bierkergaard

Denzel Washington and I have a lot in common. Famous, good-looking, wealthy. Perhaps the greatest thing we have in common though is a busted pinkey on our right hands. Pinkey-in-Arms. He busted his in a basketball mishap. I busted mine on my brother's brick-hard head in a teenage fight about something stupid no doubt. Basketball was involved before and after the scrap. When my brother came to, he cackled that my right hand hand had crumbled like a stomped-on aluminum can. I felt like punching him again but I didn't pack a lot of power with my left hook. So, I took it like a near-man and sulked and stewed. I had some combo of 3-2 (two broken fingers and three broken knuckles, or three broken fingers and two knuckles). I tried to keep playing BBall after my hand shattered and I couldn't even hold the ball. I should have gone to the hospital immediately. Instead I waited about a week and when went I to the Emergency Room with my weary Mom, where I was a semi-regular, my r...

There was an essay recently in Christianity Today   where the writer expounded on why she does not drink alcohol: She lives in an impoverished neighborhood where one of the variables of destruction is alcohol abuse. She felt that drinking alcohol in that context gave the tacit approval for abuse. She writes:  When we take Communion with our friends and neighbors, we use grape-flavored Kool-Aid as a symbol of Christ's blood, shed for us . Really...tons of sugar, artificial coloring? That's truly mendacious. A lot of Americans struggle with metabolic disorders and dietary issues such as diabetes, hypertension, heart-disease, and inflammation, by the over-consumption of sugar and simple carbohydrates. Probably even a lot of people in her 'hood. Not exactly a stumbling-free substitute. Ridiculous actually. Fork over the candy bars and soda, yo. Then, she went from there into a general commentary of how drinking Christians should avoid posting picture of beer, wine, a...

I was reminded last week of a concert by the band Aradhna , who are a syncrestic blend of Hindi musicality and Christian spirituality. The occasion for the remembrance was attending The Back Porch Fest brought to fruition by The Row House, run by my friend Tom Becker. I love the tagline of The Row House on its banner: Nothing Is Not Sacred . The Back Porch Fest was a cool musical event with a diverse line-up of bands set in a barn and bucolic farmlands. A beautiful day, even the flies fit the vibe. What would a concert set in a country scene be without the flies buzzing by? Stepping back from the Fest a bit, I thought how remarkably cool the scene was and how I really appreciated Tom's and cohorts vision in putting it on. I will return to Aradhna in a bit. Sometimes when we are too close to greatness we miss the glory. The Row House is doing cool and cutting edge stuff and Church-goers should pay it some mind. Evangelical subculture generally runs a parallel universe ...

All of us have those household jobs that we avoid. Taking out the trash, dishes, laundry. Mine is cleaning the shower and bathtub. If I was proactive, I would scrub it weekly, keeping the grime at bay like the marauding Germanic hordes of yesteryear. When I was a teen, one of my household chores was taking out the trash. I would delay and then the pile would grow and grow beyond the confines of the brown paper grocery bags. So, I would have to reach down and try and grab the edges of the bag through the trash.  Avoidance just made the problem worse and worse. Then, sometimes the bag would break. Say what you will about plastics. It has made taking out the trash a tidier affair. Reminds me of a documentary I saw on PBS one time about a man that lived in the Alaska Wilderness who lived almost entirely off the land, sparse tools, and his wits. He had one exception: A plastic tarp for his cabin for waterproofing. The thing that make the plastic so bad as a disposable is it perm...

I enjoy being an iconoclastic individual. Evangelical-Intellectual, Athletic-Beer Drinker/Cigar Smoker, Reformed/Open-Minded. I am a niche personality. Working my way out of and whittling down a prefab ready-made audience, eschewing the type of predictability that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have made their billions on, as well as the Liberal equivalents. Perhaps my most illuminating fascination that exhibits my both/and approach is my deep affection for Jimi Hendrix, not just his music, but his personality. Far from only being a drug-addled freak, Jimi Hendrix was a modern day Mozart. Taking the Blues from the Mississippi Delta and expanding it into the Universe. Perhaps one of the few that could legitimately have both the historical roots and the progressive imagination together, making his music a epochal earth-shaking phenom. No other Rock guitarist has had such a lasting legacy. I just finished the book below: (a very plain and drab cover, that looks more like a passport pic...

Man, I watched Girl, Interrupted last night and the remainder this morning. Mental health and the true story of a young woman who spent a year of her life in an upscale Psych Ward during the 1960's were the backbone of the story. It was harrowing, humorous, and downright heebie-jeebie. Think One Who Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest gone female.   A. Jolie plays a narcissistic hell-raiser just a little too well. She is not the main character but might as well have been because the story needs her scalding and accusative voice in order to be told.   Mental health is like boxing a shadow. The shadow is real and ominous but it is difficult to find the angles to move the fight for health forward. Archimedes might have been able to move the world if he had a place to stand but such footing is fleeting in the realm of soul healing. That which is of the world cannot cure the world. I think the movie ultimately affirms the powerful antidote of Truth as the key to progressive healing...

I had some free time the last three days or so thus I read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I was intoxicated by the glasses full of sentences. Drank it up with relish and left with a deep regret that it is all gone. A great book ends like an empty bottle yet the taste lingers on and on in the mouth of my mind. I have always had a love affair with words. Yet, becoming an English teacher was never a goal which would seem like an appropriate path for a word aficionado. Not for me. I found the classroom like a cage, lashing my words to bars of punctuation and spelling and eating the gruel of grammar. There is a time to scrub the prose and poetry but first get a body of work of words down. Even worse, being a Librarian and ordering children to spit out their gum. That was from back in the day and not the current reality. I suppose words just are ideas, a way to label something wonderful. Maybe like Adam naming the animals at Creation. I am going to be teaching a course next year i...