I'm curious if anyone out there might have some advice for me.  For my birthday, I was given a gift allowing me to download an audio book from a website called Audible.  I'm super-excited to give this a try -- but to be honest, I don't have any real experience with audio books.

So I'm wondering:  Are there any special considerations for choosing an audio book?  Are there any particular authors out there who are especially enjoyable by audio?  In short:  Do you have any recommendations for how I should go about my first real audio book experience?

I'd appreciate any and all input that you might have for me.

Today marks the beginning of the third month of my Proverbs 365 project.  It's going stronger than ever, and I find that I'm really enjoying this good, long soak in the wisdom of Proverbs.  Just like I did last month, I thought it might be interesting to highlight three of my personal favorites from the past month of the project.

My favorite Proverbs-related story from the last month would have to be P2306 - Coffee Cake Conflict.  In the post, I share a personal anecdote from my university years which helps to illustrate Proverbs 23:6-8:  "Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost.  'Eat and drink,' he says to you, but his heart is not with you.  You will vomit up the little you have eaten and will have wasted your compliments." You really have to read the post to get the full effect of my reflections on the subject -- but suffice to say the story involves young bachelors learning to run their own household, eating nothing but coffee cake for dinner, and gift presented to a 20-year-old with a note saying, "Happy Birthday, you bitter old man." Follow the link above for the whole story.

Secondly, one of the greatest personal challenges that I experienced in the month of February came from reading Proverbs 26:11, which prompted my recollections entitled P2611 - Vomitous Victuals.  The title of the post is a direct reference to the Proverb itself, found in chapter 26, verse 11:  "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." As I meditated on this verse, I came to realize how I can foolishly respond to feelings of loneliness by sitting at the computer, obsessively hitting the Send/Receive button on my e-mail reader -- hoping for some sort of pathetic companionship from a glowing computer screen.  When the e-mails don't come, I get sad.  When I don't get many comments on my blog(s), I get sad.  But I keep going in a foolish cycle of loneliness.  "It's the same story... when I check my Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube pages.  I scramble around the internet like a squirrel, hunting for nuts that just aren't there... " If you can relate to these feelings at all, I would definitely recommend following the link and taking a look at the post for yourself.

Thirdly, I think one of the verses which stuck with me the most from February was Proverbs 3:3-4:  "Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.  Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man." You can read my thoughts on this Proverbs at P334 - Love and Faithfulness.  Honestly, I'm not sure if my personal reflections in this post are really all that poignant -- but the Proverb itself is powerful enough to prompt us to question ourselves:  "So how do we get back on track with these core qualities of Love and Faithfulness?  How do we make these our calling card?  The necklace around our necks?  The tattoo written across our chests?" I attempt to start answering some of these questions in my post, and I would love to hear any other dialogue that others might want to contribute as well.

For a more comprehensive listing of the February's content, here are the titles of all 28 entries, along with direct links to the rest of the contact:

• P122 - Stuck on Simplicity
• P206 - The Key to Understanding the Proverbs
• P334 - Love and Faithfulness
• P414 - Traffic Advice
• P506 - Checking for Blind Spots
• P610 - How to Avoid a Hold-Up
• P702 - Apple of Your Eye
• P809 - Atheist Buses
• P903 - Lady Wisdom and Her Staff Team
• P1008 - California Ryan
• P1124 - The Wedding Card Dilemma
• P1216 - Wat Vervelend
• P1308 - Mo' Money Mo' Problems
• P1410 - Considering Condolences and Congratulations
• P1504 - Green Tree
• P1618 - The Prognostication Possibilities of Pride
• P1714 - Water Management is Serious Business
• P1803 - Downward Spiral
• P1919 - The Predicaments of Hot-Headedness
• P2029 - Gray Area
• P2109 - A Case for Separation
• P2204 - NHL vs. NBA
• P2306 - Coffee Cake Conflict
• P2410 - Feats of Strength
• P2515 - Bones Yes, But What About Bureaucratic Red Tape?
• P2611 - Vomitous Victuals
• P2711 - Prudence Not Panic
• P2809 - Love Triangles

And that's just February!  March promises to be another great month, so check it out for yourself at http://proverbs365.ericasp.com.

It's crazy to realize that I'm currently writing...

• A sermon per week, for the first two and a half months of 2010 (squeezing my previous annual average into the first quarter of the year!)...
• An extra sermon for the first weekend in February, for a wedding...
• A two-page prayer letter each month (with January's annual extended edition just about to come out at a full six pages!)...
• A full-length work of creative non-fiction (trying for roughly a chapter every two months), collaborating with a friend to record the memoirs of an Albanian mobster / shepherd / thug / drug courier / refugee...
• A ~ 500-word original devotional per day, as a part of my Proverbs 365 project...
• And my regular blogging here (typically 2-4 posts per week)

I often like to dream about a second career in writing.  But then I realize that I'm already kind of doing that!  I don't know if it reinforces the dreams for the future or creates disillusionment.  For now, I'm enjoying the season of intense content creation.  I'm also aware of the acute dangers of such a collection of projects eventually swallowing me!

But for now, I'm living it up.

I got this from my friend?Brooke, who got it from her sister, who got it from?George Ella Lyon. ?But since I'm spending some time back in Ohio for the holidays, together with our families, I figured this might be a good time to try it for myself. ?It's a poem -- adapted from Lyon's original poem, then made into a first-grade writing exercise called "I am from..."

These are the instructions for the exercise that I got from?Brooke's blog:?

Here's the idea:

1. Write down sensory memories from childhood/life. ?smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste

2. Think about sayings you heard often / lyrics from songs, like... "don't let the bed bugs bite"... "safely in his bosom gather"

3. Think about things you smelled, food, mom's perfume, or the feeling of a family blanket

4. Write the senses down, don't explain them, but be detailed. Don't just say, "I am from dad saying " I love you more than the stars" say instead "I am from "I love you more than the stars."

5. Put "I am from" before your memories (or, in our case, we did "We are from"). List some together.?

So see what you think of my own work-in-progress here below:

We are from spontaneous four-part harmony.

We are from It's Soooooooooouuuup!

We are from full, soft, feathery-needled white pine Christmas trees.

We are from basketball with sprained ankles and broken noses.

We are from coffee with dessert while Dad abstains (insisting that he doesn't even drink whiskey).?

We are from Ya sure ya betcha.

We are from duck-colored Carhartt jackets and sports caps.?

We are from Wonderful the Matchless Grace of Jesus.?

We are from porridgey grip on Saturday afternoons and blueberry muffins on Sunday mornings.

We are from dinner table theology, ecclesiology, and homiletical analysis.?

We are from stacks of Readers Digest on the shelf next to the toilet.?

We are from Big Ten football on Saturday afternoons.

We are from big bowls of buttered popcorn on the couch at the end of the day.?

It's still a work in progress. ?In fact, I'm hoping to round out the poem over the Christmas holiday, together with other family members who could contribute memories to the mix. ?Maybe you'd want to try something similar for your family, too.

At any rate, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!?

I found out late last night that Ira Glass was going to be in Amsterdam this weekend.  He's the host of a radio program called This American Life -- and in the last several months, since my wife first introduced me to the weekly podcast of the program, he's passed Garrison Keillor as my favorite radio personality on the air.  I realize, of course, that public radio personalities don't exactly draw rock-star adoration from most folks -- but for me, to hear that my favorite radio personality happened to be in my city, with scheduled events to interact with the public at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA)... well, it was pretty exciting.

So even though IDFA's internet site didn't make it seem very likely that I'd be able to get a ticket to his afternoon presentation today, I went down to the Rembrandtplein to see for myself.  When I showed up at Club Escape, where the presentation was to be held, I was flatly told that the show was completely sold out.  I was not given much reason for hope.  But I went to the main box office and stood in line, hoping to figure out a clever way to score a ticket.  While standing in line, I struck up a conversation with an IDFA volunteer and asked if I had any hopes of fineagling a ticket, and my hopes were boosted when she said that all unclaimed reservations are released for sale 15 minutes before the show.  When it got to be my turn in line, I asked about the Ira Glass presentation with pretty low expectations and was delighted to find that I could get into the presentation after all!

I'm so glad I did.

In a very intimate setting -- with perhaps 200 or 250 other festival-goers -- I got to hear Ira Glass talk about Storytelling.  Sculpting plot and scene and narrative, to create the most effective story possible.  Stripping away pretension and phony packaging in journalism.  Making the news entertaining as well as informative... All the things that I love about This American Life!   It was fascinating stuff.  Entertaining stuff.  And very educational stuff, too.  If I ever notice that they've posted the content of the presentation on the IDFA website, I'll have to link to it so you can watch it, too.

I sometimes wonder if This American Life should be required listening for all preachers.  It's simply excellent storytelling.  One of the intriguing things that Ira Glass said during his presentation is that he recently discovered that the "formula" he uses for producing his radio program is basically the same "formula" that preachers have been using for centuries.  In fact, he said there was one point when he (an atheist from a culturally Jewish background) realized that he was basically copying the format of many of Jesus's sermons from the Bible!  And yet Glass does it so well, week-in, week-out, on his radio program that I think we all really have something to learn from him...

I've also noticed that many recent shows have offered a highly valuable mirror of Evangelical Christianity -- not so much from a vindictive, angry, antagonistic, attacking point of view (which seems to be so common in the secular media today), but from a place of genuine interest, curiosity, and seemingly neutral, third-party objectivity.  Just this last week, the program entitled Starting From Scratch featured an provocative adaptation of the Bible's Creation story which, though not entirely theologically correct, was nevertheless fascinating and insightful to hear.  The week before that, the show was called Bait and Switch -- with several different stories about the classic bait-and-switch phenomenon, including one whole story about Evangelical Christianity's tactics for sharing the gospel with non-believers.  And other recent shows have featured extensive quotes of C.S. Lewis (on the topic of the Devil on my Shoulder) and other invaluable perspectives on how the rest of the world sees Evangelical Christians.

So anyway -- all that to say this:  I was excited to see Ira Glass in Amsterdam today.  And I would highly recommend you check out the program (broadcast on National Public Radio in America or available for weekly download on their podcast) sometime for yourself.