Sarah and I both prefer to see The Tonight Show being hosted by Conan O’Brien if it were up to us. Growing up I would watch Jay and David Letterman just before going to bed, but started watching some Conan O’Brien in college during those years of later nights and later bed times. For a time we would watch Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report and then watch some of Late Night with Conan O’Brien before hitting the hay. We both think that NBC would be better off in the long run to keep Conan and not Jay, but that is a moot point. I just hope that he is on FOX or another network that puts their episodes online for free so we can follow whatever he ends up doing come this September.

I thought he was very classy in his exit and made some appropriate quotes to my generation’s high level of cynicism when things like this happen: Read more »

We celebrate our veterans for a day. We celebrate our nation’s independence for a day. Just about every governmental holiday is observed by a single day. As Christians, even if the government doesn’t see the significance, we need to make every effort to stretch Christmas and Easter to it’s full season of celebrating. Otherwise, some people might think that Christmas is no more special than Halloween or Valentine’s Day.

We give it a day! And we don’t even really give it that day. We are so partied out ahead of time that we don’t even want to do anything but exchange some gifts and eat all before the day is half-over. This year, we aren’t opening all our gifts on December 25. We aren’t exchanging stockings with some of our family until after the new year, which is still in the 12 Days of Christmas. We are planning some meals and special get togethers during these 12 days to try to have a blast and really party hard because we have great reason to party. We are salmon swimming upstream in a culture of Christmas fatigue. Christmas needs more than a day and that is how we are going to try to operate.

So, I’ve decided to update my blog and leave Google’s Blogger for “WordPress.”  By virtue of you reading this post, you are now aware of that because “jarrodrichey.com” no longer takes you to my Blogspot page, but rather to the homepage. This was also a chance for me to consolidate my personal business website and this site into one setup that is a little more organized and cost effective. I brought over some of the old posts for continuity sake, but mostly to see if it could be done. So, as I said on the other blog, who knows what I’ll post here or what you’ll find.

but it may not sound good.

We all can sing, though. I tell my choirs that at the most basic level, if you can speak, then you can sing. All speech is melodic or musical in some sense. So, you have the equipment to be able to sing. But, how often do we hear people say about a friend or relative’s singing inability that he/she “just can’t sing.” I’ve stopped speaking like that. I believe it is more diagnostic to say that he/she doesn’t have the ability to mirror the sounds that they hear. Not everyone is capable of singing with a professional tone and quality. Not everyone is gifted with singing, obviously. We too often say singing is something that you are/aren’t born being able to do. So, we don’t pursue it or exhaust the possibility that this ability might just need hard practice or cultivation like playing the piano or the violin. The longstanding debate of genetics vs. environment as applied to music is hard to separate. It may be that those who sing well may have had a great environment that was saturated on many levels with music in subtle and overt ways. It may be that you need purposeful and direct saturation of music to help you. You may not have had that in your past.

Regardless, it is safe to say that more people, claiming that “they can’t sing,” could improve their singing abilities by training their ears with singing intervals and learning these patterns and structure of music. It takes a lot of repetition if you aren’t “aurally coordinated.” Just don’t be hasty to say, “I can’t sing.” You just may not have cultivated your ear and learned to work your voice accordingly. No one’s promising an opera career, but you might not be much practice away from singing in a choir at church or in your community.

Dr. James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family,” is right to want to bring focus to the family. The question I raise in this little blurb is, “Which Family?” Are we focusing on the Richey family or the Family of God—the Church. The Church family is getting the short end of the stick it seems when it comes to focus. As Christians, we should think of our families as an extension of the Church. We don’t think like this though. We put our focus on our individual families in that we must have “family time.” In lieu of weekly church worship and communion we have “family time at the game” or “family time at the lake.” So many factors contribute to this. We have a low view of church and a low view of why we even need to go to church. We are very individualistic. Everything from worship and church revolves around our very own needs and wants. Our individual family focus is fueled by the desire to repair broken and dysfunctional family units. That hyper-correction will only hurt it the long term. Either way, the Christian family will only thrive long term in the weekly life of the Church. That is where they will learn and fellowship with other imperfect people. That is where our families will be encouraged and grown through shared trials and joys. Alone we become wierd people, but in community we are made aware of what it means to live as image bearers of God—in fellowship and peace.

So many things can be said, but family must be viewed in light of the true family—the Church of the Lord Jesus. I want my kids to see our family unit flowing out of the church family. It is the Church that should get our focus when trying to make corrective measures to improve our families. We’ll be better off focusing on THE Church family and give our families time and energy in as much as they are subjected to the church. Not neglecting our individual families but rather learning how to live in them day in and day out because of the greater nurture and admonition of the Church family.