Building Castles on the Beach

The interwebs sure have changed since I started blogging three and a half years ago. As I attempt to rebuild Building Castles on the Beach after basically bypassing 2013 and the first half of 2014, I notice that many of the sites I read and enjoyed before when I was a full tilt blogger haven't posted anything for months or even years, or have even discontinued their blogs altogether. A recent culling of the blogs I officially follow has shown that at least two of my formerly favorite websites have been co-opted by porn. These are blogs I had direct links to in the margins of my own posts. I would be embarrassed if I thought anyone was actually visiting my own site during the time those links would have been active. The other major difference is the kind of writing that seems to get read on the interwebs. I'm reminded of the commotion in the 90's about the popularity of the "newspaper" (look it up, kids!) called USA Today . It was frequently criticized due to th...

I'm still not over my disappointment in Brasil's sleep walk of a performance against Germany. So I'm not going to talk about that. Instead, with the finals looming, this might be my last chance for four years to defend some aspects of the World Cup that neophytes and ardent fans alike don't seem to appreciate. This is funny. But patently untrue.  The first thing I want to mention is that soccer is a contact sport. I don't share this now to make some tired comparison about how American football requires all kinds of pads and aren't soccer players tough and such. I say this to direct your focus as a viewer away from the sprawling green field the television camera shows you for most of the game. The pitch is long and wide (I won't say it's the longest and widest of all the sports because I don't know all the sports, but it's got to be close), and if you tend to get bored when one team passes the ball around for an interminable amount of time...

I don't follow sports. I don't watch the Super Bowl, not even for the commercials. I don't know who's in the NBA finals right now, though I am mindful of professional sports seasons and don't quite understand why the basketball season extends into the summer. And while I coach soccer and even play it myself (old man, coed rec league), the last time I watched a soccer game on TV was four years ago when Spain beat the Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup final. Only the guy on the right is supposed to use his hands. Growing up, I loved soccer but was only vaguely aware of something called the World Cup. I guess I have a memory of Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in 1986, but I can't recall if I watched it live or just heard about it later. I don't know if any TV station in the United States would have even broadcast the World Cup final at that time. In 1990, I was in Brazil, and suddenly the World Cup actually meant something. As a missionar...