Slice of Life

Slice Of Life

rounder records 2009

Like a nice pinot, and a thick slice of Butterkase cheese on a wheat cracker, Bruce Cockburn is somewhat of an acquired taste. His latest release would go great with both the former and latter. Slice of Life is Cockburn’s latest release in a long line of modest albums. A two disc, solo acoustic album, Slice of Life is a simple collection of some of Cockburn’s best work including Lovers in a Dangerous Time, Pacing the Cage, Wondering Where the Lions Are, and smooth, jazzy version of Mama Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long.

While Bruce Cockburn has always been known for his musical ability, it clearly shines on Slice of Life, with his haunting acoustic guitar and lyrics meant to make you ponder life’s deepest questions. Slice of Life is a cool, intimate album meant to be shared, just like that cheese and wine.

 

Holidays On Ice

It’s been a little while since I’ve written anything substancial on here. Almost three months to be exact. Since then, many of my blogging friends have either dissappeared or blocked their blogs from the masses. I assume you were all wondering what had happened to me. “Did he lose his fingers or the ability to type?” You may have wondered. Nope, I just lost track of the time I guess.

Things are good, the baby is developing wonderfully, but Jenefer has had a few problems. She pulled a muscle in her back, coughing, of all things. So she hasn’t been able to lift much.

I on the other hand have been working as a developmental coach at a local school. I help children who have fallen behind. I love it, I couldn’t have a better job. I’m also pursuing my degree in education. I just wish that it could go faster.

 

my blog feels forsaken.

no i didn’t quit blogging, and no i didn’t forget either. just took a sabbatical if you will.

a lot has been going on though.

first, ben montgomery’s “drivers fore survivors” 3rd annual golf outing raised $21,000 for nationwide children’s hospital and pediatric brain cancer research. 

second, the miami dolphins have won two games!!! they are currently 2-2.

third, lots of reading lately. and good stuff to boot.

more to come.

 

take it to the limit…

wow, it’s been a while.

a lot has happened since i wrote about me. first off, we’re having another baby! jenefer’s due sometime around the middle of january. we’re so excited.

my beautiful wife started a new job, and i got laid-off. i’ve been hanging out at home with miss lily, cleaning, taking care of projects that have been put off for years. generally getting a lot of work done and catching up on listening to old sermon’s and what not.

i’m working hard trying to find a job, but it’s been harder and harder. i’ve interviewed a few times, but nothing has come to fruition. we’ve come to the end of our finances a few times and somehow, god has always given us exactly what we needed.

lily’s less than a month away from turning 1! she’s walking everywhere now and jabbering about everything. she’s got six teeth and is still always happy. she can bring a smile to anyone’s face. we were at the store the other day and there was an upbeat song playing over the loudspeaker and she was dancing in the cart. she’s awesome.

that’s it for now… more to come.

 

grace like rain…

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by christ jesus. ~ romans 3:23-24

jenefer and i saw prince caspian, the second installment of the chronicles of narnia over the weekend and one thing that i came away with was a picture of god’s unending grace. over and over these past few weeks that message has been pounded into my head, but never so much as when i saw the following scene…

***spoiler alert***

king peter and prince caspian have just returned to the stone table, which is now entombed in a catacomb surrounded by murals of narnians as an image of aslan overlooks the table which he sacrificed himself on. peter has just led a failed raid on king miraz’s castle in which most of army died. peter is desperate to return the kingdom to prince caspian, so desperate he ignores queen lucy’s pleas to wait for aslan. caspian himself is desperate for the throne, so desperate in fact that when the white witch’s minions offer him the throne for a drop of his blood he gladly accepts. king peter then becomes ensnared by the witch’s promise as well. the witch hasn’t come in full form but instead has iced over aslan’s mural clouding him from peter and caspian’s view…

so many times we let our worldly desires get in the way of what god has for us. we let satan and sin cloud our site and we take our eyes off of god. but yet god remains, right there, behind the clouds, or the materialism of this world if you will. we have put on sunglasses in a world without light. to see god we have only to take the sunglasses off, we have only to look through the clouds. in trusting in god, in waiting on him, in asking him to lead the way we can find peace. we can find grace, because by our faith we stand in god’s grace. (romans 5:2)

it is that same picture of grace that we see in the first chronicles of narnia when king edmond has been rescued from the white witch’s stronghold and brought before aslan. edmond had gone to the witch to become king, and to turn over his brother’s and sisters. he had the intention of betraying them to her so he could rule alone. yet after his rescue and talk with aslan, the lion says: (and i’m paraphrasing…)

there is no need to speak of these things to edmond, what is done is done. it is in the past.

we can assume that edmond had confessed his intentions to aslan and aslan has forgiven him, and as the white witch comes to make her claim on edmond “the traitor” aslan offers himself instead… it is through this picture we can see more clearly again, god’s grace…

you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, christ died for the ungodly. very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. but god demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, christ died for us.

god’s unending grace. a point that is repeated over and over throughout the bible and through out our lives, now if only we can remove the shades to see more clearly…

 

 

textbook hippie man…

i’m worried that somewhere along the line of big cars and bigger houses, part of the christian world has forgotten that one simple verse…

religion that god our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. james 1:27

it has been frustrating, to say the least, to watch rich nathan and the vineyard church of coulmbus get pounded for their involvment in the global justice movement all because of one man’s involvment. it’s funny that jim wallis’ involvment sparked so much debate and protest around the conference. in rich’s latest monthly letter to the church he gave some excerpts from e-mails sent to him…

I heard that you were going to speak at a prayer breakfast for the Devil (Governor Strickland). If you are a MAN OF GOD and not just some limp-wristed preacher, who gets a thrill out of being around the world’s power players, you will rip into this evil monster. [After I had the privilege of preaching at the Governor's prayer breakfast, we saw 40+ commitments to Christ.]

For months now there has been a smoldering issue in the local church. The “social justice theme” has been whispered about and kept under wraps. Now it is beginning to come out, a movement by 30 local churches under the guise of revival are unleashing this socialist, anti US, anti family, anti bible bilge on the local church. This group stands for redistribution of wealth, they call homosexual marriage and abortion narrow issues and try to make believers feel ignorant for standing by the Bible as the true word of God. [This was sent in a mass email to believers all across Central Ohio.]

rich’s letter calls for the need to learn civility as a church. what we should also learn is that money, greed, power and control are not things that we need. saying that homosexual marriage and abortion are narrow issues may be over the top, but basing your vote on those two things alone in and of itself would be somewhat ignorant. as much as the bible and christianity says that those two things are wrong, (and i agree), basing my vote on those two things alone does not change the state of things in my life or in the us, where the people we vote for make the rules. banning abortion and homosexual marriage will not change the state of the economy. it won’t change the decaying state of healthcare and insurance. and it won’t de-monopolize big oil, and their bid to rob middle class americans. banning abortion won’t change the fact that the government owns big business and vice versa.

banning homosexual marriage won’t change the fact that their are still huge social injustices being done throughout the world. just take a moment to read john mccollum’s blog on any given day. when you’re done visit asia’s hope to make a difference in the life of one of millions of children…

i think the bigger social injustice would be ignoring the issue altogether to focus on who is involved in the movement and what they stand for. i think rich’s letter said that best too…

We don’t all have to agree about everything. Still less should we simply silence our convictions. But there is a way for people (especially those who claim to have the Spirit of Christ) to disagree without becoming disagreeable and to not always indulge our need for self-expression. The way forward is for us to re-learn the old lesson of civility as a church and as a culture.

just my thoughts…

 

lola and lily…

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Originally uploaded by lukebauman.

just thought that you would all like this picture. lily is a bundle of joy. she’s so happy and sleeps and eats so good.

 

the best of you…

first off, i have to say that i’ve been listening to the foo fighters skin and bones and dave grohl and company rock, hardcore.

second, i knew that, the moment i saw it, someone would say something. (you can click it) but what did you expect? it’s prince. who by the way performed the best half time show ever. i also love that he covered the foo fighters song the best of you.

and the sillouette behind the sheet? if that wasn’t the most intentionally awesome thing ever…

 

you’ve got an, impulse let it out…

so, we’ve known now since november 15th (ish) and for our families and friends it seemed to be the best christmas ever.

just four days after i got my new job, god blessed jenefer and i with another gift. we’re going to have a baby. jenefer is just over ten weeks right now, so in truth, we really couldn’t keep it a secret much longer…

and yes, we are very excited…

 

we’d hit the bottom, i thought it was my fault…

and in a way i guess it was.

thanksgiving came and went. it was nice. in truth, it was beautiful. last year i was awake at 4:30 on thanksgiving morning, making my “rack” in the most pristine asinine way. then i marched a few miles in the cold chicago snow to the mess hall to eat one bowl of lucky charms and one bowl of cocoa puffs. we had till 11 to clean our barracks, and the head, do our laundry and write what letters we could. then it was off to lunch. our thanksgiving lunch consisted of nothing to be thankful for including a processed turkey sandwich. then it was back to training. no, no phone calls, nothing special like that.

did i mention the military sucks ass?

but this year i was home, with family, with my wife, with my puppy, with my beautiful niece, and the sticky lollipop she plopped in my hand. and i couldn’t be more thankful, sticky hand and all.
and i can’t wait for christmas. we have everything up except the tree which we’ll go buy in a week or two. gotta keep it fresh. jenefer didn’t put one up in my absence last year so miss lola has never seen a tree, but she’s doing fine with the santa guarding our fireplace.
(she doesn’t take well to change.)

well, less than a month to go…

 

oh come, let’s sing ohio’s praise…

42-39

 

me, i just ran away, from a small town…

Coastal Blues

Originally uploaded by lukebauman.

as trivial as this is right now, here is my album cover. do you like it?

and now, please, please pray. my close friend ben montgomery is in the hospital with a blood clot in his lung. ben has been through multiple brain tumors since we were children, the latest being found just a few months ago. he is currently still undergoing chemo for the latest tumor and the doctors are fearful to use conventional methods to treat the blood clot, (i.e. blood thinners) because ben’s blood is already so thin from the chemo. he is fragile, but in good spirits. but please, please pray for his complete recovery, and a full healing. please. thank you.

 

it’s time for coastal confessions…

two things… first, a snippit from jimmy buffett’s a pirate looks at fifty, when i read this the other day, it took me away, like buffett’s songs do so many times, only this, this was real.

The ruins of my old hotel sit atop the promontory hill that borders the beautiful bay of Lorient. As ruins go, it looks sadly like only the latest monument to Folly chasing Death’s ass around through these islands. The place is now just a heap of burned-out remnants that somehow survived the back-to-back hurricanes that ravaged the rest of the island. Owning a hotel in the Caribbean requires a lot of misguided reasoning. Just ask Norman Paperman (Don’t Stop the Carnival ~ Herman Wouk). But I wouldn’t trade the experiences that came my way as a result of owning a small part of Autour for the world, which is what I told my accountant the day I invested in the place. It was a five room hotel, a restaurant, and a big open bar. In its heyday, the place was the staging ground for some of the worst behavior I have ever seen. It was the only hotel that I ever heard of that had a jewlry store that opened at midnight and closed at five in the morning…”

well, that’s all to say that jimmy’s beloved autour du rocher was burned to the ground in the late 80’s by ironically enough, faulty wiring in the disco’s dj booth. to this day the ruins still sit atop “the rock”

second, i’ll share a snippit of don blanding with you to think on…

The Double Life

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A restless me to drift and roam
A quiet me to stay at home.
A searching one to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homley things are done
By the domestic other one.

And that’s just where the trouble lies;
There is a restless me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For artic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising hell
But shackled to that restless me
My other self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move….

 

freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay…

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Originally uploaded by lukebauman.

well it was a whirlwind week and a half. i saw as the song says, whitecaps on the ocean, and thought i just might see water spouts. the wind blew and the storms came and went but my love for the ocean was only solidified by the amazing things i saw this week. starting last friday, jenefer and i flew in to the west palm beach airport and began our tour which included friends, family, turtles, barracuda, and stars. click the picture to follow our escapades.

first, i’d just like to say that any water park that advertises a ride that is like being flushed down a toilet is not worth the pain. i was flushed and it sucked.

second, the homes on millionare’s row on palm beach island are amazing. namely my hero’s modest home. yes scott and jenefer and i visited jimmy buffett’s casa on the beach and i’ve got pictures to prove it.

third, who’d have thunk that we’d see vanilla ice on the shuttle at the atlanta airport. we did. and i freaked out. and jenefer was embarrased. i’m probably the only one who even recognized him, other than the woman standing across from us. and i was like, “yo ice, word to yo motha.”

and you should never go deep sea fishing after dunkin’ doughnuts, ask 95% of jenefer’s family. the pictures prove it. i, being the former navy stud that i am, (right…) rocked out the storm and stinging rain with tim and the boys as some of the others threw up whole doughnuts on the boat.

lastly, sea turtles (and manatees) and speedboats do not mix well. note the pictures of fiona, the 250 pound, 4 and a half foot green sea turtle that was hit by a boat propeller. she, i’m positive, did more damage to the boat than was inflicted to her, but her carapace, (shell) will never grow back, instead the wound will heal with scar tissue that will never be as hard as the shell, but some day she may return to the sea. hundreds of these amazing and federally protected animals will be stolen, injured, or killed by foolish under-educated beachgoers this year alone.
to help in the cause visit the caribbean conservation corporation and save a sea turtle…

 

sometimes, it’s never quite enough…

this song really hits me where i am at right now.

perfect ~ alanis morrisette

       Sometimes is never quite enough

If you're flawless, then you'll win my love

Don't forget to win first place

Don't forget to keep that smile on your face

Be a good boy

Try a little harder

You've got to measure up

And make me prouder

How long before you screw it up

How many times do I have to tell you to hurry up

With everything I do for you

The least you can do is keep quiet

Be a good girl

You've gotta try a little harder

That simply wasn't good enough

To make us proud

I'll live through you

I'll make you what I never was

If you're the best, then maybe so am I

Compared to him compared to her

I'm doing this for your own damn good

You'll make up for what I blew

What's the problem... why are you crying

Be a good boy

Push a little farther now

That wasn't fast enough

To make us happy

We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect