passion of the Christ if we watched only the last few moments as our Lord is risen; or if we closed our ears to the Bach passions and listened only to cheerful Easter music. Likewise, we hope you will embrace the challenge of some of our music this Lent (and on other occasions as appropriate), and that the joy and beauty of our Easter music will all the more powerfully remind us of the victory of Love over even death itself.

You can’t accomplish anything unless you are having fun!

Just found this gem, by my little brother in 2005. Hope he doesn't get mad at me for posting it. :) Enjoy your snow day! 

-K

A Question of Value

Introduction—How much time do you spend on average studying each day? Speaking for myself, I would estimate that I study on average about four hours a day. Ok, I’m a geek I know. But this is college and when you add in class time, eating, and sleeping; it leaves with only a short amount of time for anything else. We are constantly bombarded by professors with assignment after assignments which eat up our precious moments of freedom. So how are you choosing to spend these elusive moments? Are you letting homework dominate your life? Well today, speech class, I am here to say, “Shove it!” Throw off the shackles of homework and time hogging assignments! All they do is add stress to your life! On top of that, once you complete one, you are immediately expected to do another. Completely inhumane!

Purpose Statement- To persuade my audience that studying should be done minimally and fun should be maximized! (You all need to realize that studying should  be done minimally and fun should be maximized!)

Thesis Statement-Scientific research shows that studying less, studying smart, and spending more time having fun are all trends that will enable you to become a more happy and successful person.

I. Time

The first area of study-a-phobia we will look at is the aspect of time. Many sorrowful individuals are under the impression that they have to study for hours and hours a day. That is simply not true! In the guide, Study Faster and Retain More, The Reading Laboratory, Inc. says that we should “try not to spend much more than three hours a day studying. More than that is usually unproductive.” Do you see fellow students of IWU? Even an expert on studying admonishes us to study no more than three hours a day! Authors Simon Folkard and Timothy Monk take this theory a step even further. In their book Hours of Work: Temporal Factors in Work-Scheduling they found that “a worker beginning a repetitive and demanding task at a certain time of the day is able to maintain a constant level of performance for no more that 1 ½ hours.”  Need I say more class? Do these evidences from academic studies not convince you? Can I get a halleluiah-amen??!! 

II. You are not alone

The next fallacy that is programmed into our brains is that you are alone. From the youngest age we are told again and again that we must sit still and listen to the teacher. We must do our homework at night after we have been at school for an ungodly number of hours. People you are not alone! There are tons of people just like you who are sick of wasting their time with their nose stuck in a book reading about world-changing! In his work The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure author Juliet Schor notes that “young people are moving away from the frenzied work ethic of the 1980’s to more traditional values.” He goes on to write that “There is also a pressing need for more true leisure. For the first time in fifteen years, people have cited leisure time as the more important thing in their lives than work. The nation needs to slow down, unwind, and recover from its ordeal of labor.” I want to pause for a moment to let these words resonate in your souls….

III. What Now?

So what now? Are we too simply to give our homework the Bird and watch reruns of Full House and Cops all day? The answer is a conditional yes. In the book Putting Work in Its Place: a Quiet Revolution the author concluded that “a life includes work, but cannot and should not be reduced by it.” The authors of these books are both professors at major college institutions, employees of the very system we seek to undermine, and even they say that our lives shouldn’t be reduced by a bunch of lousy work! The advice the author of The Leisure Wasters gives is that we should “set aside times for leisure activity, [and] don’t let recreation come when it will.” She also wisely observed that “recreation is an attitude.”

Conclusion    

In conclusion, we have looked at how our time as college students shouldn’t be gobbled up by frivolous homework assignments, but that how we should maximize our fun. We observed three areas: we should spend a minimal amount of time on homework, there are people out there just like you and me, and we should set aside time to party like it’s our birthdays! These are three simple steps that can help you find your purpose in life and get you on the road to recovery from study-a-phobia. I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes. It reads “Play! You can’t accomplish anything unless you are having fun!”

References

Folkard, S & Monk, T. (1985). Hours of Work: Temporal Factors in Work-Scheduling. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.

Study Faster and Retain More (1964). Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company

Meiksins, P. & Whalley, P. (2002) Putting Work in Its Place: A Quiet Revolution. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press

O’Connor, C. (1966). The Leisure Wasters. South Brunswick, N.J. A.S. Barnes and Co.

Schor, J (1991). The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: HarperCollins Publishers

More reasons to go to New Zealand

Notre Pere - The Lord's Prayer

A lovely rendition of the version of the Lord's Prayer we sing in Lent. 
- K