Still Video Bloggin'

Remember when I posted that video-blog i made a few months back? Well, in the mean time I've continued to enjoy making those sorts of clips, I think it gives me an outlet to try out random ideas for humor and commentary without much risk. Since it was born out of a video freelance project I did and has evolved into whatever it is now, and since it is the start of a new year/"quarter," I thought I'd post the latest one here and invite you to check it out. Thanks!


Day Fourteen from Peter Erickson on Vimeo.

Two Phrases...

Last night at church, a guest speaker by the name of Earl Creps spoke about the recent journey and calling he and his wife have embarked on. I don't remember the exact timeline, but the long and the short are that he was serving as a professor at a seminary in Missouri, and now they are heading out to Berkely to plant a church with the purpose of reaching out to the many students who populate that city. He spoke of this journey and process leading up their decision to pursue it within the context of Acts chapter 16 where Paul and his ministry team had been traveling the Roman highway network spreading the news of Jesus Christ. Their journey was targeting all the locations one would have expected and planned on for that time period, until one night when Paul had a dream about a man from Macedonia, asking them to travel to his homeland. Long story short, Macedonia was probably not on their radar, and my understanding is that it represented a challenging/hostile place to continue their ministry of outreach.

So again, Earl was drawing some parallels between the events in his own life and what Paul's team experienced, which I thought was very cool.

As you would imagine, such a sermon/talk largely revolved around what it means to be obedient to God when he wants you to make a change or perhaps take a step outside your current circumstances/comfort zone. In the course of the talk, he rattled off a couple phrases that struck me, and I wanted to be sure to get them down in writing because I think they deserve to be kept at the forefront of my thoughts and prayers (maybe they deserve to be at the forefront of yours too.) These are not verbatim, so I apologize in advance if I misqoute or spin these incorrectly...

1 - (regarding how we tend to want things laid out, planned in advance before acting on a leap of faith) Pay more attention to what's coming after you, as opposed to paying attention to what comes after.

2 - "You know how they say when people are drowning, their life flashes before their eyes? So often when Jesus calls us to do something drastically different, our lifestyle flashes before our eyes..." (he went on to explain how at a point in their decision making, he had a moment when he started counting all the comforts he currently enjoyed and how they would most likely be put on hold.)

Just some food for thought that I'm chewing on today.

Cheers!

Simple Pleasures #3 Skippy Skipperson

Time to dust off the ol blog here and unspin another Simple Pleasure I thought of the other day.

You see, here in North Texas, we've finally achieved weather patterns that hint at fall, or Autumn if you will. It's probably my favorite season. [cutting to chase] So the favorite season reminded me of a favorite past-time back up in the North (Minnesota):

Skipping rocks.

Cathartic, soothing, relaxing, and awesome all at the same time, my friend. (And it's free, thus making it a superior Simple Pleasure)

Did you say "SUPERIOR?"

Yep- it's no coincidence that one of the best places I've skipped happens to be on Lake Superior, on it's North Shore. Specifically on the various inlets like around Gooseberry Falls. The water's calm and clear, but even better, the shore is absolutely SILLY with smooth, flat stones which are essential for a decent skip.

(see the jpg of my computer's desktop here)

My friends up there also share an affinity for stone slinging, so much that my buddy Benny mailed me a black north shore smoothie after we moved down here and it all but made me cry.

Another note of trivia, is that Jo and I have a plate full of North Shore stones on our coffee table- ones we collected on our honeymoon up yonder.

So, if you're ever in the vicinity of Lake Superior (it's named that for many reasons, yo), do yourself a favor, pull over on 61 North anywhere north of Duluth, and skip a few. You'll be glad you did.

Day Five

Day Five from Peter Erickson on Vimeo.

Vanity, Narcissism, and Me

I'm not sure what to make of it just yet, but I dabbled in vlogging recently with the intention of helping me keep the creative juices flowing while in the midst of working on a freelance project.

(Some people go for a jog, read a book, or fly a kite...I goof off)

So here's the five entries that I submitted, offering updates on the project.

Take it with a grain of salt.

If further silliness continues via this conduit ( and it probably will, thanks to the iSight camera) you can catch it all at vimeo.com...

Real Quick

Anyone else ever noticed that homemade cookies are typically soft and tend to gradually become more brittle and dry over time, while store bought cookies (cf; Oreos) typically are crunchy and brittle, yet become soft and chewy over time.

You're welcome Jerry Seinfeld.

Grimace

This post is basically me taking time to let you know that although everything within me craves to lay down an essay on how I think the word grimace is awesome, I'm not going to. You see, it would violate some personal parameters of mine when posting- my goal is that these things, these Meanderings would be interesting, and at least sometimes concise. My goal is that they would be posts I would want to read if I wasn't me.

So again, I'm not going to write about how the word grimace is one of those words that has onomatopoeia, and how it also happens to be one of my favorite facial expressions to use, or even that McDonalds had the brilliant insight to use it in naming the first purple puffy-suited kids icon (think about that one).

Grimace. One of the great words, folks.

But I'm not going to post about it.