the unlikely orange

i love to travel, and i love music.  and i also love where the two intersect.  so, whenever i travel, i love to make sure my music matches my context.  recently, as we've taken family vacations over the last few years to california and florida, i have made mix cd's as the soundtrack to our trip.  well, this year is no different.  we are headed to arizona (to see the grand canyon, sedona, and several other places), and so i have put together a mix cd (yes, i still like cd's: OLD SCHOOL) of songs related to our journey and some of the places we'll be.  you can see the songs and the artwork, and you'll be able to see some pictures over the next week or so of our adventures.  here's to the journey!

i know i'm old.  i mean, there's a growing list of entries in that exhibit file, many of which are obvious to everyone else but me, but i'm at least self-aware enough to realize this one: i still make mix cd's.  as if it were still 2002, i rip and arrange and burn and buy jewel cases and the whole deal.  it's almost like a i can't NOT do it.  i just love it; it's in my bones.  every time we take a family trip somewhere, i make a mix cd focused on  that location, and each summer i make a cd to serve as the soundtrack of our summer, and i make several copies and share them with others as well.  they probably get it in the mail and laugh at me, but i don't really care.  i simply love doing it. this is my fifth summer cd in a row, and you can see the artwork for it above.  the theme is the word "world," as you can see from the songs i chose (also, please remember that my target audience here is the family demographic).   here ar...

 we are going to (hopefully) sunny florida in a couple weeks.  but today is covered in snow and ice.  so, to distract from the sounds of ice pelting against my windows, i thought i'd make a cd to serve as the soundtrack for our trip to south florida (miami, florida keys, everglades, etc.).  here is what i came up with.  1. the florida song - ricky sylvia 2. soak up the sun - sheryl crow 3. 1,2,3 - gloria estefan 4. island in the sun - harry belafonte 5. the yacht club - owl city 6. florida time - bob seger (with the beach bums) 7. miami 82 (avicii edit) - syn cole 8. conga - gloria estefan 9. kokomo - the beach boys 10. miami - will smith 11. orange blossom special - johnny cash 12. saltwater heart - switchfoot 13. florida key - the new basement tapes 14. ice, ice, baby - vanilla ice 15. margaritaville - jimmy buffett 16. havana - camila cabella 17. everglades - the kingston trio 18. get on your feet - gloria estefan 19. the old folks ...

it's Christmas eve!  we have once again put together a little montage (our eleventh annual!) of some footage from our advent preparations for Christmas, this time to a song that i absolutely adore called "Lord, Remind Me" by Jon and Valerie Guerra. we hope you are reminded of the magic and the mystery of this unlikely story, and of the wonder of hope being born in your own heart again this year. 

for the past four summers now i've been making an annual "summer cd," just for my own kids to listen to as we travel around through the summer months.  part of the idea was to have some "feel-good" music for the summer, as well as to expose my kids to something beyond kidz bop.  now the kids are making suggestions for the song list, too, so it has become a collaboration.  over the last four years, it has evolved into something with a theme, only because my own compulsion is to mix songs in a way that isn't just a grab bag of random music, but a kind of musical story, at least one that makes sense to me.  so this year's cd is about dreams.  and bears and bananas, too.  here's the song list.  i've been making mix tapes for the last 30 + years.  i remember recording things off the radio, pretending i was the dj, putting songs together in ways that made sense to me and interested me.  i kept mixing music through my high school and...

i know that the world isn't beating down any doors to see my kids' piano recital, but some of you have wanted to see it, especially since Shannon and i have been telling the story of what Quin does at about 1:30 into the video...the smile on the instructor's face says everything you need to know.  you gotta' feel the music! enjoy!

happy mother's day from the milinovich boys.  we recognize that mothers day isn't always a joyful day for everyone, but for us, we have to say that we are blessed with wonderful examples of motherhood in the boys' motherr, grandparents, aunts, and church moms.  in order to celebrate all that incredible love and nurturing, we've been making an annual mothers day video for 10 years now! here you can see our 10th installment, a tribute to moms everywhere, and especially our mom, using bob marley's "three little birds," as a way of saying that mom always seems to make everything alright, even when things are broken or overwhelming.  we hope you enjoy! below you can see all our other videos, in reverse order (amazing how much these kids keep growing!). here was last years, a superhero kind of tribute: in 2016 we were moving and preparing to make a new home: in 2015 we were celebrating the way mom nurtures and feeds us: 2014's i...

my mixtape for the next 10 days.  pay no attention to the fact that i cannot spell....i apparently was half asleep and in much need of a vacation as i typed it.  norcal, baby.  here we come.

 it's hard to believe it, but this is the 9th year that the boys and i have been making mother's day videos for Shannon.  Cade was only just a year old when we made our first, and he just turned 10 and will soon finish 4th grade!  we've done videos with a variety of themes: springsteen, athletics, wacky costumes, silent film, and moving, just to name some of them.  as we've gotten more familiar with the process, and as the boys get older, we have more fun planning the scenes, the locations, the costumes, the props, and even the camera work and "special effects."  still, it's a ton of work, and the reason we do it is because we know how blessed we are to have a wife and mother like Shannon, and we feel like these 9 music videos (so far) are all slices of time that she will cherish for the rest of her life.  it's about the best present we could think of, and now its a tradition.  we can only hope that she enjoys them as much as we enjoy making them for ...

i just found out that we have the chance to bring Gungor to state college on july 29th of this year for part of their One Wild Life: Acoustic Tour .  we could host them right at St. Paul's!  all i need is $7,000.  no big deal. seriously.  i need $7,000.  i almost sent them an email back to say we won't be able to do it (i mean, we didn't budget for this or anything, and i'm not sure i can convince my church to invest in something that many of them have never heard of), but then i thought, i'd better wait.  i mean, i have until wednesday to let them know for sure. so, anyone in state college want to make this happen?  if so, message me.  call me.  just let me know.

if my sermon on sunday could be represented as a song, perhaps it would be this one by drew holcomb, who says, " 2016 has been a very confusing year for me. I wrote a new song about it called "Wild World". Here it is." love is all we've got to give away.  amen.

happy memorial day, a day we set apart to remember specifically that the freedoms and liberties we enjoy were bought at a price, and that price was paid in the currency of human lives.  even today, as we think about our way of life, we should recognize that when we abuse our freedoms, or take them for granted, we are devaluing that price and dishonoring that memory.  when we choose greed over commonwealth; when we choose comfort over justice for all; when we choose personal gain over public health; when we choose self over community and country; we forget the great gift we've been given and we shame ourselves. this land was never just for me.  it was always for us .  it was always about freedom from monarchy, freedom from legislated religion.  it left room for differences.  we seem to have forgotten that in our country today, when instead of welcoming the tired, the poor, and the hungry, we want to build walls and deport those who are different. ...

To the Good People at Apple, Hi.  It’s greg.  You remember me, of course.  I’ve owned several of your devices and spent a small fortune in acquiring them over the years.  We’ve owned at least 4 different ipods, and an assortment of iphones and ipads.  It’s like we are family now.  So, anyway, how’ve you been?  I’ve been okay. Well, actually, not so much.  See, I’ve lost my best mate.  He was always there for me, and seemed to have just what I needed at any particular moment.  When I was happy, he would feed off of that and make me dance.  When I was sad, he would softly whisper and give me space for my sadness to slowly spill out.  He listened to me, and I listened to him.  A lot.  I loved him deeply.  In fact, we once celebrated his arrival with a cake.    see? I also once wrote an ode to him, and put it on my blog for the whole world to see.  It went like this: ...

for the last seven years, my boys and i have put together a little family video each may as a tribute to their mom, and as a snapshot - a kind of video scrapbook page - to capture them at that particular moment of their lives.  as we look back now to the very first one in 2009, it is amazing to see how they've grown and changed. this year, i didn't get to make our annual mother's day video in time for mother's day, which was very disappointing to me, although Shannon was extremely gracious about it, saying that it isn't something i need  to do.  still, whether that is true or not, it is something i really want  to do, and i was frustrated that i wasn't able to get to it in time for mother's day, but the reality of our lives right now is that we are moving in 6 weeks, and the perfect storm of packing, saying goodbyes, having yard sales, planning a good beginning in our new church, along with all the emotions involved in all of that, has just been too mu...

i'm not one for making political statements.  i make statements about what i believe God desires for us to do as disciples of Jesus, which always  falls into the categories of loving God completely and loving our neighbors freely.  but when it comes to supporting this politician or that one, i generally try and steer clear.  if you attended any church where i've been the pastor, you may hear me speak about issues when it involves our call to love (after all, Jesus made it clear that the only way others will know that we are his disciples is by our love in action), but you've never heard me endorse one candidate or another from the pulpit. in fact, i so much disdain being painted into a corner, that i refuse to be a part of either of our major political parties.  i'm not even an independent! i am a political "none," (which frees me from so much junk mail and rude phone calls, it is amazing!) meaning that i choose not to be associated with any political gro...

"Now those memories come back to haunt me they haunt me like a curse Is a dream a lie if it don't come true Or is it something worse that sends me down to the river though I know the river is dry That sends me down to the river tonight Down to the river my baby and I Oh down to the river we ride"  -Bruce Springsteen, The River as the lights shined bright in the arena, and we all turned on our backs on the empty stage, to file out into the late night, which would soon be morning, and a new song came over the speakers, softer than the sound that we'd heard for the last three and half hours.  even though Bruce Springsteen had descended into his dressing room beneath or behind the stage, with the E-Street Band alongside, he was still trying to say something.  but this song wasn't even in his voice.  it was the beautifully blended harmonies of Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris, as they solemnly sang, "as i went down to the river to pray...

quin is our little entertainer...even when he doesn't know all the words.  check it out.

in an article entitled " almighty God in the age of exaggeration ," which was written by Megan Hill and appeared in the november 2014 edition of 'christianity today,' this quote is expressed and defended: "if everything is awesome, then nothing is." the defense offered is that only God is truly awesome (eliciting terrible awe) and therefore the word (as well as other adjectives, punctuation marks and emoticons) ought to be reserved for the God who alone is holy. this, in my humble opinion, is bologna. old, slimy, slightly sour bologna. "say to God, 'how awesome are your             works !'" - psalm 66:3 the truth is, the poet recognizes that it is not merely the self or substance of God which may elicit a holy sense of awe (or even righteous fear, as isaiah could attest to), but also the works of God; that is, the things that God has done and is doing. like what?  what could the psalmist possibly be talking about?  well ...

-last week this creepy scene actually happened at our church.  our music director called me over, saying we had a problem at the church.  i walked up and saw the above scene: what appeared to be a tiny baby left on the doorstep at the church.  for the briefest of moments, there is this sense of overwhelming panic, that we are going to have to take care of a newborn human being.  it got me thinking a little about some of the situations we do get to deal with in the church, and how sometimes people bring the issues they don't want to deal with, and they "drop them off" at the church.  it's not always convenient, but we always try to do our best to help out however we can.  thankfully, this was just a plastic doll, and it disappeared a few days later, so i assume the child who left it was able to get it back. -here's another update on the ridiculous cuteness that comes out of quinton's mouth:      "be fries!" = surprise! clink this link ...

do you see how bad that ink is?  i could draw a better steelers logo with my eyes shut.  while sleeping.  and without the use of my arms.  but that's not the point.  the point is that, as bad as that tattoo is, it really isn't even as bad as the way the steelers tried to play football yesterday against the cleveland browns.  i agree with ron cook who says the biggest surprise of all this year is that the steelers are 3-3, considering just how bad they've played.  i love my black and gold, of course, but it looks like it could be a long year.  hopefully not as long-lasting as that tattoo. in other news, happy columbus day!  once again i invite you to check out andrew dost's awesome soundtrack to columbus day, called "columbus."  you  can listen to it here .  it is so worth checking out.