I’m writing this on a Friday, when this event happened on Tuesday. I was away on holiday, so I didn’t have a chance to review what happened at the Gospelization: read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in one day!

On Monday, I met up with Amac and we decided that we would attempt the Gospelization the very next day. Tuesday morning I woke up bright and early, hoping to get a headstart on reading. Didn’t happen. But oh well, I left the house at a still-early 9:15 am and headed to Chapters/Starbuck’s at Kennedy Commons. Phoning Amac, he told me to pick him up, so I swung by.

Turns out, his friend Chris was staying over at his house. Chris is an exchange student from Britain from a few months or years ago, and was visiting for a short time in Toronto. Chris decided to join us in our attempt to read the Gospels in one day. Sweet! What a surprise! I was pumped.

We drove to the Starbuck’s, and Chapters itself wasn’t even open yet. We purchased our respective caffeinated drinks (my drink of choice being a Venti Caramel Frappuccino), and sat down at a large 3-person couch facing an empty stone fireplace. And thus began our readings.

Chris and I started in Matthew, while Amac started in Mark. We read quietly. We shifted positions every so often. My allergies started acting up for some reason: my nose started getting runny and such. I stopped reading 1.5 hours in to go to a lunch support appointment. Meanwhile, the boys stepped outside to the outside chairs and tables to have a bit of lunch.

I returned. We started reading again. Chris finished Matthew quite quickly. He also plowed through Mark in 30 minutes. I finished Mark in about an hour. Amac moved to Matthew: it’s a long book and it takes a long time to read through. Chris and I started going through John, which wasn’t a requirement for what we decided (since John is such a different gospel book than the others), and when I reached about a quarter of the way through, Amac finished Matthew and we decided to read Luke out loud together/to each other.

My allergies were acting up a lot more. No idea why.

We read through Luke and reached chapter 11 in one and a half hours. We had reached the time we set as our cap time, 5:30pm. In total, I sat at Starbuck’s for about six hours; Amac and Chris had been there for eight. The music on Starbuck’s radio XM 45 started getting tedious after a while, even though it was old poppy-jazzy-big-bandy-catchy chill songs in the mix. I went through two drinks (the frappuccino and a tangerine blender) and Chris went through three. We encountered one of Amac’s pastors, whose friend interrupted us and asked jokingly “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” All three of us turned from our Bibles ready for a defense of the faith, only to find out it was the pastor and friend.

So we didn’t finish even the three Synoptic gospels in one day. That’s ok. We tried. It wasn’t the sole priority that day, as we had other things in the evening time. I think if you wanted to actually read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and possibly John in one day, you would need a solid 8-10 hours. That is, if you weren’t planning on reading straight through non-stop. We were reading at a pace that allowed for occasional interesting topics to be mentioned, a few questions asked, washroom breaks, and an out-loud section. I’m sure you can read a lot faster in your head than out-loud.

A few interesting things that popped up perpetually. One confusing but intriguing parable is that of the “strong man”. Jesus mentions in each of the first three gospels (I think) and talks about if you want to steal the stuff in a strong man’s house, first you need to tie up the strong man. In other words, a strong force must be defeated only by a stronger force. But for some reason, Jesus relates this to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. The sort of sin that apparently is unforgivable. I understand the force deal, and the blaspheming of the Spirit being unforgivable, but how they relate is beyond me.

Another thing that kept popping up was the issue of “who is John the Baptist?” Is he just a man, a prophet, or even Elijah himself? In Matthew and Mark, even John I think, all the people are asking this question. Even Peter himself is a bit confused about the issue, I think. We realized that Elijah had actually never died — he was “spirited” into heaven by some fiery stallions and chariot. But for him to “reincarnate” as John the Baptist — a non-virgin born, a human being — seemed pretty extra-terrestrial or Hindu-sounding. Luke 1:15 says that John will be “in the spirit and power of Elijah“. The Message version says John will “herald God’s arrival in the style and strength of Elijah“. That’s pretty awesome. And what’s more awesome is that John is still humble enough to state in John 3:30 about Jesus: “He must become greater; I must become less.”

I encourage you to read portions of the Bible with other people sometime. It is pretty neat. It’s kind of like listening to the same music on separate MP3 players simultaneously. You end up thinking about similar things, asking each other questions, certain things leap out at you. I started realizing the the red letters on some pages of my NIV were slightly lower than the black letters. Also, I think this will enable me to memorize Scripture a bit better now. Yep, try it out.

Tomorrow I’m attempting the Gospelization: read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in one day! Amac has volunteered to do it with me. We’ve calculated that it may take almost 8 hours. We’ll see. But I’m not going to let it push my other priorities out of the way (lunch appointment, evening presentation). We also decided that it might not be necessary to read John right now, as the first three books — the “synoptics” — are more related to each other than the book of John. So we might just leave out John. It would cut back potentially a couple hours.

I’ll tell you how it goes. I think we’re in for a treat.

I have learned (not recently, this is not a new revelation) that I suck at commenting. Is it really blog-stalking if you have a whole list of the blogs you visit regularly, but don’t comment… almost ever? I mean, look at it, over there in the right sidebox all nice and grey. It means I read your blog.

But enough of the justification. I do actually think about what people blog about, and what they comment when I make posts. I’ve realized that I’m not really very opinionated… not opinionated enough to discuss other bloggers’ posts often. I do enjoy reading other peoples’ comments to those posts, however. So when I see “4 comments” it makes me excited and I get to see the reaction to the wit or the hilarity. And then I click Ctrl+W to close the window or the tab, and move on. Pretty irresponsible of me eh? Very unblogsmanlike.

So I will attempt to close up some loose ends with this post.

Ratatouille was a great movie. I enjoyed it a lot, from a few perspectives. Firstly, I am a geek. I enjoyed the cinematography, the animation, and the detail. If there is one company I dream of working for, it is Pixar. I don’t know what I would do for them, but I would love to work at Pixar. So whatever they do, it continues to blow my mind away. Secondly, the story was amusing. Honestly, this movie likely will not cause children to put rats on their heads and have them pull their hair, like how Finding Nemo caused children to flush tropical fish down the toilet to their freedom in the Sydney Harbour. But the story was fun, unique, and immersive. It manages to hit all the good Disney themes of perseverance, family, honesty, nonjudgementalism, and challenging the norm. Oh, and love. Yep, that theme is in there too. And I’m not just talking about love of cuisine. I would suggest anyone to see it, because it’s just a great piece of film.

I have now completed the 3 Book Saturation: to read 1, 2, and 3 John in one sitting. As I was waiting for specific parts of my prayer letters to finish (very specifically, the folding of my letters at Kinko’s) I read through the three Johns sitting just outside Longo’s. Those books are a great encouragement to believers — it was written specifically to a church! And really warning against the conniving ways of those opposed to Christ, but can sometimes appear as well-intentioned leaders.

My sister tells me the Char-natown may be more difficult than I think. Apparently my grandma has informed her that the middle character of my name is very rare in the downtown Chinatown. It is more common uptown near where I live, but I already know where that is and it’s no challenge. I will prove that you can find this character somewhere downtown, it just needs to be pursued.

Today Jamie told me his ambition is to make it onto my sidebar links list. We’ll see. At this time, I can’t even remember his URL. And the last time I checked his blog, it was still a photograph of him and the purple raptor. Or something to that effect. It seems now his whole ambition for blogging is to make it onto my list… although in some ways, it goes against my first point in the article “why I blog and you should too”. Haha, but I jest, and we’ll see if it makes my list.

I just finished watching Switchfoot’s latest two video podcasts, and they are absolutely hilarious. It’s not like their videography is amazing or anything. But they are random, funny, and witty. Fame and fortune has not changed them at all, they are just naturally fun-loving guys. Stuff like asking the crowd to all take photos at the same time during a concert, putting a mini video camera on a remote controlled car and driving around the stage during a concert, or going to the 7-11 that was converted into a Simpsons Kwik-E-Mart in Seattle, these things just crack me up. I wish I had the boldness to just do things, sometimes. And to feel free to act childish and uninhibited. Although I don’t exactly understand the whole smashing a dobro guitar onstage during a concert. Maybe if you had a whole bunch of them, it would be amusing.

It’s always been somewhat of a dream of mine to perform in front of a huge audience. Not sure what I would do. I could lead worship, sing, or play some instrument, but it would just be so cool to have the attention of thousands of people (and still just be yourself). I don’t particularly have any ambition of being a “rock star”, since I personally don’t care much for “star”. But “rock” would be cool.

And it’s not even just about music. Having had a decent amount of experience running shows/concerts, doing live sound mixing, controlling lights and follow-spots, and doing live video, I also enjoy a great show. The combination of having the perfect sound mix with great acoustics (if indoors), live video onscreen, and hundreds of intelligent lighting, put together to saturate a fan in an experience. Awesome. Putting something on so that people in the crowd say “wow”.

So there you have it. I still dream of performing or running a massive concert. Or doing follow-spot for a band like Coldplay. Or being the lighting director for a two-hour performance. So cool.

Tomorrow I’m heading back to Toronto. I hope my lungs adjust back ok. Or my sinuses. The air in Toronto can be noticeably dirtier than other cities. In Ottawa it has been great.

Going to bed now. Gotta wake up early to drive out at 6am.