DA Carson, Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller are all going to be featured speaker at the Desiring God conference at the end of September. It is cool to discover that Piper is a fan of Keller and vice-versa (an assumption I am making since he was invited and Keller accepted). The website for the conference is here. The blog for the conference is here (and powered by Wordpress too). The most recent post links to a great interview with David Wells, the author of the book Above All Earthly Powers which was the most significant influence in Piper’s choice of topics for the conference this year. Great interview, great wisdom!

Steve

So yesterday was the FatTriplets Barfday. I actually was sick with pinkeye and and a sore throat, which was a bummer. But no barfing.

I don’t have the time or energy to write a real blog (apparently my brothers don’t either), so I will link to the story I wrote last year on my birthday About How we Got our Names.

How we Got our Names.

Scott

Over the holidays this past December, my brothers and I watched the science fiction movie Serenity and really liked it. At that time, I learned that it was based on a canceled TV series (by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire slayer and Angel) called Firefly that had been on Fox TV in 2002.

A few weeks ago, Fat Triplet Steve told me he had been renting the DVDs from the one and only season of Firefly he really really liked it. That was enought motivation to me to add all 4 discs from the series to my Netflix queue and I by now I have watched 2 disks or 7 episodes. My conclusion?? Firefly is the greatest dramatic TV series ever made. OK, OK. I’ll admit that may be overkill. But it really is good. The The plot is interesting , the dialog and writing are witty and often funny and the characters are loveable.

One of the most amazing things about this series is they have a character called Shepherd who is a Christian. He’s not just religious, he is a christian of an unnamed variety but he often is seen with a bible in his hand and provides moral direction to the crew. He is a really winsome and likeable character and is not at all caricature.

In the episode called Jaynestown there is a dialog between Preacher and one of the other principal characters, River Tam. The back story on River is that she is extrememly gifted and brilliant (even psychic) and was essentally kidnapped, tortured and brainwashed by the ruling governement (called The Alliance) so her gifts could be used as a weapon. She was rescued by her brother but she was really messed up by the experience. This is a short conversation between Shepherd and River:

*************

Shepherd: What are we up to, sweetheart?

River: Fixing your Bible.

Shepherd: I uh . . What?

River: Bible was broken. Contradictions. False Logistics. Doesn’t make sense.

(A shot of his Bible, its worn well read, dog-eared and substantially marked up)

Shepherd: No. No You can’t . .

River: So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels are already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime Number. Eleven. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times but always comee out one time. (PAUSE- she looks him in the eye) Noah’s Ark is a problem.

Shepherd: Really?

River: We’ll have to call it early quantum state phenomonon. Thats the only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.(She starts to rip pages out of his bible)

Shepherd: Give me that. (PAUSE. He looks her in the eyes. ) River, You don’t fix the bible.

River: Its broken. It doesn’t make sense.

Shepherd: Its not about making sense. Its about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. Its about faith. You don’t fix faith, River. It fixes you. (She hangs on to the ripped bible pages while he gently tries to pull them from her hand. The pages rip and she still has some in her hand)

Shepherd: You hang on to those then.

****************

That has got to be one of the best scenes regarding faith ever on network television.

I am loving this show, and I highly recommend you rent / buy it and see if for yourself. One caveat, many of the episodes have some kind of scene of sensuality (of the network primetime televison variety), so you should preview them before you let your teenagers watch it.

BTW. Fans of the show are called Browncoats.

This blog is as stale as Fritos under the sofa, but thanks to Zooomr, I have here a genuine FatTriplets Blog post.

Something FREE would be what motivates me to ACTUALLY write a blog post.

What the heck am I talking about you might wonder?

Well, I had decided that I was going to start using a photosharing site to host my images online and for the blog. I was even going to use Flickr until I encountered that pesky upload limit for the free service at Flickr.

Then I remembered!!! A competing photosharing service - ZOOOMR is giving free PRO account upgrades for any bloggers who posts a blog with an image hosted on ZOOOMR. How easy is that? SO EASY!!

FREE!! LIBRE!! Besides. Those ZOOOMR people love bloggers. They said so thesmelves. I am a blogger. Therefore they love me. I am just FILLED with warm fuzzies.

So here’s my image, hosted at ZOOOMR. Its just some GIMP art I found a longtime ago. I think its cool.

CoolGimpArtHosted on Zooomr

Since the above image is technically not a PHOTO and I haven’t read the fine print over there at ZOOOMR, I have also uploaded and displayed for your viewing pleasure the below photo of a YELLOW CROWNED NIGHT HERON.

YELLOW CROWNED NIGHT HERON

Bird-1Hosted on Zooomr

My last step to get the free stuff is to leave a comment on the zooomr blog post, pointing them to this post.

How easy is that? SO EASY!!

Scott

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