In honor of J-Lu's birthday via Justin

Fun with Nativity @ JC Pennies Catalog Studio!
(This is what my friend Cheryl does all day...)




Thanks to James, the digital retouching king of Pennies Studio, for the addition of the chainsaws.

1932-2003

I just finished reading Blankets by Craig Thompson while feeling near death with no sleep and a small cold. Karl's sick too, so while we were both collapsed on the ground of the studio, he napped, I read. I have decided to bestow this piece of literature onto Dan. It spoke to me like the scriptures did on lonely days during adolescence.

from Joshua, Kristin, and Judah's blog

father/mother God,
forgive us for our t-shirt, bumpersticker, metal-pendant faith.
forgive us for our locked church doors, our words that divide and our i'm-better-than-you religion.
forgive us for our unwillingness to accept those who differ from us.
forgive us for our stubborness to cling to those mysteries we claim to comprehend.
forgive us for our unwilingness to say "i don't know."
forgive us for our hierarchical structure.
forgive us for our our litmus tests for faith.
forgive us for our us-them mindset.
forgive us for our pro-death mentality.
forgive us for our fear of you of death of others of those things we don't understand of other faiths of differing views.
forgive us for our "pastors" who make the rest of us to look like fools by their words by their actions by their mistresses by thier alienation of their own families.
forgive us for making idols out of school prayer of monuments in courthouses of the next book that every church must go through together of narrow-minded organizational leaders.
forgive us for being lemmings.
forgive us for our media that markets you like a two-bit whore.
forgive us for our "selling Jesus" mentality.
forgive us for our ability to pretend we really care.
forgive us for our entertainment driven so-called worship services.
forgive us for starbucks in our churches.
forgive us for bad music bad art bad attempts at keeping up with the media joneses.
forgive us for not being original better forward thinking sustainable.
forgive us for not being able to have real relationships for not be able to have relationships that last.
there are so many more...
forgive us for sucking at who we are and pretending we are perfect. i mean "not perfect, just forgiven." forgive our arrogance