"Hello, yes, is this the mothership? Oh good. I was wondering if you could send someone down to collect my daughter. She's interested in going to the moon for the afternoon if that's okay. Dancing? Sure she likes to dance, and she would also like to explore some caverns and ride on a few of the moonacoasters. You'll be here in 45 minutes? Great!"

That is the way the conversation went this morning - this morning when I had to give Kara something to do today while I am at work and Mommy is exhausted! The one needs about six hours of peace alone to catch up on sleep, and the other needs a rowdy day of play - and I'm no help because work is "that toad that squats on your life" (e.e.cummings) As it was, perhaps Kara would catch hold of this idea of going to the moon for the day and that would stimulate some playtime, some drawing and other creative expression. She asked this morning if she could email me at work, and emailed to say she would miss me "while [she is] on the moon."

Safe & Sound

A quick note to report that as far as we know everyone who was up in the air yesterday is now safe and sound back on the ground. Thom arrived home last night at about 11pm. My parents arrived safely at my grandmother's house in Hendersonville, TN yesterday around 8pm. And, given that we haven't heard anything on the news, I'm trusting that Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth arrived safely to their destination in Poland. Ahh, I just like it better when friends and family aren't flying.

Nothing really new to report beyond that. Caleb is still hinding himself, though we are all eager to see him. Kara attempted this morning to "listen" to him through the baby monitor that we have set up! I told her that the monitor is for after we can see baby Caleb and she said she wanted to try anyway! She keeps me laughing.

My best friend from high school, who lives in New Hampshire came down to visit Sunday and "babysit me" for the night while Thom was gone. Kara had a hard time remembering her name all day and so began calling her "Purple Princess" - for the purple shirt she was wearing. The two of them had a glorious time imagining together. So much so that last night included me tucking in Kara and her new imaginary monster friend named Siegfried. I tried to convince Kara that Siegfried was going to go home with the Purple Princess, but the Purple Princess decided that Siegfried could visit for a few weeks. So far I've sat on him twice and you wouldn't believe how much trouble he kept getting in for kicking me in the back of the seat in the car. This should be fun!

Any good imaginary friend stories out there? Please share!

Taxi to the Runway

A few odds and ends of note...

I'm 35 1/2 weeks along and everything is going well. Good appointment on Friday confirmed that the latest week of contractions are beginning to move things along a little. Don't worry we will be bringing the cell phone and the digital camera to the hospital with us, so as soon as the little guy arrives you all will know!

In the mean time, here's hoping it's not in the next 36 hours or so. Kara and I are about to drive Thom to the airport where he is flying to Baltimore for a one-day business trip to Washington D.C. Lovely. While we are both actually very excited for him to be going on a business trip, the timing is sort of, well, awful! So, pray that everything here stays the same until at least 10pm Monday night! My friend Lynda is coming down to visit tonight and spending the night with us as part of the emergency plan :-) We also have a childcare plan and an alternate birthing coach plan. Hopefully, like any good fire escape route, none of these plans will be needed!

Meanwhile, also in the air ... My parents are flying home from Germany tomorrow to move back to the States. They packed up all their worldly goods last week and are headed to Tennessee to find a house and settle down in the States for a while. The latest plan is that they'd like to offer an online service building tours for travel agencies.

And, also in the air -- our good friends Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh are flying to Poland tomorrow for a three-week mission trip teaching English at an English language camp near the Russian border. This is their second mission trip to Poland and they are very excited about the opportunities it will bring.

So, we're off to make the connection at Logan and pray that the day will go quickly!

The Truck and the Guitar: A Ballad

Its face was all of cedar-brown
Expensive, tuned and bright
Rosewood black its fretted-neck
Unfortunate its plight.

Branded "Fender" on it stock
Brilliant was its tone
It went to worship often
But then its days were done

Now what is that we're dragging?
What has raised us up?
What's that shredded, twisted thing
That's stuck beneath the truck?

One afternoon I set it by
My Toyota, bold and red
And when I shoved it in reverse
The mighty truck obeyed

Now what is that we're dragging?
What has raised us up?
What's that shredded, twisted thing
That's stuck beneath the truck?

Forgotten was that Fender
I'm glad it cannot feel
Its body crushed to splinters
Under the driver's wheel

Now what is that we're dragging?
What has raised us up?
What's that shredded, twisted thing
That's stuck beneath the truck?

But there's no need for sadness
My church's charity
Over the weeks collected
Money for the need

My wife was sharp, my daughter loud
She pointed to a lute
Martin guitars were on sale
She's pregnant and she's cute!

Now that thing I was dragging
Raised up a better brand
The dead was called a Fender
Now Martin's in my hand

And so this tale's redemptive
Permit me to admit
What died under a knobby wheel
Came back the better fit

Now what is that we're dragging?
What has raised us up?
What's that shredded, twisted thing
That's stuck beneath the truck?

(alternate secular ending)

So if you have a guitar
That always sounds accursed
Casually leave it by your truck
And put it in reverse!

A Bad Run

It started when Kara didn't actually want to ride her bike.

This afternoon, Lynn-nore was feeling tired and Kara and I decided to go out. She was going to ride her bicycle to the park, and I was going to follow along. The sun was just coming out from behind the clouds, and it was a cool, though muggy day. As I said before, it started when Kara didn't actually want to ride her bike. She quite properly walked it across the street, hands appropriately placed on seat and handle, but afterward she never really got on. There were a short stretches where she more sat than walked, limply pedalling like an invalid. Overall, I'd say she was on her bike a collective 10 minutes of the two hours we were out.

I saw no harm in her pushing her bike. No one wants to do that for long, not when you can ride. "She will eventually learn that it's better to ride than walk." Nevertheless, going as slowly as we did, and with the sky clouding over, we were passed on the sidewalk by old ladies and wood ants. I kept switching internally between the settings Sit, Walk, Stand so that it is a miracle my motor skills didn't softboot my nervous system as if it were a Microsoft product, me wetting my pants and suffering a stroke in the process.

When we arrived at the park, there were a lot of people there. One family in particular was much animated. Three girls and a boy, all roughly Kara's age, with their Mother and Father. The latter, in a baseball cap and a red swet shirt, was roaring and chasing them about. The former, a 40ish woman with black hair and a green pullover, alternated between being a witch and being afraid of the alligator. At any rate - "Don't eat us Mr. Alligator!" they all squealed, skipping away in every direction. Kara had to be a part of it.

Unfortunately, when one of the girls asked if she would like to play, Kara quite rudely punted a "No." Then she sulked under a tree. I put her back in the game. Another of the girls had mercy on her and let Kara join in. That's when Kara decided she should roar like a lion and began trying to make the Alligator-Daddy go away and leave everyone alone. It didn't take a full minute for her to be off sulking again. I put her back in. More roaring. Ostracization. Sulking. Finally one of the girls comes up to me and says, "We don't mind if she plays but when she roars it ruins everything." (Kara had neglected to note that the girls didn't want their Daddy to go away, They wanted to be chased.) What do stand up's call a situation like this? Oh yes, "Sudden death".

I, too, was having rabid introverted social issues. What is a man of 35 supposed to do when his daughter wants to play in what is most-obviously a family-centric game? I can't exactly pretend I know them, take on some playground persona and leap about like a lunatic (pretty much what they were already doing.) Then there was the obvious class problem. By not rejecting Kara, they were acting well-bred and upper class. Kara's inability to keep her own ideas to herself, thus befuddling the works, did not reflect good-breeding and was most certainly lower-class. And, the worst bit, aside from the girls, not one member of the family spoke to either Kara or me - not a word. Even when the Daddy-Alligator was jumping away from Kara while holding a kid in his arms, he didn't say a word to her. Intentional or not, I couldn't help but feel Kara and I both were being tolerated as barbarian outsiders.

Of course, it seemed like I should know what to do. I should be able to reach into the "good parenting" bag of tricks and pull out some wisdom. Instead, frustrated, embarrased, freezing (God had turned on the AC with a good, salty sea breeze) and altogether put-out Kara and I walked home. She pushed that bike - while wearing her helmet - all the way back. It was a bad run, all the way round.

au revoir Beguine

Beguines /beh-GEENS/ were religiously dedicated laywomen, who did not follow a rule or take monastic vows. Instead, they lived in the world and worked to support themselves. Theirs was a life of prayer and devotion, coupled with down-to-earth ethical good sense, financial moderation and a desire to serve the needy. Though celibate, they could marry if they chose, and though free, they often bound themselves together in community with other women of like mind to follow the via apostolica of St. Francis of Assisi. Love was central to their religious faith. They understood the goal of the Christian to be found in God, loving one’s neighbor with God's own love and thus expressing in action the inexhaustible love of the immanent Trinity. The greatest exponents of Beguine spirituality in its mystical form are Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212?-1282?), Beatrice of Nazareth (1200?-1268), Hadewijch of Brabant, (1221?-1240?) and Marguerite Porete (d. 1310). The emphases of being daily led by love, of being led to also go wholly beyond the present and incessant demands of life and self into the ever-going-before depths of God’s own love, and of living out and being formed in one’s faith through liturgical worship and community participation and service, are found in the writings of all these women. Beatrice and Hadewijch's visions, for example, always occur in a liturgical setting.

The movement that takes the name of these women, the Beguine movement, spreading outward from the town of Leigè in Belgium, proved immensely popular throughout the twelth and thirteenth centuries. It formed part of what is called the “Medieval Reformation,” a religious awakening characterized by medieval mysticism and the popularity of mendicant orders like the Cistertians and the Fransicans. They did not look to the organized church to ordain and legitimize their ministry, but holding onto the gospel-promise of direct access to God through the gender-neutral and generous distribution of the Holy Spirit, they went about the business of ministry: preaching, prophesying, counseling, advising, offering social criticism, serving and teaching within the space opened up by the election of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, their autonomy was their downfall. Their position as “sisters between” who lived in the space between home and convent, proved too unsettling for established, male-institutions to tolerate. The autonomy enjoyed by Beguines was their downfall. Their lack of inclusion in any social or religious organized structure brought on persectution by the same. Their houses, for by the thirteenth century it was not uncommon for them to live in walled communities, were legally restricted and, ultimately, groundlessly persecuted as havens for herecy.

In our own day, there are a few Beguine communities scattered over Europe in the United States. But is it really any secret that we have had one with us for awhile? Now I have long been a Dominican myself, having converted from the Franciscans in my early 20’s when devotion alone was not enough. (Perhaps I’ll trade back again at some future time.) It was obvious enough to me who this was who was among us from the very beginning. I knew her when first I saw her. (We monastics are easy to spot.) Time has since proven my initial suspicions, as her own story has been fitted into that of the sisters who have gone before her, which I described above. Time will also trace how much further she may go with them. Presence or absence is a little thing, we are always under orders (even if we are free). For myself, I can only wish her further invitation into the depths of Jesus Christ.

Rootedness

Kara graduated from pre-school this morning. Lynn-nore and I filed in to join other parents, eventually being ushered into tiny, plastic, blue-and-red seats. (A Mr. P. sat in front of me, getting out his videocamera. His limbs irritatingly lept in the way of every photo-op!) Ogasa /OH-ga-sa/, a boy from Nigeria who joined the class late in the semester, remembered me and enthusiastically struck up a conversation. He had been at Kara's birthday party, and made the observation that "both our churches are brown." I liked him immediately, despite (or maybe because of) his maverick reputation. I told him he had a good memory. Then, standing in front of us, Mrs. Kemmer introduced the simple ceremony. Upon calling their name, each child would come up and stand beside her. Something nice would be said about each one, followed by the distribution of a little diploma and a prize. Kara's name was called first.

Kara, in khaki shorts, blue shoes and a red-polo, her hair done up behind her head in snaps of navy and white, made her way to the front. At first, she was playful - these were her friends - but the sight of the adults in the audience made her shy, and I think, too, she caught a bit of the melancholy that slips into every ceremony of life. Mrs. Kemmer put her hand on Kara's shoulder and took out a laminated piece of paper. (I was handed the camera and began a dogfight with Mr. P's instigatory elbow.) She read:

Knowledge. Kara is thirsty for knowledge. She is always interested in learning new things and is always asking good questions.
Actress. Kara is our class actress. She loves to play dress up and gives everyone names aside from their real ones.
Rootedness. Kara has a firm foundation in her faith. She has a real understanding of our Lord Jesus and certainly knows what he did for her on the cross. (Reader. I nearly lost it right there, and Lynn-nore with me.)
Achiever. (I don't remember what Mrs. Kemmer said here. I was still trying to put it together after "R".)

Afterward, we braved the rain and took Kara to Chucky Cheese. The staff - always horribly negligent - managed to lower my expectations even further by being completely invisible! Thankfully, there were some boys there near Kara's age. The three of them fell in together and disappeared howling and jostling up into the ceiling tubes. Lynn-nore wasn't feeling well. We ate lunch at home and then I went on to work. Tonight is a study night for me, maybe I'll finally get around to responding to the thread Jason and I have going on the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Nostalgia 1530

I am in a very Reformation-al mood today. The passing reign of King George, coupled with a teaching curricula which demands great attention to the details of that umbrella term "salvation", has made me hungry for the pure milk of the 1500's. (To add one more: the discussion with John G. concerning John Calvin's teaching on the fourth commandment.) To be honest, I was brought up in churches that always looked suspiciously at the Reformation in general, and John Calvin (e.g. He-who-should-not-be-Named) in particular. Oh yes, John Calvin and Beelzebub are synonyms to the ears of most low-churchmen!

There are some good reasons for this. Anabaptism, the basis for English and German Pietism and (closer to us) Revivalism, was not treated well by the Reformers and their heirs. John Calvin taught that heretics could lawfully be persecuted in civil courts and pursued by the military powers of the state. He was killed fighting in such a battle!

Nevertheless, the men and women who made up the Protestant Reformation, both the Reformers themselves, the Princes that supported them and the faithful which learned, listened and worshipped in their churches and schools, were people consumed by zeal for the preservation and transmission of the Gospel as it is taught in Scripture alone. Their tracts, sermons, books, pamphlets and lives are saturated with the same, and the soul is greatly fed by reading them.

To that end, I have been listening to several broadcasts of The White Horse Inn, a Reformation-friendly radio-talk program hosted by friend and theologian Michael Horton. (A scroll-down on their website gives access to a few interviews on the phenomenon of the Emergent Church.) Also, I recommend a look at the Augsburg Confession, available on the web with other documents in The Book of Concord.

Lynn-nore and I have actually been to Augsburg, to the site where the Emporer of the Holy Roman Empire Charles V, in the hopes of quickly settling this "religious" problem so that he could have more soldiers to wield against the Turks, summoned the Lutheran nobility to give a confession of their faith. Martin Luther's good friend Philip Melanchthon drafted a copy (with oversight from Luther himself, who corresponded with him from his hiding place at the Wartburg.) It was presented June 25, 1530 and is the first systematic presentation of the doctrines of the Reformation. I wish every Protestant would read it. Tellingly, the portion of the building which still stands serves as office space.

justification and a wing

"...as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh....[thus] it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ claims as His.

If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is His wife’s and at the same time, impart to His wife that which is His. For, in giving her His own body and Himself, how can He but give her all that is His? And, in taking to Himself the body of His wife, how can He but take to Himself all that is hers?"

That is Martin Luther, from his tract On the Freedom of a Christian Man (also called On Christian Liberty) . Here he lays out, in as clear an example as I've ever heard, the Reformation teaching on justification: Christ takes on our sin and its subsequent penalty; we take on his righteous law-keeping and its subsequent reward. That is the "what " of it. When it comes to the "how", theologians have since neutered the loving nature of this bone-of-my-bone exchange by assigning it the terminus technicus: "imputation." And, who knew, but this is the centre of a contemporary academic maelstrom! Apparently some, either taking their cue from Käsemann's new perspective on Paul or from exacting exegetical practice, don't agree with Luther's two-way exchange, but want to limit the whole to Christ's assumption of our sin. Instead of, then, being justified by Christ's lawfulness, believers are justified on the basis of their faith! Yipe!

In other news, Lynn-nore's new desk should have been delivered some time this morning. King George keeps up his incessant rattling. Dr. L. and I had a very pleasant lunch yesterday, at which point he got me started talking about the death of theological pedagogy. I remembered to be sad about Susan Ashton's fallen star, paralleling the loss of her delightfully crisp pronunciation into the currents of "the Nashville sound." And, finally, the DVD of Kenneth Branaugh's Much Ado About Nothing came in the mail - a birthday present. I popped it in and thought of who else but that hairy- and chicken-legged fellow Auntie Kara went out with in the early 90's. Still, what a movie! All the flesh, fruit, heat, innuendo, wit, melodrama and unfettered leisure that should go into a Shakespeare comedy and then some! (Oops - have I gotten too long winded for you, now? Sigh no more.)

Notes from a stiff-necked person

It started day-before-yesterday. I reached up to adjust the showerhead and next thing you know my neck seized up and has stayed stubbornly stiff ever since. We have tried cold, heat and over-the-counter medication but nothing seems to work. Time will eventually loosen it up. In the meantime, it is a good thing my chair at work reclines or I'd be staring at my desktop instead.

Today is Kara's last day of Pre-School. She went off this morning in kakhi shorts, a navy top and pigtails, sweet as could be. Lynn-nore has recently begun instituting a "yipee clipee" reward system at home. It must be working because I came in yesterday to find Kara cleaning her room in the hopes of a blue clipee. Also, Kara has recently learned a song listing the fruit of the Spirit, so she entertained me the other evening by hi-stepping atop her bed and singing it. Wonderful!

Lynn-nore herself is feeling huge. She's going on 34 weeks now, and, though I think she looks pregnant-cute, she describes herself as "a watemelon" or "an egg." Using some birthday money, it looks as if we will be able to purchase a new computer desk by the weekend. That will make her very happy, I'm sure, and get our computer up off the floor again.

As for me, I was happy to get an evening for research last night. Despite looking nearly straight-down, I brushed aside such annoyance and headed out the Sem. There was no one in the library, anyway. I needed to locate some detailed historical material on the practice and method of crucifixion in order to begin building the foundation for an article on certain aspects of Christ's death. You would be amazed both at the variety of cruelties that went by the description crucifixion, as well as the lack of materials that really address it from a completely historical angle. Apparently, too, they discovered a partial skeleton in Israel a few decades ago which still had nails through the bones of its ankles. The feet of the young man must have been nailed to either side of the pole, and a case could be made that he was upside down.

11:50 A.M. June 7, 2005

Here our temporary scene:
One curled leaf keeps watchful guard
above its guest - a chrysalis.
That one who worked to measure all surfaces
Has careful changed within her shell.
'Til brittle edges can caress the open breeze.

From such example let us speak;
And let mortality's iron-hearted magnet so repel
Until a race runs holy backward,
Tumbling on toward happy youth
And newborn for each passing moment.

So be not weighed by brittle past
But be borne up by the turning leaves;
The wind receives you -
Leap out! Leap out to happy time!

Summer Comes Rollin' In

It was becoming obvious by Saturday morning that Spring's incessant rain (reign) was over and Summer had arrived. The entire weekend was one magnificently hot, blue-skied hour after another. Kara and I spent a lot of time together, too. Saturday morning we got very wet washing cars. The afternoon was spent watching Peter Pan performed on an open, outdoor stage in the heart of a state park. (Lynn-nore was a trooper, walking the quarter-mile path through field and trees to the performance. On the way back, a toad hopped across her feet, and she stopped and showed it to a passing little boy.) I dropped Lynn-nore off at youth group and put Kara to bed. Going out later to split an appetizer with Sir Walter Raleigh & Queen Elizabeth. They were both in fine spirits! Unfortunately, the former developed a migrane halfway through the meal. One could actually see the headache-cloud descend upon his head! Ouch!

Wrapping up, due largely to the need to medicate the aformentioned, the girls went off to do their thing, and Sir Walter and I got onto the topic of "transparency." Transparency in the lingo of religious leadership is meant to convey humility: I am not a golden one, perfect and sound in all ways, but a flawed human being. One has nothing to hide. What is on the inside is reflected absolutely on the outside. Everything about the self is spread abroad indiscriminately, the good with the bad. The question was, is this an appropriate goal for church leadership? I strongly believe that it is not. There is an antiseptic, thereapeutic odor to it, betraying a psychological rather than Biblical origin. Truth is always mediated (fides quaerens intellectum), there is no such thing as transparency. It is an illusion, a utopia of the psyche. To deny this, and pursue the black-and-white of transparency raises many questions of motive, none of them healthy, most of them associated with either fear or naïveté, control or servitude.

Sunday church was warm, the pews packed. Afterward, we ate under the shade trees. Lynn-nore propped herself comfortably in a beach chair beside Joanna and Queen Elizabeth. Sir Walter Raleigh, David Brainerd, myself and others threw frisbee or played whiffleball. Kara and the other, smaller children dehydrated themselves picking flowers and chasing inchworms. All in all, a fine day. I look forward to an eternity of others just like it (but cooler, if it please You).

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

To put it bluntly: my new cubicle space is swelteringly HOT! We are right over a boiler pipe, and far from any sort of air conditioning vent. The air simply does not move! The company would make a fortune storing the Dead Sea Scrolls or other ephemera in a side-office or abandoned meeting room.

Prayer meeting last night was a welcome reprieve from the recent unpleasantness. I took five or six prayer request cards from the chapel at the Sem and passed them out beforehand. Sometimes, stressed and anxious about my own troubles, I would go up to the chapel and devote 20 minutes or so to prayer for hand-written requests like these. Doing so would always get the focus off myself and stir up compassion and a desire to see God bless others - a healthy change! My hope was that the same dynamic would operate last night. At first I wasn't so sure. This person was struggling in their marriage, that person for continence, another for a lonely and depressed son. Slowly, though, these needs lifted us out of our solipstic condition and reminded us of our duty ... "and the second is like unto it, that you should love your neighbor as yourself."

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

Thom took this one to show "Pregnant Mama" working on the crib!

After the desk fell apart and the crib was built this was the new configuration of the computer desk and a recliner! 

The new Nissan Pathfinder - aka - The Mom-Mobile! 

To get over a crying fit related to not being tall enough to hang the mobile, I suggested that Kara try out Caleb's crib to see if he would like it. The trick worked and she got over being sad and enjoyed the fun of seeing things from this different perspective!

The Pathfinder

My Dad and Karen were up this weekend visiting. We put them on a plane this afternoon. Behind them they leave a score of photos, some good food, good conversation and a Nissan Pathfinder, which will replace the Honda. Lynn-nore and I are still stunned by their generosity, which is an extension of God's own goodness. But, aside from that, I miss them. It is difficult living this far from family. I am always in a funk for a day or so after family leaves.

Nevertheless, a late-Happy Birthday to Auntie Kara. We love you! Miscellaneous: Caleb's cribset came in the mail today. Lynn-nore set it up so that Dad & Karen could see it this morning. We really love it, and will post a photo here soon. I really like the new look, Cuz. Your idea? Pre-ordered the new Harry Potter last week & am counting the minutes to July. Could this Felt-guy be any more boring? (Yawn) Thanks for the mail, Michael.

"I don't want to be your friend!"

Kara came home from school yesterday very upset. During that day, one of her friends had angrily turned on her and said, "I don't want to be your friend!" The comment, though probably made without any real understanding, went deep.

A few months ago, again at school, a little boy who had been one of Kara's closest friends did the same thing. His parents were moving, and on the last day, he says to her, "I don't want to be your friend anymore." No doubt, he was just going through some kind of kid-grief about the move. Maybe by saying that he was actually saying how much he would miss her. Nevertheless, that isn't what he said; and what he said hurt.

Lynn-nore, Joanna and I have been trying to help Kara understand these things against a larger perspective. There is the "they didn't mean it" approach. There is the direct "tell them that hurt your feeling approach." Let's face it - this doesn't get any easier. The Scripture is full of advice about this very problem: Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing (1 Pet. 3:9). When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it (1 Cor. 4:12). Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you (Luke 6:27-28).

I am also reminded of the little way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: "I didn't confine myself to saying a lot of prayers for her, this sister who made life such a tug-of-war for me; I tried to do her every good turn I possibly could." (Yes, her habit comes in a habit, but what of it? "Was it from you that God's Message first went forth, or is it to you only that it has come?" (1 Cor. 14.36))

How much lon-ger/Lo-ung-er/LONG..ERRRR!!!

Lunch with a friend today at a local pub. We would have taken the window seat but this 8-yr-old kid was dancing around waiting for something (maybe another one or two evil glances from me.) As it was, we wound up talking the entire time about scientific reactions to postmodernism and never got hold of anything substantial. Really, lunch is not a bad time for investigative conversation, but you have to go with intent. There is no time for dodgy, indirect ramp-up. Small talk can't have a place at the table; you just blurt it out and get going, proffer some subject and then move on. Gone are the days when Wes and I could drive out to Burger King after class and spend two hours digesting before we actually hit on anything.

Lynn-nore called me on the phone today to double-check her country-artist-to-their-lyric accuracy. This would never occur to me. I would not think, "I wonder who is singing this. It sounds like ex-Journey frontman Steve Perry, but I don't think he's been on the radio for over a decade. Wow, I just can't place it. Hmmm....Oh - wait - I'll use the cellphone and call John G. and ask him to look it up on his computer there at work. Yeah, that's what I'll do." [fumbles with cellphone, eyes darting between road and CRT display.] (ring ring) "Hello?" "Yeah, John!" "Heeeey, unusual to hear from you this time of the day! Whassup?" "Well, listen, I'm not calling to chat, I want you to find out who sings this song on the radio for me." "Song..?" "Yes, I swear it sounds like Steve Perry!... Oh, wait, I'm at a dead spot. Can you hear me? Hello? Can you hear me now, I've gone past that big water tower. Steve Perry....of Journey, remember? He did that solo thing, right? No I don't know what he's been up to since then. Can you look it up on the computer for me? Google it or something. I don't remember the name of the song, but the chorus has this line: "Wait/I want to say/Today hmm..hmmm stray hay my way --something something -- /how much lo-ng-er/No lo-n-ger/No lon-ge-rrr!"

See, this scenario never even occurs to me. But, it occurs to my wife and silly as it sounds, and as frivolous as her call seemed to me at the time, it was good to hear her voice: "Hold on - did you say Steve Perry?"

Living more on Sea than Land

We are living more in sea than land; the rain pounding us for days and days under grey skies. Indoor spaces are dens where light stays in its orange spectrum and corners are rounded off and dark. When the rain stops, there are so many sounds you just listen. Talk is forbidden. Creation gurgles, whines, whistles, putters, flows, sighs, drips and whirls; what can anyone possibly add?

I saw the ocean myself, like a piece of beaten tin smashed and discarded, nearly up over the road. A few tied dinghys here and there were stretching bold and tall. Cars crept along, their headlights like faded advertizing. Careful! some animal power might just wake up and sweep up the road, houses, a Dunkin Doughnuts, that rain slicker'd dog-walker, all of us together down into its greedy, open throat.

Reading: Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy
Hearing: John Coltrane "A Love Supreme"

Sean Connery taught me Access

Sean Connery taught me Microsoft Access today. Well, not really - but he was a Scotsman, and he had a grey beard like Sean Connery. He was also kind of ticked off most of the time, like said Connery, and he wore a funny hat like the same does in all the paparazzi press. Tell you what though, he could TEACH Access. Forms, sub-forms, reports, queries, you name it, we took it on!

Lynn-nore and I had a big talk tonight about my whole thing about "the poor and the flesh." Okay, see, all of my life I have been part of churches that just can't figure out what any of us are supposed to be doing. There is a lot of talk (especially guilt-talk) about should, but nothing very effective; nothing real. At first, it used to make me mad at the church. I even swore off churches altogether cir. 1992. Then, one day, I realized that the problem wasn't this or that church, it was the entire church militant everywhere that had this problem! What does it mean to be the church in the West as it enters into late-modernity? I'm simplifying it to a great extent here, but my best guess so far is summed up in these two words: "flesh" "poor." Karl Barth, following Calvin, said that the last thing human beings want to to do is actually encounter the living God. Religion may even be the best way of avoiding God yet invented - but even religion comes to a full stop before those two little words. Yes, only the cross can stand and say anything in the face of those two nouns, and it says to me that there may be something there after all. I have little idea what it really means to truly advance upon either one, but then again, neither does anyone else. Most of what passes for ministry is one of two things: the application of law (re: using a list to avoid God & make you better than your neighbor, like a list of how many times you've read your Bible or whether you are tithing) or therapy (using your hang-ups to avoid God, or trying to discover and vomit out some inner knot in the hopes that it will help you love better, or that it will give you some power over anxiety or, even worse, using intuitive insight to gain power over other people, or at least reduce them to some innocuous, self-gratifying taxonomy). Really, I didn't mean to go there....

Practically, Kara's getting over an ear infection. Lynn-nore's uncomfortable at 31 weeks along. I'm off to try and order Sunday School material on lifeway's website. I'm also advancing on Greek participles again, ha ha!

Easy answers betray no being

On the way in this morning, I was talking to a co-worker who was doing a little complaining. His beef was that a 20-grand kitchen remodeling has become a 40-grand re-do of kitchen & fireplace. Projects always double, he said - echoing my Dad's basic speech on projects: double the time, double the cost. "That's the way every project is," said my companion as we parted ways toward our separate areas, "might as well just plan for it from the outset." I laughed knowingly. Yet, now it occurs to me that I fundamentally do not ever, at any time, follow this advice. What would my attitude about life be if I simply believed this simple truth? When we lose our perspective about what the important projects are, we stumble and fall into the boiling caterwaul of competing needs.

I am God's important project - if only because God promised himself I would be. That really has little to do with me. I can barely swim high enough to begin dreaming about a self not completely dominated by the cultural tsunami of the past, how can I know anything about God's project? That project is more often seen in the embarassingly simple, the "at hand" than in some kind of machinery of Hegelian Geist. Burrow down under trust if you can. (You want to.) Hear a snatch of hope and see if you can plug your ears. (I doubt it.)

I have been listening to an interveiw with Samantha Chang; a writer talking about writing. This is why Martin Heidegger and phenomenology have caught my eye. There's something about them that is what Ms. Chang is talking about, that thing that art-making makes of you. Practical Christianity is a way of reading. Theology is a way of writing. Worship is a way of speaking good to one's neighbor. Altogether extraordinary in the ordinary. Reading, writing and talking - that's what real life is about. A good day always has these ingredients, ordinary bits of this and that thrown into the comfort food that ends a day's work. Theology is archaeology, now. Theology has been reduced and marginalized into academics marching off to dig up what other, living people did. I feel a pulse, though. There's something alive underneath this Lazarus coat. Sounds like my own heart.

Lynn-nore called me at 1:18pm. I'd been thinking about the day Kara was born - at 1:09pm 5 years ago. I am more real to that experience now than I was then. It is richer now than it was then, and it continues to be richer. Dead things are simply that, but living things grow and change with time.

I can't begin to explain to the fellow members of my church the source of their ills and mine. Complexity has overwhelmed us -all of us, once and twice-born. There isn't an easy answer to be found anywhere, and there hasn't been for a very long time. Distrust all easy answers. Of course, then, again, there is the in-your-face of the ordinary, boring, repetitive, even annoying demands to put down your selfishness and care about your neighbor. That is not sexy. Americans like to take off down the highway, chasing dreams of glory, hoping that the daily work of home and hearth isn't all there is to living. Americans war, build, buy, explore and, in the end, winding up embracing the truth that home and hearth are all there is. There it is again, the sacred in the simple. Reading, writing, talking, singing, that is enough for any life - to want more is kind of an idolatry that misses the mark in pursuit of some transcendence without immanence; very God without very Man.

Kara sat down today and decided to compose a little music. Although as of right now she only knows that the notes have names, we decided to pull out a keyboard and show her what each of the notes sound like. Now we can truly expect great things as our little composer puts it all together! 

Beautiful butterflies on a pretty new dress! Thanks Omi! 

Pretty flowers, denim and lace. Thanks TT! 

Cupcakes and Ice Cream Parlors! Thanks Omi! 

Cutie Green Capris from Grandma! 

Awake, O Sleeper

Ugh! Awake! - how long has it been? Stumbling around. My face looks unremembered, pale and distorted. The impotent whine of the bathroom fan knocks about like a frustrated poltergeist. I am Lazarus shaking off the wrappings of the dead. I am Beethoven raging in his Ninth Symphony upon the unforgiving bars of deafness. I am a scattered pile of weathered bones provoked by prophecy and restless. And Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship" booms in my ears like a thunderclap of the Messianic Kingdom.

Attack of the Giggles!

As most of you know, Kara is turning five on Thursday, and evidently what comes with five is a little tiny look at what comes at 15! An illustration:

Last week I was driving Kara to school and she was complaining about not wanting to go to school, but just wanting to stay home. I asked her why and she returned to a conversation she had been focusing on for a few days regarding a little boy named Andrew who was chasing her on the playground. Daddy had already tried to explain to her that this is how boys show that they like you and want to be your friend, but Kara was not convinced. So there she sat in the backseat saying to me "Andrew chases me" as explanation for not wanting to go to school and poof! out of no-where I had a momentary mommy-insight and I called her on it - "Kara, you LOVE it!" I said. Her face exploded into the biggest smile ever. "Kara, you love that Andrew chases you! You think it's great." I said and she couldn't deny it. She just sat there blushing and grinning in a smile that is not all that unfamiliar to me from my own youth. We laughed together as only mommy and daughter can over "boys." And then we just let it go. No teasing, no words of anyone k-i-s-s-i-n-g-ing in any trees, but we knew how she really felt and we enjoyed sharing this little secret.

Today we sat down to fill out birthday party invitations for Kara's friends and classmates. We wrote cards for Christopher, David, Katie, etc. and then we came to Andrew. One letter into writing his name and the giggles took over my formerly normal pre-adolescent child, and then the foreshadowing of days to come showed up. The giggles. The beat-red blushing and her hand flying to her face to cover the grin she couldn't let go of. It was a priceless moment. I treasure that my little girl is a happy child experiencing all of the joys of childhood, even the innocence of giggles at a sweet little boy in her class. It's good to see life through the eyes of a child once in while.

It's a prettier place!

It is Joanna's birthday, but in the meantime..

Part 1: The Discomforting Surmise. Can you imagine sleeping next to an uncomfortable person? Maybe you've been uncomfortable in your sleep before, tossing and turning, squishing your pillow around under your head, throwing out legs and limbs in an attempt to improve circulation and what not. Now let's just say this person is pregnant. Does that make it harder to sleep? Let's say they are 7-months pregnant. Aha! Now you're getting it. Now let's say they have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to improve their situation, even if it means you wake up in the middle of blurting out an accusatory "What the crap?!!" (Not that this has happened recently. This is all just surmise. And the annoying and accusatory manner could have been occassioned by a lengthy dream in which I was in danger of being scammed by a beautiful woman for my credit cards. Yes, and if I hadn't awoken -- again, all in surmise -- to express verbal annoyance, I'd have been the prime witness in an FBI sting operation...but never mind that.)

Part 2. Making the best of an awful night sleep during your day job. For anyone who is interested, I've been pleasantly distracted all day by the proceedings of the World Council of Churches' ecumenical conference on the Holy Spirit and world missions, going on right now in Athens, Greece. My favorite speech so far has been University of Birmingham's Kirsteen Kim, in her plenary address, "How do we Know When the Holy Spirit Comes? The Question of Discernment." Also a favorite is an eschatological paragraph on hope included in Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos' May 9 invocation. If you want to check out the resources available, which is everything from streaming audio to downloadable Bible Studies, you can go to Mission 2005.

Good Times. Real Life.

It was a blustery, rain-soaked weekend. Kara and I were out in it for most of the day on Saturday picking up some things for Mothers Day. We had a good time being together. I felt sorry for her everytime we would make a dash for it. Each gust of wind would blow her hood off and her hair would get soaked. Luckily, the last stop we picked up a half-dozen multicolored balloons. She had a good time playing with these on the way home - it took her mind off of being wet.

Sunday we ate at Cracker Barrel - a real treat. Lynn-nore had catfish and okra. I had grits, biscuits, gravy and country ham. Topped off with sweet tea, and it was a meal that kept us smiling for the rest of the day. Even Kara ate well. I was glad for the good food and happy company, because emotionally it was a tough day. Here is a familiar, but all-too-important Word for Mothers Day:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

Kara the Brave!

This morning, Kara had her 5-year shots. Ouch! She was very brave, and didn't flail nearly as much as she could have (extrapolated from other meltdown experiences.) Lynn-nore and I were there too sooth her along, and I held her arms so she wouldn't hurt herself jerking away from the needle. All-in-all, I'm glad it is over. I was dreading it for her, even as she was dreading it.

I'm in the middle of moving cubicles, and hoping that David received my message and we will be able to meet this afternoon. Prayer meeting last night was very well attended, and extremely submissive in tone to the will of God. I didn't know what to expect. But, God was present to hear and he dealt with us gently.

Do you feel love?

I woke up, to use a line from Homer, "full of spirits." It would be a good day to write, to think, to journal, to email, to talk. But, there is work to do. We "modern" people are so confused. Culture is so big that it can't be stopped! Irony is the only way of pausing for a moment. We have many "goods and services" but how many opportunities for a good, long chat with a friend?

I woke up with U2's album War in my head, "New Year's Day" to narrow, and the Edge's supremely even and beautiful distortion underneath the chorus to be the thing itself. My gosh, what an album is War? Written just as they were beginning to find their musical legs, and in the very middle of Bono's (Paul's) wedding to his childhood sweetheart, Ali, War can only be described as an exercise in liberation theology. War means that holy war against violence, poverty, deception, greed and political power which can only be fought in faith, hope and love because its outcome has already been promised. War is the Kingdom of God, and in particular that portion of the church known as the Church Militant, chafing painfully against the knotty bark of this present age.

Here's how Jürgen Moltmann put it in the introduction to Theology of Hope.

"Christian eschatology speaks of Jesus Christ and his future. It recognizes the reality of the raising of Jesus and proclaims the future of the risen Lord - ‘He is our hope’ (Col. 1.27). In thus announcing his future in the world in terms of promise, they point believers in him towards the hope of his still outstanding future. In the promises, the hidden future already announces itself and exerts its influence on the present through the hope it awakens...faith can have nothing to do with fleeing the world, with resignation and with escapism...the man who thus hopes will never be able to reconcile himself with the laws and constraints of this earth, neither with the inevitability of death nor with the evil that constantly bears further evil. The raising of Christ is not merely a consolation to him in a life that is full of distress and doomed to die, but it is also God’s contradiction of suffering and death, of humiliation and offence, and of the wickedness of evil. Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering. If Paul calls death the ‘last enemy’(I Cor. 15.26), then the opposite is also true: that the risen Christ, and with him the resurrection hope, must be declared to be the enemy of death and of a world that puts up with death."

To make a huge leap, this is largely why calls for "evangelize one's neighbors" feel so sour to me. In correspondence with Karl Marx's observation that capitalism reduces all personal relationships to business transactions, such emphases do not seem to value and address the whole person. My neighbor does not receive me (nor I him), but merely my "product." Doing this to the gospel - which is a truth far more dense with living reality than whatever kind of thing human beings are - is like limiting one's experience of a Monet to the black & white reproductions in a 1960's Introduction to Art textbook. Evangelism keeps me safe, love makes me vulnerable. I may learn the techniques of evangelism - in a manner analogous to the way a salesperson learns and perfects their own skills - and I have done this before. When pressed, I'm a very decent salesman. But I have a long way to go when it comes to love. (And I ask, what is this Dear John letter that begins "I love you..."? How do those words go together?) Bono asks many many times (of others and of himself) through the entire corpus of U2's discography, "Where's the love?" or, "Do you feel love?"

Baby don't fight
We can talk this thing through
It's not a big problem
It's just me and you
You can call or I'll phone
The TV is still on
But the sound is turned down
And the troops on the ground
Are about to dig in

And I wonder where is the love?
Where is the love?
Where is the love?
Where is the love?
Love and peace("Love and Peace or Else" U2)

Walked out this morning without my coffee!!

The "um-resignation" of our pastor has been the topic of thought and discussion over the last 48 hours-nearly to the exlusion of everything else. I am hoping to talk to him directly today and begin to get some clarity to unanswered questions.

There has also been some news from work. Myself and fellow editors are moving departments. We’re leaving Business Development and going over to Product Management. One of our number, chosen yesterday and a good choice, becomes our Managing Editor, so that the entire management structure we worked under on Monday morning no longer exists. A move in geography happens today or tomorrow. I'm going the distance of about 50' to a location more in the center of things (re: warmer in winter and on raindy days). There is more opportunity all round in this new position, so it is good news. My workload is going to increase about two times its present volume, though.

Wes' birthday was yesterday. He's 35!! How weird is that? Also, in other assorted bits, my cousin Carson must have fallen down a well because he hasn't updated his blog since April 22. At the same time, it is probably finals week for him - but is that really an excuse? Lynn-nore is doing a good bit of groaning these days, but it isn't enough to stop the cute-pregnant thing. Kara has a bird-watching exercise due tomorrow, so I'm hoping the troupe at home will take advantage of the weather and do some scopus aviatus. I'm back in touch with my roomate, Jason, and his wife. Lynn-nore discovered her email address in an alumni database. As for me, I totally walked out this morning without my coffee, and I really miss it!

The Magic Sunday - beautiful and strange

Yesterday was good and strange. Good in that Kara and I went to see The Magic Flute, good in that worship went great, the worship team was having a good time in the music, and good in that Lynn-nore and Caleb are doing well. My third book review is also finished, and I had fun writing it. The day was strange in that Kara had to be taken out of the service again and in that our pastor um-resigned at the end of his sermon.

The Magic Flute was so much fun! Kara and I drove into town, fought traffic and made it with 9 minutes to spear, I in slacks and tie, she in a pretty dress and tights. I could tell that she was excited. She was on her best behavior and, as we waited, holding hands in line with other parents and children, she kissed my hand and twirled holding to my finger. The ampitheater was nothing special, but the staging was beautiful. Deep purples, blues and silver for the Queen of the Night. Warm reds, oranges and flashing gold for Sorastro. I'm glad that I've been pumping almost nothing but music from Flute into Kara and I over the last two weeks, she songs were familiar enough for us to enjoy them, and the plot well-known enough for me to whisper bits of it to Kara as we watched. She was captivated! She sat on my lap and looked around at all the children, and also at the orchestra pit, where she spotted a Bass as it was carefully lowered in by crouching musician. When the music started, she leaned in and only got bored once, when Prince Tamino was going on-and-on about his love for the Princess Pamina. She didn't get the humor as much, but she's only five. On the way out, each child received a helium balloon. Kara's was a minty green. Walking the few blocks to the parking garage, Kara quizzed me on her favorite character until I finally guessed the Princess. Afterward, she urged me to find a "shortcut" home.

As for the pastor thing... I'm still of so many minds about this. I missed most of the sermon, for one reason or another, and I haven't had the opportunity to talk to any of my deacon families yet about it. In short - more thinking, praying and information gathering is in order in the near future. I was praying this morning about it. Please keep our church in prayer.

Mutiny on the HMS Bounty

Today is an anniversary of the 1789 mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty, that could be it. Also, we are in the midst of April's deluge, going on now for several days. That, too, may explain it. Whatever the reason, Kara decided to play with a ladies' razor last night during her bath.

Joanna was the first one to discover it. Kara was splashing around, and she went up to make sure water wouldn't be spilling down the stairs anytime soon. The resulting conversation, which included "Don't tell Mommy," and, "I don't think this is something that can stay just between us," brought both Lynn-nore and I running. Oh my gosh!!! A razor!!! In the bath!! With my daughter!!! (It took me an hour to calm down.)

Lucky for everyone, razors are made to frustrate the troubled (and the ignorant.) Kara did manage to put a deep cut in one of her fingers and shallow ones in two others. But her hands were so waterlogged that the wound was not bleeding, even after we cleaned and bandanged it. They were beginning to sting as she went to bed, and will probably trouble her all day today. We took away some priviledges, just to be consistent, and prayed about it with Kara. She'll be telling this story when she's older, that's for sure.

Did I mention, too, that Kara was up every 2-hours last night? All of us were dragging this morning. I did put 580 words down last night, though, so am feeling good about that today.

On April 18th we got a bonus Daddy-Stay-Home Day in the middle of the week when Thom took a vacation day to enjoy the beautiful weather we were having! We all spent a great day at the beach visiting summer! 

Kara and the "Garden" she and Joanna built. Joanna arranged a square of drift wood and Kara "planted" sticks for flowers. On our hot day at the beach Mommy and Kara walked down to her Beach Garden and the first thing Kara did was "tend" the garden by removing little bits of things that had blown in from this way and that. She was quite proud of her work!

This is Daddy the Elephant and out of view is Kara running and laughing as Elephant Daddy slowly chased her around the house! 

Daddy and Kara playing with her new paddle game from Grandmommie and Grandmother.  

Kara and Mommy at our picnic at Endicott Park.  

The long-awaited Star Wars Lego creations brought to you by Lynn-nore and the efforts of Sir Walter on the evening of the Oscars. Kara is now convinced that we play with her toys whenever they're visiting and she's sleeping! 

Solipschtick Take 1

The trees in Ipswich are showing that transparent, yellow-green beloved by Lynn-nore's Mom. I noticed several of them out the window of the breakroom during lunch today. I'd huddled next to a windowsill in order to warm in the incoming sunlight. On my lap, the book-of-the-week, with Eberhard Busch just beginning to lay out an insight into Barth's teaching of human responsibility in the light of grace that very well may update a conundrum faced by John G. and myself that goes back over 15 years! The windowsill was just large enough to serve as a convenient shelf for pen, highlighter and lunch, some of Lynn-nore's shepherd's pie from yesterday evening.

Until this week, my break reading has consisted of a little compendium of Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto, selections from Das Capital, Engel's English-language tract on socialism etc. It is hard to know what to do with Marx. But, he is at least teaching me one thing: the secret to wealth. As a Wall Street banker said when asked if he'd ever read Marx, "Oh, everyone here reads Marx. He understands capitalism!" The secret is simply this: wherever you can, own a means of production - property, stock, bonds, a business, etc.

This is one of my weaknesses, though. Honestly, I don't get things until they are explained to me on such a fundamental basis! Youth Ministry was awful for this. I spent most of my stint helping Lynn-nore trying to figure out just what the point of it all was. That was me, to cite something else, at pep rally's trying to figure out why everyone is getting so excited over something which resets every year and doesn't really *do* anything. I remember clearly Wes and I resolving to really "get into" a pep rally once and just being totally unable to do it, much to our own dissapointment. I have to have the suppositions down before I can really do or understand nearly everything, and this often causes immense interior and exterior frustration. On the other hand, mastery of anything is about majoring on the fundamentals, right? And don't we live in a world where less smoke and more sober and creative thinking would go a long way? (Ultimately, I determined that youth ministry is actually another word for the dual function of baby sitting those with children and removing children from the sight of those without. Teens scare people and make them uncomfortable. Come youth ministers and take these teens elsewhere! In short, youth ministry does far more harm than good. Teens would be much better served by being integrated into the real body life of the community, taking on responsibilities and learning with and from real adults than in being shunted off into a ghetto until they are old enough.)

Lynn-nore and I attended our fourth (?) session at Beacon on issues in parenting. (I may have referred to this a month ago.) Last night's session was all about discipline and, frankly, it made me think. Want to guess who the parental softy is in our house? This doesn't mean that Lynn-nore and I don't believe the same things - actually, we match up point for point on many goals and values (a real strength of our marriage is that we at least share the fundamentals - it is the communication of our mutual satisfaction with these that trips us up.) Rather, I tend to be a little softer on some things which I probably shouldn't. For example, I give in to the "just one more kiss/hug" lines at bedtime far too often. Whoops, don't you love/hate it when you get to talking about your kid(s) so that you start missing them?

What comes after Z !

So Kara says to me yesterday as we are sitting at the kitchen table and "doing scrapbooking" (her words for the times when I sit and work on some scrapbooking and she cuts paper with fancy scissors and uses stickers and plays with my square hole-punch and chats with Mommy) "I don't want to go back to school tomorrow. I want another stay-at-home day." To which I say, "But Sweetie, you need to go back to school to see what Mrs. Kemmer is going to teach you about this week." To which she replies, "I don't want to." To which I reply, taking a different tactic, "But don't you want to see your friends, Katie, and Andrew, and Josiah will all be there?" Again she declines. We continue this conversation for a few more moments without gaining any real ground. So, a few minutes go by and she pipes up with another question "Mama, why do I have to go back to school?" And I say, becoming very pragmatic about the whole thing, "Because it's a school day." And she says, truly puzzled, "But, Mama, why do I have to go back, we already finished the letter 'Z'." And she's right! The last week before school vacation they finished up the alphabet, clearly summing up all that a "4 1/2 girl" needs to know!! I tried my best to explain that there might be more that Mrs. Kemmer could teach them about other things, and we let it go. A few hours later at dinner we revisited this conversation. Kara jumps in with a brand new thought. "I know what we can learn now," she says. She thinks for a moment and I can see her mouthing the alphabet song as she's thinking. She goes through it twice and then announces, "We can learn about 'now I know my ABC's'." For that's what comes after Z!

Whence the delay?

Wow, I haven't posted on this for almost a week- what's with that? Well, my family. We had a great week together! I took Wednesday off, and we spent the whole day at the beach, joined at lunchtime by SWR & QE. Kara and I lathered on so much sunblock that, despite being in it for 7 hours or so, neither of us burnt (or, in my case, colored) at all! It is a good thing we had so much rain over the last few days, or we would have been out in it again!

As it is, rain allowed time for Lynn-nore to continue making progress in her efforts to change our 2bdrm into room enough for 3. Caleb is only getting larger, 2lbs now, and he's going to demand some space when he arrives! A few months ago, she fussed and measured everything out, and came up with a design that not only made room but improved every room in the process. This last weekend, the bedroom and the basement received the lion's share of attention. I'm quite blessed to have such an industrious and thrifty wife (and one who overlooks my protestations about carrying things to the basement at 9pm on a Sunday evening.)

Kara is preparing for something of another sort. A week from today, the Boston Lyric Opera is putting on a 1-hour presentation of Mozart's Magic Flute (De Zauberflöte) designed especially for children. (Mozart is Kara's favorite.) The cost is extremely low for any cultural event: $15 adults, $10 children (where local church performances run $20 for adults!) The opportunity is too great not to go, even if the material would be better appreciated a few years from now, and even if money is already tight. Some things have to be done for the sake of life. Thus, I've been playing the story and music for Kara over the last week. My hope is that if she can recognize the music and knows the general direction of the story that it will make sitting through the performance that much easier. I wasn't sure how effective my passive exposure plan was going until she climbs out from one of her "houses" yesterday and says, "Daddy, is this still the Magic Flute?"

As for me, I have a 1200-word review due by May 1 for Blackwell: Karl Busch's The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology (Eerdman's 2004). I'm halfway through the book itself so reading time is paramount over the next few days. But, if you want to know where my brain is increasingly over the next few days, there you go.

Otherwise, I had a chance yesterday to teach James 4:1-10, and, surprise surprise, there is a triune structure to it, bookcased in with an intro and conclusion which presuppose prayer. Despite my clumsiness, I really knew the Spirit was with me as the class was going. It is a good thing to teach the Scripture - not any human performance, but God's effective opportunity.

A perfect three days

A perfect three days, that's what this weekend was. EBSCO gave its employees Monday off, simultaneous with school vacation (Kara's out of school), thus, from Friday's perspective, what lay ahead was a vacation! God also helped: the weather was beautiful. We went Yard-Sale-ing, picnicing, we ate excellent Japanese food, saw movies, sat out in parks with friends, threw frisbee, and layed on the beach. As Lynn-nore said yesterday, "I'm glad we aren't moving this Summer."

Back to the beach again, yesterday Kara was playing and I got up from the blanket (Lynn-nore was seconds from sleep), to walk with her. She kept talking about "my garden," and, "my bamboo garden that Nanna and I made." The image I had was of a few sticks stuck (no doubt) too close to the water line. Kara was so excited, she insisted on leading, so I followed her padding steps across the wet sand. The breakers were so beautiful yesterday, lifting, first a deep blue, then a jade green, swirling with foam as they swept upon the shore and crested, then a roar as each folded into the whipped cream surf. "C'mon Daddy!" says Kara. She led up and away, rising out of the wet sand, across the rough, and up on the loose beach. Our feet when "Rrrrt - Rrrt - Rrrt" against the sand as we walked. She was moving so fast, I was working just to keep up. "Here it is," she squeals," here is my garden!" I hadn't noticed until we were right on it, but there, opposite the surf and tucked in against the sea wall, was a perfect square of set wooden planks (Joanna must have dragged them over into place), and in their midst a 2' ring of dried sea sticks and grasses poking up out of the sand to make a miniature forest. Kara was very excited to show it to me, and I bragged about it and fussed over it. I found an unusually shaped, hand-length strip of pine and ceremonially added it to her collection. Kara sat cross legged next to her garden, in a corner of the marked out square, and began to lecture me on the qualities of bamboo. "Daddy," she says, "do you know what color bamboo is?" "Yellow," I said. "No, Bamboo is green." she answered, beginning to fold several lengths of stiff sea grass in her hands. "Kara," I said, "Do you know what animal loves bamboo?....Panda Bears." "Really?" she said, very interested in this news. "Then I am Snow White and you are a Panda Bear." I was a Panda Bear for the rest of the day.

Kara read recently of the incident in which Jesus is confronted by the demon-possessed wild man at the tombs and Jesus sends the demons inside him into a herd of pigs. This, combined with several other references, including the line in the Lord's Prayer: "deliver us from the evil one." All have combined to make Satan and his minions a big topic in Kara's nightly routine. "How did the wild man get demons in him?" was last night's question. "Did I ever have demons in me?" Honestly, this is an uncomfortable topic. Most of my "work" in Christianity involves digging out from under false ideas and un-critical ways of assuming and projecting things into the Bible and Christian beliefs that aren't there. Therefore, I'm much more interested in a discussion of Luther's discovery of grace than I am in hearing a lecture on demonology. The Scripture isn't really interested in informing us about realms outside our own in any material way. Sure, it may speak figuratively and poetically - but even in those interests, the choice of doing so suggests great hesitancy. The gospels record how Jesus talked a good deal about the Devil and how he drove out any number of demons, but they only do so to underscore their claim that the King has come, he is overthrowing his enemies and establishing his Kingdom. In other words, it is about Jesus not about the devils. Trying to bring this around, what this means is that I can't say I'm completely comfortable talking about this with Kara. The point is not to fill the world with devils, but to realize who we are as heirs of the True Heir. I don't want to conjure up a world for her that sounds more like childhood fantasy (and therefore something to be put aside) as she grows into adulthood. We have enough time with our own flesh, truly, with its unhealthy, self-destructive and selfish desires. This is the arena of my interest, perhaps one day I'll arrive at the point where demonology is relevant to my experience, but I suspect in no time soon.

you're just a homeowner with a low mortgage

I started working on a third book review last night. It is another introduction to Karl Barth, but this time the scope is much larger than the Church Dogmatics. The prose is so stylish it nearly approaches a belles lettres, and betrays Eberhard Busch as a master of his subject. I'm not really sure what the next writing project will be. It would be nice to get paid for something. Maybe I will approach Barnes & Noble again and see if they have anything, or maybe it is time to branch out a little further.

Kara has a new car! Yes, a lovely, hand-crafted model with real Elmer's glue trim and a cardboard frame just big enough for one. I think it resembles a classic Audi in design, with bits of yarn thrown in for sport. I hope that we will be able to post a photo of Kara with her new C-Box coupe.

Lynn-nore's parents were talking about moving up here again last night. Just remember, everywhere else if you win a million dollars, you are a millionaire. Up here, if you win a million, you're just a homeowner with a low mortgage. Why not open a decent bookshop in Germany (they could sure use one, given how hard it was to find anything descent when we were there)? It could be a family business!

Kara fell out of bed

Kara finally did it last night. At 3:30am, I'm awakened by cries of "Help! Help!" Rushing in to Kara's room, I discover her. She hasn't actually fallen but, due to the tightness of her sheet, is actually suspended against the side of her mattress. She's honestly more startled than hurt, and quickly goes back to sleep.

Earlier, at 1:30am, she woke up having a bad dream about being bitten by an alligator. I sat with her and stroked her hair and we prayed until she could go back to sleep again. All in all, a much-interrupted evening.

Lynn-nore and I are still raking in the benefits of the marriage conference this last weekend. The conference was an outreach of Family Life Ministries. It was a very valuable experience. All range of couples were there, from newlyweds to grey-heads. The best part about it was getting to spend so much focused time with Lynn-nore. It really felt like a second honeymoon! We have had our rough patches, it is true, but neither of us believe those will ultimately define our life together. The conference gave us a vocabulary of concepts and ideas which we have already begun putting in place. I would highly recommend any couple attending one of these Family Life weekends.

34 @ April 11

April 11 is a rough day. It is Tabitha's birthday. She is (or might be) 34 today. I never expect it to be hard, but it is. And there is no remedy, save just living through it until it recedes into forgetting for another few hundred days.

I don't know - ask God

Lynn-nore will tell you (I hear Amen's from many others) that I find it very hard to focus on more than a handful of things at once. The number may be as high as five, but I suspect it may hover around 3, growing less as one of those becomes more demanding or complex. Yet, as so many of you have reminded me, usually through your patient but self-evident frustration at what probably appears to you as "procrastination" (which it usually is not), life is infinitely more complex than that. Believe me, I know.

The blind know that the color green exists. The lame know that others walk. We know, today, that there are cities of teeming thousands sharing the planet with us right now which we will never visit or even hear about. And, sometimes, we are aware of this, aren't we? We step outside of our experience and are aware of other, larger experiences; we are just human beings, after all, and finite. Moments like this, illuminative moments, always give me a weird feeling, like the moment of weightlessness before falling. I had just such an experience in the last 12 hours.

Last night, laying down to go to bed, Lynn-nore twining her fingers into mine, that feeling just swept over me. I felt absolutely alone, held against some infinite space only by her fingers. I used to get this way when I was a kid, and then, later, in college (college was a period of daily buffeting by this feeling). It is a sudden loss of meaning; like that woman who lost one of her talents. The usual solution in such cases is prayer - there is no space, even the empty space of existence, that is not full-up with God. "What is man that you are mindful of him?"

Then, this morning, I was getting up, sitting there on the side of the bed, late in awaking, trying to remember what day it was. Lynn-nore woke up and said, groggily, "I was having this awful dream that we were fighting." And, as if in protest, she says, "I love you," and then goes back to sleep. I turned back to contemplate rising, but in my mind I was thinking, "I am here now, I was in that existential space, and just a moment ago, as I was waking, there was a *me* fighting with Lynn-nore in her dream."

Work is the public face. You do what you do, drive, park, find food, find tasks. There isn't anything deeper than silicon here. Pour a million meetings into a day, and you haven't talked to a single human being, or even said anything worth remembering. Then you drive home, and there are the tasks of "the workday evening." Even Kara doesn't say anything, except at night when she's about to go to sleep.

The other night I had tucked her in was getting ready to leave when she starts talking, in a clear, non-loopy, focused way, about what had happened that day at school. I was surprised that the giddy, unreachably tired child of seconds before had suddenly changed over, and so I sat down on the foot of her bed and listened as she talked with me. Not about tasks, but about life.

[One more paragraph.] This weeekend, Lynn-nore and I are going to a fairly dense weekend marriage seminar. Every couple that we know who has gone just raves about it, and the Lord has made it possible for us to go. There is the technical details of getting there, of wearing, eating, introducing, note-taking. But I'm expecting that we will have moments - 15 minute breakouts or something - where suddenly it is like, "What is your deepest experience of love...think quickly now." Can I even do this? Can I leap out, dive down, and come up again...who the heck is this, existing in that void, in that dream, teetering on that bed, working this job, fathering (and just being a fellow human being) to this child? Can we even say what our deepest anything is? Do we know anything authentic, or do we only know in hindsight? Have we ever stopped long enough to become aware enough to even say?

As I said above, I find it hard to focus on many things at once. Most things are just tasks, but these leave scarce time for real being. If one never sees oneself, or only as it is convenient to do so, or only just before sleeping, or in snatches with one's child, how can we know? What is your deepest experience? How do you know authentically anything? Would you even recognize anything if you had it? What if you had something but forgot it, or if you might have something, but you aren't sure? Isn't it true, really, that we don't know anything and would be lost in that void, falling forever, if it wasn't that God knows us?

We will never really know. Instead, we must take ourselves from the point of being known.

You have made them a little lower than God;
You have crowned them with glory and honor;
You have given them dominion -
O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

on baptizing infants

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture delivered by Dr. Anthony Lane, Professor of Historical Theology at the London School of Theology. His topic was, "Should we Baptize Babies? A Study of Early Church Practices?"

The substance of his talk boiled down to two main points:

• The New Testament does not separate the experience of justification and the act of baptism in any way. Indeed, so closely intertwined are these concepts that they sometimes refer to someone's salvation as their "baptism" and vice versa, without even a tip of the hat to the waiting and watching for "internalization" of religious faith with such as we are familiar.
• The best and earliest resources that we have on the subject of baptism suggest that variety was the name of the game. Some families/churches/geographical regions baptized their infants, others waited until their children were 8 days, 3 years, teens. young adults or even urged (in the context where baptism began to be understood more along Roman Catholic lines) their children & others to wait until a point as near death as possible. What was important was baptism. The age of the baptizee, evidences of regeneration, or other factors could be emphasized or deemphasized - no one really cared one way or the other.

It should also be noted that such variety existed not in a time like ours, in which religious practice is in general being flattened and emptied of all value. This variety existed when baptism is an incredibly important issue.

After the lecture, Lynn-nore, Joanna and I sat around in the living room and discussed it for over an hour. All three of us agree both that Kara displays the outward signs of a regeneration, and that no church we're aware of would either baptize her or allow her to take communion. As a result, every door of the Christian faith has been open to her, every question answered until now, and the only reason is tradition.

A Person with a Green Head by Kara Chittom 

A Tea Party with Princess Kara 

They haven't sent it back yet

My post-submission anxiety always waits for that, "What kind of junk is this?" email to arrive after sending off a review. In this case, the 3,000 word "review essay" went off Monday evening for publication. One more to go, this time a return to Karl Barth, and a return to the intimacy of only 1,200 words.

Of course, if you think that paragraph was boring, imagine if that's all that was flowing around in your brain. Period. This has been me for about five days. (You'll notice I haven't posted much recently.) Compared with the adventures of Lynn-nore and Kara, I'm a mono-syllabic drone.

Those two have been having fun together over the last week. Yesterday is a good example. After having lunch with me in Ipswich yesterday (an extreme rarity, and always nice), the two of them went to the beach. It was a beautiful, sunny day yesterday, and I suspect there some barefeet on the sand while they were there. After that, they worked on clearing the patch of ground in front of the apartment. Kara was so tired last night, she could barely keep herself awake long enough to be grumpy and disobedient.

One interesting thing coming up. There's a prof from the London School of Theology speaking at the sem tonight on paedobaptism and the early church. I'm looking forward to basking in the glow of academic discourse for an hour.

Not Your Average Tuesday

So, the day started normal enough for a school morning, except at quarter of seven Kara still wasn't up. So, I went in to wake her, which was going well enough, until we discovered that her eyes were gooped shut. I'll spare you all the gory details, but suffice to say, it turned out not to be a school morning after all and instead Kara wins a trip to the doctor's office! Her school requires 24 hrs on antibiotics for Pink Eye - so here we go to get those meds. She's in good spirits otherwise, now if we could just convince her not to touch her eyes! Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Caleb seems to be doing well. He thumps and jumps all the time now, and just like Kara, seems to get the hiccups about once a day. Unlike Kara, who kept her hiccups to a modest and rythmic hump, thump, thump, he seems to get his whole body involved. Imagine you have the hiccups and your arms and legs just can't help but jump in on it. So instead of one little thump, I get five thumps in five different places. It's actually pretty cute :-) When he's not hiccuping he seems to be exploring his territory as in "What if I kick Mommy, here? Hhhmm. How about over here? How about here?" Kara seemed much more inclined to pick a spot and stick with it, while this little guy wants to make sure he's covered all the bases (that's it, he's playing Baseball in there! Go Red Sox!).

Here's a blast from the past, how about an update on my Pampered Chef business! It has been a long time since I had a good run of things with my business, since sometime last summer it seems. Throughout the rough spots I have managed to hold onto my position as a director, though my team has struggled quite a bit. It seems that last summer and Fall planning and executing the 40 Days of Purpose program seemed to squeeze out the time I would have ordinarily devoted to my business. This was not the wisest choice in the long run in terms of the bottom line, but I feel that things are finally picking up in that department again. Of course, after 40 Days I was in my first trimester and feeling sick all the time and then promptly had to be careful because of the pre-term labor problems. But, God is gracious and merciful and has at least sustained my position as director. It seems that every month that it has been truly on the line, the numbers have come in to make ends meet for my team, at least. A month or so ago I sent around an email update on new products and promotions and from that got a couple of leads for shows and orders. One of those was from the owner of the Curves gym in Peabody asking me if I'd like to come and set up a table at her gym to collect orders. I followed through with this and spent a couple of hours there yesterday which turned out to be very profitable. She is very excited about the product line and it was a very low-impact way for me to make some profit ~ a big success with very little difficulty on my part. At the beginning of March I also participated in an open house with a couple of other women who run home businesses ~ a Creative Memories consultant and another mom from Kara's class who makes and sells jewelry. From that endeavor I got a catalog show and a new recruit, always a big plus! So, all in all, things are picking up and I can foresee making it through the pregnancy to a place where I can build my business back to where I mean it to be. Just thought you all might enjoy the business update, as it hasn't been mentioned much lately.

Well, speaking of business and sick children ~ I need to run more catalogs out to Peabody to the woman at Curves and then get Kara over to the doctor's office, so I must close for now.

Be expecting Princess Kara pictures on the blog soon! I made her a princess costume last Thursday, per her request and, of course, had to take some pictures!

Make it a great day!

Definitely coming down with something

Yep, I'm definitely coming down with something. Kara, too, seems to have picked something up, from school probably. She was coughing enough last night to warrant some medicine. Never adept at waking up quickly, she cried for at least 15 minutes until coming to enough to gulp down a dose.

The weekend looks pretty good. Despite rain scheduled for Saturday, Lynn-nore has invited Sir W. Raleigh & QE over this evening. I'm picking up the pen tomorrow morning and knocking 3,000 words out. Shouldn't take more than a few hours.

I noticed this morning that the New York Times magazine has an interesting article about the mega-church movement. It is very plain, having done a good bit of reading in the adjustments in public attitudes toward religious faith in the last 200 years, that the state of the modern church in the west is largely reactive and still reeling from deep-seated cultural and intellectual attacks leveled against it over this entire period. The symptoms of the "blighted church" are easy to spot, and are rampant and suffocating in every community I've ever been a part of. Simply put, this sickness manifests itself in the question, "What is our purpose?" And are only mistreated by church growth initiatives.

The problem with the western church is so deep-seated, so rooted in the makeup of our very life-assumptions, that it would really be impossible to fix them without accepting radical change. As John G. said the other night, community, as the human species has always understood and known it, is no more. We simply do not know what we are saying any longer, and cannot accept, by stint of our own cultural desires and the constructions of identity and personhood that have been built into the west since the Enlightenment, a re-discovery.

Some will say that the growing emergent church movement (cf. Anna Aven on this movement which is an outpost to the larger web conversation) proves me wrong on this. Some of these churches represent semi-radical attempts to strike out in bold new directions, that is true. But they are not addressing the problem on a definitional level, and, in my opinion, are more a manifestation of discontent than a well-informed solution. The Jesus movement of the 1970's, an outgrowth of the secular hippie movement, was "emergent" (and far more radical) long before these largely 20-something churches. That move us gave us Christian industries, and a more powerful political voice, but it has not helped the churches. The definitions of religious community, language and expression are still nostaligic, and largely culturally isolated, throwbacks.

btw. Anna defines the Emerging Church as:

The Emerging Church (EC) is a movement throughout the English-speaking world that is in part a response to postmodernity and in part a reaction to church as we know it, which is also called the institutional church. There are some unifying factors to the movement as near as I can tell, namely some concept of “ancient-future” worship, a deconstruction of liturgy, and a return to a less hierarchical structure of church leadership in order to have more people more involved as in the days of the early church.

Sleeping the big sleep

I was so tired last night, that I went to bed at 9:30 and slept soundly until 6:30 this morning. 9.5 hours of sleep; I can't remember the last time I had much more than 6. Of course, this means that I didn't finish the review last night.

Frankly, it is becoming very difficult for me to write at night. After Kara is in bed, I'm pretty much ready to lay down myself. That's the way it has been for over a month now, and finally, last night, I just gave up and said, "That's it, I'm going to bed." I hope this isn't a trend. It isn't like I can just write in the mornings - the best time of the day. More thought will have to go into this. The review will be done shortly, anyway.

Listening to Ella Fitzgerald on the way in to work this morning. Her voice is so smooth and light; really amazing. The disc I have is a collection of recordings she did of the best songs by American composers. It makes you wonder if *any* songs in the latter-quarter of the 20th century are classics in any sense of the word, or just pop-junk. Bob Dylan and the Beatles are about the only sources I can think of for true time-surviving work. What do you think?

Another goal for the weekend: send out some job applications.