Wonka is vividly fantastic, musically amusing, artistically wild and creative, bizarre and most of all morally challenging.  

I normally gravitate away from fantasy, science fiction or anything of the impractical nature never gave this story a chance.  When hearing of it even as a child considered it ridiculous. Yearly it would appear on TV and each time I glanced at Wylder's hairdoo and rejected Wonka. I preferred things like Little House on the Prarie.  For school reading I even managed to pick it up and after a couple of pages threw it down.

Well, once my friend told me of the premise and the different selfish traitsand the consequences they incurred I was intrigued.  So I watched aware of the point delighted by all the crazy antics and insane scenes laughingaloud most of the movie. What a brain could even think up such a story.

My wife and I saw Sting and Annie Lennox at the Hollywood Bowl last night. It was a birthday present. I have been a musical admirer of Sting for many years. On that level the evening was amazing. Sting's voice was in first rate form. The band was astounding (notably featuring a young drummer named Keith Carlock WOW!). Even the set list was enjoyable as it included one of my favorite, less popular Sting songs 'Seven Days'. Also on the bill was Annie Lennox. We enjoyed her set as well, although we wish she would have done 'Into The West' (from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack). All in all the concert was really well done.

On the flip side it was also an evening of sadness for me. There was a lot of thoughts conveyed via the music that night (Sting is a thoughtful composer, that's part of his appeal) but all of it pointed towards this current sort of trendy humanistic relativism. Which of course makes sense because this is exactly where Sting is coming from. In a casual interview he mentioned that when it comes to 'spiritual truth' he is not comfortable with the notion of 'certainty'. He then gently stated how important it was to remember that "there is no certainty". The person asking the questions had the presence of mind to light-heartedly ask, "Are you certain about that?". Which got a chuckle from Sting. I thought that was the key question really and would have been interested to hear his response. So last night while Sting sang in 'Send Your Love'...

I've been thinking over the last couple of months that we need to start having barn raisings again. The Church body would come together to help a person raise a barn. Everyone would work, building, providing food, watching children, etc.

Lately this thought had been brought to the forefront of my consciousness as our pastor has been preaching about the unity and the team dynamics of the church. This thought has been coupled with a youth study out of Ecclesiastes, revealing that two get a better return on their labor than one.

While I realize that most people living in urban/suburban America do not have barns, I was the recipiant of a barnraising this past weekend. Friends came over for a meatfest, but we ended up working on small projects all over my house. Gardening, patching holes, and cleaning were just some of the things accomplished.