Personal Update
Finished Posting...Whew
That's me on Tuesday at 4:40 pm. I spent the entire day making candles out of the scraps of candles leftover in our church fireplace and writing the thing I just posted below this. This one felt pretty good. Felt like old Real Live Preacher stuff. I actually started that essay last August, revisited it a couple of times, but finally it caught fire in me.
I LOVE posting something after hours of wrestling with it. Instant good mood for me. MUCH better than finishing an essay and sending it to Christian Century, though that feels pretty nice too since I get paid for it.
So I'm feeling great. Hope you like the essay. At 6pm I'm going to our church "brotherhood" meeting. It's where the guys of our church get together to drink beer, eat pizza, and enjoy being together. Some would say the least spiritual thing we have going on. I don't know about that. It is definitely the most popular, long-standing thing for men at Covenant.
I'll drink a Shiner for you.
gordon
NOTE: Whenever I post something for subscribers, I'll put that notice at the top of the page so you'll know to log in. Otherwise this post would not be visible. A listing of previous subscriber posts is on the right menu IF you're logged in.
Sitting at Java Junction - Subscriber's Post
Hey there subscribers,
I'm thinking of changing that name. Maybe to Friends of rlp. I don't know.
This is an experiment. I'm posting something for you and allowing it to be promoted to the front page. That means that only people logged in as subscribers will see it.
But then, what if you aren't logged in? Should I have some kind of notification for you on the menu? New Friends of rlp content up. Log in?
Okay, I just put a little notification below the header.
Here I am right now, 11 am CST, sitting at Java Junction working on my sermon. I do a lot of sermon work here because of the free internet. I need internet because I love http://textweek.com. Good resources for the study I do before I figure out how the sermon is going to come together.
So, should I post subscriber things (er, friends of rlp) in this way? Need a notifier so you know to log in?
rlp
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Temptation Part 3 sneak peek
Hey everyone.
I had a great writing day today. Finished up an essay for Christian Century. About a 6 hour ordeal, and this was something I've had in progress for a couple of months. I'll send it to them tomorrow.
CC also posted a piece today that I gave them back in December. We all forgot about it. I sent my editor an email and said, "Hey, did you guys ever publish that Tethered piece?" She sent email back. "Oops. I guess we forgot that one."
So it was 4pm, and I had 2 hours left. Promised Jeanene I'd leave the church at 6pm. I decided to see how much I could get done on the Temptation story. I got a first draft finished by 6pm. The writing went MUCH faster than usual.
I thought I'd give you guys a look ahead if you're interested. Disclaimer. This is an absolute first draft. Right out of my head and onto the paper. I NEVER let people see these. I'm weird that way. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night, say "Oh shit" and pull it offline.
I don't know what and how much will change before it goes online. Typically I don't even have a first draft. I work in sections. This time it came out as one draft. I'll go over this until I can read it through without anything bothering me. 20 times? Who knows? I don't count.
So if you want to get a peek at the end of the story. Here's a .pdf file from my writing software. Unless something radical happens, there won't be any major changes to the structure. I hate the ending. It's really just a placeholder. Hopefully I'll come up with a way to end it while I'm going over it.
http://RealLivePreacher.com/temptation3.pdf.
By the way, I chose to enlarge the scripture quotations from Satan and Jesus to indicate the context from which they come. It is important to know that Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy first, then Satan takes a Psalm out of context. Jesus counters with the Shema, understanding good scripture interpretation both includes the context and weighs passages against each other according to their purpose.
I saw no way to make this clear in the story without adding a little to the scriptures quoted.
Monday Night Stuff
Monday Night
Hey there,
I'm heavy into the Temptation story. This one will take three parts. I'm not sure if I've ever done a three part RLPDV before. I put 8 hours into part one. But then I got in the groove and did part 2 in about 4 hours.
Garage Band is awesome. So much easier than the old setup I have. I recorded both files using the microphone that comes with the mac. That's kind of fun. And the new Drupal site allows me to upload an audio file, which it automatically puts in an audio section with a feed.
In other news, I was feeling pretty desperate before the surgery. Here I am checking out some religious literature in the waiting room:
I thought this was strange. I found it in an older neighborhood here in San Antonio. Kind of a poor man's strip center. I've never seen anything like it.
That's it for today. I don't know if I'll have time to finish the Temptation story tomorrow. Probably no energy. It's pretty rare that I do one two days in a row.
g
Writing at Panera Bread 2-19-08
Hey friends. This is my first subscriber blog post. I'm sitting at Panera bread in San Antonio, working on something I hope to post at the blog later today. It's a funny piece from a time when I was trying to replace a toilet in our house. Pretty much done.
I'm a little concerned because I haven't heard back from many subscribers. I doubt any subscriber will even find this. If you do, leave me a comment.
One of the cool things about having blog entries that only you guys can see is the ability to interact with a smaller group of people via the comments. I'll likely be more responsive in this format.
Gotta go. This thing won't write itself!
rlp
Life Stuff
Greetings,
Last Thursday I had arthroscopic knee surgery. I tore the meniscus in my left knee almost two years ago. I wish I would say I was doing something exciting. The truth is I was helping some friends move. I never felt it tear, but it's given me trouble ever since. The surgery went fine. The doctor found some other cartilage issue and drilled a couple of holes in my femur. I'm not sure why he did that, but I was coming out of the anesthesia and don't remember much. I'll find out details at my follow-up visit.
Today was my first day walking. The three holes they punched in my knee for the surgery hurt worse than the knee itself. Looks like I'll be fine.
I spent all day working on this blog, which frustrated me. I'm itching to write. But the move over to a new server with new software has been harder than I thought. And I haven't even done most of the work. I'm serious when I tell you that I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't met Tim Miller at Jethro.
Most of the cool things about the new Drupal site are behind the scenes. Things that make it easier for me. I worked over the menus on the left. I got my Foy Davis and RLPDV and archive links the way I like them. Some of the stuff links to the archives. I doubt I'll ever get around to importing all that stuff.
One new thing about this blog is the way I'll handle subscriptions. The details are in a new page I created. On the old site I maintained a page for subscribers. Well, if you use the word "maintained" loosely. One problem was I had to basically lay out the html every time I wanted to update it. With the new site, it will be much easier for me to maintain some secondary content as a way of thanking the folks who subscribe.
Tomorrow I have some stuff to do in the morning. I hope to get some time to write later during the day.
rlp
Real Live Preacher 3.0
This is the third incarnation of Real Live Preacher. I began as a Salon blog at http://blogs.salon.com/0001772. Later I moved to my own domain using Drupal. That's when the chatroom and the threaded comments began. I guess that was RLP 2.0
Well, here we are with what I hope will be the final version. Now that Jethro is in charge of the nuts and bolts, I'm guessing they will update Drupal for me so that I don't get behind again.
So okay, so the new site is up and running. There are a number of issues I want to tell you about.
1. We lost all of our user accounts. There was no way to help that, unfortunately. However, there is good news. On the old site, having a rlp user account meant that your name appeared on comments, and you could visit the chat room. Well, there is no chat room. Anymore. It fell out of use. I could always bring one back if people wanted it, but for now there isn't one. AND, you can leave your name when you leave your comment, if you like.
2. You can still sign up for a user account if you want. If you are signed in, You won't have to do the captcha thing. And, in the future, I'll have some features reserved for registered users only. For example, users might be able to launch a discussion forum if a particular essay brings a lot of discussion. I'm not sure if we'll have that, but there are a lot of things Drupal can do. We could add a number of things.
3. Subscribers (Those who support the site financially) Your blogs will be listed here, just as they were before. We're going to recreate your user account for you, so don't worry about that. And as before, there will be an area of the site for you only. I can't promise this, but I've asked Jethro to find a way to feature your sites in a rotating basis as well. So every day there would be a featured site or two from the subscriber sites. Be patient; we're doing a lot.
4. I have a lot of clean-up work to do. All of the old stuff is here: http://reallivepreacher.com/rlparchive. But it won't be linked by subject. I'm actually considering republishing all of the old essays in the new system so that they can be tagged for easier retrieval. I don't even know how to get started with that. I've written so many essays since 2002. Even if I only do the serious stuff, it's a daunting task. I'm still thinking about that.
So why the change?
First, I had no spam protection in the old Drupal site. Second, there are a lot of things behind the scenes with the newly upgraded Drupal software that will ultimately make my life a lot easier. Images will automatically thumbnail for me and are easier to upload. My audio files will have an RSS feed, making them a podcast if I want. And I really enjoy doing short videos. Tim Miller tells me they have a solution for making that easier to do as well.
Finally, I'm working toward only dealing with my word processor and Drupal. Previously I wrote things, then put them in FrontPage, then finally into Drupal as an html file. I have some editing options here that are helpful to me.
So I'm glad for the upgrade, even if it means things are a little out of order for a time.
Tomorrow: The first essay on the new site. Some thoughts about war, the Mars rovers, and an impossible dream.
rlp
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