the unlikely orange

hey!  happy leap day!  it's a day that occurs once every four years, and that means it's my day to take a shower.  just kidding.  i take one at least once a year, whether i need it or not. seriously, though, i don't know who invented leap day, but whoever did it is such a snob .  i mean really.  this just a day for crazy liberals who don't believe all the other 365 days aren't good enough.  no, those crazies say we need yet another day so women can propose marriage to men, which is entirely opposite of the created and Biblical order.  soon they'll be trying to turn to form us into their own image and turn every day into leap day, as if 365 days isn't enough for all the good, hard-working americans out there.  we don't need no stinkin' leap day!  last night i finished "committed" by elizabeth gilbert.  it was a fascinating tale of one woman's wrestling with the whole idea of marriage, and how she finally came to term

yesterday was the 11th birthday of our dog max.  we adopted him a decade ago and  inherited his almost-cliche name, but at least gave him the dignity of formalizing it into: maximus drake milinovich.  every dog deserves a middle name.  max's happens to be in honor of the late great british musician, nick drake .  however, whatever dignity we afforded him by extending his nomenclature was soon reclaimed by us as we insisted on treating him like our first child, posing him in various situations and outfits just to hear ourselves repeatedly proclaim, "look how cute!"  you can tell from these pictures, for example, that max is either into amateur piloting or was made to wear these goggles by his dignity-denying adopted parents.  as much as i want to say it is the former (how cute would it be to see max piloting a small plane, ala the red baron?), it is obviously the latter.  these pictures are part of a photo shoot we did with max for our 2011 christmas card.  i've

"green, continental" mixed media collage on previously painted wood panel (acrylic paint, found papers, vintage papers, glue) gregory a. milinovich february, 2012 i thought i'd share with you a new collage i made.  it is fairly large (about 48 inches by 36 inches), and made on top of an 70's-style painting i purchased at an auction for $1.  i took an old map of the continental united states and carefully cut out each state with as much precision as possible.  then, i traced those states on top of all kinds of different papers, trying to get a variety of patterns and text, etc.  then i cut each of those out again.  then i glued each of them, like a puzzle, on to some art paper.  then, i did a wash over the whole thing with a green acrylic paint wash.  in the meantime, i had pasted old maps all over the old painting, and then muted it with a white gesso wash.  then i covered that with a blue wash, and added all sorts of blue and black detail over that for

it's late on saturday for a saturday song, but better late than never!  at least, when it comes to blogging.  but not when it comes to getting to church.  well, according to ben harper and blind boys of alabama, anyway!  enjoy!

my children (and a couple of the adults in our house, too) love legos.  i'm pretty sure it's not just a phase, or, if it is, it is a really long phase.  quinton's not really into legos yet (unless you count eating them), but both jackson and caedmon are perfectly content to spend hours - hours - in the basement just recreating the things they see in their imaginations with colored plastic blocks.   sometimes they just want to build random things, and sometimes they want to rebuild the sets they have.  but the problem we ran into is that the pieces of these sets were spread out among our many bins of legos, and so building even the simplest of these sets would take hours.  so we made a commitment to organizing all these sets and keeping them all separated.  in the process of doing that, we began to organize other pieces as well, and now we have quite the lego organizational system, complete with two different sets of small shelves (78 individual shelves, altogether!) an

today is ash wednesday, the beginning of the season of lent.  lent has traditionally been a time for christians to humbly and soberly face the truth of their own brokenness and sinfulness.  it is a time to take stock.  it is a chance to slow down enough to remember that we can't do this thing on our own, just ashes and bones.  brittle and faltering.  of course ash wednesday is the first chapter in a lenten story that ends with an empty tomb and a whole new creation of life from death, dancing bones and brokenness turned to wholeness.  but we start in ashes.  in penitence.  in humility.  in the need of profound grace.  "ash wednesday 2012" mixed media collage on canvas (vintage book pages, acryclic paint, beads, glue) gregory a. milinovich february 2012 each year for ash wednesday i make a collage.  you can click here to see some of my collages from the past years.  the collage above is this year's offering.  grace and peace to you this ash wednesday

-happy pancake day.  or shrove tuesday.  or, as it is known in these parts, fausnacht day.  in this german version of the old tradition, you empty your pantry of flour and sugar by making doughnuts and eat them readily before lent begins.  here in the milinovich house, we'll be eating pancakes for dinner, as look ahead toward our time of fasting and penitence in lent.  i love lent, and look forward to this time of spiritual challenge and renewal.  but first: pancakes.  yum.  -we had a very blessed weekend, as we were visited by some dear friends from new jersey.  we just basically hung out and played games and took a walk and went to a dinner at church, but we spelled the weekend out in laughter and love.  this has got to be the good life.  -having said what i said about lent earlier, i seriously can't believe  it is here already.  i just finished putting away the christmas decorations (not really, but that's what it feels like!).  how is it time for ash wednesday a

i cannot tell a lie: i hope you have a great president's day.

happy saturday. a little math for you to introduce today's saturday song.... i love coldplay + i love willie nelson __________________ = i like this song. 

every year for valentine's day, i make my beloved a small collage.  this is my fifth year doing this, and so now she is starting to accumulate a bit of a collection.  if you visit our house around valentine's day you will see these on display, but since most of you don't get to come over very often, i thought i'd share them here.  "to my valentine: 2008" mixed media (found papers, vintage papers, acrylic paint, pencil, glue) on hardcover bookboard gregory a. milinovich "to my valentine: 2009" mixed media collage (found papers, vintage papers, vintage photograph, acrylic paint, glue) on hardcover bookboard gregory a. milinovich "to my valentine: 2010" mixed media collage (found papers, vintage papers, acrylic paint, glue) on hardcover bookboard gregory a. milinovich "to my valentine: 2011" mixed media collage (photograph, found papers, acrylic paint, glue) on hardcover bookboard gregory a

this sunday in church as we continued our series entitled "when christians get it wrong," we dealt with that ever-so-sensitive topic of homosexuality.  in some ways, i suppose, i have avoided talking about thsi from the pulpit for some time, and, in other ways, i have been wanting to preach about this.  basing this sermon series on adam hamilton's book "when christians get it wrong" gave me the perfect opportunity, since his book has a whole chapter devoted to this subject.  and it should, because our position on this particular issue is - unfortunately - how we have come to be defined in our culture.  in the recent barna survey which lead to david kinnaman writing the book "unchristian" (which is well worth checking out), 91% of the unchurched people surveyed chose the word "antihomosexual" to define christians, thus becoming the most widely chosen word among a total of 20 (10 positive, 10 negative).  so, to make it clear, among those u

this weekend my two older sons were able to participate in a lego building contest in bloomsburg, pa.  they were given several hundred assorted legos and were to build some sort of building.  we used it as a great opportunity to continue to teach them about celebrating creativity and finding purpose and pleasure in playing, not only in winning.  as you can see in the picture above, jackson took it really seriously, designing a large "outdoor house," complete with electricity, a pizza oven, and more.  i'm not really sure what Cade built, other than what he calls a "house.'  they were to build for 45 minutes, but cade, who was one of the youngest kids in the field of 30, got a bit bored and starting cleaning up his legos before the time was up.   the local newspaper was there and interviewed both Jackson and myself, along with others.  they ran the story in the sunday paper, and we were both quoted.  you can see the story here .  we had a great

time for saturday song.  today i am sharing a song by an artist named dan black .  the song is called "symphonies."  it seems to be about living life deeply, "sucking the marrow" from life, and not being satisified with the status quo.  at least that's how i interpret it.  the song features a collaboration with rapper kid cudi .  that's a good enough song right there, and you can watch the video of it here .  but i found this remix one day while messing around on noisetrade , and i LOVE it.  it is remixed by one jeremy henry, who goes by the moniker " haus of glitch ."   it plays with the song's lyrics about copying and pasting, and has a great deal of fun with the orchestra blasts and digital noises.  i love electronic music, when its done artfully and especially when it is still maddeningly melodic, as this is.  there is no video to look at below, just the song to enjoy - so, enjoy!  and look for the symphonies in your life today!

"need of healing" mixed media collage (vintage papers, vintage photograph, acrylic paint, glue) on hardcover bookboard january 2012 gregory a. milinovich here is a new collage i recently made, focusing on simplicity and shape, and as much as what is not there as what is.  i used an old hardcover bookboard that had been withdrawn from a library and indelibly marked as such, and used that as my starting point.  from there i just kept it simple and played with shape, line and color.  i intend to have some new works up on my etsy site soon, in case anyone is interested in purchasing any of my art, so stay tuned for that.  and now, for your thursday, a poem by luci shaw: Small Song God of the sea, God of the rock and bird and tree, you are also the God of me. The pebble fell. The water stirred and stilled again. The hidden bird made song for you. His praise you heard. You heard him sing from in the tree. And searching

-hey, did you hear there was a football game played on sunday?  yeah, me neither.  i guess there was some kind of madonna concert and they played some football game before and after the show.  -actually, i did watch the game, and was delighted with the results.  i know i'm going to have to go through at least 300 years of purgatory for this, but here's the honest-to-goodness truth of it:  i love watching boston lose and suffer.  in general i am not nearly so harsh and hateful, but boston (and the baltimore ravens) is the target of all of my disdain.  i won't eat boston baked beans.  i avoid sam adams.  i don't watch movies set in boston.   if there's something i like, and then i find its from boston, i swear it off.   if i'm watching jeopardy, and one of the contestants is from boston, i begin praying for a long and humiliating loss.  okay, so i'm exaggerating here (what i do best), but i'm not completely making this up, i assure you.  which is why

this weekend we celebrated the second half of jack's seventh birthday, and he had another (smaller) bug cake with an anthill on top.  he got many great gifts, especially the lego millenium falcon which is already built and looks amazing.  we had a great time with my mom and dad, and now our son is in his eighth year (dad says that is the croatian reckoning - as i get older i'm not sure i like that so much).  now it's on to valentine's day.  time to make sure those you love know it without a shadow of a doubt.  love freely and deeply and expressively and wildly and passionately and extravagantly.  love wholly. 

i just finished this book this weekend, and wanted to share it with my readers.  it's called "i''m proud of you: life lessons from my friend Fred Rogers" by tim madigan.  it is the true story of an unlikely and unexpected friendship between a journalist from texas and the children's show host from pittsburgh.  sent on an assignment to interview the famous tv figure, madigan was skeptical of rogers' kindness at the beginning.  but the relentless kindness that mr. rogers showed him, along with his natural comfort with vulnerability and intimacy, soon softened his heart and demonstrated that mr. rogers was no joke.  his kindness was not just a public television facade meant to trick the children. he was no charlatan.  he was the real deal.  then, through email correspondence and phone conversations, the two developed a close friendship that served madigan well.  as he went through marriage difficulty, some depression and related issues, and then a terribl

-well, the groundhog says we've got more winter ahead.  which could mean 6 more weeks of temps in the 40's and 50's.  or it could mean that winter is just getting started.  who knows?  only the groundhog, i guess.  which leads me to the biggest issue i have with this whole groundhog thing.  um, WHY DO WE LISTEN TO A GROUNDHOG?  this is the kind of thing that 500 years from now kids will be reading about in a textbook (or whatever they're using then) and the teacher will say, "yes our ancestors believed that one magical groundhog named phil would emerge on one particular day each year to predict the weather patterns.  it was reported on around the world and people took this very seriously."  we're going to look like idiots.  i mean, even more than we already do.  they'll say, "this was a culture of witch doctors and superstition.  they believed in meteorologists groundhogs and stars that can predict the number of friends you'll make, and cookie

i am such an independence junkie.  i value my self-sufficiency to a fault.  while there are some stengths in this, there are also some obvious negative aspects, as well.  like being able to rely on others.  or learn with others.  or play well with others.  basically, anything that has to do with others.  so often, the easy route for me is just doing the task at hand by myself, and i too often choose that route.  this personality trait certainly applies to my faith, as well.  as much as i'd like to think it doesn't, i have to admit that my independence is a stumbling block in my relationship with God.  i mean, why ask God for help when i can easily do it myself?  my humanity and self-absorption can easily cloud my judgment and get me thinking this way, if not consciously, then certainly in the recesses of my mind and in my behavior.  which is why i appreciate cade.  caedmon is my four-year old.  he didn't inherit my independence.  he likes to be close to others and to