Danny ChaiI know that many people are making their summer plans and I just want to encourage you to consider missions while you are doing this. My guess is many people haven’t even thought about it, but before you finalize your plans, please do think about it. Also, if you’re going, ask me for support because I really do want to support you. I don’t know how much I can, but I want to so please do.
No one commented on my last thoughts. I guess no one finds them interesting except me. You are all fools.
By the way, Eddie, the passage you quoted is used by some people as evidence that David was a bisexual. I’m not making this up. There was a huge uproar about it at some Jewish council in Jerusalem some years ago and they cited that passage. To show that homosexuality is OK. Yikes.
An interesting phenomenon is how when something happens to you, you suddenly find it being all over the place, where you never really noticed it before. For example when a family member gets a disease, you suddenly become hypersensitive to it.
Anyway, it seems like everyone has cancer. Do other people feel this way or is it just me? But it feels like there are more and more occurrences of it happening. For example, in baseball, Lenny Dykstra, Brett Butler, Eric Davis, and now is it Andres Galarraga all have struggled with cancer. Like was it ever like that before? Gene Siskel just died; he had a brain tumor. Kim Perrot of the Houston Comets just revealed that she has cancer (that’s spread to her brain. She is only 32.). Those last 3 examples all occurred in the past week. The revelations, I mean. Anyway, it’s interesting to me how it just seems to pop up everywhere, now.
I spent a significant amount of time changing the javascript on this page so it displays the time you’ve spent reading correctly in hours, minutes, and seconds. It’s fairly intelligent, also, as it puts in the s’s when necessary and all. Anyway, I’m a loser, but it was fun. You can see it by viewing the source for this page. Anyway, there’s some strange things going on there but it’s necessary because javascript apparently doesn’t truncate when it’s division with 2 integers. Interesting.
I’m sure that most of the people that have had e-mail for some time have at one time or another received the poopie list. You know what this is? It’s like a list of different types of poopies. It’s pretty amusing. Anyway, poop has been on my mind. One of the types of poopies that the list mentions is like the clean poopie. You know, you go, but when you wipe, it’s totally clean already. I love this feeling. And the thing is, you can usually tell when it’s a clean poopie. It’s just harder and more solid, kind of like when you’re constipated, or you’ve been constipated. Those are the best. They just come out, and it’s totally clean! I love those the best.
But you can also tell when it’s gonna be a dirty one. You know what I mean? Those kind of juicy ish ones where you just gotta wipe forever and it still doesn’t get totally clean. I hate those. These are more often associated with slight diarrhea in my mind. Or sometimes, it’s like when you go but you don’t feel done, but you get the feeling like you won’t ever be done, but it’s still time to wipe. Then you end up wiping for a really long time. Theres just a lot there and you don’t know how to get rid of it all. It just takes forever.
Anyway, you can usually tell as you’re crapping which one it’s gonna be. And recently, it’s been all the messy ones. And I’ve really had to wipe a lot. It kind of sucks.
Dave hit it on the nose. The reason people like to be on worship teams. I think. Albert Shim I think put it best. He said that on a worship team you get the honor and pleasure of seeing the people of God worship. Actually he said that that’s what his goal is as a worship leader, to see the people of God worship. I love the way that sounds. Anyway, it’s a dope feeling when it happens.
So what Dave said made me reminisce. There are quite a few worship times in my memory that I think were really special. Actually, there are tons. But I’ll just mention a few that stick out in my mind.
Most recently, I led once at FiCS this year and I think it was a really special time. I’m not quite sure what it was, but that’s actually generally true – when the worship times are good, I’m not usually sure why that is. But that’s a good thing. Anyway this night I tried to pull off some bold (when I say bold I almost never mean it, it’s just a filler word now) moves and it worked, well. It was good. However, I will never ever lead at FiCS again; I mean never. I’m thinking about not even going to FiCS anymore. But anyways.
Another really good time was at the All Campus Retreat last year. In general, the times were good, and a lot of things I wanted to try ended up working out. Which was good. But in particular, I will never forget the campfire time. There was just so much energy, and people didn’t want to leave, and it was just great. Really really good time then.
Actually, a lot of “event” type things have turned out really well, I think. I had a really good time with Soli Deo Gloria junior year. Also, praise during Crossing the Bridge, with Kaleo, sophomore year: that was a good praise time.
Senior retreat, that one night when me and Albert were doing tag team praise; that was also a great night.
Another good time in my mind was sophomore year, near the beginning of the year, when we were meeting in Braun Music Center. It was when Sang was still helping out. This one week was just really special – one of the first weeks, and this particular week the place was packed. It was kind of disorienting, but there was literally no place to sit if you came in late (it’s a pretty small room). Anyway, that was a really good time. That meeting was actually a significant one in my mind. It was when we realized that FiCS was not going to be the fellowship we thought it was that year. Like, there was no way I think anyone expected it to be the size that it was. The room we were in reflected that. All of a sudden these random people were coming, and it was just bizarre. Anyway, this particular meeting still sticks out in my mind.
Another meeting that same year took place in Cubberly 233. For some reason, not many people were going to be there that week so we met in the “prayer room.” Anyway, it was a great meeting – not many people there, but we filled the room. Chihua’s family, including his sister, were there. Also, Pastor Harold gave a great message on the tabernacle. I usually forget sermons but this one sticks out in my mind. And praise time I think was great – just me and a guitar, no complicated equipment, totally unplugged, and it was very powerful. I miss times like that. Maybe one week this year we should have FiCS in Cubberley 233.
I can remember bad praise times too. Is this a bad thing to say? I don’t know. But if there is such a thing as a good praise time, there must necessarily be a thing as a bad one, right? Anyway, I’ve been involved with my fair share of those. A number of them have been All Campus Praises. I think these are great, but at times it’s an example of too many cooks spoil the broth. Meaning, everyone has a say, no one really takes control, and it just somehow comes together, but not in an efficiently organized form. I’m a big fan of there being an understood leader at all times. It just makes things so much easier, and things come out better in the end. That’s my opinion, at least. I am pretty much totally against the philosophy of worship leading presented at Urbana. I mean, 180 degrees. But that’s just me. Anyway, control is a wonderful thing, it needs to be taken, and when that doesn’t happen, it’s just a lot more messier.
There are countless (OK, not countless, just maybe 3) times that I’ve led at church that were pretty bad, for various reasons. My problem is I always want to try different things. So like one week I tried to do Sweet Mercies with the dope part in the middle like on the Winds of Worship recording. But the pianist that week had never heard the song before, so that didn’t work, because the piano is key in Sweet Mercies. Another week, I wanted to do He Has Made Me Glad like on the recording in Maranatha Praise 14? Or 15. One of those. They sing it in cut time, then there’s this dope middle part where they sing “Hallelujah! He has made me glad” 4 times. It’s very dope; excellent recording. Then they kick back into the chorus, one key higher and in double time. The increase in energy is amazing. So I wanted to do it. But Kris Song the drummer was gone that week and drums are key, absolutely vital to cut time – double time transitions. It’s just impossible to do without drums. I tried anyway, but total confusion. Uck, I could go into all the details, but basically, the only person who understood what was supposed to happen was Kris Song (he was gone Saturday but there Sunday) and I could just tell by the look on his face that service that he understood. Oh well. Interestingly, Pastor Dave said later that week that worship team should keep doing spicy things like that. He’s into that, I think. I love him.
Another bad time is mentioned on my lowlight.html page. So I’ve had my share of those.
Another bad week was in Cubberley 133? Is that the room? 103? Only the seniors know what I’m talking about. But Lisa Tahk came to help that week, but I had forgotten mics, so we went unplugged. The thing is, I sung that week a bunch of KCPC songs that the worship team knew, but no one else. So it was silent. And you know, if you sing new songs without amplification in a semi big room, you’ll just fail. Jimmy Ahn comes up to me afterwards and says, “New song week, huh?” But only one song was new; the rest people just didn’t know. one included Psalm 102 – a great song we don’t sing enough. Another, I sang that week was Song For The Bride. We’ve never sung it since; just bad memories of this night kept me from doing it.
I’m thinking of putting up some additions to my page. One would be like, songs I really think are dope. Every couple weeks or so, I’ll put up a song, maybe it’s MP3, and it’s lyrics, and write why this song is dope. Maybe I should put up another page, like, tricks I’ve tried in worship that work, and the things that don’t. They’re not tricks, more spirit filled inspirations. But you know, it’s easier to type tricks.
I was talking with Jieun last night and she was saying (should this be public) ok, she was just talking about singing alto parts, and I was truly amazed. Because the way she thinks about harmony is just totally different from me. Me, I just kind of feel my way through harmony, like, you know, you usually sing a 3rd step up, and once in a while, it’s a 4th, you know? Not too much variety or complexity. But like, Jieun actually visualizes the chord, so like, she’s singing this one part and she’s like, is it this note or this note? Because this note would make it a C chord but this note would make it an A minor. That just blew me away. That she thinks in those terms. It was interesting.
But what it made me realize is that the thinking behind singing alto and singing tenor is pretty different. I think tenor’s a lot easier. You sing a 3rd up almost all the time. If you’re not careful, though, you’ll be singing the 7th from tonic, which makes the chord either a dominant 7th or a major 7th, both of which if they’re not intentional, can make it sound weird.
But alto is a whole nuther thing, altogether. “But alto is a whole nuther thing.” I think what most people do is just always sing a 3rd down. But the danger here is singing the 6th from tonic, which fits in only in a minor chord of the 6th from tonic, or the Major 6th chord of the tonic, which is the chords where this usually happens. So it’s just kind of lazy, to always sing a 3rd down, and this frustrated Jieun. Anyway, it opened my eyes to certain things, which was interesting to me.
Anyway, I’m rambling and this is interesting only to me, but my belief in worship is that men should only sing the melody or up, and women should only sing the melody or down. That is, men shouldn’t sing lower harmonies, and women shouldn’t sing higher harmonies. This is the rule. I challenge you to ever find a praise recording that violates this rule. Also, you should rarely start a song with harmony – it should start in the middle of the song, if at all. And never ever start a song with full 3-part harmony. This goes along with mixing it up, making things sound different. Too often singing a song it sounds just the same from beginning to end. That’s bad. There are infinite ways it should be mixed up, from the instrumentation, to who is singing, to what parts are being sung at a time, to, most importantly, dynamics. I cannot stress how much influence dynamics play musically.
But I’ve said too much. I could go on and on. My problem is that I’m highly opinionated about certain things. I mean, those things that I know a lot about. My hope, though, is that I not be as opinionated about things I don’t know a lot about. I don’t know how well I succeed at this. Again, if you made it all the way down here, congrats.