…and other trivia.

Thought for the day: There are two kinds of people: those who can count to ten, and those who stand in front of you in the supermarket checkout line.

July 28: on this day in history, Thomas Cromwell was executed by order of Henry VIII (1540), Sir Thomas Harriot introduced potatoes to Europe (1586), World War I began with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (1914), Benito Mussolini resigned and FDR announced the end of coffee rationing in the USA (1943), a US Army B-25 bomber accidentally crashed into the Empire State Building (1945), Walt Disney released “Alice in Wonderland” (1951), Terry Fox was born (1958), and Keith Green died (1982). My random links won’t be quite as noteworthy as any of these… but as remarkable as your average potato, perhaps.

This past week, the CIA turned 60 and the Simpsons Movie was released. If the characters in the show had aged, Maggie Simpson would be voting now… which means (get ready to feel old) that the crop of teenagers starting College or University this fall were born the year The Simpsons first aired (“Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”), so in their mind — it was always on TV. The year they were born was also the one when Ayatollah Khomeini placed a $3-million bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head, but it was Khomeini who died later that year. It was the year of the Exxon Valdez oil spill; Dilbert went into syndication, Seinfeld and The Little Mermaid both premiered, Pete Rose was banned from baseball, Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, Emperor Hirohito, Bette Davis, and Secretariat died, and the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Protests were staged in Tiananmen Square, the Cold War ended, and the Berlin Wall came down… which means we’ve got a generation now that’s been raised on Dilbert, Seinfeld, and the Simpsons instead of Cold War fear… though that’s been replaced now with fear of terrorism. Part of the Berlin Wall is pictured here, with the graffito (singular of graffiti): “Irgendwann fällt jede Mauer” — “Eventually every wall falls.”

Now, on with the linkage:

Pride of Place, hands-down, goes to Emerging Grace’s image set of motivational-style posters, all having missional themes. Stunning, beautiful, profound. Go read. Be moved. (I even get quoted.)

1. Apparently I’m an outlaw… I’m hoping none of my friends are tempted by the bounty!
2. Nice reflection: out of the cave
3. Guerrilla gardening: putting flowers into urban settings; Organic culture-jamming… surf the links, that’s how you find things like the Uber Ducky.
4. Summer road trippin’? Tips for surviving and keeping it affordable are to be found here and there.
5. The TED Blog announces a Powerful new documentary on the Darfur genocide — looks interesting, if that’s an acceptable word for such a thing.
6. More on visionary leaders: Leadership and the Church– The Uneasy Truce Between Leaders and those Who Follow. We talked about this last week when I asked if Jesus was a failure at visionary leadership (by whose standards?)… but Brad Bergfalk points out that some people just don’t want to be led. Can’t say I disagree with that.
7. Cindy Bryan applies parallax theology to the missional church; insightful idea, fits in with another discussion this past week.
8. Lots of buzz about the Midwest Emergent Gathering that just concluded, but we’ll single out Mike Clawson’s report, for obvious reasons. Wish I could have been there; sounds like it was a good time, even if Will Samson did sleep through it.
9. Trevin Wax is rethinking our vocabulary, and takes a look at the phrase, “personal relationship with Jesus.” I agree, we can do better than that. I hope.
10. Fred Peatross says that every three years, your church should be unrecognizable from what it was three years earlier: “When you compare where you are today with where you were three years ago, if you can’t say, ‘I don’t recognize this place,’ you don’t get it.” He calls it the “Three Year Rule,” but I think some of us may operate on a “Three Decade Rule.”
11. Map of World Religions (via)… but it doesn’t show the emerging/missional church…
12. Links to recent interviews with Brian McLaren… and even a YouTube video. His new book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope is due out in October; he’s talking Deep Shift.
13. The photoset to which Emerging Grace was responding (see above): Pyromaniac Posters for Emerging Christians. Laugh at yourself. Okay, if you must — laugh at someone else who apparently thinks “same thing, bigger hammer” is always the right answer. (What else could they they have been thinking?)
14. Okay, I confess: I’ve never read any Harry Potter. I saw most of one of the movies once, but I can’t remember which one it was. Nevertheless, I know whether he lives or dies because I read it on Wikipedia. One of these days I’ll probably read them… especially now that I found out Jonathan Edwards would have read them.