Chris and Katie Humphreys

Reflections on Power....

I’ll start off this post apologizing for the seemingly randomness of the topic.  It’s honestly just something that’s been on my mind the last few days.   :)

One week ago today, Katie and I took the time to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office (during the first of two times!) to become President of the United States.  One thing that has really struck me this past week is the idea of just how powerful the President is.  

In one 35 word oath, Barack Obama went from private citizen to the most powerful man on the planet.  Four Star generals will take their orders from him, the leaders of other countries answer the phone when he calls, the stock market rises or falls on the words that he chooses.

And yet that got me thinking about how powerful we each are as our own individuals.  We have the power over our minds.  We have the power over our thoughts.  We have power over the words we speak from our mouths.  We have power over the things we do each day and the way in which we do them.  We have the power to affect ourselves and other human beings.  

While we may not (individually) have the power to destroy the world, or have people rise to their feet when we enter a room, the power we do have is actually much more practical.  We may not be the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military, but we are each the “president” of our own actions and the way we go about those actions.   

Sure, it may not be as outwardly cool as having your own bullet proof, custom designed limo, helicopter, and plane, but it is a power that we don’t acknowledge or think about nearly often enough.  I think if we’re really honest with ourselves, we don’t want to admit that we’re powerful.  We don’t want to think about how much power we actually have since it’s easier to think about the few “cool” powers someone like the President has.  Ignoring the power that we have is a clever (albeit poor) excuse for not making changes in our lives that we know we need to make.  It’s much easier to pass ourselves off as powerless to change a situation in your life, in your community, or in your world, than to rise to the challenge and harness the power you do have to make a difference.  

So if you’re up for the challenge, go ahead and revel in the power that you as an individual actually has.  Feel free to even get caught up in a power trip if it’ll help you.  Just use that power to positively effect the world around you and while marching bands won’t break into “hail to the chief” when you enter a room, people will enjoy your presence just the same.  :)

As a side note: here's a super cool collection of Inauguration Day photos that I found on Gary's Blog. 

Also if you wanted to see a crazy 1474 megapixel image from the inauguration click here!  

How hard can this be... really.

Just saw this headline on CNN.  Am I totally missing something here or would an electronic voting machine be a pretty simple thing to program?  Can't imagine that it's much more complicated than a vending machine right?  I don't hear about too many people trying to get a 20 ounce bottle of Diet Coke a suddenly a 12 ounce can of Dr. Pepper comes shooting out the bottom...

Help me out here.... am I the only one who thinks this is odd that we haven't figured out how to get accurate voting machines yet?

Anyways... happy Thursday ya'll!  :) 

On the topic of voting here's a cool little video I found from my buddy Becker a while back....

Is the Viginia Tech Killer worth it?

As I've said before, and as all my close friends know, I'm kind of a news junkie.  CNN is set as my browser homepage, and I love reading up on what's happening in the news, politics, etc etc.  However, I'm totally sadenned by the way the news media has covered the terrible events at Virginia Tech. 

They've only rewarded disgusting and vile behavior with unparalled attention and instructed anyone who feels neglected, unheard, and misunderstood on how to get the focus of the entire world.  I can only imagine how many people were inspired, now educated as to how to get their voice heard.  Indeed, the shooter's video has gotten more views than any other video that has EVER been released on youTube.

               

                

It's interesting how this incident has shown how easy it is to get the attention of the world and make big, bold headlines by doing evil.  But think about just how much harder it would be to make the headlines by doing something good.  What good deed could I do that would get the attention that the Virginia Tech shooter has gotten by doing evil? 

Tim Sanders did a great post on this on his blog. It's well worth the read.  One super interesting thing he points out is how NBC put their logo on the video so no matter what network showed it, NBC is advertising through it.  It really bums me out that NBC would consider the Viginia Tech tragedy to be a marketing opportunity.  In all honesty, my opinion of all these media corporations who have elevated this guy has gone down because of this.  As Sander's said, "We shouldn't make him prominent, use his name or display his picture.  He's not worth it.  He accomplished nothing."

I really hope we as a country (with the assistance of the media) can start to take the attention off the manic views of the killer and put more focus on assisting and praying for the healing of the community at Viginia Tech and their families.

Taking the Long Way

It's interesting how with iTunes nowadays we're prone to buying just singles instead of whole albums. Back when I was in high school if you really wanted a certain song you had to go down to Tower Records or some other store and buy the CD, but now for 99 cents you can just buy a single song. I'm cheap most of the time so I rarely buy albums anymore.

A few weeks ago Katie and I rented "Shut Up and Sing", a documentary on the Dixie Chicks and their journey since Natalie Maine's infamous remark, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas" back a few days before the start of the Iraq war in 2003. I'm kinda a news junky (my homepage on my internet browswer is CNN), so I'm so surprised that I really didn't hear much about this whole controversey when it happened. Maybe it's cause I'm really not a country fan and I've never really listened to the Dixie Chicks before. I'm not sure.

The movie was a super interesting behind the scenes look at how their lives changed, not just professionally, but personally as well and how they delt with everything from radio stations who wouldn't play their music anymore, to date specific death threats, and ultimately to the recording of their latest CD "Taking the Long Way." After the movie, I just decided to buy the whole album cause I thought it would be interesting to hear how they wrote about their experience.

So now that I've listened to it for the last two weeks or so I'm really into it! The songs are super creative, and they've done a great job of writing about their frustrations and pain in a tangible way. It's a really mature album, the more I listen to it, the more I like it.

It's also really got me thinking more about albums in first place and how we're progressively moving more and more away from listening to entire "albums" and more into just singles or songs that interest us from the 30 second preview on iTunes. While that's a cheaper way to buy music for sure, I think we're kinda cheating ourselves. Excellent artists mean for albums to be heard in their entirety, not just picked a part by listeners who are only interested in the singles. :)

Just a quick thought..... :)

By the way, click here if you want to view the trailer to "Shut up and Sing"