Shofar, so good

Today is the celebration of Rosh Hashanah. Not sure what that is? It is a Jewish holiday, where they proclaim God is King. It seems like it is a pretty big deal. So big, that our church preschool was closed today. If you ask the director why we close a Christian school on a Jewish holiday, she will tell you we follow the county school schedule, and they are closed. I can't help but think of how many things the public school system does that we don't want to follow, but that really isn't important.

I looked up what Jewish people do on this day. It is supposed to be a day of no work. Traditionally people eat apples and honey, pray for most of the day, and reflect on how God is the King of our lives. For some reason, we never seem to hear what the day is about. We just hear that the schools are closed and I guess that's good enough for most people.

Another part of the celebration is to blow a Shofar. A shofar is a ram's horn, or some kind of horn that you could blow, but definitely not a car horn. That's different. An animal horn. It should be noted here that the Shofar is a very difficult instrument (if you call it that) to get a sound from. Similar to a conch shell, it requires a great deal of air and a certain formation of the mouth to get a sound.

One sunday some years ago, a random woman came to our church with a Shofar. She wanted to blow it in the service during worship. I told her thanks, but no thanks. She went and found our pastor. I'm not sure how much money she agreed to put in the plate, but I was told she was approved to blow the horn at the end of our service on the last song. Well, the last song was Days of Elijah. A perfect song for the Shofar. There is a line in the song "at the trumpet call". Cue the Shofar!
So we begin the song with the woman standing on the stage to my right. Here comes the chorus. Here comes the line...."at the trumpet call!".....nothing. I figure she is waiting for the finale, so no big deal. Next chorus....nothing. One more time for the chorus and it is a double chorus. I turn to see a woman with cheeks as puffed out as big as if she had 30 marshmallows stuffed in each one. Her face was as purple-red as a beet. Not a puff of sound came from that horn. I had to look away. Last time...nothing. It was like a car wreck. You know it's bad, but something compells you to look. She was going to explode. Just then came the sound. The mighty sound of a Shofar. Or pehaps the sound as if we just let a little bit of air from a big balloon. The song ended. She did not. She continued to blow as hard as she could. Finally the sound of a beached baby whale came forth. I have never before heard a beached baby whale make a sound, but I am certain it would sound exactly like that.
She looked at me and signaled for the band to keep playing. "One more time!" she yelled. "I don't think so" is what I thought as I put my guitar on the stand and thanked her half-heartedly for coming. We never saw her again. If she ever comes back I will refer her as a guest to play for our preschool on Rosh Hashanah.

Rob Bell, Francis Chan, and the Daytona Cubs

If you look at the title of my blog, you may be wondering what do all these things have in common?  For those of you who remember Sesame Street it is like the "one of these things is not like the other".  Obviously we have two of the more trendy Pastors and a minor league baseball team.  If you are not familiar with Rob Bell, I will introduce you. He is a trendy glasses-wearing Pastor who made a series of videos, each about 15 minutes long and all with a really cool message. The problem is he talks to us while some distracting event is happening in the background. I have a real problem with attention deficit so I find myself very distracted with what is happening around him and not paying enough attention to what he is saying. His videos are pretty popular among the 20-30 something crowds.  Francis Chan is also a Pastor. I would put him in the category of "rebellious trendy". That means while he says he is not trendy, he sure looks like he is, but in a different kind of way.  He also has a series of videos where strange things are happening while he talks. In both cases of Rob Bell and Francis Chan, it is almost as if they were unaware the film crew was showing up that day and they do the talk anyway while being followed.
Also common in these short films are the shaky camera operators.  Many times we see a closeup of hands instead of the guy speaking.  I noticed something about this type of camera work.  It has a different effect on age generations. The younger group sees this type of filming and thinks nothing of the camera angles and bizarre close-ups of extremities. It is normal to them. The middle-aged people see it, know it is done on purpose, but can't figure out why anyone would do that.  The last group, the elderly folks can't believe they left those mistakes in the film. They see a shaky camera as a bad camera man who probably got fired after the making of this silly video. Unfortunately there was not enough money to do a re-shoot of the scene so they left it in.
This takes me to my Daytona Cubs. Observe this video of me throwing out the first pitch at a recent game. How I got to do this is not really important to the blog.

The key words in this video are "first pitch". I have many people who asked me if I really struck the guy out. Really? On the first pitch? Never mind the fact that they would let all those extra people on the field while I pitch to a real batter with an umpire. I did a bit of simple editing. Not to fool anyone, but because I thought it would be funny. I guess Rob Bell and Francis Chan think the same with their videos. They aren't trying to fool anyone, just give a message about God. I bet God gets frustrated with us when people read the Bible.  His work is pretty straight-forward but we manage to look at the stuff in the background and be confused. Same rules apply as the videos but take away 20 years. The little kids hear it and think it sounds normal. Teens to 30 somethings hear it, get it, but are not sure why God did it this way. Middle age to older people hear it and find all the mistakes and controversy in it. They figure that people got in the way of God's word. 

At the end of the Cubs game they let all the kids on the field to run the bases. I went out and ran the bases with the kids. I like being young.