The Home of Bilbo Baggins

Following The Potter in Moldova

2012-01-05T12:01:00.001-05:00

This is actually a story from a year ago when Sue and I went to Moldova in the summer of 2010, but I realized I had never posted anything about it:

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One of my most precious memories of growing up is the time I spent summers at thelocal art gallery taking pottery classes. In the summer of 2010, I was able to share someof that joy with a group of children in rural Moldova.

Our church went on a missions trip to a small village in Moldova, near theRomanian border. Our primary goal was to work along side a local pastor and the OM Moldova teamin a children's program for the week. We were considering what else we could do in this program tobless the children and share the love of Jesus with them. I remembered sharing my love of pottery and clay through a couple of classes with the children in our local church, and how much they loved it. We were unsure of where to get quality pottery clay in Moldova,so we decided to carry the clay along with us. Getting a pair of 50lb boxes ofclay on two flights and through customs was, to put it gently, an interesting challenge, but we did eventually get itin.

There were around 100 children participating in the program, so rather thantry to deal with all of them at once, we split into smaller age-specific groupsof around 15 to 20. With help from our Moldovan translators, I was ableto teach the children some basic exercises and shapes, and then let them usetheir imagination to create what they wanted. It was fun to watch theexcitement of the children as they were at first frustrated, but then began toget the feel of working with the clay. The pastor was able to borrow a smallkiln from a local school, so we were able to fire many of the pieces the children had made to makethem more permanent.

The pastor also introduced me to Peter, a local potter, and we spent time sharing together. Since we hadn't used up all of the clay with thechildren, I was able to give a 25lb block to Peter to bless him and hiswork. The OM Moldova team was then able to take another block of clay with thema couple of weeks later to a similar children's program at a church in anothersmall village. The pastor's wife there is an artist herself, and was veryappreciative of the clay, since she was finding it difficult to obtain quality claythere to work with.

I would like to return at some point with the team to the village in Moldova.One of my dreams is to take a smaller group of some of the older children andspend some some more concentrated time with them, to see them get beyond simplymaking a shape to the point where they can express a little of themselves intheir creation. After all, the oldest Potter in the world is God Himself. Heformed Adam “out of the dust of the earth”, and made Adam “in His own image.”He has passed that same spirit of creativity and expression on to us, if wetake the time to discover it.

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I have not yet been able to return to Moldova, but I am thankful I have been able to pursue that dream in Hungary. The LORD only knows where I will be able to take my clay next...

Blogger and Google+ Merge

2012-01-04T16:36:00.004-05:00

So, Blogger and Google+ are being merged into one integrated service. Makes sense, since they are both owned by Google, and many people, like myself, already have both accounts. Just makes you stop and think a bit, as the Great Google Blob gets one size larger.

Of course, if this gives Google+ a little more momentum as it tries to catch up with Facebook, then that's probably a good thing, since it comes a little closer to being a viable alternative to the social networking site that Everyone Loves to Hate...

The Veil is Lifted

2011-09-27T20:09:00.004-04:00

On the first morning after we had arrived in Baja, Hungary, Bill Drake lead the OM Arts team in a short Bible study. To lay a foundation for our time there in Baja, he spoke from II Corinthians 5 where that apostle Paul speaks of us having a "ministry of reconciliation." We are not to preach ourselves, nor the greatness of our beliefs, but rather we are pointing people to be reconciled to God through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Any time I look at a passage in Scripture, I always like to go back a little way and get a "running start". No verse in the Bible stands on its own -- it is always preceded, and followed by other verses, and is most fully understood in its context. I went back and started looking at that passage, and over several days, worked all the way back to II Corinthians 3:7. There, Paul is comparing the "ministry" of the Old Testament Law with the ministry of the Spirit of Christ. He recounts the story of how Moses, when he came down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of the Law, had to cover his face with a veil to shield the people from the glory shining from his face because of the time he had spent with God up on the mountain.

Then Paul brings up an interesting point. The glory of Moses' face -- ie., the glory of the Law which Moses represents -- was not permenant. In fact, the reason that Moses veiled his face was not so much because of the glory itself, but to hide the fact that it was fading away! Paul uses this to draw a contrast between the fading glory of the Law, which can only condemn us, and the eternal glory of Christ, who actually brings us righteousness and eternal life!

Paul goes on to state:

(14) For to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.

Those verses struck me in the context of our coming to Hungary. Here we were to bring the ministry of reconciliation to these people, but there was a veil over their hearts! No amount of preaching, explaining, pointing, painting, acting, singing or standing on our heads was going to remove that veil. Only Christ could do that.

As I pondered the idea of the veil, I began to pray, asking Christ to show me what the veils were here in Baja. I started writing down the names of different veils as they came to me in quick succession. I don't claim that these are all the veils over the faces of the people of Baja, or of any other town, but I felt the Lord was specifically pointing out these six as things we were to contend with.

This is the list:

The veil of Simple Ignorance: Sometimes we know people who are ignorant because they close their minds and do not want to know. However, more often than not, people simply do not know the news of Christ. They've never had someone live the life of Christ in front of them. They may have heard myths and fables read to them to put them to sleep at night, but the Truth has never reached them.

The veil of Pride: In particular, I had the feeling that this was the pride of self reliance and tradition; "We can do this on our own, just as we have done for generations!"

The veil of Witchcraft: This was not "witchcraft" in the sense of spooky old women in black dresses and pointed hats, but the spirit of witchcraft -- often manifested in power and control over people through spiritual means.

The veil of Numbness: This was a bit of a surprise, and I had to pray about this one longer than the others, but then it made perfect sense. This is the numbness of, "I have been in pain for so long, I don't even feel it any more."

The veil of Fear: Fear is always a veil, but especially in this case I had the sense that it was a fear of change and the unknown. Not wanting to step off of the path that we have been on for generations. This veil felt like the flip side of Pride, again pointing to the sense of history and generations of people.

The veil of Secrecy and Shame: This was perhaps the scariest of all the veils that I felt. I had a strong sense that this was related in particular to the evil of human trafficking, which is a huge issue in Eastern Europe. I don't know to what extent it is an issue in Hungary, but I had a strong sense that it was there. Much like botulinum toxin, it only takes a tiny bit of this evil to poison an entire population.

I continued to pray about the veils. Some of them overlapped, but each had it's own personality. However, knowing about evil is all well and good, but it's not the point of why we were in Hungary for. Anyone can point out evil -- it's all around us. Specifically identifying evil is good, but again, it's pointless unless there is a solution.

But there is a solution.

The solution that I kept coming back to is right there in II Corinthians 3:14-18, which I started to quote above:

(14) ... only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and there the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces [contemplate] the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

The veil is the same today as it was in Paul's day, as is the solution. Through the redemptive work of Christ, the veil is lifted, and we behold the true Glory of God. We are transformed from the inside out. Christ overcomes each of these six veils through His power in the lives of people, as His Glory is reflected from our faces, and into the lives of the people around us. Imagine a prisoner on death row, being led out with a black hood over his head, and when the hood is pulled away, instead of the execution chamber, he is standing in the middle of an open, brightly lit field, free to go, knowing that his wrongs have not only been forgiven, but paid for by someone else who has died in his place!

Now, as an artist, I HAD to respond to this! Over the nearly three weeks we were there in Hungary, I had an opportunity to do a lot of different expressions of art, from simple teaching of children to individual sculptures to the graffiti wall we did on Friday night. However this one piece, titled "The Veil is Lifted", does the most to embody the heart of what we were there to see happen.

The Veil is Lifted

Since we had no kiln, I was never able to fire this piece, or any of the others we did while we were there. However, I was able to leave it there at the Prince Arthur English School, where we were working with pastor Arnold.

When I spoke with the team later, we wondered if there might be a seventh veil. Not that the number seven has any magical significance, but it is often used in Scripture as symbol of completeness. More on that later...

(Quotations from the NIV.)

Hope

2011-08-21T17:35:00.007-04:00

It's funny how sometimes God will use a really small thing to give you a little glimpse into His heart. At the edge of Baja, on the banks of the Danube, there is a small stone tower. There is a steep set of steps along the outside of the tower which climb to a small, circular platform at the top, around which runs an iron railing. There is a circular bench in the center of the platform where one can sit and gaze out over the river and the forests which line the far bank. It's a wonderful place to sit and rest in quiet.

What is worthy of note though is the railing which runs along the steps and around the platform. There is a tradition, started in Hungary and now spreading to many other cities, that a couple will take a lock and engrave their names on it. According to the tradition, if they attach the lock to the railing and then throw the keys into the river, then their love will endure forever!

A few of us from the OM Arts team wanted to go out to see the locks. I ended up being a little behind the others, so I spent the half hour walk along the edge of the canal approaching the park by myself. As I was walking, I couldn't help but notice the rolling black clouds of a thunderstorm fast approaching from the other side of the river.

The storm held off long enough for me to get to the park, even though I could see the lightning flickering in the distance. To one side of me there was bright blue sky, full of sun and hope. To the other, ominous black clouds approaching fast.

I sat for a little while on the bench, looking at the locks, and it suddenly hit me that I was seeing a picture of life. Every one of those locks represented a couple, a story, a dream, a hope for the future. Like the bright sunshine, they had seen a time of joy and expectation. Some of those dreams were only born yesterday. Some had been there for many years. Yet, in the background, the storms were approaching. I wondered how many of those dreams had been broken or crushed over the years. How many dreams had turned into nightmares? How many have lived on, struggling against the storm? How many were still flourishing, bringing life and light to others around them?

What I saw was more than a silly tradition and a bunch of old locks on an iron railing. I saw lives of real people. These are the same people Jesus sees. These are the people Jesus has sent us to, to enter into their stories and reflect His love to them, and tell them there is a Savior who is stronger than tradition, a Savior who commands the winds and the waves. I felt a sense of the urgency of that call.

So, I guess God can even talk through a bunch of rusty old locks...

Marsha, painting along the Danube

Hungary Update

2011-08-03T23:36:00.003-04:00

Hungary:

As you may remember from previous updates, I spent most of the month of July traveling with an OM Arts team in Hungary. Every time I go out on one of these trips, I learn to appreciate more and more the value of getting out of the office and seeing what exactly all of my IT work at OM USA is actually supporting.

You may also remember that, as we were planning the trip, there were a lot of questions about what exactly we would be doing. I'm learning that this is pretty common – you set your goals and make your plans and collect your materials, and then you hit the ground on the first day and discover what God is really planning for this trip! Goals and plans and preparations are necessary, but you learn to hold on to them with an open hand!

One quick story:

Our OM Arts team was made up of six visual artists working along side the music and dance teams. I will never cease to be amazed at the caliber of people God brought on that team, and how He molded us together in the couple of weeks we spent together! We had a couple of main objectives as we were in the city of Baja (pronounced: Boy-ah). The first one was teaching art classes in the small English school there, and developing friendships with the students. Another main objective though was to create a large scale piece of art which would be a part of the final concert in the main town square of Baja on Friday evening... and be able to do it in five minutes on stage! The concert would bring together music, testimonies, dance and art as a complete presentation of the message of the Gospel. To that end, we spent a lot of time at the start of the week praying for the specific message that the Lord wanted us to communicate with the people of Baja.

The sense that we got was a message of how God takes our brokenness – through sin in and around us and all the wear and tear of this life – and somehow transforms that into beauty. He doesn't always "fix" things in our lives, but He takes those things and transforms them into something that makes us whole, strong and even beautiful. The word we found in Hungarian which best communicated this transformation was, "Csodálatos", which means full of wonder and beauty and awe. It even has the sense of birth and new life. We decided to do the piece as a "graffiti wall", a canvas around 5 feet by 12 feet, which we could do with spray paint and multiple layers of stencils and free hand painting. On Friday (after a LOT of scrambling to pull together all the details), we were able to actually get the "wall" up on stage at the end of the concert, and do the entire piece while Bill Drake and his band played behind us. When we were done, Bill explained the message behind the piece, and then invited people to come up and put their hand prints in paint on the wall as a visible statement of their commitment to be a follower of Jesus.

There were a lot of the students from the school who came up to add their hand prints to the wall, as well as some others from the audience. I was busy behind the stage taking care of some of the stencils and materials we had used to make the piece, but when I came back around the corner to the front of the stage and saw the wall and all the hand prints there, I was struck by the thought that each one of those prints represented a person, a life, a story of someone who was making a step forward. Each of those steps were different – some were probably more serious or thought out than others – but each was still a step. It was more than just a pretty piece of art up there on stage. It was God using art to communicate the deeper message of His Love to the people of Baja.

Tales of the Tyrone Tryons - April, 2010

2011-04-27T14:10:00.001-04:00

Dearest friends and family,

Shalom! A couple of Sundays ago, as a part of our preparation for the Easter season, we had a time celebrating the Passover Seder meal at church. Murray, from a Messianic Jewish ministry, led us through the Seder, explaining each step and symbol as we shared the meal around tables ourselves. It was amazing to meditate on how Jesus Himself celebrated the Passover, and to see how each part of the meal points to His redemption for us! Hallelujah!

We were reminded about the great need to pray for the Jews around the world... and to pray for Muslims, too! As we see in the news, the Near East is shaking, and we need to pray fervently in these days! We keep hearing amazing firsthand reports of what God is doing there – reports that you don't hear about in the news – but there is still great persecution. Just this week in that region, a church leader was released. He had been arrested after baptizing new believers there, not knowing someone was using a cell phone to video the event – a video which was then shown on the national TV. He had been sentenced to death for his “crimes”, it is a great miracle that he was released. Thank you, Lord! Keep praying for our persecuted brothers and sisters.

What's going on in IT?

iConnect: Some of you may have heard of the “iConnect” (Blackbaud) project that the IT team at OM USA has been working on. After several years of work, the project had finally reached the “Go Live” milestone. There are still several portions of the system which need to be implemented, but there were enough pieces in place that most of the people in the office could begin using the new system.

For all of you who are familiar with implementing large projects like this, you know how things are always rocky at the beginning! However, the system is finally coming to life. It will be a while before people have used the new features enough to become comfortable with them (and for us to shake out the bugs), but we are up and running. Thank the Lord for bringing us to this point! We really hope that this system will be a powerful tool to help OM tell the story of what God is doing around the world, and to invite our partners and supporters to become a part of that story!

The Americas Server: While a few of the larger national offices in OM have been spending a great deal of time sweating over iConnect, the majority of the OM fields are still using the existing Petra system for personnel, finance, recruiting and a host of other IT functions. As an organization, we have found that, even though we have tried to make the Petra system as simple as possible to maintain, some of the smaller field offices still have a difficult time finding people with sufficient IT skills (or time) to keep the system running smoothly. As a result, some of the larger offices, such as USA, have set up “hosted” services for the smaller offices. In simple terms, we have a central computer in our office that the other offices can dial in to over the Internet. This way, these smaller offices have access to all their IT data and functions, and we in the US can take care of making sure the systems are properly maintained and running smoothly.

My newest responsibility is taking care of a dozen or so fields throughout South and Central America (hence, the name, the Americas Server). While this is a pretty significant amount of work, it also gives me a great opportunity to serve many smaller offices around the Americas, and to directly support their ministry through this hemisphere. It's another example of how we can use the latest whizzbang tools of the IT industry1 to see the Gospel spread to every corner of the earth!

Sue's News:

Sue has had changes in her life as well. She was asked to assume the Book Store Manager job at OM USA in January. There are 3 important subdivisions of this job. Let her explain:

The “Brick and mortar” store (physical store) – Sue now oversees the 9-5 bookstore that is open at OM USA with the assistance of several valuable volunteers. She enjoys ordering and receiving lots of new books! The bookstore has given her the opportunity for plenty of reading, too (almost always at home), since publishers and new authors keep giving her new titles to check out! With a lifelong love of reading and books, it is fun, fun, fun! (Did you know Sue won a reading contest in Second Grade and still has the prize–a book of course–to prove it?) Part of this job is also an outreach to the Tyrone community.

Secondly, the job means providing book tables upon request for local church missions conferences. With the help of volunteers, we have provided three so far this year. Sue has always been greatly blessed with the inspiration of missions conferences, thanks to the heritage of Grace Covenant Church in Rochester, NY. Now it is a blessing to share great books with many at these conferences. Sue reads as many of these books as possible to provide good recommendations for purchases. It is a wonderful privilege to follow Operation Mobilization's 50+ year tradition of using literature to share the Gospel.

Finally, the newest part of this ministry is the OM USA online bookstore. The online site is technically “working”, but we are still learning how to add new titles, make changes, correct prices, etc. Sue calls this her "monster in the closet"! She is learning how this all works, with a 250 page manual to study. Prayer, please! You can check on our progress yourself at https://store.omusa.org/.

As we look to the future, OM USA is continuing to expand its literature ministry. Sue receives daily requests for books by phone and email. With our own mail room (where Sue still helps out for a few hours each morning), we can ship orders to most parts of the world. We are able to receive discounts from most publishers, so we are able to offer books at a reasonable cost – often below the price of other on-line bookstores! Anyone may phone 800-899-0432 or send a request to sue.tryon@om.org to order most Christian books.

In addition to her work with the bookstore, Sue is still taking Spanish lessons every week at our local church. There is a significant Hispanic population in this area, and knowing even a little bit of Spanish can open many, many doors to meaningful ministry right here where we live.

OM Arts:

As I alluded to in our last letter, I am continuing to move toward more involvement in the ministry of OM Arts (http://www.arts.om.org/). The Lord has been moving us forward at a dizzying pace as I have had the opportunity to join a local Arts organization here in Fayetteville, and to purchase a second-hand kiln to start developing my own studio. I'm afraid our cars have seen the last of the inside of our garage. ;-) I have applied to join OM Arts team going to Hungary for this summer (http://www.arts.om.org/mission-trips/visual-art/hu1.html). One interesting piece about this trip is that it combines both art and working with teens in a different culture. Please pray as Sue and I seek the Lord's will for this trip, as well as several other opportunities (including a return trip to Moldova where the team there would love to have us follow up on the ministry which we began last year!). You wish sometimes that you could do everything, but the Lord has given us real bodies that can only be in one place at one time...

In Closing...

I was reading a prayer from another missionary that we support in Chile, and something he wrote really struck me. He was expressing his thanks for all the people – people like you – who stood behind his team in their ministry. I would also like to express our thanks to you in the same way for the many ways that you stand behind us as partners. Those who support us financially are obvious, but just as important are those who pray, and write letters and emails, or call on the phone. In our position here in the US office, we see very clearly the way this partnership impacts people all along the chain that God has created, from the home church to the mountains of Kyrgyzstan or the little villages of Vietnam. Standing here in the middle of that chain, we see very clearly how we could not do this without your obedience to God's call. Thank you for your faithfulness!

Prayer Time: Thanks be to God!

For Sue's new responsibilities as the Bookstore Manager
For real tangible progress on the Blackbaud/iConnect project.
For opportunities for ministry this summer

Requests for prayer:

Guidance and wisdom and perseverance for Chuck in both teen ministry and IT projects supporting OMers in the US and beyond
Big breakthroughs in implementing the online bookstore.
Wisdom,guidance, and strength in Sue's diverse job responsibilities
Wisdom in planning and finances as we consider short-term missions opportunities for 2011

God bless you and your family as we see Gods's Glory unfolding in the wonders of spring. We praise the Lord for you!

In His Service,

Chuck and Sue Tryon

OM Flood Relief in Pakistan

2010-09-01T12:52:00.003-04:00

By now, you have probably heard of the horrendous flooding in Pakistan. The has UN said the final toll could exceed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined.

Since flooding began in Pakistan in July 2010, the OM team in Pakistan has been struggling to bring aid and the Christian message to flood victims—so far they have fed nearly 2,000 families. For more on what OM is doing, see the link: http://omusa.org/pakistan

$35 feeds 1 family of 6 people for 2 weeks

"If it was easy..."

2010-07-26T20:44:00.002-04:00

As I begin to spend more and more time doing pottery, and expanding the range and depth of the pieces that I'm creating, I am finding that "failure" has an important role in the creation of art. Pieces blow up when I try to fire them. Glaze turns out wrong. Things collapse or warp when they dry. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of getting to the end and finding that a piece doesn't speak, or it's out of balance or whatever. I take a step back, figure out what went wrong, and try again, sometimes three or four times. I'm finding that it's a normal part of the process.

I told someone once, "If it was easy, it wouldn't really be art."

It's not always an easy lesson to swallow.... :-(

Logos Hope Trip - #3 - At Anchor, and a Change of Plans

2009-11-15T22:23:00.004-05:00

I wish I had written more down at the end of each day we were on the ship, since the week is already starting to get blurry as I try to remember the details of what actually happened. Of course, the fact that we were stuck out at anchor and couldn't participate in many of our planned activities didn't help. The first couple of days (Fri-Sun) went according to plan, but the announcement early on Monday morning (about 6:00AM) that we were leaving our berth due to the continued swell, pretty much threw the rest of our agenda to the wind.

(Apparently, the problem was a storm on the other side of the island. We had bright, clear weather with a moderate wind, but the waves were carrying around and coming into the harbor where we were tied up, causing the ship to rock back and forth enough that the captain was concerned with potential damage to the ship and moorings. We were also concerned with being bumped out of our berth by a grain ship which was due to come in to offload flour, a process that would take several days. If we had been forced to leave that berth, we would have lost the advantage of being open up to the public for access to the book fair. If we had moved to one of the cruise line berths, then the crew could come and go, but the general public wasn't allowed.)

I now have a pretty good idea of what seasickness feels like. Thankfully, I didn't get really nauseous, as some people do, but I had a nagging headache for most of the first day at anchor, and for the next couple of days, found myself constantly tired. Later in the week, the waves started to calm down a bit, and I started to get used to the constant rolling, but overall, seasickness wasn't one of my more pleasant experiences. According to our original schedule, Monday was supposed to be an "off day," so we had planned to go ashore and look around the island a little. Unfortunately, that trip got immediately axed. However, I managed to take a nap on during the day, which helped with the seasickness. My bunk was perpendicular to the axis of the ship, which meant that I was rocking head-to-foot rather than rolling back and forth. At least I wasn't feeling like I was going to roll out of bed. Eventually, my system sort of got used to the rolling, and though I still felt tired a lot, I was still able to work, and after a while, even enjoy the rest of the week.

Sue and Joyce did a lot of sewing during the week, from curtains to mending. They had planned on doing some sewing anyway, but being at anchor and our onshore activities canceled, they took up sewing in earnest. A couple of people came up to her and almost begged to have some of their work clothes patched. (Those people down in the engine room and serving as deck crew can be pretty hard on even the toughest of clothes!) I had to spend an hour or two on Tuesday trying to fix one of the two old sewing machines, since it wasn't functioning at all. I'm no expert on sewing machines, but with some fiddling, I was able to at least get it sort of working.

Starting Tuesday, Dave and I went to the book exhibit. With all the pressure to just keep the shelves filled during the time visitors are on board, it's hard to actually spend time checking that the books are shelved correctly (not jumbled up by people putting things back in the wrong place), or even that the price markings are accurate. Since the ship visits so many different ports, they don't use any specific currency, but instead, use "units", which then correlate to a list of prices posted around the floor. For example, a book of 200 units translated to something like 5 Barbados dollars. However, sometimes, there would be a change in the unit price of a book. If someone put up a new stack of books but forgot to change the ones already there, you would have a discrepancy. So, Dave and my job for the next two days was to go through the stacks and make sure that the prices of the books were marked and consistent..... all while the ship was rocking, back and forth, back and forth. OK, remember we have to be FAT -- Flexible, Available and Teachable. ;-)

While I (mostly) enjoyed the practical work on the ship (OK, I really liked the engine room), what I really thought was important was the time we had interacting with the young people on board. While at anchor, there was a lot of frustration among the crew that they couldn't get off the ship or open up deck 4 and the I-Café to do what they had come there to do. However, as the ship's director reminded us, God wasn't surprised by our turn of events, and He still had plans. Since we couldn't get on shore, the effect for us was that we had much more time to talk to and work along side of the crew.

We had many meals when we could sit down and share with people. For Sue and me, it was especially rewarding to catch up with some of the young people we had met 8 months earlier at the GO conference in Germany. We'd met so many people there, full of hopes and dreams and visions for the future, and now we had a chance to see how they were actually doing. It was encouraging to see how much each of them had grown in that short time.

Of course, they still had their struggles. One common theme was that of relationships. Several people mentioned having a difficult time because they had developed close friendships with short term people (such as people in the “STEP” program, which only lasts a few months), only to have those friends leave the ship at the end of their term, perhaps never to be seen again. One asked for prayer after developing a friendship with one young lady, and then feeling crushed (“I can't breathe.”) when she left the ship at the end of her time there. Sometimes, with the intensity of life on the ship, it's hard to find someone who will just be a friend to hang out with, to talk and joke, to give you a chance to unwind and decompress. There were issues with balancing between working/ministering and relaxing. Some worried about getting to the end of a day and looking back and feeling like they hadn't used their “free time” wisely, while another asked for prayer for a balance between being involved in an endless blur of activities and being more contemplative, or as she put it, “a balance between being a Martha and a Mary.”

Still, with all the pressure and struggles, I was amazed to see how God was working, and the depth of character that these young people showed. We had the opportunity to attend several prayer meetings on board ship during the week we were there, and when there was time for sharing, they would come up one after the other, sharing Scriptures, and encouraging each other. I never heard them complain about the work, though I did hear some frustration over not being able to get off the ship to talk with people on shore more. For me, that time was perhaps the greatest blessing I could have received from the trip -- to see how, in spite of all their fears and foibles, God was filling the hearts and minds of these young people with a passion to serve Him and to know Him.

Logos Hope Trip - #2 - In the Belly of the Ship

2009-11-12T21:44:00.005-05:00

On Saturday, I was assigned with Dave and Larry to work in the engine room (deck #1 - as far as you can go down in the ship, not counting the ballast tanks). We first had to get our ear guardians and steel toe shoes. They had a big bag of shoes for people to use, but I couldn't find anything that was actually my size. I found a pair one size larger than I thought I wore (they used European sizes), which I could get on my feet, but they were pretty floppy, and make going up and down the stairs pretty dicey.

Once we had our feet and ears protected, we went down in the engine room and had our safety briefing. This mostly involved walking around the four main compartments (generators, main engines and cooling, machine shop and fuel bunkers) and pointing out the various fire extinguishers, emergency exits and waterproof bulkhead doors. There were also the various alarms that would go off, most of which we actually were supposed to ignore, unless there was a general alarm, which would mean heading to our assigned muster stations.

Elanor spent most of the day working with us, since she was responsible for “Vision Teams”. First went to the most aft compartment in the engine room, which housed one of the main fuel bunkers (heavy fuel oil). It had been primed once, but we had to wipe it down with solvent (to remove any film from the constant oil in the air) and then give it a second coat of primer. Once we had wiped down the wall, we got paint and small rollers (much smaller than normal rollers: about 1 inch diameter and about 4 inches long). Talking with Elanor while we were working gave us a little snapshot of life on the ship.

The next painting project was a small workshop they were building for the chief engine specialist (I don't remember what his exact title was), where he could have a more controlled working environment for his specialized tools and sensitive engine parts. I'd actually had about as much as I could take with solvent fumes, so I volunteered to do power wire-brushing of some of the extruded steel supports on the outside wall of the workshop. This was a little more “fussy work”, but actually suited me better. It was tricky getting in all the tight corners to get at all the rust, since the spinning wire brush was about three inches in diameter, and the tool was big enough that it made it difficult to get around some of the other stuff in front of the wall we were painting. You end up holding it about 6 inches from your nose. Yea, look out in case it grabs and kicks back at you... ;-) Dave, Larry and Elanor were working on painting the inside of the shop while I was working on the outside. Once I had finished wire brushing, we were able to complete painting red primer on the outer wall.

I was glad that I had brought a pair of grubby jeans to work in. We were definitely filthy by the time we were done, not to mention exhausted!

By the time we mostly finished that job, it was time to clean up. Since this was on a Saturday, which is the end of the week for the crew, we spent the last hour or so doing what they call, “Hour of Power” -- doing a more thorough cleaning of the whole engine room area. The team was in the middle of moving some equipment lockers around in preparation for the “Heavy Oil Project” (setting up to process the cheaper, but dirtier heavy fuel oil to run in the generators and main engines), so that had to be straightened up. We also helped with hauling out garbage, which included various scraps of steel and other parts that had been left over from other jobs, and hauling it up the very narrow and steep stairs to the deck above (#3) where we left it in a large drum to be dumped later.

One of the things that Elanor said was that she really enjoyed working with short term Vision Teams, perhaps even more than some of the other departments, since whatever the teams down in the engine room did, it usually made a visible, long term impact on the ship. When you paint a major piece of equipment, it's obvious when you were done. You can point to that job and say, “That's where I made a difference.” Other assignments, such as working in the book hold or helping in the galley, were perhaps just as important, but those were often ongoing activities where it was much more difficult to see a long term, physical impact on the ship. As we finished up sweeping, the engineering team expressed how thankful they were for the contribution of our team. I was tired and filthy with oil and paint and rust, but I definitely felt like I'd accomplished something, and made some good friends.

Logos Hope Trip - #1 - First Impressions

2009-11-12T21:38:00.003-05:00

“You have to be FAT –Flexible, Available, Teachable”

My first impression of the Logos Hope is of the size – not so much of the ship itself (though it is a pretty good sized vessel), but of the vision, the ministry, and the hand of God on the crew.

Since we have been working at the OM USA office, I have gotten used to the idea of working full time at a place where God is the center of everything we do. People there aren't perfect, and things don't always go smoothly, but there is an intentional effort to see God working in us and through us. Prayer is serious business, and miracles are something you come to expect on a regular basis.

On the ships though, everything is even more compressed, shaken together, with the fluff squeezed out. People are still people, and it doesn't take long to see the little signs that everyone there is still God's “work in progress”, but there is no doubt that this ministry exists based on the power of God.

Of course, there are still plenty of practical things to do! There's this huge ship to keep running, and floors to vacuum, and a crew of between 350 and 400 to feed and clean up for, and books to sell, and there's still a never ending battle against the corrosive effects of salt and water on wood and steel.

We arrived on Friday afternoon, with enough time to settle in to the cabins where we were staying, get some organizational details and to get a tour around the ship. When you get there, the ship feels like a maze of twisty passages, all looking the same, but after a few days, you start to get a feel for how to get from one place to another. One of the first hurdles was the sheer number of steps to go up and down! I found I had to be careful not to over-stress my knees. You eventually start to learn which stairs go to which areas in the ship, though if you don't have a porthole near by, it's still a challenge to figure out if you are headed forward or aft at any point in time.

Saturday was when our activities started in earnest. I had expected that we would be doing more activities together, but when we received our schedules, we discovered that we had quite different assignments, depending on our own skills and where we fit in. Remember: be flexible and available.

For our first full day (Saturday), some of the team was assigned to the “Visitor Experience Deck”, deck #4, which is the main book exhibit and visitor area. This area is designed for people coming through to buy books and to provide a place for the visitors and crew to interact. Some of the responsibilities there are practical, such as welcoming people and selling the books and making sure the flow of people keeps going in the right direction. Another job though was specifically to sit down with people as they are in the “International Café” and to start up conversations. This actually works quite well, since people have already gone through the book exhibit, and are usually happy to talk.

The I-Café is one of the most direct opportunities for interacting with visitors on the ship itself, but there are still plenty of other opportunities for getting out among the local people and interacting, either on the streets or in different ministries such as going to prisons or orphanages. Some of our team headed into the city with an “e-day” team. They visited in a park where some of the team set up a story-board to attract people and start them thinking. Others on the team then circulated around to hand out literature and start conversations.

To be continued...

Get Real

2009-10-03T18:52:00.000-04:00

A young friend once said to me that she wished people could be more "real". It bothered me that I could never put my finger on what that exactly that meant. It just occurred to me that perhaps, being "real" isn't so much what we do or how we act, but rather the ability to see ourselves as we really are, or more to the point, how Jesus sees us, good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, failures and successes. We no longer have to put on the masks that other people make for us so that we'll fit in. We no longer have to polish our halos in order to make God appreciate us.

We got out the clay...

2009-09-05T18:01:00.002-04:00

Another funny little twist: We had a "Spiritual Emphasis Week" here at the OM USA office, which involved a lot of time for team building and training... and just sort of mixing things up. Since OM has a substantial "Arts Link" department (http://omartslink.org/), they set up some tables in the main worship area with different kinds of art supplies, encouraging people to "get out of the box" and use the arts to worship, or just kind of exercise the other side of their brain.

Well, they had one table with drawing and painting supplies and another with colored paper and stamps and glue for making cards and pictures and another table with a huge pile of Lego blocks ... and another table with home made play-dough. Now, this was actually pretty good quality play-dough, but it's still not the same as REAL clay. I still had a 25lb block of air-hardening clay left over from when I did the kids ceramics class in our Sunday School a few months ago, so I asked if I could add that in. Well, once I got started with the clay, I immediately got absorbed. The team had scheduled lots of free times through the week (games down in the dining room and just time to get away...) and I started making things out of clay. Some of the families brought in their kids in, so I found I had an instant class room of anywhere from one or two, to a half dozen children, all VERY anxious to get their hands into the clay. I don't think I've been that happy in years! I was able to make some significant pieces during that time (I'll try to get some pictures soon), but the funniest thing was how surprised all the people in the office there were at seeing a totally different side of my personality. They all know (and appreciate) the technical side of my work there, and how I can do what they consider to be miraculous things with their computers, but they'd never imagined the artist lurking inside of me. Especially the real artists there in the group. I think they're already scheming about how to get me along on their next Arts Link trip to work along side of their musicians and dancers and painters and all... ;-)

Well Mom, I guess all those ceramics classes you sent me to at the Memorial Art Gallery during the summers when I was a kid really seem to be paying off! ;-)

Seven good reasons to switch to Windows 7?

2009-08-20T14:06:00.004-04:00

Well, I read the WIRED article, Seven good reasons to switch to Windows 7, and unfortunately I found it to be pretty thin.Two questions in the opening paragraph really put me off:

"Do I really want to continue using an eight-year-old operating system?" -- Well, that's like asking, "Do I really want to continue living in a eight-year-old house?" If the house fits me, and is comfortable, and has all the things I need, then I'll be perfectly happy to live there for another eight years, thank you very much. Just because something is old doesn't automatically mean it's broken. (Of course, this is an article written in WIRED, so maybe that's the way that crowd thinks.)

"Don't I deserve better?" Uh, well, prove to me that it is better! Sure, maybe I deserve a Mac, or Linux, or whatever. Show me that something is better, and then I'll decide if I deserve it or not.

Then, there were the seven reasons themselves:

You Asked for This
- There's no question that Win7 is better than Vista. That isn't saying much. Microsoft got the biggest black-eye in its history for Vista (well, maybe not including Windows ME), and they hopefully learned an important lesson: People don't shell out hundreds of dollars for a new version of Windows just because it has a NEW NAME. Oh, and don't spit in the eye of your hardware vendors. They don't play well with that kind of attitude either.

Upgrading Won't Screw You Over
- Uh... Some time real soon now, Microsoft will hopefully give you a compatibility tool which will tell you how much money you need to pay to get basically the same functionality as you already have now. And, they will include (if you pay extra for the "Ultimate" versions) a "virtual XP" layer, which will basically inherit all the warts of old XP, so you can still enjoy all those security vulnerabilities while running Win7. (Yea, virtualization is supposed to isolate those things, but you can still attack the virtual XP environment, and how long do you really think it will take before the hackers figure out how to break out of Microsoft's cardboard box?)

Automatically Installed Device Drivers
- Hummm.... Ubuntu has been automatically detecting proprietary drivers and downloading them for years now. Glad that MS has finally figured out how to do this.

Piracy
- OK. This one totally baffles me: Windows 7 is an OS practically made for pirates. Want to display your movies, photos or music on your TV? Bam! Windows Media Player will do that out of the box if you have a Wi-Fi enabled TV, or an Xbox. Huh?? How many people do you know who have a Wi-Fi enabled TV? Um, playing to your XBox? Notice that that is another Microsoft product? How about to your Wii? What's the chance you can play MS streamed content on that? Oh, and even if you have legitimately purchased DRM shackled media, if you don't have DRM equipped hardware, then BAM! Windows will nicely downgrade the quality of your video stream so you can't see it at its full HD level. (That's to keep the pirates from snarfing their movies by intercepting the decrypted data stream as it goes to the display unit.) Just because you can plug into a network and see your pirate friend's shared disk drive, what makes you think you're going to actually be able to play that DRM'ed content??? What universe is this guy living in?

A Better Interface
- OK, so Microsoft moved everything around so you have to learn Windows all over again. Funny -- the interface looks a lot more like a Mac. They've got a 3D desktop. Ooooooooh. Shiny!

More Advanced Hardware Support
- OK, if Microsoft really delivers on their promise (unlike the flop that was known as Vista), then this will be the one real driving point to force people off of XP. XP has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient under the stress of change, but there will come a point when it's just not going to be able to keep up with the pace of hardware and driver change. Multiple cores. 64 bit. Optimizing for solid state drives. Supporting touch screens and multiple platforms (read: smart phones) out of the box. Better behaved device drivers. This is going to be the one thing that finally puts a stake in the heart of XP.

It Looks Sexier
- Well, this is WIRED magazine. 'Nuf said.

So, I'll say I am using Windows 7 (Beta), and I like it, but I don't think I like it enough to run out and pay $300 for a license. (I can buy an entire computer for less than that.) If it comes installed on your new computer, then great! If you have a specific need for it (especially new hardware), or you feel like you understand the interface better than old XP, then go for it. However, I don't think you're going to see a lot of owners of existing computers paying to upgrade, at least until 1012 when Microsoft quits issuing security patches for XP and finally signs XP's death certificate.

There are plenty of ways that Windows 7 is better than Vista, and even some reasons why it is better than XP, but this article didn't do a very good job of convincing me. ;-)

ChromeOS and what Google is really doing

2009-07-23T11:29:00.003-04:00

The Web changes everything...

I thought this was a good article talking about what ChromeOS may actually accomplish. In particular, I thought this was interesting:

The most promising parts of Office 2010 are the strikingly rich Web versions of Microsoft's Office applications, which will run equally well on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari (a close cousin to Google's Chrome). Similarly, with Exchange 2010, Microsoft is erasing IE's edge over other browsers and platforms for Outlook Web Access.

As Microsoft (along with everyone else) moves away from the desktop and toward the cloud, they are starting to loosen up on their dependence on trying to force everyone to use the IE browser. If the desktop really does become irrelevant (a big if), then it no longer makes sense to try to use IE as a leverage point to pressure people to use other Microsoft services.

With Chrome OS, Google is doing what other vendors should have done

2009 Tour de Cure

2009-05-17T20:15:00.004-04:00

Well, after missing the 2008 Tour de Cure ride for the American Diabetes Association (due to being in the middle of moving from New York to Georgia), I was finally able to ride in the Atlanta/Northern Georgia TdC this year. As usual, I did the 100 mile route.

The short version is: Another well organized ride, though this time, it rained pretty much continuously from about the 40 mile mark. It was still warm enough that, as long as you kept moving, you were warm, but at a couple of the rest stops I got cold pretty quick! The ADA does a good job of organizing these rides, and they know what they are doing. They seem to do a good job of getting great volunteers too, and training them, since they always seem to know what they are doing. Thank you again to the ADA for a great ride!

Of course, since I've been doing the TdC in Rochester since 1993 (I have the century patch to prove it!), the natural thing is to compare the two rides. So, here is how this ride fared.

Route:
This is the first year I've done the TdC here, so I had NO idea what to expect. What I got was a very hilly route, though no real "killer" hills. Well, almost... This wasn't a mountain climb by any stretch of the imagination, but they had lots of long climbs, some of which got pretty painful at the end. I'm glad I did a lot of climbing practice over the past few months, since I was generally able to pass people up on the climbs. There wasn't very much flat terrain! In general, you were either going up or down. The traffic was pretty manageable on most of the roads, though there were some pretty narrow spots. Towards the beginning, when we were still in some big groups, they had police or volunteers manning intersections to stop traffic when we were going across. The markings were good on the roads, though I would still have liked to see an actual MAP of the course.

Compared to Rochester, the route was good, though a lot hillier. It was pretty confusing with the twists and turns, and seemed to endlessly loop around. They did double up quite a bit with the shorter (100K and 40mile), which can be good and bad.

Roads:
Something I've noticed about Georgia roads is that they tend to be reasonably good surface (no potholes!), but the shoulders are abysmal, or with the several inch drop-off into soft dirt, downright dangerous! You usually get 3 to 6 inches from the white line, and that's it!

On this route, the roads were fair to good, with some spots where it got pretty rough. I'd say I liked the Rochester and Finger Lakes roads better, though they had plenty of lousy sections too. Of course, with the rain, that made everything a little messy (mud and junk on the road), but not too bad. Overall, I think they did a good job of selecting good roads.

Organization:
Excellent as usual. Some of the rest areas were running a little short on either food or sports drink, but I was always able to get enough. Check-in was very fast. I got there a little later than I wanted to, but got through check-in in a couple of minutes. They either had more people working, or fewer riders, since the Rochester tour always seemed to take a lot longer.

Now, if they could only do something about ordering better weather.... ;-)

Volunteers:
As I told some of the volunteers on the ride, one of the things which always makes the TdC a great ride is the caliber of volunteers that they get. I don't know what ADA does, but they must really pump these people up! And then, they train them, and make sure they have what they need. It's great to hear them cheering for you, and they are always friendly and courteous.

Fund-raising:
Since so many people know the ADA, this ride tends to almost do the money raising for you. I was a little disappointed though in how much I was able to raise this year, but there are many reasons for that. Partly, it's just the sucky economy, partly it's that we just moved and we don't have so many people we know here, partly it's just that I was busy and didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. In the end, I did have about $270, so that's a good start for a new tradition of riding here.

I am, however, very grateful to those who did support my ride. They are the ones who really make it worth while!

Riders:
I really miss my team, "Wheezers and Geezers", from up North! :-( I didn't actually do a lot of riding with them (most of them are a lot less wheezerly than I am), but still, it's great to have a bunch of people who are pulling for you, and especially at the end of the ride. There were plenty of friendly riders out on the course, and people tend to talk pretty easily, but if you started to fall off the back, they weren't about to wait for you. I rode with groups for about the first 50 miles or so, but then as my knees started to get sore, I dropped back. I was able to link up with a couple of other riders, which was a huge help, but I did a lot of miles on my own. It wasn't until the last 12 miles or so I linked up with one young lady rider (very strong though), and we managed to ride together to the finish of the course.

I think it had a lot to do with the cold rain at the finish, but not very many people stuck around for very long once they got back, so I didn't feel like there were people to talk to. I had my massage, ate something, talked to a few people, and then headed home to a long, warm shower!

Mechanical:
That old Miata pulled through again! The thing is as old as dirt (and almost as heavy), but I rode without a single mechanical problem. Oh there were a couple of times it felt like the tires had turned to mush, but I think that was just my legs screaming in protest.

I saw a lot of very nice bikes out there, and a lot of them at the side of the road with mechanical problems, or flats, or broken spokes or whatever. Riding in the rain is rough on a bike, and some of these $1,000 or $2,000 prima donnas don't do so well in these conditions. Of course, some of it is lack of maintenance, or lack of a lot of real riding on these things, but it's impossible for me to tell. Almost all rest stops had mechanics set up (great advertising!), so there were people to go to if you did have a problem. I don't remember seeing any sag wagons on the course though, so I don't know how many of them there were, or what you would do if something happened out on the road

Massage:
One of the great things about the TdC is that the ADA brings in professional massage schools. I don't know if they do it in every city, but in Rochester and here (Atlanta/North Georgia) they did. These people are great! I really think it helps with your recovery the next day. The only problem I had this time was the little tents they were using, and when it started to blow and rain again while I was laying there, I got so cold I started to shiver really badly. I don't think that helped my cramping caves either! :-( Still, it was a great way to end the ride.

Food:
Food at the end was OK. It was warm! Overall, they have better food in the Rochester ride, but I was just glad to have something warm in my tummy. Food along the was was comprible -- lots of fruit, but not much by way of bagels or straight carbs. They did have various granola bars and such. Basically, it covered what we needed to keep going.

Overall, it was another great ride. I'm going to be stiff and sore tomorrow, but it was definitely worth it. It's great to be riding again!

Exchange OWA and Firefox

2009-05-13T15:22:00.001-04:00

Very Interesting....

If you use Firefox to display Exchange calendars through OWA, then it should come as no surprise that Microsoft makes your "user experience" as painful as possible. I've found that, when you are in the "daily" view, the Exchange server sends wrong data for the "all day" events for that day. It looks like Exchange is incorrectly figuring the dates, and bleeds the events from one date over to the next date. (For example, if my event is on the 19th, it will show up on both the 19th and the 20th.)

If you switch back to the Weekly view, then Exchange actually sends the correct data for Monday - Friday, but events on Saturday and Sunday just vanish.

(Also, Exchange renders "weeks" on Firefox as Sunday-Saturday. On IE, it renders "weeks" as Monday-Sunday.)

So, if you use Firefox to view calendars, then Exchange dumbs-down the interface and scrambles the data for you.

Gotta love it.

:-(

Tales of the Tyrone Tryons -- February, 2009

2009-02-25T21:27:00.002-05:00

This is a bit of information which Sue added into our last prayer letter:

Sue's Corner
What am I doing here in Georgia? I am working as a Human Resources Coordinator in the Support Services team of OM USA. (This is the same department that Chuck works in with the IT team.) I am serving US Operation Mobilization members with their benefits and helping meet many other needs. There has been a definite learning curve for me in this job, but my boss and I are finding ways to put my gifts and past experiences to the best use in this ministry.

For fun and relaxation, I have also started a Learn to Quilt class for OMers. We really enjoy this fellowship time together here in our home.

Last night, a huge storm with baseball sized hail roared through Tyrone. The Lord kept us safe, and even our lovely daffodils were left standing after the storm. In the storms of life, our Lord is ever with us, so we can stand! May He cover you, dear ones, as you seek shelter under His wings from troubled times.

Praises!

Logos Hope setting sail after 5 years of preparation! ( http://logoshope.org/ )

Prayer Requests:

That we would continue to encourage the many people we met at the conference
Consistent financial support
To keep learning our jobs and be a blessing at the OM USA office
Encouragement and provision for everyone reading this letter.

Logos Hope Sails!

2009-02-19T21:17:00.000-05:00

The Logos Hope, which is the newest addition to OM's ocean-going ship ministry, finally set sail from Køge, Denmark on February 19^th, after nearly 5 years of conversion and outfitting. The first port of call will be Gothenburg, Sweden, and then ports in the Netherlands, UK, Faroe Islands and Ireland. International Co-ordinator for OM, Peter Maiden said: “As Logos Hope sails from Køge a great day has arrived in the history of OM Ships and, I believe, in the history of OM. It is both encouraging and challenging to think of the huge number of people who will meet with God on this vessel or through teams sent from this vessel in the years to come.” The Logos Hope will bring knowledge, help and hope to people in port cities all around the world, in the form of literature resources, aid supplies and an all-volunteer crew and Staff.

Ready, Set, GO!

2009-02-19T21:14:00.000-05:00

Through the years that Sue and I have been together, we have had several times that really stick in our memories – times like going to the Urbana Missions conference together, driving across country with our family from NY to Yellowstone Park and back, the wedding of our daughter Melinda. We have now added another such memory in our trip to Germany to attend the OM GO! conference. The GO! Conference is OM's major training and orientation program for new members as they head out to their various fields and assignments. It's a time of transition, from the comfortable environment of our own home and culture, to another place, often foreign and uncomfortable, but guided by the Lord's hand on our lives. The conference deals with understanding who we are, both as individuals and cultures, and where we are going. It's a time to asses why we are following the Lord into His work around the world, as well as thinking about some of the specifics of what we will be doing.

For us, this was a time to meet people from around the world, and make new friends – a time to break out of our cultural boxes, and even sometimes to laugh at ourselves. It was a time to really get serious about our commitment to God and what He has called us to do, and to think seriously about the price we are willing to pay to see His Gospel carried to every people and tongue.

There were somewhere around 120 participants at the conference (not including staff), from around 20 different sending nations, headed out to 15 or 20 different fields and projects. Of course, some of them were headed to the two ship ministries of OM – the Logos Hope and the Doulos.

We have many stories from the conference, but a couple of the things that really impacted us were the many people we met there, and the day of prayer.

How do you spend all day praying?

Well, that was probably the question on the minds of a lot of the people at the conference on the one day which was set aside almost totally for individual prayer. However, at the end of the day, we all wondered where the time had slipped away. The main conference room was set up with a dozen or so different “stations”, each with a particular focus in prayer. One spot focused on the fears we faced going into ministry. Another focused on freedom from different sins that may have been hounding us. Another focused on praise and worship, and had recordings of the Psalms. Another focused on forgiveness and releasing others who have wronged us. In another area, there were stations covering different unreached nations, or issues like the continued slave trade and the exploitation of children and women, or different world religions. The day was spent in quiet prayer and reflection, with people moving from one area to another at their own pace, stopping to learn about all of the different needs, and then praying. Part of the day was also spent in more collective prayer, with one large room divided up into a dozen different fields represented at the conference. Everyone would pick one of the areas (there was room for about five or six people at each place), and then spend about five or ten minutes hearing about that particular nation or region, getting a list of specific prayer requests, and then spent another ten minutes praying together. Then we would get up and move to another area, and repeat.

What I felt during the day was a sense of beginning to get close to God's heart, not so much for big countries, or broad ideals, but for the very real people who were represented by each of these times of prayer. It's all well and good to have loud, exciting times of praise and worship as a group, but the real foundation of our Faith is built in the quiet moments we learn to spend with God.

Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers...

One thing that really hit us was the number of people, from college age to retired couples, who were there, ready to leave behind their comfortable homes and jobs, to say goodbye to their friends and family, and to head out to every corner of the globe. Many were headed to the two OM ship ministries, the Logos Hope and the Doulos, but others were headed to countries like Ireland, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, South Africa and India. The excitement was palpable, but it was more than just the emotions of going off to see new places and learn new cultures. They were filled with a desire to see the Good News of Jesus brought to the people of these nations, to serve them through medical missions, youth outreaches, teaching, sports programs, and any number of other activities, to build relationships with people, and to see the Gospel make an impact on their lives. Probably very few of them really knew what they were going out to face, but they were ready to follow the Lord, wherever He might take them.

The OM "GO!" Conference

2009-01-26T09:25:00.003-05:00

Well, we just got back from the OM "GO!" conference in Mosbach, Germany. This is OM's training and orientation conference for new members as they get ready to actually head out to their fields. There were about 120 people from at least 20 countries, headed for around 20 different places around the world.

It was a great time of teaching, worship and praise, prayer, and a time to get to meet and interact with different people from all kinds of different cultures and backgrounds. There was a wide variety of ages, though the majority of the people were younger. I sort of felt like the "parent" as I was talking to all these young people, but they all made Sue and me feel welcome and appreciated. We made some friendships that I think will last a life time.

The schedule was pretty insane, and not surprisingly, a lot of people were tired and struggling with colds. We managed to keep healthy during the conference itself, but the cold/cough/fever that was going around finally managed to catch up with us on the day we got home. Thankfully, we can take a little time to crash and get some rest!

I'm still "processing" as they called it there -- thinking through and internalizing all the ideas we were exposed to there through the different sessions, so I plan to have more posts here as time allows (and when I'm not suffering from coughing fits! :-/).

Remembering Alex Elyjiw

2008-09-19T00:04:00.002-04:00

(Last weekend, one of my best friends from growing up -- Alex Elyjiw -- was killed in an auto accident. I wrote up a little memory piece I'd like to publish here, in his memory.)

Oh yes... Boys growing up. Those pre-teen and adolescent days can be rough times, but it sure helps when you have best friends to spend them with. I had a lot of friends when I was growing up, but Alex was definitely one of the best.

Actually, I remember the entire Elyjiw family as a special part of my growing up. I always liked to come over to your house. Your parents were always fascinating, and I loved the art and craftwork you always had around your house—especially the Easter Eggs. It was a special place of respect for a heritage that you were fighting to maintain and protect.

I remember spending hours and hours together with Alex and George (and even Ken and Peter sometimes), building everything from hot air balloons to model airplanes and rockets. I remember lots of quick-setting “5 minute epoxy” and Popsicle stick patches. I wonder how many rockets we lost on top of the School 46 roof. My brother Ken reminded me of boomerangs (I never was really good with those) and firecrackers. We flew hot air balloons, heated over alcohol burners made out of tin cans... kites... bike races around the little parking lot at the school. We rode our bikes down the water culvert that ran along side of Browncroft Blvd into the Ellison Park valley. I remember playing with toy soldiers in the sandbox and woods next to Andy Smith's garage. ("Bombs Away!") Races down Doorchester. (What IS it about little boys and races?) I remember playing hide-and-seek after dark. Alex was creative, competitive, energetic, friendly, kind, and just a great friend to grow up with!

I think I remember the model airplanes the best. We would build control-line planes (the kind that you hold on to the wires and fly in circles) that were about the same size, and tie long streamers to the tails. Then, we would both start them up, standing at the center of the same circle, and fly them around together, with each one trying to clip the other's streamer with our propeller. It was some CRAZY flying, and we spent a lot of time laughing together as we tried to not get our lines too badly tangled! I think we had more than a few crashes, and we went through many tubes of quick 5-minute epoxy glue to fix them right there in the School 46 field, and then get them back up into the air.

I seem to remember one model plane that Alex (or George?) converted from a stick-and-tissue-paper design to a control line. I think he put too big a motor on it though. He started flying it, and before it had gone around the circle a half dozen times, the body (and gas motor) sheared off from the wing mounts and went spinning off into the air. We were rolling around on the ground and laughing for quite a while after that one.

I still have some of those model airplane parts down in my basement. I haven't touched them in years, but I don't quite have the heart to clean them out because they have so many great memories associated with them.

I remember the rockets too. We started out with kits from Estes, but quickly moved to designing our own rockets. I tried a couple of rocket sleds (strictly against the rules), and had at least one which turned out to be negatively stable. We had big ones and little ones (the “Mosquito”). We had big, important sounding count-downs, and then racing off on the bicycle to try to figure out where the wind had carried the rocket and its parachute, and wondering HOW we were going to get the fool thing out of the tree it had landed in. (Rake handles never seem to be long enough.)

I remember trying to do clay-mation movies with his 8mm camera. I know we spent hours, one frame at a time, slowly moving the clay figures and toy cars. I don't know if we ever saw the end results of that movie, but in a way I guess it didn't matter. It was the process that was important.

One thing I remember about Alex though was that, even though he was really competitive and played his hardest to be the best, in the end it didn't really matter who won or lost. We were just friends having fun together.

It's been a long time since I've seen Alex, and I have often wondered how you guys were doing. Though these are lousy circumstances under which to get back in touch, it's still nice to be able to look back and remember the really great times we had as kids, and to hear from you again. I'm glad to hear that, at least in the good ways, Alex didn't change a lot from back when I knew him.

A Tree Planted ...

2008-08-17T23:13:00.005-04:00

For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
Jeremiah 17:8 (KJV)

If you've seen the new business card I just designed, it has a simple drawing of a tree on it. (see my web site for the logo.) For the most part, I simply put a tree there... because I like trees! I didn't have any deep underlying meaning or psychological reasons. I drew a tree, and there it was. My brother (the Graphic Artist and ArtGeek) figured out how to digitize it and make it into a business card.

As often happens though, on further reflection, I decided that there was something meaningful about the image of a tree. In both Jeremiah 17 and in Psalms 1, the image of a "tree planted by the waters" comes up as a picture of those who put their faith and trust in the Lord. When the hard times come (drought), the deep roots sunk into the ground along the stream continue to refresh the tree, and it does not wither.

I'm not usually a big fan of the KJV, but in this verse, there is one word that really hit me. Many translations use something like, "It will not be anxious during droughts." However, in the KJV and several other translations, it uses the term careful.

What jumped out at me is the picture of someone who, during a time of drought or famine, is very careful about how they live or spend their money, or careful to store up food for hard times, to hide it from others so they don't take it away. To be careful is the opposite of being extravagant, or even generous. You are always calculating, figuring, measuring, thinking about what you won't be able to get in the future.

In contrast is the one who puts his trust in the Lord (or in Psalms, the one whos "delight is in the law (or word) of the Lord"). When the hard times come, and they always do, that man or woman will not lose the green in their leaves. The tree may still be "stressed", but it will continue to bear fruit. In terms of energy, bearing fruit is a very extravagant process in plants, but it is necessary for the continued life and reproduction of the plant. In the bigger scheme of things, bearing fruit is necessary for the survival of the entire ecosystem, just as in the Church, being fruitful is the secret of continued ministry and growth. If we do not bear fruit, we will not grow.

Lord, I want to not be careful in the time of drought!

OM Trip Report - April 2008

2008-04-15T14:56:00.005-04:00

Sometimes it's good to have a reminder of why we're doing all this work to join the team in the OM USA Headquarters. Since it had been over a year since my last trip down to volunteer down at the OM USA Headquarters outside of Atlanta, and since my schedule is a bit more flexible now, Sue and I decided that it was a good time to take another trip there. For about ten years now, I have been taking a week off during the summer to fly to Atlanta and spend a week working with the team in the computer department, usually on short term, high intensity projects upgrading some part of the system there or installing some new piece of software. These are the kinds of things which the team could possibly do themselves, if they had the time, but they are so involved in the day to day activities of just keeping things up and running that they can't take the time to step back and deal with the disruption of “fixing” something. That's where my skills, and the extra time that I can spend come in handy. In addition, Sue and I wanted to get a chance to talk with some of the people in the office regarding our efforts with developing our support base and Partners, and to look at some possible apartments or housing alternatives. As far as the technology, even the behind-the-scenes pieces are vital to the smooth running of the computer systems.

Security: I was able to implement some changes on their network with regard to maintaining passwords and security.
Network Equipment: There are some issues with older pieces of key equipment on the network (Cisco switches) showing signs of possible failure. We were able to spend time meeting with several computer vendors to evaluate alternatives for upgrading these components before they decide to give up the ghost.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: One problem with complicated systems is that people tend to know their little piece, but they don't understand how they fit into the bigger picture. While I was there, we spent considerable time gathering many of these smaller pieces and putting them into one place – a network diagram showing how all the components work together. It's one of those pictures which look deceptively simple once you are done, but can be a huge help to the people tasked with keeping the system running day to day.

I was also able to look into some apartment complexes in the area. There are several complexes as well as houses for rent within a reasonable bicycling distance from the office, all of which take pets (i.e., Polly can come with us). Please pray with us regarding options in housing – it will definitely be one of our largest expenses there, and there are many factors to consider. It was also a great encouragement to talk with some of the other people on the team there. Everyone there knows the trials and triumphs of raising support, and it was good to hear some of their testimonies of the Lord's faithfulness, and creative ways that they have used to work with supporting their ministries. Support is still a major prayer concern for us, but the mountain doesn't look nearly as intimidating when you can see how others have made it through.

Sue was busy too...

While I was gone, Sue took some time to go to a long-arm quilting class. She has wanted to do this for a long time. While she was learning, she finished a baby quilt that she has been working on for over three years! In addition, Sue was able to keep up her work ministering to the residents at the Winton Road Heritage Christian Services home, as well as continuing to work on our Support goals. Overall, the trip was a great encouragement, both to Sue and me, and to the people there in the office. The team there is very anxious for us to get there, as there is much work to be done, especially as the entire OM USA team continues to grow. The need is urgent, and we keep pressing forward to be able to join in the work!

Missions Conference

One other note to add here is that we will be speaking at Grace Covenant Church's Annual Missions Conference, which will be from April 23rd to the 27th. Sue and I will be speaking at the meeting on the evening of Friday, April 25th at around 7:30PM. For those of you who are in the Rochester NY area, we would love to see you there! The church is at 224 Chestnut Ridge Road (zip: 14624). There is a dinner at 6:30PM that same evening, though you need to make reservations ahead of time for the dinner. Please call us (585-235-5822) for more information.

Please Pray for us:

continued diligence in raising our support
speaking at the GCC Missions Conference
wisdom in looking at options in housing

Off to Atlanta again

2008-04-04T16:21:00.004-04:00

Well, I'm here in Atlanta again for another trip. I am down here for two weeks this time, working on projects on the network. We are going through an Exchange migration, though I have to admit I'm not exactly contributing much to that effort. (It's not that I'm trying to slow it down... I just don't know anything about Exchange to know how to make it work!)

One of the things I have been able to contribute this round though is a comprehensive architectural diagram of the network topology, which is a huge help in figuring out how things are working. Hopefully, that will assist in identifying performance bottlenecks. It also gives us an idea of where we are at as we look to upgrade parts of the network, both to replace aging hardware (before it dies on us), and to support the ever growing needs of the office. (You know, those pesky graphic arts and media people with their terabytes of video data ;-)

Ultrasound Updates

2008-03-06T16:14:00.003-05:00

Mindy and Phil just sent out another update with their Ultrasound pictures (as of Feb 21). The pictures are getting more and more detailed. (No more amorphous bean-shaped blobs...) They even have a 3-D rendering of the images.

I'm put the pictures here on my Web page. They are in a powerpoint presentation, with some key features labeled. (If you don't have MS Office, the document also opens very nicely in OpenOffice.org)

2008-02-21T12:26:00.001-05:00

Tales of the Tryons Vol3

"I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

Philippians 12:12,13

Well, seems like it's time for an update!
Still Moving Forward: Since Christmas time, our number one focus has been on developing our Partner team. We are currently at around 1/3 of our support goal, so we have definitely been making progress, though at times it seems painfully slow. We have presented our OM vision 28 times. We currently have 97 prayer partners, of which 26 have pledged regular support, and another 20 have given one time gifts. We are grateful for each of these people who have said that they are standing behind us. I'm definitely chomping at the bit, waiting to begin work at the Operation Mobilization office, but it seems that the Lord has some more lessons He wants us to learn before we go. One of the lessons we have been learning is that, right now, our real focus has to be on ministry with our partners, and our dependence has to be completely on the Lord and His Grace.

In the Storm: One of the stumbling blocks in front of selling our house (one of the requirements for our moving to Atlanta) has been the condition of the roof on our old house. We had to replace one section this year (roughly a quarter) when it started leaking badly. The north facing part of the roof was still in good condition, due to the fact that it gets very little sun beating on it. However, the largest (south facing) part of the roof was very old, and the shingles were curling badly. We knew we needed to replace it before selling, but given the current prices on roof work, we were NOT looking forward to the bill.

Well, we had a serious wind storm here in Rochester in January (75mph winds). There were a lot of trees and power lines down in the area, and some people took several days to get their power back on. Thankfully, we didn't have any tree damage, however the wind did peel off a couple dozen shingles on the southern side, enough so that the roof REALLY needed to be repaired before we could sell the house. We called up our insurance company, and after taking a look at it, they agreed to cover the damage. So, God sent a storm to damage our roof so that we could get the money to replace it.

(Hmmm... I guess sometimes God DOES speak in the storm.)

Grandma: In other developments, our daughter, Melinda, just announced to us at Christmas that she and Phil are expecting their first child, due in late July. We, of course are delighted to have our first grandchild, though I have to admit I'm still trying to get my brain around the concept of being called "Grandpa". However, I have been assured by multiple current grandparents that you don't have to be "old" in order to have grandchildren, so I guess I don't have to worry about hanging up my keyboard yet.

Great-Grandma: Speaking of grandparents (and soon to be great-grandparents), one serious item for payer is Sue's mother's health. We just found out on Valentine's Day that her 85 year old mom is having plenty of heart trouble. She has been having tests for a couple months, and discovered that she has total blockage of two main arteries, and her heart is now working at 50%.

After prayer and careful consideration, she has decided to go ahead with bypass surgery. It has just been scheduled for Tuesday, February 26. Sue and her brother, Peter, are currently working out the details of flying down to Venice FL to be with her for the surgery, and for the recuperation afterward. Her mother has always been physically active, even teaching a water aerobics class at the community pool where she lives, so this has been quite a shock.

On a technical note: I am playing around with some different formats for this letter. I've seen people send prayer letters both in ordinary "text" form, as well as html mail, or an attached PDF. Regardless of whether or not you understand what those terms mean, please let me know if you receive and can read these letters. Personally, I tend to get wrapped up in the technology, and sometimes forget that there are ordinary people out there just trying to make sense of these silly computer things.... ;-)

Praises:

Our growing list of Partners and their desire to invest in the Lord's work through us.
Becoming grandparents.
God's continuing provision financially in our journey to OM.

Prayer Requests:

Continuing encouragement and tenacity in building our Partnership team.
God's hand over Sue's mother in her coming surgery and recovery.
Health and strength for Melinda and the little life developing inside of her.
More opportunities to present our vision of serving with Operation Mobilization.

The temptation at this point is to view this time period when we are developing our Partner team as just a bridge we have to get over, rather than seeing God's hand working in us and through us. What I am beginning to experience is that God is still working day-to-day, often putting us back in touch with other members of His body whom we have not seen or heard from in many years. We are learning that, no matter what circumstances the Lord puts us in, that's exactly where He wants us to be at this moment, and we are still to find our strength in Him!

Blessings to you!

Chuck and Sue Tryon

Here Comes the Sun!

2008-02-20T00:15:00.002-05:00

Woot!

Today was the first day that I actually noticed that the sun was still up at 5:00PM. I guess the days really are starting to get longer again!

In the Storm

2008-01-14T16:06:00.001-05:00

Another interesting bit, to file under, "God's Creative Ways to Provide."

One of the stumbling blocks in front of selling our house (one of the requirements for our moving to Atlanta) has been the condition of the roof on our old house. We had to replaced one section this year (roughly a quarter) when it started leaking badly. The north facing part of the roof is still in good condition, due to the fact that it gets very little sun beating on it. However, the largest (south facing) part of the roof is very old, and the shingles are curling badly, and we were thinking that we needed to replace it before selling.

Well, we had a pretty serious wind storm here in Rochester last week. There were a lot of trees and power lines down in the area, and some people took several days to get their power back on. Thankfully, we didn't have any tree damage, however the wind did peel off a couple dozen shingles on the southern side, enough so that the roof REALLY needed to be repaired before we could sell the house. We called up our insurance company, and after taking a look at it, they agreed to cover the damage -- enough to go over that entire section of the roof. (They aren't paying to replace the entire roof, but we weren't expecting them to.) It's not a huge amount of money, and there's a deductible we still have to pay, but it's a lot more than nothing, which is what we had before.

So, God sent a storm to damage our roof so that we could get the money to replace it.

(Hummmm... I guess sometimes God DOES speak in the storm. ;-)

Our Purpose

2008-01-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

Foreign Missions have always been an integral part of the purpose of the Church, as embodied in the words of Christ to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." In the beginning, this commission was seen as going out and preaching the Gospel, but as the Church has grown in its understanding of the harvest field to which is has been sent, this quickly expanded to all manner of ministries, from medical help to education to economic development and training, all to the purpose of touching both the physical and spiritual sides of the people we are pointing toward Christ.

In addition, as the world has grown more and more dependent on technology, so the Church has learned to use technology in its mission. Printing presses made it possible to physically hand people the printed Word of God. Christian radio reaches deep into areas where it is physically or politically impossible to travel. Aircraft have made it possible to reach deep into remote areas of the globe, to contact people groups which have been isolated for hundreds of years.

As the complexity of our understanding of this Mission has grown, so to has the realization that missionaries to not work in a vacuum. Missionaries no longer hop on a ship and sail off on their own to the dark shores of Asia or Africa. A system of support and services had grown up around people going out on the field, much as a military operation depends on a vast infrastructure of people and services to support the individual troops crawling through the mud on the "front lines." Missionaries need both the spiritual and practical support of a "home team," providing everything from recruiting to education, training, financial book-keeping, communications, prayer, encouragement, coordination, strategic direction and a host of other services.

Computers and Information Technology have taken an increasingly important role in this support structure, just as they have in the rest of society. Computers and digital communication technologies have taken on a key role in shrinking the world. At one time, when a missionary sailed off to a foreign field, it was often the last time that their family heard from them. At best, letters could take months to circle the globe, if they reached home at all. Today, with email and blogs and VoIP, communication is practically instantaneous. A missionary's support and prayer team can know of his or her victories, as well as their trials and struggles, in almost real-time. Strategy teams back in a missions headquarters can coordinate rapid responses to international disasters such as floods or earthquakes, reaching out with the hands of Jesus to people who desperately need not only the Good News, but a meal and a safe place to spend the night.

The USA Headquarters for Operation Mobilization is one such center of operations, providing a launching point for hundreds of both short term and long term missionaries, and ensuring that they have both the spiritual and technical support for the work that they are doing. The headquarters provides logistics and coordination, tracking of donors, office support, HR services (payroll, accounting, health care, etc.), communications such as newsletters and bulletins, as well as Technology and Multi-media.

I have had a long association with the OM USA Headquarters, first through friendship with several of the people sent out from Grace Covenant Church to work full time at the headquarters. I have worked for many years with the former head of the IT department, Ron Tenny, first by helping with small tasks, communicating remotely by email and phone, and then starting about ten years ago, spending a week of vacation each Summer to go down to the Atlanta office to work on short, high priority projects. All this time, the clear direction from God has been to act on the "input" side of the financial equation, earning a substantial income from my professional positions here in Rochester, and then funneling a substantial portion of that income to others who were God's hands and feet in the field. However, about three years ago, Sue and I made the decision to start taking the necessary steps to leave our positions here and join with the OM USA team there full time. There have been several "mountains" in the way of this move, such as financial responsibilities, but one by one, these mountains have been, "cast into the sea."

Our role at the OM USA Headquarters will be primarily focused on using my skills in computer technology, network administration, as well as doing whatever else the Lord may put in our path, to support the members of Operation Mobilization as they minister God's Grace across the globe. I will be serving in the computer department:

Building secure, reliable, scalable computer networks.
Providing consulting to other smaller offices around the world.
Building and maintaining hardware (networks, computers, servers).
Training and helping a broad user community in all aspects of their use of computers and technology.
‏Building and maintaining software systems, especially as they relate to communications (email, word processing and office systems).‏

Of course, entering that kind of environment is to step into the possibility of serving the Lord in an endless variety of ways, as there are often opportunities to go on short term projects or special assignments, however our attitude is to be used by the Lord in any way He sees fit. There is a constant stream of ministry workers who go through that office on a regular basis, moving on and off of the field, and all of these need a place to stay for a while, and more likely than not, fixes and updates to their computers and laptops!

At this point, almost all of our other obstacles have been overcome, except for our monthly support. We still need a team of people who will stand with us, both in prayer and encouragement, as well as financially, committing to support us on a regular (monthly?) basis. Since my assignment at Xerox has ended, this now allows me to dedicate more time contacting potential partners, to share with them our vision of working full time with OM, and to present the opportunity of partnering in our ministry.

This is both a scary and an exciting time, but also a time when we really need to learn what it means to depend on the Lord and His provision, and His guidance. This is a dream that has been a long time in coming, but which is finally beginning to take shape.

Tales of the Tryons

2007-12-06T16:19:00.001-05:00

(August, 2007)

“...for those who leave homes...for my sake and the Gospel's shall be blessed one hundred fold.”
(Mark 10:24)

This Scripture hit me like a thunderbolt a few months ago. It's time to go!

After years of preparation, we are following the call the Lord challenged us with at Urbana 1976. We have been officially accepted as members of Operation Mobilization (OM).

Operation Mobilization is an international faith-based evangelical missions agency that began 50 years ago with the prayers of George Verwer and a few fellow college students. Today there are 4000 OM missionaries serving in 110 countries and on three literature ships. OM's ministry is supported by both churches and by tax-deductible donations from individual people.

We will be serving in the United States home office of Operation Mobilization, which is located south of Atlanta in Tyrone, Georgia. Chuck has been doing short term projects at the headquarters for several years, but now we will be going there to work full time. Some of the many ways in which we will be working are:

Computer and technical support for missionaries in the US headquarters and on the field
Facilitating communications for the 200 member central office and others around the world
Participation in fervent prayer as we keep up to date with newest developments from around the world
Hosting missionaries and conference speakers from around the world
Participation in short-term mission opportunities in other countries as opportunities arise

As you can imagine, we are up to our necks (and further) in things to do and details to work out before we can actually leave for Atlanta. Our most important task is developing a Partnership Team -- a team of people who commit themselves to regularly pray for us and give to OM for our support. As is the case in any army, it's the people behind that lines that make the ones out front effective.

Here's a way that you can help us RIGHT NOW. We need a lot of prayer every day. Look at some of the mountains we need to see the Lord overcome before we can go:

selling our house
wrapping things up with our respective jobs
packing, sorting, giving away “stuff”
time and energy to do everything
developing our Partnership Team
seeing the Lord fill the gaps at church that our leaving creates
moving, and finding the right living arrangements in Georgia.

In this day and age of email and electronic communications, it's still nice to receive a piece of paper and a canceled stamp on an envelope delivered by the US Mail service once in a while. However, there are also some advantages to using the Internet, such as speed and the efficient uses of resources. If you would like to participate with us in this vision, please send us back a note, and include either your phone number or a mailing address.

In spite of the mountains, we are excited about finally moving forward into this new stage or our lives together. We invite you to be a part of our ministry too.

We're looking forward to hearing from you!

Chuck & Sue Tryon

Free-fall

2007-12-04T18:01:00.000-05:00

Well... I've finally finished my assignment at Xerox, so I am now in "full time" Partnership Development. It's a step of faith, to be sure. Up until now, I've been able to depend on my income from my Xerox job. Now, I really have to get serious about getting to the goal of 100% support.

I sort of feel like a sky-diver who has jumped out of the plane and suddenly discovered that he can't find the handle to the rip-cord, only to remember that he's strapped into a double harness with the instructor, and the INSTRUCTOR is the only one with a rip-cord. So, I guess I'll be in free-fall until He decides it's time to deploy the 'chute..... ;-)

The Difference...

2007-11-01T23:31:00.001-04:00

What's the difference between a Sinner and a Saint?

The difference is that the Sinner looks at the saint as he walks by and says, "I could be just like him."

The Saint on the other hand, looks at the sinner as he walks by and says, "I could be just like him."

"There, but by the Grace of God, go I."

Stories from a Different Age

2007-10-31T20:59:00.000-04:00

One of the most wonderful memories I have of growing up was my father reading to us kids (6 of us) after dinner. Every night as we were finishing up dinner, he would read first a couple of chapters out of the Bible, and then a chapter or two, or three if we could plead with him, from some other book. He picked different books, mostly from missionary biographies, or stories about great Christians from the past, or from various fiction works from authors like C.S. Lewis. I think we went through the entire 7 book series of the Chronicles of Narnia, THREE TIMES. I don't even remember him using particular voices or anything, but I can remember being able to see those stories in my mind's eye as he would read them. From the works of Paul Brand and "Ten Fingers for God" to "Through Gates of Splendor", to "Hammered as Gold", that's how I learned to look beyond my small world to the far corners of the earth that Jesus has sendt us to.

I think that's one of the things I wish I had done with my kids when they were growing up. (*sigh*) A different age.

Hard Pressed on Every Side, But Not Crushed

2007-10-21T18:30:00.000-04:00

2 Corinthians 4:7

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."

The passage in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, where Paul recounts the many forms of suffering that he and his team had gone through -- pressed but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned -- is certainly a familiar one. All of us can relate to Paul's statement at some level or another, though I don't know if there is anyone who has gone through all of these difficulties to the same extent that Paul had. However, it is a great comfort to see how Paul was subject to each of these difficulties and persecutions, but never to the point of breaking. We are reminded of another passage written earlier to the same church, in 1 Corinthians 10:13, where he reminds the church that,

"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

However, sometimes I think we forget the opening of the paragraph. Paul's emphasis was not on the deliverance which he had experienced, but rather on the fact that JESUS had intentionally orchestrated these circumstances in order to show to Paul, and to anyone who saw him, that it was not Paul's great strength of character, or Paul's wisdom, or even his ability to deliver the message that was the source of the power of the message he was bringing. The persecution and trouble was not something that Paul had to get through in order to present his message. In a way, the persecution was the message itself. In addition to the proclamation of verse 4 from above, he continues in verse 11:

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

Paul saw himself as a jar of clay, holding a message of such power and glory that he did not want in any manner to get in the way of it, or to attempt to "borrow" any of its glory for himself. All that he could think of was that the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus be what people saw in him. For the Corinthian church in particular, he could see how his suffering would bring many to a knowledge of Christ, and that it would "cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God."

Of course, Paul didn't work to artificially manufacture this suffering. At times, Christians have tried to create their own suffering, either in Martin Luther's self inflicted beatings, or the dour faces of Christians who believe it is a sin to enjoy anything in this life. Suffering for suffering's sake isn't going to bring any Glory to God, and I don't think Paul was any great fan of suffering itself. Rather, "we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake," and the persecution followed as surely as thunder follows lightning. Some things, such as the storm at sea as Paul was traveling to Rome, were the consequences not of outright opposition or persecution, but rather of other people's poor decisions, and the workings of God's finger on the forces of nature. However, Paul took each of these in stride, choosing to see God's hand behind the circumstances rather than the circumstances themselves. He never forgot that he was jar of clay -- one with an eternal future to look forward to, but clay nonetheless. In a way, it might seem to be darkly humorous that, after recounting all of the horrible things he had gone through, Paul would simply refer to them as "light and momentary troubles," but the secret is in the perspective that he kept:

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Passage at Bible Gateway

Why Can't We Just Get Along?

2007-04-06T23:46:00.000-04:00

Why can't we just get along? All around us we see the signs of intolerance. In Northern Ireland, religious intolerance has led to a long history of strife between Catholics and Protestants. In Western Africa, racial intolerance has led to tribes that have been killing each other for hundreds of years. In the nations of the Horn of Africa – Ethiopia, Somalia and the Sudan – ethnic cleansing are still leaving thousands dead. In Iraq and Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Sunni and Shia militias are killing each other every day.

In our own country, there are plenty of signs of intolerance. We can point to signs that we are overcoming the evils of racial prejudice, but our inner cities and schools are still starkly segregated as minorities struggle to overcome the traps of poverty and crime. Our political debates often descend into shouting matches, or “shock jocks” spewing hatred, whether it be Abortion, public health care, conservative vs liberal or the growing anti-war protests.

Amid the din of the screaming and yelling people call for tolerance. “Why can't we just get along?” “Live and let live!” Can't we just put our differences behind us and live together?

What is tolerance really? It is the act of ignoring our differences in order to accomplish another goal. Often that goal is simply peaceful coexistence. At other times, it might be an economic goal. We may overlook (tolerate) the inhumane working conditions imposed by a trading partner, if that partner will provide with cheaper goods and services than we can obtain from someone of higher ethical standards. We imagine that, if we would just be tolerant, then we could live with each other in wonderful peace. After all, no two human beings look at the world through exactly the same set of eyes. Marriage is a prime example of the need for tolerance. Does it really make that much difference if the toothpaste is squeezed from the end or in the middle, or if the toilet paper roll comes over the front or down the back?

However, there are times when the differences are just too big to ignore. Perhaps the most obvious example of the failure of tolerance and was that shown by the governments of Britain, France and Italy in the Munich Agreement of September 1938. Rather than recognizing Hitler and the threat he posed, the leaders of the day decided to tolerate his actions as he began to re-arm Germany, if only he would promise to be nice. When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the British Prime Minister Chamberlain was still not prepared to take the country to war over “..a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” As a result, Hitler drove all of Europe, and ultimately much of the rest of the world into the horrors of World War II.

I remember a time when drunk driving was tolerated by our culture. Sure, people knew it was “wrong”, but for the most part, people treated it as a joke. Then, along came Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. They were MADD, and they were no longer going to tolerate the slaughter of their children! Between MADD and other organizations like that, they shook up our nation, and changed fundamental attitudes in our culture about drinking and driving.

We can think of Civil Rights leaders throughout our own history – heroes who would not stand by and tolerate the evils of prejudice and segregation, risking their lives to fight for justice and equality. Martin Luther King was not a “tolerant” man. Rosa Parks decided she would no longer tolerate being told to go to the back of the bus, and almost ignited a war, but in the end, her action proved to be a turning point for an entire nation.

There are some evils that we cannot turn our backs on and pretend they do not exist. If it's just the toothpaste, then the value of harmonious living far outweighs the value of having the tube squeezed the “right” way. In other cases, it is simply the realization that beating someone over the head is often counterproductive, and more can be accomplished by reasonable discussion. The Crusades were a short victory, but ultimately accomplished few lasting results, other than creating a deep seated hatred between Eastern and Western cultures. However, there are still things worth believing in, and even fighting for.

The reason why intolerance causes so much of a problem in society is that it usually degrades first of all into a “Us vs. Them” attitude, and from there into a hatred of those who are different from us, or those who have different purposes and priorities than we do. Intolerance is often based on ignorance.

If tolerance in itself is not the answer then, what is?

The first thing we must do is determine in our own minds what is important to us, and what isn't. What we stand for, and why? We must understand though, that almost all issues are complex, and do not lend themselves to simple black and white solutions.

But then, once we know what we really believe in, we still need to hold on to the basic dignity of each human being, even when they disagree with us on those important things. In part, it is a matter of respect. If I believe something, then I must, by definition, believe that I am correct. However, we must understand though, that the issues we struggle with are complex, and do not lend themselves to simple black and white solutions. I must also realize that I don't know all the answers, that I don't even know all the facts, and I could be wrong. Even if I'm not wrong, there is still an opportunity to learn from that other person.

For example, I call myself a Christian. I believe in the literal life and work of the man Jesus Christ, and the factual accuracy of the Bible. This is a belief that I would die for. However, that doesn't mean I cannot tolerate the presence of other religions. This country was based on the concept of religious freedom, not because the founders thought that religion was not important, but because they believed in the basic dignity of the individual, that truth is not found through intimidation, threats or coercion, and that each man and woman must seek this truth on his or her own.

There is an old proverb, attributed to Native American tradition, that you should never judge a man until you have traveled a mile in his moccasins. Many raging arguments would take on a decidedly more peaceful tone if the two sides would take a moment to look at the issue from the other person's perspective. It is an interesting exercise to try to debate a topic... from the other person's point of view. It forces you to look through the other person's eyes. It might not be enough to make you change your mind, but it can give you a respect for where the other person is coming from.

There are so many things which make us different as individuals. In many cases, we can learn to appreciate and enjoy those differences, though sometimes we may have to learn to just ignore them in order to be able to live and work together. In some cases though, the differences will be significant, and cannot be glossed over. However, even in these cases, we can still learn to respect one another. If we take the time to overcome ignorance, and try to understand the issues from the other person's perspective, then even in our struggles for the truth, we can learn from each other, and all be wiser for the experience.

A Tribute - AmyElizabeth

2007-03-17T18:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we had a going away lunch for a member of our software team at Xerox. AmyElizabeth had been with the group for around four years, but she wasn't able to dodge the latest expense cutting measure. :-(

The group asked me to "say a few words", so I dug through some of the many pleasant memories I had of the time AmyElizabeth was on the team. I thought it would be good to write the speech down while it was relatively fresh in my memory. On further reflection, I've added a couple more comments here in addition to what I actually said.

Oh, fair warning is that there are plenty of inside jokes, as one would expect from such a tribute....
------------

How many of you have read the book, "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister? I still consider that to be my favorite book on Software Development, or on almost any other topic. Rather than focus on the technological aspects of software projects and why the succeed or fail, they looked into the personal dynamics of writing software. What aspects of a development team make one succeed and another one flop?

One of the core concepts that DeMarco and Lister introduced was the idea of a "gelled team". More than just a group of people on a project, a gelled team is knit together as a single entity with a common goal. The success of the individual is tied to the success of the team. If you succeed, then I succeed. There is no challenge too great, no mountain too tall to climb. Nothing can stop a gelled team.

Now, many managers try to build "teams". They stage "team building events" until they are blue in the face, but until the team itself takes ownership of the bonding, nothing happens. The team is gelled by the actions of the members, and the bonds that they develop themselves. The best managers recognize the kind of people who tend to create gelled teams, and cultivate them.

Now, we have a lot of really good people here in this team, from top notch engineers, to "Big Picture" software architects, to managers who "get it", but we've also had something else. We've had a magic ingredient.

Now, it's not altogether clear what it was that AmyElizabeth did to create this magic. Maybe it was the vending machine birthday cakes that she always remembered, or the hair drier in the morning (when the power went out). It could have been convincing Wayne that that it really was his 50th birthday, or sending out three separate "meeting" invites to convince two different people that the get together was a surprise party for the other guy, when it really was for both of them together. Maybe it was, "I need penguins... I need lots of penguins," (all 756 of them). I'm sure the Zero Year cakes (complete with gummi-worms) had something to do with it, along with delivering 50 birthday balloons one at a time. Then, there were the sushi outings, the Pink Flamingo divas, and the Real Chet Yoder. I'm sure that walks around the buildings went a long way in helping us keep our sanity.

I'm sure AmyElizabeth has been accused of many tricks and "decorations" for which she was not responsible for, but then there are a few that I know of that were never figured out. However, it's not surprising that she developed a reputation for being behind most "disturbances" in the group. Any time there was something going on, be it in a hallway or at the Summer Picnic, chances were good that you'd find AmyElizabeth in the middle of it.

Now, most groups have a practical joker, but AmyElizabeth's teasing always had a different feel to it. Many practical jokes are meant to embarrass the victim, or there is a subtle put-down hidden in the laughter, leaving people feeling smaller. However, with AmyElizabeth, you were always left with the feeling that people were laughing with you, not at you. It was to draw people together, to let every individual know that he or she was noticed, important, a part of the family. It was important to remember and celebrate your birthday, even if she had to make a cake out of vending machine cupcakes or animal crackers. Creativity was a key, as was doing the unexpected. These were the kinds of attitudes that brought us together and made the team jell.

AmyElizabeth, now you are heading off to something new and different. I don't claim to understand the whys and wherefores, and I must say that the timing of this is change is uncomfortable to say the least, but I am confident that God has wonderful things in store for you out there in the future. Know for sure that you leave this group with our fondest memories of the time you have spent with us, and with our earnest hope for your bright future. Go with our blessings, and with the certainty that you still have a lot of friends back here to keep in touch with.

God bless you AmyElizabeth. We will sorely miss you.

Time to Come Together

2007-03-17T18:28:00.000-04:00

I've often noticed that it's at times like funerals and workplace going away lunches that we finally take the time to get together with friends and family -- people whom we've often not seen for years. I used to think that was a pretty sad commentary on humanity, and the way-too-busy lives we lead, but I don't know if that's really true. If you think about it, those are the times when we've lost someone (even if it's just the relatively short term loss of not seeing someone on a day to day basis of a working relationship), and we are reminded of just how much we are dependent on each other. We are lonely, and we come closer to comfort each other.

It's times like these that we are reminded that we should take a moment to slow down and think about our friends and family. The world rushes by so fast, and before we know it, some situation or circumstance moves us apart. Maybe it's our children graduating or getting married and moving away. Maybe it's a friend passing on, or a good friend getting laid off at work, or making a change in their career path. They're here, and then in the blink of an eye, they're gone. Maybe it's not a permanent separation, but it's not the same as it was before. Don't let it catch you with regrets.

Faith, Power and God's Design

2006-11-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the most profound difference between the life of the flesh – that life which we knew before the Spirit of God entered into our hearts – and the life which we experience in Christ is the role of Faith in how we see the world around us. Before, everything we did, everything we trusted in, every motivation was centered on ourselves and our belief in our own power to control our destiny. If we wanted to be successful, it had to be by our own strength and intelligence. Everything we learned about the world around us was through our own eyes and ears and powers of observation. We defined "success" on our own terms. As a result, we became slaves to the Powers of this world, namely sin, Satan and finally, to death.

When we become a child of God, everything changes. Rather than trying to occupy the center of our existence with our own feeble will, we give that position to Christ. Though we hardly understand the implications at first, we put our faith in Christ, to do with our lives according to His design. In exchange, He releases His transforming Power in our lives. Through faith, rather than rebelling against His direction as we have done since the time of Adam and Eve, we have the power to work in concert with Christ. By the power of Christ, we overcome sin, the flesh and the power of Satan in our lives.

As we grow in our knowledge of Christ, it is vitally important that we understand how He works to accomplish His design and purpose in our lives. Recently, we have seen an unbalanced focus on the power that God has given to us to miraculously overcome trials and tribulations in our lives, in particular in the visible aspects of physical and emotional healing, relationships with others and finances, without trying to understand the purpose that God may be trying to work in us. The central focus of this teaching is that, if we have problems, then it is always God's will that we have more Faith, that we pray against Satan and that we be miraculously delivered.

The underlying logic in this belief follows along these lines:

We are God's children, and He desires to give us good things.
Satan is God's enemy and our enemy.
Problems are the result of Satan attacking God by attacking us.
God wants us to defeat Satan.
If we have enough Faith, and demonstrate that faith by praying hard enough and long enough, then God will deliver us from Satan's attacks and our problems will go away.

The belief is that, if we are experiencing hardships, then they must be a sign of Satan's attacks. It is certainly not a failing on the part of God, or His Power to deliver us, so therefore, it must be a failing on our part to either fast and pray long enough or to have enough faith. Alternatively, if we really do have enough faith, and are praying fervently, and we still don't see the manifestation of God's miraculous healing, then we must actually be healed, and we just don't see the manifestation of that healing yet.

One argument given to support this belief is the verse in Matthew 4:24, where word spread through the region of Syria about Jesus healing, “and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them."¹ Another verse is then quoted that Jesus is, "the same yesterday, today and forever." The conclusion then is, since Jesus apparently healed all the people in that one place, and He never changes, then He must necessarily wish to heal all diseases all the time. Unfortunately, the logic here simply doesn't hold, since there many other instances in the Gospels where Jesus heals "many" people, but no mention is made of "all" people. In fact, in the instance of the healing of the invalid at the pool at Bethesda², He would most likely have stepped over many others there laying by the pool – others who had no more or less faith than the man Jesus singled out. The man didn't even know who Jesus was, and his faith was only in the story of the angel who was said to "trouble the waters." Yet, Jesus chose in His sovereignty to heal the man.

We have in our minds an idea of how we define success. The pastor wants a large church with a thriving ministry. The evangelist wants to see many people coming forward in his crusades. The businessman wants to have a growing business so that he can give generously to the church. Parents want to see their children happy and successful. The goals we have may be lofty, but they are all based on externally measured goals that we can see. When God doesn't conform to our definition of success, we fret and run around, trying to figure out what has gone wrong – why God isn't following our plan.

It is clear from Scripture that we cannot approach God without faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus instructs us that, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." The difficulty with the belief that it is always God's will for us to be healthy and wealthy, and that any deviation from that will is merely a sign of our own lack of faith, is that it supplants the Sovereignty of God with our own interpretation of the situation we are in, and how we think God should act. In particular, it ignores two other fundamental sources of difficulties and stresses in our lives.

The first source of problems in our lives is our own fleshly nature. In Romans 7:28, Paul bemoans the fact that he struggles with his old nature. "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me." This is not a question of forgiveness or "punishment" for the things we have done wrong. The Blood of Jesus covers our sin, but that does not mean we no longer suffer some of the short term consequences of our behavior. When there is un-confessed sin in our life, God allows difficulties to lead us back to him.

Sin comes in many shapes and sizes. It may be in remorseless breaking of the Ten Commandments – adultery, stealing, murder – or in an infinite number of more insidious sins. If I am harboring a bad attitude toward my neighbor, then I will have a difficult time sharing the Gospel with him. If I am so caught up in materialism and the things of this world that I am not paying attention to my family, then my children will be wild. If I am cultivating a root of bitterness in my heart over wrongs I have suffered in the past, then my body will likely be racked with a host of physical ailments. If, in response, we focus on the symptom (the sickness) and try to buck up our faith, rebuke Satan and cast out the sickness, Satan will simply laugh in our face. It's as if we lock and bar the front door on our house to keep out burglars, while the back door is swinging in the breeze and all the windows are standing open. James tells the church that, "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless."

Regardless of whether we consider the sin large or small, it is still disobedience in the face of God's direction. I believe that many financial problems that we see in the Church are caused by Christians skimping on their giving, or in some other way, putting their confidence in their own ability to provide for material needs. Materialism still stands as one of the greatest sins of the entire Church in America. Again, in James, the apostle tells us, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."³

The danger here is to think that, any time we are suffering, it must be because we have done something wrong, or that God is punishing us. Once again, God does not bring down punishment on our heads because Jesus has already born the effect of this judgment. He is no ogre sitting up in heaven, cackling in glee, waiting for us to slip up so He can throw a lightning bolt at us. There is no sin for which we have not already been forgiven. Rather, God uses the fires of trial to purge us of that which is defiled, incomplete or defective. His goal is the perfection of his bride, the church, and as members of that bride, we are to be perfect. God knows our weakness, and while He has no patience with sin, He has infinite patience with us, and chastens us as a father chastens his children.

This leads to the second clear source of trials and difficulties that we experience in our lives – namely the Hand of God, molding us as one would mold clay, into a vessel for His own purpose and glory. The clearest example of this is the statement of the Apostle Paul where he recounts a time when he prayed that God would deliver him from a "thorn in the flesh"⁴. Paul leaves the reference vague, leading to endless speculation on our part as to that exactly the thorn was. There is certainly the possibility that was a physical (in the "flesh") ailment, such as poor eyesight. Others guess that it was the persecution of the Judaizers that constantly hounded Paul through his ministry, trying to destroy his work and corrupt the churches that he planted. It is likely that he intentionally left the exact character of the thorn vague because wanted to communicate a principle rather than limit us to a specific example. In either case, it was a problem that Paul fervently prayed for deliverance from. It says he prayed "three times", but I'm sure it was more than three short prayers before he tucked in for the night. His belief was that this thorn was impeding his ability to minister, and therefore, God must surely want to deliver him! Why would God intentionally weaken him? These were intense times of prayer, where he exercised his faith in every way he knew how, seeking the face of the Lord. In response, the Lord spoke directly to Paul, telling him that He would not deliver Paul from this thorn. However, the reason was not due to any failing on Paul's part, either in sin in his life or in some lack of faith. Rather the Lord said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." As a result, Paul decided that he could boast in his weakness, that the power of God was more completely shown when he was weak.

God's sovereignty is so infinitely greater than anything we can say or imagine! His plan for us is that we see nothing around us save Him and His Glory. In Matthew 8:28, Jesus rebuked the disciples not because they hadn't calmed the storm on their own, but because they did not have the peace to sleep through it like He had.

There are several reasons why this mistaken belief that it is always God's will that we be perfectly whole has resurfaced time and again throughout the recent history of the Church. One source of this belief is the confusion between God's ability and His desire. The thinking is that, if I am not praying for deliverance from my problems, then it must be because I do not believe that God is able to deliver me. Conversely, if I believe that God is in fact powerful enough to be able to heal me, then I must believe that it is God's Will, and that I will be healed if I have enough faith. Hence, the statement that, if we don't think that God will miraculously heal us, then we don't really believe in God. The logical conclusion of this belief is that Paul, since he stated clearly that he believed that he would not be delivered from his thorn in the flesh, that he must not actually have believed in God.

If we hold to this unbalanced view of the power of our faith to bring about God's healing and deliverance in our lives, we will end up falling into a host of other spiritual tar pits. The first consequence is that it sets our hearts and desires on the Gifts of God, rather than on God Himself. Rather than seeing how He wants to work in our weakness, we set our sights on a vision of perfection that we have created ourselves. The center of our focus moves inward, on seeing God's POWER in our own lives, meeting our needs, rather than on God's ability to show His power in my weakness. Our attitude becomes that God has promised the riches of the kingdom to me, so I will not rest until I experience those riches. Meanwhile, the rest of the world around us withers in sickness and poverty, sin and death, but our eyes are focused on the glitter of reaching what we think is God's abundant life for ourselves.

Another, perhaps surprising consequence of forcing God into the position where He desires to bring physical healing all the time is that, suddenly, our healing depends on us rather than God. If it is God's will that I be healed all the time, as long as I have enough Faith, then if I am not healed, then it must be because I don't have enough faith. Rather than focusing on God and His will, the focus is on my praying enough, or fasting enough, or "marinating in the Spirit" (a fall-back to the meditation rituals of Eastern religions), and bucking up enough Faith to be healed.

Perhaps the most insidious and dangerous consequence is that the unbalanced focus on Miraculous Power given to Christians to overcome physical problems in their lives leads to the false impression that the lack of visible problems must be a clear indication of God's Blessing and Pleasure. If I'm healthy and wealthy, then I must be in God's Will, and everything is great in my life. God's will is that I be healthy, so if I am healthy, I must be in God's will. This is an open invitation to Satan to lead us down the primrose lined path to destruction.

To pray for miracles, we need to understand God's purpose in miracles. It has been observed by some that, the places where we see the greatest miracles taking place are where the Gospel is going out to the unsaved. It is often in foreign missions, where the saints are beating back the wall of spiritual darkness around them, that God shows His greatest power. This follows the pattern of Scripture where, when Jesus sent out the disciples two by two to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, He promised that they would exercise great power over Satan. The purpose of that power is to point to Jesus and His Kingdom.

Clearly, our enemy is Satan, and he is doing all that he can to keep us from experiencing the real power of God in our lives. However, he has an able accomplice in our own carnal nature and its fleshly desires. Our tendency is to love God and follow Him because He gives us good things. God wants us to follow Him even when we don't see the good things. As Oswald Chambers said, "the ordinary view of prayer is not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer (or for that matter, faith) as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself."⁵ That knowledge of God is the true source of POWER in our lives, and an open channel for God to work His purpose through us.

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.⁶

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

1Quotations taken from the New International Version.

2John 5

3James 5:16

4II Corinthians 12:7-10

5“My Utmost for His Highest” - Aug 28

6Romans 11:33-36

The Inevitability of Change

2006-01-08T10:35:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, we were nearing the end of a meeting of the church board. We had spent the meeting discussing the impending retirement of our long time pastor (about 30 years), and the issue of finding a replacement. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of uncertainly and doubt about what such a change would bring. Unlike a lot of denominational churches which often change pastors every five years or so, we have never gone through this in our small independent congregation. Since our pastor is retiring, there are many questions about what his continuing involvement should be once a someone new comes in. Many wise friends have told him that, unless he actually leaves the church, the new pastor will have a very difficult time establishing himself, since he will always be under the shadow of the old pastor, and many long time members will find it difficult to transfer their own loyalty from the old pastor to the new one. Clearly, with his personal commitment to the people in the congregation -- all his closest friends -- this would be a heart-rending experience for our pastor. As a board, we were very unified in our commitment to move forward, but it was still a very stressful time.

As we were praying at the end of this meeting, a number of points jumped out at me, and I wrote them down:

We tend to get wrapped up in following people and personalities. We need to focus on following CHRIST.
We will not be able to make a "perfect" choice.
In fact, there is no perfect replacement.
It doesn't matter, because the only perfect one is CHRIST.
No matter what we do, under a new pastor, the personality of the congregation will change.
Change is always unsettling, but it isn't always bad -- in fact, it is necessary for growth.
We will be surprised how resilient most people are.
Some people will be uncomfortable with any change and will leave.
Some aspects of our ministry will remain with other people in the church (e.g., the missions program) and not change much.
The new pastor will need room, and freedom to be himself. (This from pastor and the people who remain.)

The tendency in this kind of situation is to try to find a new pastor who duplicates, as closely as possible, the old pastor. There is some value in this -- in trying to preserve the personality and character of our congregation -- but there is also a danger of stagnation if we are simply trying to avoid change. There is also the simple fact that there is no one quite exactly like our old pastor. In fact, this is the way that Christ created each of us to be unique individuals. To deny or try to squash this individuality is to deny the power of God to work in new and different ways.

Is Linux Ready for the Desktop?

2005-11-26T19:17:00.000-05:00

One of the questions I keep hearing again and again is, “Is Linux ready for the desktop yet?” It's pretty clear at this point that Linux is a top flight server OS. Not only is it less expensive over the long haul than certain other proprietary options, but it has shown itself to be more secure, flexible and robust. The market share of Linux in the server market is still relatively small when compared to both more traditional Unix variants and to Windows, however it is the only OS that has been showing consistent, double-digit growth over the past several years. Long standing problems with enterprise support and scalability, such as support for large numbers of parallel processors and huge memory sizes, have eliminated through deep refactoring of key parts of the kernel. With companies like Red Hat, IBM and Novel throwing their full weight behind Linux support, enterprises now have a level of comfort with the kind of technical support they need. While there is still a great deal of change still under way, the kernel is showing signs of the kind of maturity that enterprises require before they are ready to put full reliance on the OS for their mission critical applications and data.

Linux is now firmly entrenched in the server space, especially in the Web server space, where combined with the Apache Web Server, it is a force to contend with. There is still plenty of competition between Linux, Windows and the various Unix flavors, but you aren't going to hear anyone saying, “Linux? What's that?”

However, most of us don't spend our time building Linux servers. It's on the desktop that most of us touch computers and all of the technologies that have become so pervasive in our day. It is also on the desktop that Microsoft has shown its greatest strength in marketing and market saturation. That is where Microsoft has been able to leverage its monopoly position to gobble up more and more application markets, from office productivity suites to Media and home entertainment. It is even through its hold on the desktop that Microsoft has tried to force its way into the server space, tying its desktop clients tightly to enterprise applications such as Exchange, Directory services and enterprise management tools. At one point, it seemed poised to gobble up the Internet itself, squeezing it between IE on the client and IIS on the server.

It is also on the desktop that much of the most interesting developments in human-computer interactions are taking place. We are re-thinking how we interact not only with the piece of hardware sitting on our desk, but with distributed computing, and even with other people spread across the world. It is on the desktop that much of the newest hardware is being introduced, and it is from desktop like platforms that the game and home entertainment industry is branching out.

So, in order to really impact the greatest number of people, Linux must be strong on the Desktop as well as in the server room. It doesn't necessarily have to conquer Microsoft and drive it into oblivion, but it must present a viable alternative in people's minds, appealing to a significant chunk of the computer using population.

Is Linux Ready for the Desktop?

People have been asking this question for a long time – at least since the late 90's. For a long time, it was clear that Linux was, “By Geeks. For Geeks,” but that is quickly changing. But, the question is still being asked, and it still raises heated arguments as to the correct answer. Whenever I have happened on these arguments (or “flame-fests” as they often degrade into), I have invariably found that the opposite sides are really talking about completely different questions. The questions I see break down into basically three categories: (1) Is Linux ready for the desktop? (2) Is the Desktop ready for Linux? (3) Is Linux ready for MY desktop? I believe that, if we really understood the questions behind The Question, we would not only be able to understand each other better, but we would probably gain a greater understanding of where Linux needs to grow in order to continue to conquer the desktop.

(1) Is Linux ready for the Desktop?

If, by this question, the intent is to determine if it is possible to run Linux as one's primary working environment, then the answer is unmistakably YES. Personally, I have been running Linux as my primary working environment, both at home and at my job, for over seven years. Now, I've always been one to swim against the current, and it certainly hasn't been easy all this time. There have been compatibility glitches (running Ximian Evolution in an Exchange world), and sometimes updates have broken things. Over the years, I've spent lots of time on Google and USENET looking up esoteric configuration setting and boot parameters. I still have problems now and then getting hardware to work, or finding support for sound cards or non-standard video drivers. However, I've always managed to somehow get what I need. With stable releases of Firefox, the Evolution email client, and OpenOffice, there is very little that I still can't do on my Linux desktop. If I really needed to, I could get Wine to run most Windows applications, though I still find it easier to have a spare Windows box near by running VNC for the occasional application where there just is no Linux equivalent.

Measured this way, Linux is ready for my desktop, and for the desktops of a steadily increasing number of people. My wife knows nothing about Linux, but she runs it on her desktop. Since she was already using Firefox on Windows, it took her several days to even realize that I had changed anything when I replaced her Win98 install with Fedora Core. I have another friend who was constantly calling on me to clean out viruses and spyware on his system. With his permission, I replaced XP with FC4, and now all he says is that, “My computer runs ten times faster than it used to!” In many situations, especially where people primarily use Web browsing, word processing, email and perhaps IM, Linux is usually a better, more stable, more reliable solution. The list of completely supported hardware and applications is growing. Standard devices like USB drives work just as you would expect them to on a Windows box. There are still plenty of games and other specialized hardware devices which are not fully supported, or that may take extra “heroic” efforts to get working, but that list keeps shrinking.

So, the answer to the first question is, in many cases, a resounding YES.

(2) Is the Desktop Ready for Linux?

The second question is, unfortunately, more of a political, sociological question. Most people, especially those in decision making positions, are familiar with Windows and Windows based tools such as Outlook and MS Office. They are comfortable with the tools, and in spite of the bugs and crashes and security holes and the general attitude of, “We're Microsoft. We know better than you do,” they have learned to navigate their way through the tools they use. They may only need 10% of the features, but they have grown to rely on them. They are comfortable not only with what the applications do, but how they do it. They know the terminology. They are used to the quirks. They have set up macros to format their files how they want them. They have their Access databases set up and their mail-merge files configured. They have other custom tools which are integrated with the Microsoft way of doing things. They may grumble and complain about the costs of licensing, but they know that their purchasing department is already set up to OK the yearly costs, so they just bite the bullet. They have IT groups who's very organizational structure is built around Microsoft's tool chain and licensing requirements.

When it comes down to it, people don't really care what operating system they run. They don't even think of it as something separate from the computer. For all they know, Windows is just something that comes for free when they buy the hardware. They want to run their applications, or their games, and Windows is the way they run them. They think word processing is “Microsoft”, and they have no concept of the distinction between hardware, OS and application.

When you tell the average user about Linux, they give you this confused look and ask, “What will Linux do for me?” It doesn't matter to them that it's free (as in “free beer”, or “freedom”), since they don't think they paid anything extra for Windows. Chances are, they didn't pay anything for MS Office either, either having it as part of a bundled system, or installed from a friend's copy. (They don't even really think of themselves as pirates. It's there, and so they use it.) They don't “get” the philosophical or moral significance of Free Software, since it doesn't seem to directly impact them, or they way they use the computer.

Put simply, the average user doesn't see any particular benefit to using Linux, or at least not yet. More and more “average” users are beginning to feel the pain of poor security, and they are starting to notice that some other people, such as people using Mac's, don't seem to be getting as many viruses. People are starting to hear about this “Linux thing”. Lord knows that Tux is a recognizable icon. IBM is making really cool advertisements on TV spots. Slowly but surely, the word is getting out.

Still, it will be a while before Linux gains the critical mass in the minds of the majority of computer users in order to really take off. It is very likely that this will happen sooner overseas than it does in the US, since there is an understandable distrust of American technology and monopolistic companies pushing their weight around. Massachusetts and its adoption of the Open Document Format is still a curiosity. The EU pushing for the use of Open Source software is not. The Desktop may not be ready for Linux yet, but it is headed in that direction.

(3) Is Linux Ready For MY Desktop?

In arguments about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop, those who claim that it is not ready invariably point out that, “I have to use application X, and there simply is no equivalent application on Linux.” There may be applications which are close, such as The Gimp is to Adobe Photoshop, but there is still some kind of gap. It is even possible that the parallel Linux application may be superior overall to the required Windows based application (such as some would argue is the case between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft's Office suite), but there is some significant feature which is still missing. Sometimes it is simply a case of #2 above, where the user is comfortable with their current tools, and reluctant to have to learn everything all over again. In many cases, the required application is some highly specialized piece of software either custom written, or aimed at a very narrow market. It would be possible to port to Linux, but as long as the vendor feels no economic incentive to do so (i.e., no paying customers in the Linux or Mac market), the port will never happen.

However, whatever the underlying cause, there is a significant roadblock to the individual or group's path to adopting Linux on their desktop. It may in fact be that Windows, while it's not be the greatest tool, at the moment, is the only tool available. There are many efforts under way (some coordinated, and some not) to address these shortfalls, but others, mostly because of market size and interest, will never be filled. Hence, no matter how much the user may want to go to running Linux on their desktop, circumstances have painted them into a corner. In these cases, Linux is still a long way from being ready for those particular desktops.

Ready or Not...

So, the answer to the original question depends on which underlying question you are really asking. It also depends on the situation the individual user is in. Plainly, the answer is not the same for all people, or all groups. For some people, Linux has been ready for a long time, and has already been running as their primary desktop for years. For some others, Linux may never be a good fit. For others, it may only be a matter of making the decision to dive in and switch. For many, it is simply a matter of finding someone to help them through the process.

These questions, and their answers, may also give us a hint of the future, and how we can work to drive Linux on to more and more desktops. As noted, often the greatest roadblock to acceptance of Linux on the desktop is the psychological barrier of leaving something familiar for something new and uncertain. The friend I mentioned with the constant spyware problem wouldn't have had a clue how to install and configure a Linux desktop. For me, it was a simple half hour job. Once I did that for him, aside from the fact that some Web page plugins don't work, he hasn't had a single problem.

The problem of applications is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Without market penetration and demand, vendors aren't going to port their applications to Linux. Without applications, market penetration will stall. One answer is for the community to come up with viable alternatives, though this takes time and resources. While the Open Source community isn't directly driven by dollars, it has its own “currency” of recognition, teamwork and feedback. The community will not spend resources on a project unless there is the definite feel that a significant number of people want the product. That “significant number” may actually go to the number one, if the developer and the audience are the same person, but projects of one take a long time to get off the ground.

So Linux is truly ready for the Desktop, but there is still plenty to be done before it can gain the momentum to rise above the noise level and become a viable alternative in the eyes of typical consumers, software vendors and heads of corporate IT departments. In my opinion, the following points are where growth is needed:

Software corporations (ISV's) taking the gamble that Linux on the desktop is growing, and that they need to consider it in their targeted platform plans. It is still a long shot for them, but the potential payout of grabbing “first mover” status is huge. As an example, there are signs that the Gaming industry is starting to catch on, as game titles are coming out with Linux releases, sometimes before the Windows release.
In cases where they can't find a viable business plan to create Linux based versions of their products, software corporations need to consider open sourcing their products. Obviously, this is a complicated process, and not a decision to be made lightly, but there are strong examples of others, such as Sun with OpenOffice.org, who have been successful with this approach.
The larger Open Source community – from developers to corporations that “get” FOSS, to government agencies – needs to keep up the fight against the use of software patents and other IP claims to try to create legal barriers to Linux where simple marketing dollars, threats and strong-arm tacts have failed. There are people in positions of power who are still deathly afraid of losing that power and influence to this “cancer” of open source.
Individual developers and communities need to keep producing quality open source products. More and more the key needs to be driving consistency and integration. One thing which large corporations such as Microsoft have is the ability to enforce consistent interfaces, where users know what to expect, and to build integration between different products, so they work together. Obviously, they aren't always good at this, but they generally have been better than the community. There are efforts such as the LSB for system level consistency, and desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE, and now Mono which provide frameworks for integration, but developers need to keep their eyes and ears open to what is going on around them, and to consider how they fit into the whole computing “experience”..
Individual Linux users need to look for more opportunities to help others. The community is known both for its helpfulness, and for its impatience with what it considers to be laziness or incompetence. Be patient with newbies! Don't scare off the non-geeks! Take a little time to help grandma with her computer by installing Linux, and then sticking around long enough to make sure she is not frustrated by some glitch she doesn't know how to fix. Volunteer your time to set up some computers at the local elementary school or community center. Give a seminar on Internet Security at your church. Hand out Ubuntu Live CD's at work. Donate cold hard cash to organizations working to spread inexpensive, Linux based computers in developing nations overseas.
Use Linux yourself. Show your boss that, yes, you can run a Linux desktop at work, get your job done, and not make his job more difficult. (Chances are, once your IT person gets over the initial shock of seeing Linux on your computer, he or she will be relieved because yours will be one less desktop to worry about during the next virus outbreak.) Sell it to your boss by telling him that you are actually more productive using Linux than you are stuck on Windows, and then make sure it really happens.

Linux is ready for the Desktop, though not all desktops are ready for Linux. It will continue to grow, but our efforts can accelerate that growth. Wherever we are, and whomever we might be, there are things we can do to promote freedom in software. FOSS may not have the same impact as Solving World Hunger, but in its own way, Free Software, in the way it spreads knowledge and the ability to share, communicate, learn and participate in the communities around us, can serve to make the world we live in a little better place.

Frankenstein Rises from the Ashes

2005-11-24T11:33:00.000-05:00

OK, so computers still drive me crazy, but sometimes I manage to get the upper hand, for a while at least...

If I may horribly trash my metaphors, the Frankenstein computer has once again risen from the ashes of its previous demise, or perhaps to stick better to the myth, with a couple of replacement parts, you can get almost anything back up and working again...

It took another trip to eBay to get a replacement motherboard (that, and another $43 with shipping), but with that in hand, I was able to fairly quickly move over all the other parts (CPU, SCSI card, NVIDIA video, etc), and get the system up and running again. This time, happily, the board was able to fit in to an old VAIO case someone had given me. I had to use a hack-saw to get the power supply to fit right, but I've done worse. The MB is a Shuttle AV49PN, which has lots of neat features, most of which I'm not using yet (e.g., SATA support), but which may be handy in the future. One quirk is that I can't seem to get it to overclock the 2GHz processor. The old motherboard, before it bit the dust, was running at a cool 2.666GHz, which is a pretty significant boost. However, even at the rated 2GHz, it's pretty snappy (compared to a dual 500MHz PIII), and the CPU should last longer.

So, I now have a system where I can play some games on, and almost keep up with my son Sam playing Enemy Territory.

Computers Drive Me Nuts.

2005-10-15T22:02:00.000-04:00

May 15th? Sheesh! It's been a long time since I posted anything here!

Well, not to wallow in self-pithy, excuses or overly long contemplation of the navel, we will continue on.

Did I ever mention the fact the computers drive me nuts?

I finally tried to upgrade from my old dual PIII/500 main desktop (the Frankenstein) to a P4/2GHz motherboard. I didn't have a case to put it in, so I just tried to lay it out on a wooden board. Actually, it worked pretty well there, sitting on top of the SCSI enclosure where I put the 3x9Gig drives. It had a reasonable NVIDIA video card, and 768Meg of RAM. I was even able to over-clock the P4 to 2.666GHz, if I boosted the core voltage by a tenth of a volt. I regularly checked the cooling fins to make sure it wasn't getting too hot, and it never got more than slightly warm to the touch. One time when I got a process locked up where it was using 100% of the CPU for a long time, it did get a little warmer, but I didn't see any problems after that.

The system ran just fine there for a couple of weeks. I think this is the biggest jump in compute power that I've ever had, and I have to say I was pretty happy with the system. All I needed was a case to wrap it up and make it pretty.

Of course, I'm wondering now if it was the over-clocked that did me in...

I had an old case I'd pulled a toasted motherboard out of. (Queue: eerie soundtrack.) The power supply seemed OK -- in fact that was the power supply I was using for "Son of Frankenstein". All I had to do was pull out the old MB, and install the new one. Simple, eh?

Got everything put together, and hit the power button. Nothing. Nada. Started to sweat. Started disconnecting peripherals. Nothing. Pulled the entire system out and laid it out exactly as it had been before. Zilch. I think I now have two toasted motherboards. I have no idea what might have failed on the motherboard, but I don't even get the fan on the CPU cooler spinning up, and there's no signal on the video output.

One good sign was that I took out the CPU and put it in another computer and it worked fine, so at least that wasn't the problem. I don't think it is the RAM, though I haven't had a way to check that yet. The only sign that I have of any sort of problem is a slight bulge in the motherboard under the CPU. I don't know if it was there before, but it's entirely possible, since I did get the board used.

So, now I'm back to the old computer. Fortunately, since I have a Linux network, all of my critical files were on the file server, so I didn't lose anything significant. However, it still torques me that the new system was working FINE before, and I had to go and mess with it.

*sigh* Oh well. Sometimes I never learn.

Blogs and the "New Journalism"

2005-04-24T18:53:00.000-04:00

Not too long ago, there was a lot of hype about how Blogging was about to become the "New Journalism." Certainly, there are a lot of advantages which blogging brings to the table.

Anyone can start a blog... or at least anyone with an Internet connection and a minimal amount of computer skill. You don't need a degree or a lot of money, or for that matter, and particular skill in writing.
Aside from minimal restrictions placed by your ISP or Blog site, you can say anything you want.
Anyone in the world (or, anyone in the world with an Internet connection) can read your blog. Of course, this point combined with the previous point means that your boss can read your blog. People are suddenly realizing that they have to be careful what they say about their boss or place of work online!
Blogging, if you became popular enough and you allow people to post replies, can create a community.
Blogging is inexpensive, meaning that you don't need corporate sponsorship, with the ever-present threat of being shut down if you say something that upsets your sponsor.
On a blog, you can "publish" as often or as rarely as you want. If you want to put up three "articles" in a day, and then nothing else for a month, you can do that.

Blogging is the ultimate electronic "soap box". Just as it was in the past when anyone could get a box to stand on, set it up on a street corner or park, and start talking to anyone who would listen to them, blogging gives a venue for anyone to speak their mind, only this "street corner" is the entire world! (or... the world as it is connected to the Internet.)

However, is blogging really Journalism? I would contend that, in a general sense, it is not.

Please note that I am saying this in the general sense. There are a lot of blogs out there, and obviously some are better than others. But what are the problems?

First, blogs are not really world wide. As much as we might like to think that the entire world is connected to the Internet, this simply is not the case (yet). True, here in the US, and in other developed nations, the percentage of people connected is quickly approaching 100%, but it's still not there. In other poorer nations, connectivity is steadily increasing. In many places, even if people do not have computers at home, there are often Internet Cafes where they can go online for a minimal charge. However, there are still plenty of places in the world where more traditional forms of journalism are still the only way for people to find out what is going on around them. Newspapers, periodicals, radio, TV. These still cover much more of the world than the Internet does, and they cover more of the less affluent part of the population. The Internet is still skewed toward younger, affluent people with a healthy chunk of disposable income.

Second, there are no checks and balances on blogs. Now, many would say that there are no checks and balances on traditional journalists either, and that they can publish any kind of lies and half-truths that they want (especially when the journalist in question is publishing something we don't like), but the fact is, there is at least some pressure for journalists to be honest. Journalists, when they write for established publications, have Editors. Usually, they have some kind of training. They have professional ethics to follow. There are certain legal ramifications if they publish out-and-out libel about someone. Certainly, these are no guarantee that everything published by an established media outlet will be honest, un-biased, factual or in good taste, but at least it's easier to call someone on the carpet if they are completely out of line.

In comparison, you can say anything in a blog. If you are a part of a hate group, you can spread hatred and bile. You can talk about all your favorite conspiracy theories. You can tell about your alien abductions, and your latest "scientific study" into the perpetual motion machine or cold fusion. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. All that matters is that someone out there thinks like you do and will listen. Blogs feed on group-think and mob mentality. If you can write well, it doesn't matter if the facts are there to back you up. Blogs, even if they begin to become popular, tend to limit themselves to like-minded people. If you make comments that everyone agrees with, then everyone else will chime in their support. On the other hand, it becomes all too easy for dissenters to be flamed into oblivion, or hacked to pieces electronically.

Of course, blogs have their own dangers. If you're not careful, and you start to publish confidential or otherwise unflattering information about your job or people you work with, you can suddenly find yourself in a heap of trouble. This has been coming up in real world cases recently, where people were writing in their blogs as if they were a private journal, and then being surprised when they were canned from their job for making all kinds of nasty accusations about their bosses. Surprise, surprise. Blogs are public (unless explicitly set up otherwise), and there is nothing to prevent the "wrong" people from reading what you write.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem with blogs is that they are anonymous. "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Assuming the author isn't a well known personality, it is all too simple to hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Of course, this is also one of the advantages of a blog -- you can publish unpopular ideas without the threat of reprisals. That only works somewhat, as it is usually still possible to track someone down in the real world, if you are persistent enough, but it still makes it harder, especially if the author is careful to hide his or her tracks. Thus, anonymity is a double-edged sword. It gives both freedom and an opportunity for abuse.

In a general sense, blogging has none of the normal checks and balances that tend to keep a real Journalist honest, and to make sure that the content of the blog is factual or correct.

Still, there are examples of the opposite. There are examples of blogs which have not only raised the bar on journalism, but they have created strong communities, communities which have themselves become an integral part of this New Journalism. These blogs take advantage of the strengths of blogging, without falling prey to the weaknesses. (Well, that was obvious, wasn't it...)

EXHIBIT ONE: Groklaw

I would like to look at Groklaw as an example of what makes a great blog. This is not to say that Groklaw is perfect, or that there aren't other blogs which have reached a similar level of excellence, but it is easy enough to point out a number of attributes that give this site its strength.

First, Groklaw, and in particular its author Pamela Jones (PJ), has kept a fairly narrow focus. Some people like to think they are experts in everything. Rather than let Groklaw wander all over the map, PJ has given it a specific focus on Open Source and the law. It started out primarily focused on the SCO vs. IBM (or as some would say, SCO vs. the World) case, but as that case has continued to lose steam, the site has begun to branch out into Copyright and Patent law as it affects software and the Free Software / Open Source ethic. PJ calls herself a Journalist with a paralegal background. She doesn't try to cover politics, or world hunger, or scientific research, or the lives and times of famous people, though she no doubt has her own feelings on those subjects. In sticking to a narrow focus, PJ keeps to what she is good at, and what she can speak about with some authority.

Second, the site has tried to maintain good taste. Obviously, when you are allowing comments (especially from anonymous posters), it is hard to control that, but in may ways, PJ sets the tone with her original stories. That's not to say that the posts are dry. Rather, PJ is incredibly funny, in her own understated way. She's just a little over the top in her style, but never crude or abusive. She has a touch of sarcasm, an occasional story, a penchant for pointing out contradictions in other people's statements, and perhaps most important, she isn't stuck on her own self-importance.

Of course, just to keep us off balance, once in a while she comes up with a story or comment that bubbles up from the depths of her heart. It's one of those touching observations that lets us see deep down into her soul -- the kind of thing you have to be really careful of publishing on the Internet. Still, it lets us see that there is a real, feeling person there writing those posts, not just a batch of prickers or sour grapes.

Third, Groklaw is a community, not just the ramblings of a single individual. It has become more than simply the sum of its parts. In the beginning, the intent of Groklaw was to create a sort of Open Source Journalism, in particular, digging into SCO and the accusations they were making against the Free Software community and the GPL (GNU Public License). PJ would publish a story, and then ask for help. She wasn't the expert on all this stuff, and certainly didn't know all the history, or even the meaning of all the technical bits and pieces. That's what everyone else was for. Groklaw was the gathering point, the collected eyes of a large group of individuals, each with his or her own skills. It created a place for many people to contribute and pool their resources, as well as a place for us techies who had no idea how the legal system worked to find out what all the legal gibberish actually meant. Eric Raymond said in his work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar that "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." In a similar manner, given enough eyeballs, and research project is trivial.

Fourth, Groklaw isn't perfect, but it is ready to admit that fact. One of the standard threads in the responses to any post is, "Put Corrections Here." Where there are factual errors, the "many eyes" of the community can check PJ's post and find them. Then, the posts are corrected in near real-time. Unlike a print magazine where you have to wait a week or a month for the next issue to come out, the posts on Groklaw can be corrected right away. Admittedly, many of the corrections are picking nits at grammar, but some of them are significant, such as corrections to attributions of quotes and such.

Fifth, Groklaw is up to date, or even in some cases, up to the minute. Since it is a site focused on a legal case, Groklaw is usually the first site to report on court hearings with eye-witness accounts. It is usually the first place to find legal papers as they have been submitted, and they are usually transcribed to text form within a couple of hours. Again, this is the work of the community rather than one individual.

Lastly, and perhaps most critical, Groklaw is focused on integrity and presenting the facts, and then letting people come to their own opinions. While a lot of the personality (the heart and soul) of the site centers around PJ and her style of writing, the foundation is always the facts of the source documents to which it refers. There are plenty of people in SCO who don't like PJ, and complain intensely about Groklaw, but the one thing they can't do away with is the factuality of the documents presented there. PJ and the others who add their comments to her posts can add all the spin they want, but what really matters is that they present the facts, and allow you to come to your own conclusions.

The result of all of these factors is that, unlike blogs in general, Groklaw is based not so much on the personal opinion of one person, or even a group of people, as it is on the facts of the law. It doesn't matter if you like SCO or IBM. The source texts are there for everyone to see. It doesn't matter if you like PJ or agree with what she says. If all you want to do is read the source documents, they are there for you.

In a general sense, blogs and their content do not constitute a viable substitute for more conventional journalism. That is not to say that they are unimportant as vehicles for the discussion of ideas, and as a modern day equivalent to the old soapbox on a street corner, but are not the same as real journalism. However, in some cases, such as Groklaw, blogs have succeeded on harnessing the strengths of the Internet to rise to a new level that even the best of conventional journalists cannot reach. They do it through:

Sticking to their strengths
Maintaining an atmosphere of excellence (keeping Trolls and flame-fests in check)
Building on the strength of the community - whole is greater than the sum of the parts
Admitting fallibility and being ready to make corrections when needed
Timely information
Absolute dedication to objective truth and the ability of the individual to form his or her own opinion.

It is my own hope that other sites can follow this example, and that these sites will become an example of how the collaborative nature of the Internet can create new and constructive ways to share knowledge and ideas.

What's in a Name?

2005-04-23T22:12:00.000-04:00

So, what's in a name?

My use of the name "Bilbo" goes back to the 80's, shortly after graduating from college. (I may have even used it before then, but this is when it really stuck.) A friend of mine was running a BBS on a C64 (any one remember those?), with a dial-up modem. Most BBS's at that time required you to use your real name, but on this system, everyone had taken on some pseudonym or another. The guy running it was Drool Rockworm. Another regular participant was "Lore Rastifarious". Another, one of the real grouches of the group, called himself "Lord Bah". Those were great times of lively discussions, from Religion to Politics to Technology. The funny thing was, though we strongly disagreed with each other, we always respected each other's opinion and thoughts. Arguments got pretty hot, but never descended into name calling or personal attacks.

In all that, I tried to maintain the persona of the unflappable one. I could argue without getting upset. I always saw Bilbo as being polite, even when his guests were a bit of a pain, and he never lost his wonder at the great world around him.

Since "Drool" and I worked together at Automation Gages (in Rochester), I started calling him Drool there, and he started calling me Bilbo, or Mr. Baggins. Ever since then, the name has stuck. That was close to 20 years ago, and Drool and I are still great friends (and still have some animated arguments about religion), and whenever we speak together, it's still Drool and Mr. Baggins...

And away we go...

2005-04-21T23:19:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the world of my Blog. I have nothing of great resounding wisdom to add at this point, other than the fact that I am here, and ready to start.

Oh, and the name. My use of the nick-name "Bilbo Baggins" predates the current wave of popularity of the works of JRR Tolkien. In fact, it goes back to the days of modem based BBS's, though I'm afraid admitting that fact dates me. I've always enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and I'm not so snooty and stuck up that I think of all the recent fans as wannabes or hangers-on. The greatness of the books is in no way diminished by popularity and fad. In fact, they will continue to be great long after the crowds move on to something else to tickle their fancy.

And, if you want to see my site, go to the real home of Bilbo Baggins