manna?

All Cereal Resturant Opens In Philly by Joseph Kaczmarek (USA Today)

Posted by Ed and Lois

How’s this for thinking outside the box: a cafe with jammies-clad servers pouring cereal day and night, topping it off with everything from fruit to malted milk balls, and serving it in “bowls” resembling Chinese takeout containers

Cereality Cereal Bar & Cafe, which opened its first sit-down cafe Wednesday on the University of Pennsylvania campus, is a sugarcoated — and tongue-in-cheek — homage to what your mother always told you was the most important meal of the day. But she probably never dished out bowls of Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch topped with Pop Rocks.

Behind glass-door kitchen-style cabinets at Cereality are 30 varieties of brand-name cold cereal. Customers order from “cereologists,” whose most popular mix is two 8-ounce scoops with one of 36 toppings, plus regular, flavored or soy milk for $2.95. Also offered are cereal bars and made-to-order cereal smoothies and yogurt blends
Cereality also offers its own combos with names reminiscent of Ben and Jerry’s ice creams. John Merz, a 27-year-old Penn employee, was bowled over by Devil Made Me Do It — an ambrosial elixir of Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, chocolate crunchies and malt balls, topped with milk.

You’re eating candy with milk on it!” chided his co-worker Caroline Couture, 42. After polishing off her Banana Brown Betty with hot oatmeal, bananas, molasses sugar and streusel topping, she said that she’d be having a salad for lunch — but that she’d visit Cereality again.

“We’re all still kids, really,” she said. “A lot of the foods you loved in childhood you still love as an adult.”

Full Post :http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2004-12-01-cereal-restaurant_x.htm

Baby Girl Born

Posted by Ed and Lois

Manna’s first birth.

Kira Arline Guerrin was born to her parents Seth and Abby Thursday afternoon, December 2 at Holland Hospital. Mom and Dad are doing fine. No word yet on the new grandparents.

A Tear Jerker From Heaven by Robert Bianco (USA Today)

Posted by Ed and Lois

Based on the book “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom. It’s on ABC TV Sunday night at 8:00.

Written by talk-show host and Tuesdays With Morrie author Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is one of those gift-shop inspirational parables that usually are more popular with book buyers than book critics. Come the holidays, those tales tend to plop on the TV screen like a honey-coated Christmas goose.

Happily for us, Albom’s story is stronger at its core than most. And Albom, director Lloyd Kramer and producers Robert Halmi Sr. and Jr. have transferred it to film in its best imaginable version. Stripped to its essentials, beautifully acted and gorgeously produced, a Heaven that might have struck some as simplistic and preachy is now closer to simple and profound.

Heaven is a modern twist on The Christmas Carol, with an emotionally damaged hero being led to salvation by five people in heaven rather than three ghosts on Earth. In Albom’s vision, the five people you meet are not necessarily the most important people in your life or the ones you loved the most. They’re five people who can illuminate your life.

Full Post http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2004-12-02-five-people_x.htm

Becoming A Cultural Redemptive by Brian Orme (The Ooze)

Posted by Ed and Lois

Question: Should we be creating seperate places to meet people (a Christian sub-culture), or interacting with them on their own turf? (Isn’t it our turf too?) I think the answers are all yes. The problem for me is that I can disappear into our sub-culture, and never come out.

There is something within every culture that seeks to replicate the redemptive story of God. It may be somewhat unrecognizable at times, but the desire to be redeemed—to be set free, to be bought out of our bondage to selfishness, to watch God transform negative experiences into good—flows through every man. It’s amazing to see how strongly we identify with certain films and art because of this desire. Every weekend, thousands of people flood into cinemas to connect with characters and stories of redemption. Braveheart, Finding Nemo, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption are just a few films that capture this theme.

How do we join God in His mission and connect Christ with culture? In many ways, the connection is already there, waiting to be illumined. We don’t need to go out and buy all the latest CDs or DVDs or watch hours of MTV, we just need to be observant and intentional about what we see happening in culture and what we see God doing. The culture cries out, and all creation for that fact, for redemption. In some places, the cry may be subtle or masked, and in others, there is a wild plea.

Becoming a cultural redemptive means that we are willing to connect with the expressions of our culture in order to translate the message of the kingdom: a message of freedom and a new start.

Full Post http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=956

Bono In The New York Times

Posted by Ed and Lois

“There’s cathedrals and the alleyway in our music. I think the alleyway is usually on the way to the cathedral, where you can hear your own footsteps and you’re slightly nervous and looking over your shoulder and wondering if there’s somebody following you. And then you get there and you realize there was somebody following you: It’s God.”