Prodigal Altar Boy 100 Day Countdown T-80 Days to Go 30 October 2012

Prodigal Altar Boy 100 Day Countdown

T-80 Days to Go

30 October 2012

Goal:  2 hours per day working on the film

Details: 

·     Reviewed web development proposal

·     Per advisory board, contacted another web developer

·     Reviewed Advisory Board comments on fundraising letter

·     Fine tune mailing strategy (mechanics)

Total time:  2 hours

Goal:  30 minutes per day music practice

Details:

·     Warm-up on the Roland-ready Stratocaster

·     “Dies Irae” (50X) – Stratocaster

·     “Dies Irae” - Annihilator

·     “It’s Your Thing” – Stratocaster and Annihilator

·     “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” - Stratocaster

Total time:  30 minutes

Goal:  15 minutes exercise per day Body Opus Week 10

Active rest

Total time:  15 minutes

Goal:  30 Minutes “Tangential Endeavors”

“Albert King Live in Sweden” – (You know the Flying V was headed somewhere)

Total time:  1 hour

Ceremony vs. Ritual

Scanning today’s newspaper I ran across these two articles.  The first article lays out how Poland is set to put a musician on trial for blasphemy after tearing up the bible onstage.  In the second, Egyptian Copts have narrowed their field of candidates for Pope down to five.

 Referring back to Richard Rohr's piece ("Accept No Cheap Substitutes), he describes ceremony as "...meant to maintain the status quo."  He goes on to say that ritual "...always reveals the shadow and is meant to change us or at least transition us."  

So in Poland, we are set for what will undoubtedly be a trial of ceremony.  This musician will go on trial after what the article describes a Supreme Court case that "pitted deep Catholic traditions against a new desire for free expression."  The court's decision that Adam Darski should go on trial is maintenance of the status quo.

In Egypt, the Coptic Orthodox Church began voting Monday on a new spiritual leader to replace Pope Shenouda III, who died in March.  They narrowed the list to five candidates and a child from the congregation will draw the name of the new pope.  Now that's ritual.  whatever name that child draws will be the new pope, transitioning the Coptic Orthodox Church to its new leadership.

 

Prodigal Altar Boy 100 Day Countdown T-82 Days to Go 28 October 2012

Prodigal Altar Boy 100 Day Countdown

T-82 Days to Go

28 October 2012

Goal:  2 hours per day working on the film

Details: 

·     Met with Andrew Omotosho, web developer.  Discussed Web needs.

·     Reviewed mailing plan.

Total time:  2 hours

Goal:  30 minutes per day music practice

Details:

·     Warm-up on the Roland-ready Stratocaster

·     Grace City – Two services

Total time:  2 hours

Goal:  15 minutes exercise per day Body Opus Week 10

No carbohydrates after 6:00 PM

Active rest and recovery.

Total time: 

Goal:  30 Minutes “Tangential Endeavors”

“Fretboard Domination” – George Christian

Total time:  1 hour

“Accept No Cheap Substitutes”

Richard Rohr writes:

The most common substitute for liminal space is known as liminoid space.  Events and occasions that occur in liminoid space look liminal but aren’t.   Nothing new can happen in liminoid space, only more of the same.  We as a culture have become expert at passing off counterfeit experiences for the real thing.  Entertainment serves as worship, loud music and big crowds substitute for depth or breadth, and spectacles substitute for any true catharsis.

Fr. Jim Clarke, an elder for the organization Rites of Passage, taught us the difference between ceremony and ritual.  Ceremony is meant to maintain the status quo, but ritual always reveals the shadow and is meant to change us or at least transition us.

True ritual like true drama, always creates a catharsis, or emotional cleansing.  We prefer ceremony to ritual because it asks so little of us; we merely have to show up physically and be entertained.  True ritual demands psychic and personal participation, maybe even a change of heart or mind, whereas the liminoid character of ceremony allows us to observe at a distance.

(From the book: On The Threshold of Transformation by Richard Rohr)

Rohr’s observations cut at the heart of TQ’s “Shock Liturgy.”  On the one hand, TQ leveraged expectations violation theory by behaving outside the “priest paradigm” of behavior and drawing people in to his message.  The other side of that is the attention his tactic attracted often overshadowed the message he was trying to get across.  I have said that often, and now realize the people hung up on the spectacle at the expense of the message probably were not that engaged in the first place.  TQ alluded to that in one interview, arguing that the majority of the people who objected to one of his controversial Lenten themes had not been paying attention to all of his communications and planning before the Lenten season.  I don’t know whether TQ would agree with Rohr on the liminal and the liminoid, but I do know TQ was a fountainhead of liminal opportunity.  He gave thousands of people the opportunity for catharsis through liturgy using the principle of adaptation.  Judging from the people I interviewed and the throngs at his funeral, many took advantage of those opportunities to change not only themselves, but also the world around them.   

Fly on, Blue Angel!

Today is Channel My RAGE Day

2011 – Last 100 Days

Countdown

T-60 Days To Go

1 November 2011

Today is Channel My Rage (in a constructive way) Day.

Who am I mad at? I’m mad at myself for getting mad. 

Last week I sent one of my daily devotionals from “On the Threshold of Transformation:  Daily Meditations for Men” by  Father Richard Rohr OFM to my “Wolf Pack List.”  This is a group of guys I share devotionals with, put out prayer requests and share our struggles to be men.  Many of the devotionals come from the Ransomed Heart website, but when that devotional is focused on the ladies, I will pull from other sources.  The devotional for that day asked, “How am I defined?”  A memorable quote from the piece stated that if you are defined by other people’s responses to you, then”…you’ve laid down a sandy foundation for your life.” When I sent that out last Friday (28 October 2011), there were a few responses to the email, and we all went about our merry way into the weekend. 

Fast-forward to this morning, when I get an email from my supervisor concerning a recent performance evaluation I had contested.  What I read made me furious.  I thought about some not-so-nice (okay “scathing”) replies to him, and went as far as starting a draft, then I thought about the devotional I had sent out last Friday.  It is easy to read these devotionals and respond in agreement when nothing is on the line, but the proof of whether we take them to heart  is how we respond when the thrust of the message hits us right in the face.  Then I got mad at myself.  The author had me pegged, “This is the burden of the modern self:  insubstantial, whimsical, totally codependent, and all the while calling itself “free” and educated.”

BOOYAH!

Guilty as charged.  I don’t’ have anyone to blame but myself.  If I call myself a Christian, then I must (re-)align my attitude and as the author says, “…identify the meaning of our lives within ourselves in terms of our radical relatedness to God.”  He ends the piece with a quote from St. Francis, “We are who we are in the eyes of God, nothing more and nothing less.”    

How my supervisor feels about me is his problem.  I know who I am.  As I said in a previous post, “I got a Daddy!”  (Part 2 and Part 3)  I will channel today’s rage into a spirited Viking Warrior Conditioning workout and reap the benefits.

Shouts out to my Wolf Pack.  They came back with words of encrouagement and humor.  Whether it was focusing me on my successes or a friendly jibe to keep me from taking myself so seriously. They came out like, well, a pack of wolves!  Howl, Wolf Pack, HOWL!  Let me hear you, brothers!

Goal:  1 hour per day working on the film

Details: 

Digitized 2011 footage from a June interviews. (one tape)

Watched Karen Everett lesson on three-act structure.

Total time:  1 hour

Goal:  30 minutes per day music practice

Details:

MojoCaster  warm-up

 “It’s Your Thing” – Isley Brothers

“Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing” – Living Colour version (Spent some time combining the two riffs.)

Rhythm work on the E – B/D# - C#m – A chord progression. 

R&B chord progression work.  Focused on texture and tone.

Pat Metheny – Exercise #1 bars 1-4 metronome at 60 bpm

Total time:  30 minutes

Goal:  15 minutes exercise per day

Viking Warrior Conditioning

Kettlebell Snatch

36:36 Protocol (36 seconds to complete 18 reps, then 26 seconds rest)

18 reps per set – 16kg Kettlebell

Completed 20 sets of 18

Note:  The last time I did Viking Warrior Conditioning, I only completed 16 sets.  Today (my day of rage) I knocked out 20!  I gues I need to bring a little more rage to the Viking Warrior table!   For those of you keepng score, 20 sets = 360 reps

360 X 16kg = 5760kg which equals 12672 pounds total volume.  Not too shabby!

Total Time:  24:04

Goal:  15 minutes per day working on the score for the movie

Details:

“Granby Street” – lyric swap and bringing in first verse earlier

 “Dies Irae” – 20X (whole piece) on the Roland Strat

After 20X of the whole piece, focused on dyads and octaves

D – Dsus rif work

“So What” – Miles Davis

A Dorian intervallic riff

Total Time:  30 minutes