Paul Prins

Marking the start of the third month of the Occupy movement’s work in lower Manhattan I feel like I have finally had enough time to process through everything that has been going on to share a few thoughts and one frustration. Let start by saying that I believe this is a thoughtful group of people with important things to say.

My Frustration

First the frustration. There has been widespread attempts to marginalize this movement of people. This has been done by attempting to hijack their slogans (We are the 99%, etc.) and calling them to get jobs. Those who have marginalized this movement have – more than likely – avoided interacting with their very clear core complaint. This also includes all of the spin-off advertising (Jay-Z…) and attempts to redirect the frustration into other pursuits.

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Life is a rolling series of new beginnings that we often fail to acknowledge. It seems that life can be viewed one of two ways, as a series of conclusions, or of beginnings. With the deluge and overlapping story lines of our lives, every day we are rolling through these points. Points that can be viewed either way.

Over the last many weeks I have been watching my own life, and those lives intertwined with my own, to see how we view these moments. There have been many big changes in my life this year that fall into this category: my dad’s passing away, changing churches, and bringing on staff to help Fresh Vine grow (amongst smaller stories). The same goes for my friends, but I won’t write of them here.

I try to look at each of these being the beginning of a new story. My dad’s passing starts the story of my life continued without his council and smile. Starting to attend Mill City has been the beginning of many new friendships and opportunities. Fresh Vine is a different organization than it was a year ago (two new employees, many new clients, amazing opportunities, new branding, and more exposure).

Looking at scripture this plays out as well. When Adam/Eve fell in the garden it was the beginning of the story, not the end. When Christ died on the cross it was not a conclusion, but another beginning. There is life after the fall, there is life after Christ, and there is life after death. This is not mystical hogwash, but reality. Yet many want to look at Christ as the end of faith, yet I believe Jesus saw himself as the beginning and means to a new life. The life that God intended from the beginning and was never possible before Christ. Even death is a new beginning, eternity is not an end but another beginning. There are no last pages in life, only starting points to what is to come.

Starting points call us to live each moment with excitement for where the story goes next.
I can promise you it will be good, bad, and ugly – and I can’t wait.

What – if any – way should we be involved in the social movements spurring up around the country?

I feel immense change is coming to America (and the Euro-zone) yet struggle to know how to respond/participate… Any  thoughts you could share with me?

I decided I needed to do something less mentally taxing that programing for an hour or so last night. The choice led me to make some Parmesan Crusted Chicken (via Elise) since we had everything here we needed. It turned out really good and was a nice break for me. I might have added a bit to much Italian Seasoning and Parmesan… but come on, thats what makes it delicious.

If you were wondering, Jordan gave it a thumbs up – so it must have tasted good.

It has been almost 8 weeks since my dad passed away and with the ALS walk coming up this Saturday I wanted to make sure that we had the audio from the Celebration of Life service available online.

Video Slide Show (no audio):

Eulogies

John Prins: Brother (5 minutes)

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Ryan Prins: Son (11 minutes)

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Paul Prins: Son (6 minutes)

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Kyle Prins: Son (10 minutes)

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I’m currently working on getting the documentation together for our API (with Fresh Vine) and I needed a bit of code to place in the sidebar that would display any resources from the same family.

Within WordPress I have the pages all nicely nested. So there is a top-level page with a slug ‘api’ (page ID 16), and that has a child slugged ‘documentation’ (page ID 20). This related pages script will check for the children of ‘documentation’ including the first level which we add in at the beginning there.

The page hierarchy looks like: api-> documentation->members->view-id (for example)

The Code

php $Page = get_post();		// Get the Current Page
$ParentID = $Page->post_parent;	// Get the Parent Page ID
if( $ParentID == 16 )
	$ParentID = NULL;	// We're a child of
else if( $ParentID == 20 )
	$ParentID = $Page->ID;	// We 

$Related = get_pages( array(
					    'child_of' => $ParentID,
					    'sort_order' => 'ASC',
					    'sort_column' => 'post_title',
					    'hierarchical' => 0,
						'parent' => -1,
						'post_type' => 'page',
						'post_status' => 'publish' ) );
// Look to see if there are any related pages.
if( !is_null( $ParentID ) ){

	// Get the Parent Page
	$Parent = get_page( $ParentID );	?>
	 post_title; ?>>

post_content ) // Check for empty page
				continue;	?>
		 post_title; ?>

Final Thoughts

All in all the code works splendidly. Though I have taken out all of my styling for this example I have it setup to display the method and to give visual indicators of what page the user is currently on (with a simple if $rPage->ID == $Page-ID check).

Well I hope this was helpful for someone else out there in the inter-webs. If you used the code leave a note so I can see how you used it!

Every now and then one needs a break from the tedious day-to-day. On this particular day I decided to watch riveting tug of war match anchored by an Elephant, and a donkey. While the elephants team is loosing in this particular photo, they ended up winning.

All animals were harmed shortly after this photo was taken….

In my opinion many Christians who affirm the Rapture fail to take into account the simple reality that Jesus was already transformed before he was ever taken up into the sky. The leaving the disciples and ascending into the sky seemed to be a requirement for; the interim period we are now in (between the resurrection and the consummation of history) and our reliance on the Holy Spirit (“I must go so the counselor can come”).

That Jesus was already raised from the dead is the key part of this part of the gospels for me. His body was already new and transformed so that he was not immediately recognizable to some of his disciples,  he could walk through walls and even appear out of no-where (traversing dimensions?)! This new body also seems to have come out of the old body, that his previous physical body was transformed into his new body (creating the empty tomb the women found, he was not simply given a different body).

Since Jesus’ resurrection is described as the foretaste for the church (this is where immersion baptism comes from – to die and rise in Christ) I believe we can understand the transformation of his body to be one and the same that all matter in the cosmos will one day go through. A new, transformed, and perfected creation will emerge from (come out of) the current creation in a way we cannot understand or ourselves create/induce.

What are your thoughts on the idea that every atom of the cosmos will be transformed? 
I’ve shared this notion with a few peers recently to a very warm response and would enjoy further feedback.

Photo Credit: Me – Snow Covered Mountain Cemetery

Last January Jordan and I spent a week in the city of lights for our 4 year anniversary. For those of you who don’t know, we feel called to move to (in my case, back to) France to plant a church. We had been thinking Paris but Jordan had never been before, so after all was said and done she gave a huge thumbs up! To celebrate we got one of our photos from the trip printed by the fine folks at White House Custom Colour. It just showed up this morning!

WHCC Pro Tip: Ask for two Lollipops, get two lollipops

This is the first photo we have ever gotten printed on their canvas with a stretched frame (comes with a hanging wire as well). We’re still trying to figure out where to place it, but it looks pretty amazing.

[M]any people in the U.S. and around the world lack the education and skills required to participate in the great new companies coming out of the software revolution. This is a tragedy since every company I work with is absolutely starved for talent… This problem is even worse than it looks because many workers in existing industries will be stranded on the wrong side of software-based disruption and may never be able to work in their fields again. There’s no way through this problem other than education (read retraining), and we have a long way to go.

Why Software is Eating the World – Wall Street Journal

I spoke of this exact issue recently in a systematic theology course. While there are huge opportunities for the advancements economies that can leverage software space in the minds of consumers, there are many careers that will disappear within the upcoming decades. Often one hears statements about the affect of outsourcing (think back to the automotive bailout) on fewer industrial jobs in the US. Yet most of those jobs were not outsourced, rather they were automated thanks to software that replaced a need for them.

Furthermore, software lowers the requirements needed for jobs in industrial settings. Where one once needed technical skills to perform tasks at work, any still working in industry now find themselves watching machines do the work (observation jobs which  can/will also become automated). I’m unsure how the economy will adapt to this shift, and I find myself concerned about the education/retraining will be done.

Much of my consideration around this subject has rested is in how the Church might respond to this shift. Any thoughts out there?

UPDATE: My intention here was not to make anyone feel as though they have chosen a poor perfession, but to ask one question. In a shifting economy (where people must be retrained) how will the church respond? There will always be need for service sector jobs, but with the shift towards automating industry how might we respond to those being displaced? If Detroit is any indication, not very well. But I remain optimistic about the future.