A couple of new additions to the blog:

• Reading list : I have added a reading list section to the blog - in the sidebar on the right there are three links under “Reading list” : “current”, “past”, and “future”. Each link takes you to a page that displays the covers of the various books in each list, and they are linked to Amazon. The “past” reading list also has a rating for each book and a short book review I scribbled, for whatever that’s worth
• Subscribe : I have added a mailing list feature to the blog - click on the link titled “the reckless mailing list” under “Subscribe” in the sidebar. You can now get an email whenever there is a new article on this blog. The email will contain a short excerpt and a link to the post. You can also unsubscribe at any point. I won’t sell your email addresses

Thanks for reading!

“There is a fire
And motion of the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest”
~ Childe Harold

Quote on intro page to Book II of “Ben-Hur : A Tale of the Christ”

One of the revelations I’ve had recently about the Christian attitude toward growing in faith is the mainline Christian confusion about U2 - “how could they be a Christian band if they wrote a song titled ‘i still haven’t found what i’m looking for’?”
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Recently I read this quasi-humorous quasi-serious satirical take on the evangelical Christian approach to spiritual life:

You Might Be Evangelical If …

While I chuckled at the items on the list, and nodded along in understanding with many of them, one item in particular stood out:

You might be evangelical if …

7. … you tell God what to do when you pray. This becomes clearest when you attend a non-evangelical service and the Episcopal priest, say, begins, “We pray for the worldwide church, Lord,” and you wait to hear what he will pray about the worldwide church but instead he moves on. “We pray for our bishop, George,” and while you wait to hear about George’s great needs, he moves forward: “We pray for the sick in our midst: Helen, Steve, Raven…” For the evangelical, by contrast, it is a point of pride to intuit God’s desire: “We just pray that you will give Steve strength as he heals. We ask, Lord, that you knit those broken bones together and help him keep his wound clean beneath the cast. And Lord, for his mother, as she juggles nursing her son now with her job down at the post office, and her grocery shopping every Monday, we just ask that you give her extra strength in her body and love in her heart and gas in the tank of her Crown Victoria.”

How true! In my evangelical past I have certainly thought that this was the only right way to pray - that nonspecific general prayers were feeble and weak, and that a sign of a mature Christian who asks for prayer requests is to ask for all the minute details of each prayer “target”.
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Here are two pictures from our recent whitewater rafting trip - one that ended up being a field trip lesson for us in reckless faith For more on that, click here: http://www.recklesspassion.com/20060615/ahead

We just got the pictures of us on the raft from the whitewater rafting company, click on the thumbnails below for the full size images.

Of course, I can be easily picked out in the images since I am the only non-white person on the raft Alexis is across from me on the raft, to my left, at the very back of the raft. In the first picture, the one where you can’t see much of the raft, Alexis is the one on the far right of the picture. The raft guide Hannah is in between us. Alexis is also the one with the look of sheer glee on her face In the second image, it looks like Alexis isn’t rowing, but actually in that one the raft is about to hit the wave (you can see it about to hit the guys in the front - it washed over all of us shortly after the picture was taken) and our guide Hannah has just told the left side to row backward to get the raft to hit the wave side on, so Alexis is preparing to dig back on the oar.

The glee on her face, though, stayed on for the entire 3 hours we were on the river

Last weekend Alexis and I celebrated our first anniversary by going on a whitewater rafting trip up in Maine. We spent three nights in a luxurious suite at a great place (www.crabapplewhitewater.com) that organizes rafting trips down the Kennebec River, and, when the water is high enough, on the Dead River.

I know, isn’t the name itself kinda imposing? The DEAD River? Yeah, sign me up!
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