Kek is an incredible individual, and wrote a smashing review of my blog for his (broad) world of blog attendees! Keep watching my site for his upcoming music machine of Gospel Plow from my upcoming solo album on One Soul Records, Troublin’ Mind.

And check out his blog! He sends me a couple hundred people a day from his review of me — so the least I can do is send a few back:)

And if you don’t understand French — you should! Just kidding — I don’t understand French either… but I discovered an amusing machine that will translate from French to English, albeit broken-ly, at www.freetranslation.com — it will give kicks all around.

And because there are so many folks from Kek’s site visiting mine, here is a bit of English translated into French for you (and for you to be amused by the bad translation):

Accueillir � mon site de blog — je suis excit� que vous �tes venu me visiter. Kek est un grand gars, et un artiste d’�clat incroyable, n’est-ce pas ? Je suis beaucoup d’amus� par ses petits jeux, et je suis beaucoup regardant en avant au jour il me fait ma propre machine de musique. Et je regarde aussi en avant � l’audience lui joue quelque guitare de blue grass la prochaine fois je le vois, dans la chute dans New York, ou � Paris un jour.

S’il vous pla�t revenir — si vous ne comprenez pas mes textes anglais bien assez, vous pouvez aussi, comme j’ai fait, www.freetranslation.com de visite et il traduira quoi que vous aimeriez (d’une voix bris�e et dr�lement) dans le fran�ais, ou quoi que la langue que vous aimez.

Les acclamations, et j’esp�re que vous avez un jour merveilleux !

I have put many mp3s of my own music on the sidebar for public perusal — so please, feel free to click and listen as you check out my site! There are clips from the upcoming release Troublin’ Mind from One Soul Records, as well as full length tracks from Light into the World, my new Eucharist service, and plenty more besides…

And I have found some extremely insightful blogs in cyberspace that are worthy of linking, and have added them to my “Friends” and “Blogs I Like to Read” sections of my sidebar. I’ll just say a few words about a few of them here.

1. jeshua erickson is an amazing singer/songwriter and activist
2. joel erickson is his father, an incredible lutheran preacher
3. cynthia gustavson is my mother, a poet and social worker
4. katharina schuhmann is my girlfriend of three years, with lots of pictures of us on her blog:)
5. lars clausen is the creator of www.onewheel.org, and an incredible fellow
6. sollicitudo rei socialis is a catholic blog dedicated to poverty and social concern
7. religiousliberal is exactly what it purports to be — a brilliant site of religious liberalism
8. beppeblog is a blog about religion and politics — with a Quaker spin
9. bethquick is a blog about social justice and religion — great insight from another minister
10. chuck currie is a brilliant writer about spiritual and social issues — a site I visit every day
11. connexions is written by a methodist pastor in wales — politics and religion. great site
12. evangelical expatriate is written by a woman who worked with jeshua as an intern at sojourners magazine. incredible insights here

That’s enough for today — check out all of these insightful Christians’ blogs!

On September 11, 2000, I arrived in Jerusalem, eager to begin my program in conflict resolution through music — a program that I had created over years of planning and deliberation. I was in Bethlehem when the fighting started, and I stayed as long as it took for me to figure out that I couldn’t do the good work that I had so long planned. One of my favorite kids, Asel Asleh, was killed in the prime of his life — a tragedy I will never forget. This is a link to a picture I took of Asel at summer camp at Seeds of Peace where I was his camp counselor.

Six months later, on March 11, 2001, my father and I were in a terrible car wreck. We were an inch away from death. My father wouldn’t have made it through if I hadn’t shouted for him to wake up — he was pierced and broken — and he lost almost every drop of his blood on the way to the hospital. Thank God and thanks to his tough-as-steel heart, my father is out biking an hour or two per day on his re-constructed hip — and he walks to take communion in church — and he walked my sister down the aisle the next year.

Another six months later, on September 11, 2001, our country woke up to realize what I had first realized a year earlier: the world is not as safe and kind as we first believed.

And what can we do? I think we can all sing a song for justice, and for love, and for family, and for this wonderful life that we are living. I sing every song for God, and for my dad, and for those who die, and for all of those who are suffering, and for all of those who feel the same joy I feel in music.

I have made two recordings of my own since My two September 11ths and my March 11th. One is called Live in Vermont, and is the record of my years after my accident — sitting on the porch with my best buddy, Micah Schonberg and picking songs — and another is called Stolen Shack, where I am playing music with some of my other best friends — I also recently completed and am in the process of disseminating a new folk/bluegrass worship service called Light into the World, and am excited about the response it is getting.

And I made a recording with my close friend, Jeshua Erickson, an incredible singer/songwriter who I met in Washington. When I was out on the porch, he was in his room — and when I was trying to push all of my fears inside, he was pulling his out.

Jeshua has written songs about his life, and about the political and religious truths in this world like none I have ever seen. Jeshua’s new album which I had the honor of joining him on, Swords into Plowshares, is not perfect, not a multi-million dollar production — but a beautiful yet rough, gritty and real interpretation of the political and social climate today as well as a pretty listen:)

Jeshua has written a story about our recording process and the troubles and trials that ensued — please visit his site at: www.jeshuaerickson.com/blog — and please go to Sojourners Magazine to check out his CD, which is for sale on their site. If you’d like to read the lyrics from the tunes, or to hear soundclips of them, visit www.jeshuaerickson.com

If you haven’t ever tried to sit out on the porch and play in the snow, or in the rain — singing a gospel tune out into the cold air for nobody in particular, try it — it will change you!

Peace.

I am really shocked and surprised by the number of sites that link to my site just because I’m in cyberspace — among them a pretty random variety — from how to build engines to pretty obscene sites to German telephone deals…

I delete all of them, and ban their link — but they do represent something — a very large societal issue — what are our values — is the internet the Wild West, where values are swallowed by an indecent extreme strain that flood the market with spam and porn — are these the cowboys robbing the coaches as they go west?

I am most alarmed by a link (I have already removed it from my ‘Statistics’) to adanov dot com, (I haven’t made a link because I don’t want any more spam — but copy the url into your header and look — there is no obscenity — there are simply pictures of women that are up for marriage to a man in the west who will pay to bring her here)

They linked to my entry about God and Moral Values. Was that a joke, or are the words God and moral values a trigger for men that would potentially ’shop’ for a wife. I am, frankly, remarkably disgusted. I guess if they had linked to any one of my blog entries besides that one, I wouldn’t have been as surprised — it is probably their chief marketing strategy…

The ‘junkyard jet’ (www.junkyardjet.com) also linked to my moral values entry. I find this ’spam’ site sort of amusing — how to build a jet engine in your backyard. I don’t have any idea what this has to do with moral values — but maybe it’s a red state kind of thing to undertake. “You can build your own jet engine!”

And the one ’spam’ link that also links to my Moral Values page is the freshtech news site — which is pretty cool — so I’ll keep it in my stats — it is a news source for science news, open source news, windows, linux and firefox news, etc. But why did they link to my “Moral Values” page?

It is all a mystery to me — but if you are reading this, and do not know me, then I guess, in a way, I’m spamming you, too — but I hope I’m a slightly more refined internet cowboy. (And I certainly don’t provide information on how to purchase a wife from eastern Europe.)

I was really impressed by my visit to the Gates by Christo in New York — it was truly beautiful. I wrote an entry about it a few days ago with some pretty pictures taken by my pretty lady… But there are many other blogs with some beautiful pictures of the Gates:

Incredibly beautiful 360 degree panorama shot

Nice slide show

New York City Gates Blog

Rob Kutner’s beautiful photo journal of the gates

The official Christo Gates site

The Central Park website with some great info on the Gates

I didn’t think that I would be so enamored by the Gates — but they are breathtaking in person, and in photographs. This time of year, with the dark trees, the gates cut through the park like swaths of blowing flowers.

Chuck Currie has a passionate new post about poverty and the George W. Bush administration. Here is an excerpt — but go check it out — it is good to find other souls in this world who find deep meaning in Christ’s love for the poor. We are the only nation that can’t a national voice to speak out against poverty even in our own country, let alone Africa or Asia.

Thank goodness for Bono, and for the present hip trend in Hollywood to follow his and others’ examples, and lend their voices to the less fortunate of the world — those who can’t just run food up on their credit cards.

But, as my father always says, there will be a time — when we hit rock bottom again — when all of our borrowed money comes back to haunt us…

For now, there is speaking out, even in this small media.

Chuck Currie writes about another of Bush’s cronies who has come out against his policies — David Kuo. The article he refers to is on beliefnet.com

Kuo says that he is speaking out now because the “White House can still do a great deal for the poor. It can add another few billion to insure every American child has health care. It could launch a program to simply eliminate hunger…” Don’t hold your breath, Mr. Kuo. This president just doesn’t give a damn.

I guess I’d like to think that this is not true, but I’m afraid I agree. I’ve been amazed in the previous weeks, however, at the way the rest of the world has come together in their agreement to fight poverty in Africa and in the rest of the world. And I was particularly happy to hear that John Edwards had set up a research center at UNC on the subject of poverty.

But what a shame that our president, a devout Christian, lives in such a dream world of evil gay people and terrorist devils that he can’t emerge to see the children of our own country growing up in Wal-mart poverty.

Check out Chuck Currie’s blog — his is one you’ll want to bookmark.