an interesting weekend

i'm not usually one for name-dropping, but this weekend was a good one!

saturday i was supposed to go to the beach for cameron's birthday. she is a friend from elementary school who lives in santa monica now, so i was excited to see her and meet her friends. alas, the point of going to the beach was to have a bonfire, and all the fire pits were taken by the time she arrived that afternoon, so our plans got scratched, much to my disappointment. dan was supposed to be my ride, so i still met him at the appointed hour, then invited him and a few others over for dinner before going to the screening of a film on campus. so we enjoyed some thai green curry and were on our way.

i had seen ads for the film all week: the ordinary radicals, but i wasn't sure what it was about. several friends were planning to go and trying to recruit me, so i was glad to see it with them. it's basically a documentary about shane claiborne's book tour for "Jesus for President". it's pretty much about how we, as Christians, are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of heaven, and left and right don't matter as much. it was an interesting book to come out right before the election.

along the way, shane and his band, including his friend jamie moffett who directed the documentary, meet a bunch of cool people who do radical things. one guy read the book, and wanted to give all he had to the poor. only he didn't have much. the next day, he went on the price is right and won big (BIG!) and sold it all and went to africa to work at an orphanage. yeah, crazy (cool) stuff. there were several interviews with all sorts of people loving the poor, neglected, homeless, underserved, and marginalized in communities all over the nation. it was inspiring stuff.

in typical fuller fashion, hosting a screening of the film (the LA premiere!) included a Q&A session afterwards with jamie, the director. he had some interesting things to say and was generous to answer the audience's questions. afterwards, he announced that he would love to hang out with some of us, so he ended up at my apartment. yeah, you read that right. the crowds just kind of drifted off, so it was me and my group of friends still hanging around by the end. about 10 people came over, dan cooked some spaghetti and meatballs, and i put in a pan of brownies. we chilled a while, chatted with jamie about all sorts of things. (his favorite screening locale? toronto. his girlfriend's job? working for obama in the caribbean. yeah, i don't quite get that one, either.) sweet times, eh? i also appreciated, yet again, the international crew: norway, france and finland this time.

sunday, i went with a bunch of people to ecclesia, a church in hollywood. it meets at a big old theater, right on hollywood blvd. (we walked the length of the block of the theater on both sides, and of the hundreds of stars, i recognized 7 names, including carol burnett.) anyway, i was attending the service here (instead of my home church, oasis) because of the guest speaker that morning, donald miller. yes, the don miller that wrote Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, and Through Painted Deserts. it was great. i loved the church service, and don was hilarious. ok, maybe not hilarious, but definitely funny and entertaining. he talked about what happened AFTER easter sunday - when Jesus appears to the disciples, and Thomas doesn't believe until he touches Jesus. don's point is we need to have faith. you can hear his message here, if you're interested.

after church, we headed over to sharky's for lunch. yummy. i just had to throw that in there for my most faithful reader. ;-) she could probably even eat there, too.

ok, thanks for listening to my bragging.