A funny thing happened on the way to......

I have been looking forward to this past weekend for a while now for a single reason: OTT at Sanctuary. And while the Koinonea folks put an amazing experience together in a wonderful location in Oakland, there were so many other things that just seemed to happen at the right moment (just what I needed to hear or see) that made this a stellar weekend.

I was in church Saturday morning and while most people undoubtedly feel a sermon is the last thing they want to deal with to start the weekend, I would rather have a two or three hour sermon and skip all the preliminary parts of the service, especially when the sermon was as good as it was this time. I have been going through some issues in my personal life and it was almost as if the sermon was addressed specifically to those issues. As well as I know our pastor, he has no way of knowing about my problems, but what he spoke about really helped and encouraged me.

After that I went to a lecture led by Dr. Doug Clark on "A Window on the New Testament: The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context". There was a second session in the afternoon and I learned a lot from both. Dr. Clark is a co director for the Madaba Plains archaeological projects in Jordan and they are recruiting for their dig at the main Umayri site this summer. I spoke with him after the second session because I will be in Jordan in the summer of 2009 and was able to find out who to speak with to get linked up for that. So the Jordan leg of my world trip will involve excavation at the secondary site at Jalul. This was a connection that had been proving difficult to make and I am grateful to have made it.

Then I took a brief nap before heading to the second Sanctuary of the day: The Sanctuary of the Arts. Alloy Trex were playing when I got there and I really liked what they were doing, especially one track with a NASA feed throughout. Then BetsyLa came on and I did a little exploring before the official ceremony at midnight. While doing so I ran into a girl I knew in high school. She just moved back up to San Anselmo with her boyfriend and had randomly found out about the party. She was connected with the Moontribe people in SoCal and this made a pretty good beginning for getting into the SF scene. It was nice to see her again and catch up a little. Outersect kept things moving after the group ceremony. OTT played a good mix of old and new tracks from the just released album and then opened up his dj set with Leftfield (always a big plus for me!) . I always loved the visual juxtapositions between the dual videos Leftfield "Africa Shox" and UNKLE "Rabbit In Your Headlights". Two of my favorite videos of all time. I had to take off at the end of his set around 5am, because I had to be at work at 9am, so I missed Sneaky Hippy. I also recorded the entire evening, but need to make sure the levels were good before sharing that with anyone.

While driving into SF from Oakland that morning, I had the radio on some random station and they were broadcasting a presentation Ben Stein just made to the Commonwealth Club on January 24th. I have long thought Mr. Stein was an intriguing and insightful person, someone worth giving a listen to and this was no exception. I tracked down the link for the full lecture today at work and will give it a proper listen soon. So, Sunday was productive and despite only three hours of sleep I was feeling fantastic by the time I finally made in back home at 9pm with the truck full of trash from the remodel job.