a couple months ago, just after the recording academy announced their 54th annual grammy nominees, i blogged my predictions. those are set to air tonight and i thought just prior to the ceremony, i’d repost this to serve as a guide of just how wrong i’ll likely be.

here’s what i predicted in december.

yesterday, barack obama’s campaign released a 27-song spotify playlist that serves as the “official” playlist of the president’s bid for re-election. you can see the track list here or you can actually access it via spotify by clicking here.

if, over the last couple days, you were to take a peek at the theological social media circles i run in, you’d be hard-pressed to miss the stunning story that matthew paul turner shared on his blog. delivered in 2 parts (part 1 and part 2), he shared the story of a guy named andrew who, until recently, was a member of mark driscoll’s mars hill church in seattle. you can read turner’s posts to get the full story, but in essence, this guy became subject to church discipline for confessing to sleeping with his fiancée and for having an inappropriate (platonic) relationship with another girl.

over the last couple weeks, as jeff bethke’s video (above), ‘why i hate religion, but love jesus’, was hitting critical mass on the web, i began writing a post about it. that post quickly made its way to my ‘drafts’ folder (which only has 5 posts all-time). it wasn’t that it was particularly controversial or incomplete, it was just that i felt like the support & the criticism across the internet was overstated and largely unhelpful. the web really didn’t need one more blog post.

but.

we’ve spent the better part of the last 12 months watching the dog and pony show that is known as the republican primary season. this entire process has been, to say the least, entertaining to behold. this is quite the crop of candidates. i mean that in the so-painful-to-watch-yet-so-awesome sense of the word.

i’ll reserve much political commentary in this post. quite frankly, i have plenty of opinions of the republican field, but regardless of who wins the nominee, i’ll be voting for barack obama. and i really think you should also.

on february 12, 2012, the recording academy will convene to hand out their annual awards for the best music of the year. between now and that night, we’ll have plenty of time to make predictions, talk about snubs and anticipate the biggest night in music all year.

undoubtedly, the grammys receive plenty of well-deserved criticism. years in which albums by herbie hancock and taylor swift won album of the year were signs that the academy were becoming more and more irrelevant to discerning music fans.

while in seminary, in a small group, i read richard foster’s classic, celebration of discipline. each week, we’d discuss a chapter with the weekly leader determined by who was struggling most with the particular discipline (each chapter was a particular discipline). the week i chose to lead—which amounted to sharing about my struggles while engaging the text—was the chapter about solitude.

i like to talk. and talk. and then talk a little more.

and not talking is a key tenet within the discipline of solitude. solitude isn’t just about silence, but it’s certainly a close ally. so when you love to listen turn your music up and play loudly with your kids and talk during the remaining hours of your day, silence can be a difficult discipline to master.