We were having brunch in a restaurant when our oldest daughter looked across the table at us and asked, “Why did the cowboy get a dachshund?” We looked back blankly. We didn’t know. “So he could get a long little doggie,” she replied. Fine, groan then.

This week I learned that when you get poor results from your little Parmesan cheese grating gadget because the cheese is a little hard, use a good lemon zester instead. A good lemon zester, in case you’re wondering, comes from Lee Valley, having started life as a wood file. The end result is actually better, with nice finely-grated Parmesan cheese adorning your pasta.

Okay, time to raise the curtain on this week’s random linkage.

1. Pride of place belongs to a post I wish I had written… Grace’s A Relational Ethos of Leadership. Excerpts:
   

   The problem with misunderstanding the nature of roles and relationships goes beyond just being an issue of doctrine or belief, because as we live out wrong beliefs in this area, the results are relationally damaging. It is not a benign issue. In an attempt to fulfill roles that were not intended, we miss out on the kind of relationships we were intended to have. …Hierarchy imposes a power structure on relationships that were intended to be mutual. With mutuality, we have the freedom to give love and respect. We freely submit to one another in authentic relationship. Power and control remove that freedom by demanding submission. Requirement replaces love and relationship. The ideas of headship and spiritual authority create a role of mediation. …We see this dysfunction in our corporate lives when there is an underlying belief that responsibility for the care of the body rests on the pastor. …we functionally neglect caring for one another and miss the opportunity to learn what living according to the one-another passages would be like in its fullest expression.

2. It could be a caption contest… photo of a girl, a guy, and their pets.
3. Trevin Wax quotes A Journey Away from Generation X; I wonder if those who aren’t would still get it?
4. The “dangers” of blogging: Yossi Vardi on TED.com; be forewarned.
5. What Produces Bad Decisions? Stupidity doesn’t make the list, which means you can positively affect your ability to prevent bad decisions.
6. Jesus in the healing line.
7. Michael Spencer serves up A Lectionary F.A.Q. — good stuff for those not quite used to the concept.
8. Frank Viola responds to questions about and criticisms of Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
9. It’s official! Guinness is the Official Drink of Advent! Jest if you will, but Glenn offers some good insight… think it over slowly, in front of a Guinness. Or two.
10. Freebies from the Atlantic Monthly archives — stories by Raymond Chandler, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, and others.
11. Revisiting the Concept of Cheap Grace: begins with a bad church sign and moves along to Bonhoeffer’s assessment of cheap grace.
12. Paul Young on Fiction, Truth, Reality and all that stuff… the parable of the Good Samaritan and other insights that creep up on you.
13. David Fitch’s Confessions of a Missional Pastor (Wannabe?) – Looking Back on Some Frustrations With Time.
14. I just don’t know how to describe Squirrel vs. Penguin, except to say squirrel, penguin, dueling banjo and guitar, Burt Reynolds in Deliverace, the Dukes of Hazzard… and I don’t know what’s with the pigs, or how a penguin can manage that finger-pickin’ with a flipper. You just have to see it.
15. Have I mentioned “Sinners in the Hands of the Emergent Church” — Jonathan Edwards on the Emerging Church before? Andrew Jones takes it on, with a bit of discussion ensuing around his question, “Did Edwards demand the Native Americans convert to English language culture [and American value system] and a non-indigenous worship style or did he apply Biblical principles of cross cultural apostolic ministry in the way many emerging church apostles are now employing as they take the gospel into other cultures?”
16. Ben Witherington is Rethinking the Number of the Beast… $665.95: Retail price of the Beast; 666F: Oven temperature for roast Beast; Route 666: Way of the Beast — and more. Some years back, my wife and I lived in an apartment block with the street address 664, which made us — yes, that’s right — the neighbour of the Beast. Some misunderstandings of this mark are far more tragic.
17. The CBC explores the question “Where is God today?”
18. Resolutions of the Televangelists 2008 (via)
19. Fernando Gros quotes Robert Frost’s A Time to Talk… take time to read it.

For yet another week, that’s a wrap.