| Level Up! |
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| 09:17pm 05/05/2009 |
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Today I am a level 7 cleric.
That means today is the sixth anniversary of the day I got my ordination online.
I still think of myself as a minister, and am generally succeeding at what I intended when I intended to be a minister, which as I pointed out last year pretty much means be good family. My place is a house of worship (of some kind or another) for many dear friends, and my friendships have become more peaceable and life-affirming. Plus, hey, STAR WARS! Though it might seem like mere fanfiction on the surface, I assure you, it is rather my long lost final thesis in Catholic Studies. It counts.
Anyway, I have no time to give further details, because I have to go do more work for the paying vocation.
But, y'know, duly noted for the livejournal.
*ding*
REVEREND JACK IS NOW A LEVEL SEVEN CLERIC. |
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| Star Wars: According to Jack |
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| 04:26am 16/03/2009 |
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Howdy folks! Wondered about the lack of sermons over the past year? It's cuz I've been writing a book! It's finally finished and ready to be shared...
http://revjack.com/starwars/
I know rewriting an already popular story isn't the height of originality, but hopefully you'll find that I've taken the story in a new and interesting direction. I won't be posting notices for each of the individual chapters here, but if you'd like to be on the mailing list and have scenes sent directly to you as they're released, just drop me a line (address at link) and let me know. And tell your friends! |
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| Make your own nin remix album! |
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| 01:37pm 03/12/2007 |
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So I wanted to share this Cool Thing that Nine Inch Nails is doing.
Trent's released the individual tracks from "Year Zero" as wav files on a bonus disc with the new Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D album, for fans to remix. (I think they're also available on his website, but it's crashing my browser on Ubuntu at the moment.) Anyway, I gave it a try, and it's way fun:
http://revjack.com/music/
I've always been drawn to NIN more for their light-and-floaty than their loud-and-thrashy, so I took my favorite songs off the album and pulled out the noise, leaving only the beauty. It's NIN I can sleep to. :-)
Anyone who likes NIN and is interested in learning audio editing should check this out. I used Audacity on Ubuntu; Trent includes software for Mac and PC on the disc. And if you give a listen to my "diminished" mixes, lemme know what you think. :-) |
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| Rock and Roll Momma |
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| 10:42pm 30/09/2007 |
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Happy Birthday Mom!
Mom's birthday isn't for another week, but she had an early celebration last week with her favorite band in the world, American English. Apparently they surprised her with a big party and, of course, plenty of dedications.
In the clip, my Mom's the black-haired woman that the camera keeps swinging towards. The tall guy with the sideburns & buddy holly glasses behind her is my lil' brother.
Just wanted to share this with my friends, so y'all can see how crazy/awesome my Mom really is. :-) |
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| Pirates of the Unitarians! |
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| 02:48pm 31/08/2007 |
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I've got a blog now, for recording my adventures in the local Unitarian Universalist community:
PIRATES OF THE UNITARIANS!
As a Discordian, I found myself frequently at odds with some of the local UU leadership over their belief in rules. I don't believe in rules the way some people around here don't believe in God; I think they're figments of our imagination that we invent so that we can pretend that there's some amount of order to the universe. It's not that I was going out of my way to be a rulebreaker, it's just that I didn't really care what they said one way or the other.
So, rather than continue to deal with a bunch of greyfaces freaked out that one of their leaders didn't care about the rules, I resigned all position of official leadership in the community and declared myself a pirate. Hoisting the Chalice & Crossbones, I'm out on a mission to help remind my dearly beloved UU friends that you can't legislate morality or spirituality. Idunno if it will lead to religious revolution or just get me kicked out of the local congregation, but whatever happens, I'm gonna blog about it.
So add it to your bookmarks! Tell your friends! It is awesome! |
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| Level Up! |
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| 02:48pm 05/05/2007 |
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Well, as of today, I'm a fifth level chaotic-good cleric. I hear this is where I start to get some of the really cool spells. We'll find out. But first, a retrospective...
The fourth year of my ministry might be appropriately characterized as
THE YEAR OF BUREAUCRACY
and summarized with "served as President of the Board of Governors at the Channing-Murray Foundation."
( Read all about it... )
And yet, the blessing amidst the Bureaucracy has been the rediscovery of the core of my faith--the experience of forgiveness and communion that practically defines church for me. Peers in ministry may come and go, but these are things I can carry with me wherever I worship. And that is worth bucketloads of XP.
So LEVEL UP, once again. I'm still in the game, at least for one more year.
God bless us all; God knows we need it.
Peace & Slack,
Reverend Jack
See also:
First Anniversary
Second Anniversary
Third Anniversary |
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| Open-Mic Worship Service |
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| 09:19pm 23/04/2007 |
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Once a month at Channing-Murray, I've started hosting an "Open Mic" worship service--best described to IMSA folks as Club Pseudo meets Sunday Church. I've done three so far and gotten about a dozen people at each. Everyone brings their own icons and adornments for the altaworship table, and we take turns reading from our respective scriptures, leading each other in song, lighting candles of joy and concern, meditating, preaching. We're even multimedia enabled. My two contributions last week were to sing along with NIN's "Year Zero" as an example of a "Kyrie Eleison" and play a scene from the movie "Jeffrey" where Nathan Lane plays a gay priest explaining the meaning of life. We also had a woman sing fantastic Hindu hymn, and another woman sang an earthmother song, both very beautiful to hear. There was a dude who was just passing through town, traveled a lot on weekends for his job and so visited a different UU church each week, who told us about how he had just given up his car in favor of a bicycle & public transit. Several poems were read, candles were lit and prayers were said, and much more...it was awesome church.
Usually these are on Sunday (I hope to stabalize that to the Nth Sunday of the month by early fall) but the next one is Saturday May 19th at 1pm-ish, as part of the fifth annual Midwest Discordian Ministry Assembly. Anyone who's reading this--give a shout if you want more info. |
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| MIDWEST DISCORDIAN MINISTRY ASSEMBLY FIVE |
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| 09:07pm 23/04/2007 |
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Short and sweet invite for now--
MIDWEST DISCORDIAN MINISTRY ASSEMBLY 2007
MAY 18-20, 2007
Red Herring Vegetarian Restaurant, Urbana, IL
Hot Dogs Will Be Served On Friday
Anyone reading who's interested should give a shout and I'll get you more info. |
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| Sunrise, Sunset....mostly Sunset |
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| 05:58pm 08/03/2007 |
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I have a photo gallery now, called Head in the Clouds. It's pretty much all daytime sky photography, since that's what I've been obsessing over since getting a digital camera; there are a few outdoors shots that focus on something other than pretty clouds. I welcome thoughts, comments...I like to hear which ones are people's favorites. For only two months of picture taking, I think I'm doing pretty good. But I can't wait for storm season...that's when the real fun starts. :-) |
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| Joining the Fight For Awesome |
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| 04:16pm 03/03/2007 |
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I just placed an order for the new edition of Revelation X, using a gift certificate given to me for Decemberween by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hecateuse and the_sween. Posting here was the fastest way to thank them for enabling this awesomeness. Thank You! :-D
Also, I'd like to mention that online bookdvdemporium gift certificates are totally awesome gifts, and hereby exempt from RevJack Declaration Anathema #423, "Condemnation of Gift Certificates." |
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| I HEART FATHER CHRIS |
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| 11:15am 19/02/2007 |
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I was just flipping through some of my old posts about evolution last night, reliving the frustrating nightmare of trying to talk to anti-creationists; then today I stumble onto this post from Father Chris, leaving me with the warm comforting sensation that someone else is out there presenting my views much more eloquently than I ever could, so I can just kick back and relax and link to them. :-D
http://chris.tessone.net/2007/02/19/the-authority-of-science/
Quoting Chris [
It's interesting to see how the roles of church and natural philosophy/science have shifted over the years. In the medieval church, one believed that God had particular attributes primarily because the hierarchy told one God had those attributes. Nowadays, the church's teaching authority plays some role in that, but we also put significant emphasis on experience of God. With science, on the other hand, we are increasingly moving in a direction where only specialists need concern themselves with replicating and validating results — the hoi polloi can simply accept these results on faith, because canonical science is so good at what it does.
Except there's plenty of evidence canonical science isn't quite that good.
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I'm disappointed by the contempt in which many people hold skeptical religious conservatives. Many of those who hold science in high esteem are somewhat more informed, but to suggest that they have themselves done the work to validate, for instance, the theory of evolution and are not accepting these results on faith in the integrity of science is beyond disingenuous. Skeptics of evolution may have the bad luck of being on the wrong side of the data, but the problem lies in the authority they choose to accept — it doesn't make them stupid or fit for scorn. In fact, they are revealing a weakness in Western science that many on the other side have a hard time seeing.
] Well said, Father Chris. |
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| What wouldn't Jesus do? |
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| 02:13pm 18/01/2007 |
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This is in regard to one of the posts mentioned at here and includes my answers:
Would Jesus knowingly allow terrorists, murderers, rapists, child molestors, theives, and the like to freely enter into our country illegally?
Yes.
Would Jesus support providing illegal criminals with FREE health care
Yes.
Would Jesus KNOWINGLY provide illegal criminals with FREE education?
Yes.
Would Jesus Christ want to knowingly grant amnesty to a pack of illegal animals that just gang raped a young teenage girl?
For God's sake, yes. Perhaps you missed the memo about forgiveness.
Would Jesus share George Bush's "compassion" for such criminals?
Probably moreso.
Would Jesus Christ twice take an oath to protect His country from invasion
Nope, probably not.
and then immediately commit TREASON against Americans by ABSOLUTELY REFUSING to secure our borders?
But he might do this.
Would Jesus Christ go behind the backs of His fellow citizens and make an agreement with a foreign government to provide social security benefits for that government's citizens and the time they were here illegally?
No, he'd probably do it up front.
Would Jesus Christ have the same definition for compassion as George W. Bush?
I'd guess not, but maybe.
Did Jesus Christ die for all of those that will repent and submit themselves to Him?
He also died for those who won't.
Far be it from me to speak for the Son of God, but I do believe the only question that would have an answer of "yes" here would be the last question that I posed.
I weep for the state of religious education in this country.
However, Jesus does believe in justice and the rule of law.
Oh, I'm sure he *believes* in them, given that the ostensible point of his death was to overcome our inevitable death at the hands of justice and law alone.
With Bush's border and immigration policy being so treasonous and disgraceful, it's a wonder that he could possibly expect anyone to want to follow any laws. What's the point?
Eternal life through the forgiveness of God. |
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| RIP Robert Anton Wilson |
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| 02:07pm 11/01/2007 |
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I wish a good journey to one of my great inspirations, Robert Anton Wilson. May his soul find rest, and may he remind angels and demons alike that even the afterlife is nonsimultaneously apprehended. |
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| SLACK 101 |
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| 10:20am 08/09/2006 |
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Here comes my first sermon of the year...
SLACK 101
"Repent! Quit Your Job! Slack Off!" Thus preaches the Church of the Subgenius, the nation's premier gonzo space cult. But what is Slack? Why do we need it? Why does The Man want to take it from us? Local Discordian minister Reverend Jack Ditch (Jonathan Prykop) starts off the new academic year with an introductory lesson on the most important concept in religion since Love hit the scene.
Sunday, September 10th 1:00pm
Channing-Murray Chapel (above the Red Herring)
1209 West Oregon, Urbana, IL
Refreshments & conversation afterwards. |
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| Upcoming Rev. Jack Worship Service... |
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| 02:21pm 17/05/2006 |
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Rev. Jonathan "Jack" Prykop and the Midwest Discordian Ministry Assembly in association with the UUC Worship Committee present...
"I am Chaos! I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am Chaos! I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am Chaos! I have come to tell you that you are free! I am Chaos! I am alive; I am life itself. I am Chaos! And this Memorial Day weekend, I'm taking over your church..." |
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| Level Up! |
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| 03:16pm 05/05/2006 |
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Happy third anniversary of my ordination!
Three years ago today, on the fifth day of the fifth month of the two-thousand-and-third year of common reckoning, I received my ordination in the Universal Life Church. As I have in the past, I take this opportunity to look back and consider how I have grown as a minister over the past year.
( Read more... )
*ding* REVEREND JACK IS NOW A LEVEL 4 CLERIC!
I'm not saying that level four cleric is anything near to what I thought it would be way back when I was level one. This is more of a retroactive leveling system, a way for me to look back and catalog my development as a minister. I gained new powers--spells like "UU Worship Service" and "Rudimentary Church Administration." I also, as always, learned more about how much I have yet to learn: how to be as wise in my interactions with each and every person as I strive to be when I speak to a crowd from a pulpit.
I've had some hard knocks, but on the whole, my third year as a minister was a resounding success. As for what the fourth year holds...well, let's forge on ahead and find out! |
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| This gets kinda long, but hey--you asked! |
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| 03:21pm 27/04/2006 |
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Questions from deaconobvious...
( Read more... )
Questions from logodaedaly...
( Read more... )
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The Rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. |
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