Our Little Man! This outfit on Caleb made us think of someone who reads this blog - Comment if you think it's you! 

mid-summer flats

I started this post in the hopes of proving that we are knee-deep in the mid-summer flats. As it is, I'm so flat I didn't even finish what I started. But here's in the meantime:

L. and I have become addicts of the Fox TV show House. The writing is excellent, and the acting high caliber--the cast is well-seasoned both on the stage and in film. Hugh Laurie plays Dr. Gregory House, who is to infectious diseases like Immanuel Kant is to epistemology. He's done quite a lot on the Brit side of things, but I, at least, was aware of him from his exceedingly hilarious portrayal of Mr. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility (1995). House has given us something to think about during these hot days of mid-summer, when it is too hot (and we're too broke) to go out, and the kids push it until 8:30 before finally nodding off (Last night, for example, Kara cries out, "I can't get to sleep! What can I do?" to which Lynn-nore replies, "Try not yelling 'I can't get to sleep!'.") Even Caleb has developed the habit of crying for no real reason for a good half-hour after he's put to bed! I can only believe they have caught wind of the truth that they represent "the latest generation"--a waning superiority complex only waxed against the late-night howls of their own future progeny.

L. and Kara are going out this evening to hunt for Caleb's birthday present. (Maybe I'll get some reading done.) Kara is such a giving personality. She loves to share and give gifts. She is always drawing things for people. I like that about her.

Thanks to Lynn-nore's iron constitution, Kara's reading is improving. I say thanks to Lynn-nore because, just last week, she instituted a "no read, no play" policy regarding dress ups. Thus, one book a day must be accomplished before all else. It is an excellent policy. Kara's reading should blossom. Even after a few days it is already showing improvement with confidence gained. A bit of Mommie genius. Yes, I think childbirth must begin the accretion of a serum known as "Mommie genius" somewhere in the brain which accumulates throughout life. Ah, do I see a pun: genus-genius? Does that work?

I was so thrilled on Saturday last to have picked up two copies of Horkheimer's works (Frankfurt School) for one dollar each! That and a book of essays about the hermeneutical turn for another five used up a scant fraction of accumulated birthday money, and will keep me bemused for months to come (if my reading progress continues at its current snail's pace.) "Hey, who wants to ditch reading again and go for a swim?"

Hi! Check out my cute new outfit from Grandmommie and Grandmother! 

... oops, gotta get back up again! 

On the Go! Catch that cutie boy! 

While reaching for the camera - Caleb got away. After a few moments of searching the apartment, Kara and I found him in the dark, dunking his new sandals from Grandmommie into Mama and Daddy's toilet!!! Yuck!!!!! Kara snapped this picture. 

thinking of Kara

Kara's second visit with the psycho-educationalist person ended on an amazingly positive note yesterday. For some reason, Kara decided to be herself during their session. It went an hour and a half, during which time she answered questions, matched patterns with blocks, drew shapes, matched like items and things like that. When it was done, the doctor emerged praising Kara for her high intelligence, for her poise, and for the appropriateness and clarity of her speech. On one hand, we were pleased--what parent doesn't love things like that said about their child. On the other hand, we still have the three Kara's: Kara the acutely shy; Kara the jump-about; and the Kara he described, the one we see least. That Kara only comes out at special times. At night, just before bed; first thing in the morning; riding in the car; relaxing in her bath; being the big-sister to her baby brother.

As we approach baptism day, opinions are flying and theological conversations abound. I'm thankful that both kids, as far as I know, have no idea that they are plowing ground which, at least in terms of my family, is a complete novelty. Look I get that many of you--beloved friends and family--even strongly disagree. And though I could employ historical and theological arguments, let me speak to you, instead, as a parent, or more important, as a Christian.

I want Christ for my children, and my children for Christ. Thus, I will not knowingly deny them any benefit of his that they may properly afford, be it baptism or the elements themselves. I see no reason for denial: Our knowledge of doctrine should not deny us participation in the church: the novice is welcome along with the expert (see James 2:1-7). A lifetime doesn't exhaust the contextual depths of the seder meal (the covenantal background of our eucharist) and the same goes for baptism. Grown adults can be as stupid as pagans when it comes to the most basic facts of their confession. Theology tells us plainly: he is the beginning and the end. The new life is ours by invitation, begun and consummated in us by the Spirit's re-creating power ex nihilo. Which exemplifies the greater grace: informed choice or submissive reception? So then if I, a grown man, know how little I add (and more often subtract) to the sum of my own sanctification, why should I expect something else of my children? (see Gal. 2:15-16; 3:3)

Finally, I am challenged to find an explanation of the the Matthew 19:13-15 pericope that allows it to be Scripture instead of resigning it to the sweet candy coating of religious sentimentalism. I challenge you who disagree with this very task. And I ask you also to recall our common purpose: the pursuit of Christ. As we approach baptism day, let us separate our opinion from what is important, and celebrate in the same Spirit a common confession: He was born. He died. He rose again. He reigns.

San Pellegrino in a neat green bottle

The oscillation of the overhanging clouds made a hot and cold of the afternoon. Refusing the extra fuel costs of air conditioning, I drove out to get a haircut at the local barbershop. The shop itself is a hallway of separated stalls, like tiny dens, each with a chair, a mirror, a little TV and bookshelf, assorted magazines, and a stylist--some men, some women. And they only take cash, so my habit is to buy a $1.50 San Pellegrino mineral water and add the cost to my bill.

My father-in-law introduced me to San Pellegrino half a decade ago during our first trip to Germany. Always careful to stay hydrated, he carried a small cooler in his Honda filled with water, and, for himself, nearly always had a Pellegrino nearby. He and my mother-in-law kept a few bottles of the stuff downstairs in an little-used half-kitchen of their three-story home. I remember the red tiles under my socked feet, reading the Gospel of Mark before everyone else was awake, and just being thrilled to the core about being in Germany. Every stone, every brick, every cloud or hill, tree or flower seemed baptized in the waters of Deutschland.

I like the way the carbon dioxide lingers in a San Pellegrino (first bottled in 1899). Its dry wit stays on long after the usual acquaintances have gone to bed. Even flat, the water itself "bottled at the source, San Pellegrino Terme, Italy," still wants to let you know it is an import.

The last time we were in Germany, I resolved to see how much it would take to buy something there. In New England there are camps--seasonal bungalows unusable in winter but good enough in Summertime to make do for awhile. Unfortunately, my German, despite my best intentions, never gets beyond "Do you speak German?" "I would like a glass of water, please." "How much is this CD?" There is a glass ceiling to language learning, a great gulf between the tourist's tongue and a native's. Once, quite pleased with myself, I went a little way into the jungle: I asked a man where the elevator was in German, cobbling it together from bits of this and that. My ruse was volk enough, apparently. He spat back a host of staccato syllables-and-vowels in the rise and fall pentameter that is spoken Deutsch. Best yet: I understood him.

I'd like to think that drinking this San Pellegrino would bring me a little closer to understanding my father-in-law, too. Yet I suspect his choice of mineral water was largely dictated by the commissary and clever product placement. I raised the subject with him--an ex-Army colonel--of the U.S. soldier's who were then on trial for killing Iraqi civilians. "Yeah," he grunted, "It's silly putting people on trial for killing people who ought to be dead in the first place." I just noticed: San Pellegrino has no calories or fat--who can't feel good about that?

A recent pic of the kids! You can almost make out the missing spot in Kara's front row of teeth and, yep, our big guys is walking! 

First visit with the educational-therapeutic-psychologist guy

Maybe we're just making this up in some kind of shared hallucination," I said to Lynn-nore as we looked about this psychiatrist's office. An Auburn clock and mug. A Pampered Chef timer. A Crack the Case game. "Don't even say that," she shivered. Dr. Howard's office was amazingly familiar in nearly every respect. Indeed, he himself could have been Dr. Davis' brother. A little taller, yes, and more laid back, as in the off-hours. I don't even remember how we got started, but we had an hour and a half to talk about our Kara, and we sure did. Dr. H. was friendly. He took notes. He made observations and asked questions. When he asked, "Can she stand still?" Both of us just stopped and thought. Surely I can think of one occassion . . . We hit every communicable tale, plot-point, characteristic, atmospheric detail--everything!--that was possible in that ninety minute space and felt good about it. I think this man is going to help. He nodded when we described, oh, the inability to stop putting her feet on us during prayer; to stop leaning on me during dinner; to not go limp and lazy the minute any mental question becomes slightly difficult. "My hypothesis," he said, "is that she's somewhere on the border between ADHD and sensory integration issues." And now he'll meet with Kara a few times and we'll see where we go from there.

A handy checklist

I love checklists, don't you? If so, you'll love this. The 164 (June/July 2006) edition of First Things was kind enough to include an oppressive regime checklist. One should keep this handy in one's wallet or pursue for quick consultation--especially on Sundays!

___ Extreme hostility to "outgroups." You are either for us or against us. Dialogue or civil conversation with the "enemy" is betrayal.
___ Complete submissiveness to "ingroups." Our party and its leaders are to be supported without question. Criticism of our side is breaking ranks, and breaking ranks is treason.
___ All relationships are subordinated to the criterion of what will advance the "cause."
___ The most important thing to know about the world is that it is divided by the conflict between them and us.
___ Purely theoretical ideas that do not clearly serve the cause are to be repressed.
___ The expression of sentiment is a sign of weakness.
___ We and our group can survive only by the manipulation of others, who are there to be manipulated.
___ The triumph of the cause will result in a harmonious world without conflict.

A post-out-of-place on Schleiermacher

Friedrich Schleiermacher /FREE-drik shLIE-ur-mah-kur/ (1768-1834) is on my mind these days, and, believe it or not, he's on your mind, too. Profoundly influenced by the anabaptist tradition, Friedrich lived at a time when religious faith was understood as something alien to humanity; something it could do without (and probably should.) Not so, he shot back in his influential On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799). Human beings are religious by nature, Friedrich argued. Rather than put religion aside, it is more human to cultivate it! Everyone is aware of God; everyone carries within themselves a "feeling of absolute dependence." It is only obscured by the humdrum cares of daily life. The best kind of human life consists in cultivating our natural God-consciousness. Sin, he said, is the obscuring of this consciousness.

Now, I ask myself how far away from Schleiermacher we have come? The truth is: not far, despite the 171 intervening years. How far away from the realization and cultivation of God-consciousness and a feeling of absolute dependence is "having a personal relationship with Jesus" or "getting a lot out of that worship service?" How many books are written on "finding God in the everyday?" Though we have long since forgotten Schleiermacher, he has not forgotten us; and his arguments dictate very much the shape of the way we moderns are religious--for good and for ill.

I read Ephesians this morning. (John G. and I have been circling like wandering planets around this epistle for well-over three months.) Schleiermacher is notably absent. Ephesians isn't about the cultivation of God-consciousness, but the display of the divine victory in personal acts. And for what purpose--to grow in one's awareness of the divine? No, rather it is to display the goodness and wisdom of God by what one is and through what one does. The Kingdom is more about the outward act than it is about the inward state. One has been saved by grace; one is to do good works and so overcome evil. One does from what one is. There is no need to achieve some special insight. There is no gnostic Aha! which lays open hidden and secret rhythmns behind our normal experience of the material (created) world.

How much, then, of what counts for a Christian lifestyle is about the drumming up of this God-consciousness, the seeking of a direct experience of God, the discernment of hidden providences and wills? We divide things into sacred and secular and thus become a voodoo people--forgetting that God made all things and has said they are good. Rather than denying creation, we should be people of creation. We are a secular people who need to put the sacred behind us. Let's leave sacredness to the Hindu's and the New Agers. God came in the flesh.

Oh, I have gone too long. Few will make it this far. Understand that this little sermon is part of the adjustment which informs the recent adoption into the liturgical, Anglican tradition. There is an affirmation of the body--that's the way theologians would talk about this--that is needed: the body and mind need their praise. The mind may take in the truth, but the body is limited. It needs to kneel and to stand. It needs to eat and drink. The body needs its dance, for it, too, must celebrate what it hopes for--to be clothed. Musicians, dancers and others talk about "muscle memory." The body, too, needs to be reminded and to confess what God has said about it. The body, too, demonstrates the goodness and wisdom of God.

patriarch

My paternal grandfather Park was a patriarch. I did not know him well; just childhood memories. We visited at Christmas. One time, for example, I had to go to the bathroom. I knocked on the white frame of the door. Tap tap. "Who’s there?" I heard him say. "It's me!" I squeaked, "I need to go to the bathroom." His voice came back through the frame. "Do you have to do number one or number two?" I had no idea what he meant, and said so. He repeated himself, this time his voice taking on an unmistakable playfulness. "I don't have a number," I said, exasperated. "I have to go to the bathroom!" This went back and forth a bit longer, until finally he, chuckling, explained the whole arrangement and that was that. The subject of our exchange is not why I remember. We could have been talking about furniture or the weather. It was the unexpected mirth, the sense of play behind what he said. It startled me. I hadn't expected it. My grandparents weren't exactly the get-down-on-the-floor with you type. If things had been different, if his health hadn't declined, if my parent's divorce hadn't come in like Hurricane Katrina and obscured the day-to-day building of an emotional landscape, perhaps that moment of humor would have been more than something. And yet, Park is as much a patriarch to me as Abraham.

Before Park there wasn't much, just working-class white Mississippi lumbermen-turned-sharecroppers: farm manners and farm equipment, harvest and hard work, all baked together in the humid heat of the American South. The horizon wasn't any further than the few miles you could see across the delta cotton. That farmhouse. That silo. That rusting plow. That copse of trees. All thrusting up through a green pinstripe laid across the dark earth. But something happened to this young man. No one knows what it was--a spark from somewhere: "But who is there that calls upon Thee without knowing Thee? For he that knows Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art. Or perhaps we call on Thee that we may know Thee. “But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher?” (Rom. 10.14) Augustine didn't know either. But somehow Park looked a little further over the flat horizon, and that makes him a patriarch.

Park had a good voice, at least that's what my dad has told me. It contributed to the religious seriousness went deep into this man. Park was a faithful Southern Baptist, active in church, fervent about religion. Religion was a place he could have status, that's what my step-mom Karen theorizes. Being a center of the church in the South gave social recognition in the community that was unavailable otherwise to the working-class. My Dad tells stories of driving his father in a swelteringly hot, black Lincoln to gospel sings all over the Delta; Southern fundamentalism was pillar and post in Park's mind, but Christ was mixed too deeply in the narrow ridges of Southern religion. A Judeo-Christian ethic, steeped in premillennial Darbyian dispensationalism, kept Park out of drink and the whorehouses; but Southern religiosity added law to Christian freedom and hardened opinion and tradition into prejudices and protectionism. Each of his three sons have since struggled to find their own way between their father's Christian faith and the blue-collar fundamentalism that came with it.

Park had a real awareness of the class structure of American society, of where he was on it, and of what it took to move upwards: education. This to me is the most unexplainable part of his personality. Plenty of country people are religious, and deeply so, but few are class ambitious. How was it that this man decided not only to amend his ethics but turn his face upward toward the middle class? Park married a cosmopolitan girl; not a Yankee, but a Southerner whose father worked the railroad. They were from Tennessee, a border state, and her father's job took them all over the South, wherever the railroad went. (It should be remembered that railroads stretch beyond the horizon, and mathematically, the parallel tracks upon which so much may go will never meet.) Their marriage was sociable enough--it is hard to gather data from my distance. Nevertheless, class consciousness figures in his choice of a wife. Park had a study. I remember it well enough, a man's room, full of hats from all over and an atmosphere that was about as Indiana Jones as Indianola MS can get. Kitsch, yes, but a kitsch that bespoke awareness of something larger than itself. His books--and their house had books. I mentioned the Lincoln. He even did genealogical research, tracing the family line all the way back to the Isle of Kent (or so he said. He didn't know to document and footnote his discovery process. Rather, I'm told he set it down as a poem.) Over the course of his life, Park collected what trappings of a better class as he could. He never freed himself from them, they were never his, but they were at least present.

I'm not sure how conscious he was of any of this, but I'd like to think he understood at some level that he himself could never transcend his own origins. As he aged, as his sons grew up, there is a despair, even a desperation, that tells in things if you look at them hard enough. He was a spendthrift who liked to dress well, meaning that he played, irresponsibly, at visions of a different life. Money was always his enemy and never his friend. Money, that constant barometer of class, of position in American society. Class ambition makes a man money-stupid; especially a man who, through music and religious faith, displayed an imagination given to constantly leap beyond himself, tempted always to phantasie, to live within an unreal life. The cracks in his personality became dividing lines between his sons, and like any patriarch, he was sometimes foolish about his boys. Each went on to play out their parts, just as sons of Abraham's always do.

What Park wasn't able to do, they did--mostly. A doctor and a deacon, an executive in healthcare information, a lawyer and playwright, each son inherited his father's class ambition. Each married according to that ambition. Their religious faith, too, bears his stamp, and at least one has had a very difficult time picking his way between faith and fundamentalism. What remained, economic security and the achievement of a Christian family culture, with the corresponding ability to make independent and free class decisions, they have partially achieved. Each of them moved out of Indianola. Each went on to college and some to postgraduate education. And mammon has also written its story into them, at times an unhappy story.

My generation lives from the margins of Park's patriarchal shadow. We almost have the freedom of self-determination. But if we're honest, we see that same ambition, that same struggle with faith and with economics, that was there in the beginning. And as for religion, most of the grandchildren attend church, though some of us have made choices outside the circle of the Southern Baptist Convention. One of us--the eldest son of one brother--is Greek Orthodox. Two others, including myself, are Episcopalian. What we are today and the questions that still pull at the edges of our lives: so many of these we did not create. We are living in the shadow of a patriarch, whether we like it or not--and some don't.

As Kara turns six tomorrow, I wonder how it will be for her and for Caleb. Will they finally find the freedom to write truly different stories, their own stories? Have I found solutions to the questions passed on to me so that these same questions will not, then, go on to them? Frankly, I'm unsure. Now that I am in the middle of what is now a multi-generational process, I cannot see into the future. I cannot tell whether more is required, or what might exist outside of a patriarch's demands.

No one really knows why Pater (his family nickname, but telling in its Latin) saw something, something in his surroundings and in himself, that was further out than he could see. But he did. So he "took his wife and all his possessions and set forth" (Gen. 12:5) and thus became a patriarch.

New sport...

Mom Rodeo. Are you a mom with a bucking bronco under the age of two in your house? Do you wrestle your little one to the ground multiple times a day in a timed event? Then we're looking for you! Welcome to mom rodeo!

Big Top event - The Timed Diaper Change - only truly bucking broncos need apply! Your little one must be able to flip himself or herself over in less than .05 seconds and be able to crawl completely out of reach in the time it takes you to grab the forgotten diaper ointment.

Secondary events

- Jammy Time - For this event you must be able to get your child out of snap-up day clothes and into snap-up jammies WITH a full diaper change by the completion of his or her favorite children's song.

- Feed Me Mommy - This event takes both skill and precision. To add some challenge, we're looking primarily for 7-8month old babies who have just discovered how to blow raspberries!

Come one come all! to the First Ever Mom Rodeo -- coming to a home near you!

On top of "IT"

I was thinking this morning, as I was folding a small load of laundry and putting the sheets in the wash about the expression staying "on top of it." As a mom/homemaker, that's the ever-present issue. If I don't stay "on top of" the laundry, then I find myself washing a mountain of it. If I don't stay "on top of" the groceries and meal planning, I see the rising cost of convenience meals. If I don't stay "on top of" the dusting, I think we actually get sick more often with chest colds and sinus issues. If I don't stay "on top of" organizing this or that thing around the house, things spin out of control and piles and messes and cluttered closets start to take over.

Therefore, each day I do a bit of the overall work and that's how I stay "on top of it." Now, truth be told, this is a fairly new revelation for me. As little as one year ago, I was most certainly not "on top of it" - just ask Thom or our friend who was staying with us and you will find out all the hidden secrets of how not "on top of it" I really was. A mountain of laundry seemed normal to me at the time. And years earlier a mountain of dishes seemed ordinary, but not anymore. Staying on top of it is the new me. Dividing the work throughout the work-week breaks the routine needs down into manageable pieces and leaves space for the incidental projects - like painting Caleb's furniture or Kara's bedroom or keeping up with scrapbooking. In the past, this was done instead of staying "on top of it." Projects have always been fun for me - sort of playing hard rather than working hard. Or maybe, playing hard rather than working smart. But now, the new me, the mother-of-two with a husband who loves his job and whose parents live across town... this new me, I stay "on top of it."

But as I was thinking this morning about the little load of laundry I was folding and the specifics of my day today... I got to wondering what "it" I was staying on top of. Out there beyond motherhood and housework or even the daily-grind at a desk job - where does this staying "on top of it" expression come from. The two thoughts that came to mind were surfing and rodeos.

So, with that in mind -- some days life's a wave, others it's a bucking bronco!

Tortilla Chip Nation

Tortilla chips: I simply can't control myself. Whenever I'm at one of those restaurant's that provide unlimited amounts of chips, I can't stop eating them. I compulsively crunch crunch crunch along through the before- during- and after-parts of the meal like a man driven by the Mexican hounds of hell. Heaven help me if I'm ever in such a situation without some kind of limiting factor, like a lunch hour or someone else's schedule. The situation would be permanent and probably fatal. Upon retirement, I must beware the terminal situation because, like a goldfish, I'd probably sit at one of those tables and request more chips until the inevitable explosion--to the, no doubt, enthusiastic applause of the harassed waitstaff. They might break out into song: You finally died of corn chips / We're happy that you did / Because you cost us hundreds / In supplemental tips. (At least I'm not the only one.)

Right under the armpits

One thing you can say about living in Nashville, whenever there's music, it is usually good. That was certainly the case at the craft fair in Franklin this last weekend. We met L's parents there amid a sea of people and, in a just a block or so, heard Country, Bluegrass, Southern Rock and California Jazz. I pulled Kara aside for the jazz band, explaining what the band was doing and why. She was nearly spent by then, though. See, there was a kid's area. These giant, inflatable rooms for kids. Two tickets and she was away in one called "Jurassic" with giant teeth and a climbable volcano, kids jumping around, throwing themselves against each other, sliding into each other. Pandemonium. One resembled a giant dog's head. You entered under the ear and came out (via an interior slide) the nose. Inside, whooshes of air kept a bunch of balloons swirling and bouncing around. Parents clustered about transparent plastic portholes, watching our little darlings bounce around like crazy human electrons. My favorite is "pass the balloon in your mouth" meaning that your kid puts a balloon in their mouth and then passes it to another kid who does the same thing. I also like the "too old to be here" kid who keeps ducking out of the nose to tell on a sibling and then ducking back in. The food was expensive, though there were deals to be had: I snagged a decent egg role for $1.75. Franklin's downtown is a sidewalk-shop odyssey. Lots of art stores, galleries, chocolate shops and antiques. It also looks a great deal like New England, which, we are learning, is a must-have on everyone's architectural wish list. What used to be the corner store now becomes the purvue of resort and high-society locations. Caleb had a great time just looking around. There was one point where, taking two balloons in hand, I belted him about the ears with them. This urned a happy bit of piglet grunting from him, along with an expectorant wave of hands and curl of tongue. He is so funny when he gets excited. I love throwing him in the air a few times and listening to him laugh, though it brings back some painful memories of my Dad throwing me about a zillion miles up into the air and catching me again and again right under the armpits (ouch!)

Bits of Easter going and coming

So a few weeks ago, the family went to an easter egg hunt. It was a nice day on the whole, and the hunt was located in an expansive yard to the side of some acquaintances from church. The host and hostess fenced in large squares of grass, and placed multicolored eggs throughout. Kara and L. went to join the other little girls, bucket in hand. Caleb and I moseyed over to the babies square. I set Caleb down right beside a big orange egg, and adjusted his hat. Beautiful area, really. Standing, I looked up at the surrounding green hills. The lawn was long and flat, curing up toward the base of the nearest hill and falling away into a steep brook. I looked up at the clear sky, thinking about the dark clouds and the tornado that had screamed through this very landscape only a few days before. Caleb had discovered the egg. He lifted and turned it, trying to nibble on first its narrow and then its fat ends. "Is that egg tasty?" I asked him, crouching. He put it down in frustration, and glanced around. A purple egg was just a few feet away. He was on the move. Ah, another Dad. I stood. We talked about work. He told me all about working 150 feet up on cable towers and we talked about a group of American Indians that builds all the skyscrapers in New York. Caleb was munching. "Is that grass tasty?" I said, indulgent. He ignored me, hands lifted as if to say "there's so much to munch here, who can choose?" The Dad and I kept talking, this time about the tornado. It was on everyone's mind. No, he didn't know anyone who had been hurt. Caleb leaned out to grab a yellow egg, and then sat back hard against my foot. He studied it, looking for any strategic weakness. A few clouds had drifted above us. The Dad and I were making a joke about heights. His baby girl was losing patience from her shoulder perch. I looked down. Caleb had given up on the yellow egg. Instead a little bit of green grass went in and out as he sucked, uncaring, and pulled at the lawn. "Let me get that for you," I said, "It's a little disgusting." I grabbed the bit of grass and pulled, and out came an ENTIRE DANDELION!! He'd been sucking on the whole thing, from yellow flower to green stem.

L. and I sat down with our rector today, and we are joining an Episcopal church in Nashville. Many, I’m sure, believe we've lost our minds--or worse--but I couldn’t be happier about it. If the news media are to be believed, the Episcopal Church in the United States is as corrupted and lost as they come, and, frankly, that is probably true. Nevertheless, our new home confesses Christ as Lord and displays a fidelity to Scripture and a love for neighbor that is unmistakably orthodox. The preaching is straight from the text, its service is evident and the liturgy stays true to Cranmer’s prayer book without innovation. it is also aligned openly with the Anglican Communion Network, a reform movement within the Anglican communion.

Still, explaining this seemingly-from-nowhere change is difficult. I wish I had the thinking done on the matter; I'm wrestling with the draft of a personal statement to explain it as much to myself as to others. In the meantime, here's a story:

Palm Sunday. We faithful file out of our chairs and line up in the sunny open air, where we are given real palm fronds (not sheets of construction paper cut into leaves). Then, the rector and the other leaders file everyone in, all of us singing a hymn together. As we go, Kara looks up at L. and I and asks, "What's going on?" and I smiled an inner, ecstatic, wickedly wonderful smile. And, as I reminded her about Jesus' triumphal entry, I thought to myself: "What's going on? Why, catechesis, my dear, catechesis."

This and that

So, if you've been checking here for the last week and dissapointed that it kept on being the "sound I heard last night" story of the 10th day -- here's something new for you.

Let's see... Caleb is getting his top teeth. He's looking very cute with nearly four teeth now and thinks he can eat anything... including dandelions and sticks from the yard. He is loving the toys he got for Christmas and enjoys playing with them every day. His current favorite is an activity table from his Aunt and Uncle. It's by LeapFrog and plays lots of music and does ABCs and 123s and he laughs and dances while standing and holding onto it. He's getting so big. He's about ready for his 9 month checkup and I'm guessing he's about 22lbs and 30 inches. We'll see how close I guessed in a couple of weeks.

As for Kara, she is trying her best to overcome some struggles at school and being very sweet around the house. At school they are reading and writing sentences and she's not quite up to speed with the rest of her class, likely because of the move this year, but she's catching up. In the last two weeks we have seen a lot of progress in her reading and writing and we just wish she would feel more confident in school. Believe it or not she's actually having trouble with shyness and being too introverted. Crazy sounding isn't it?! Thom and I are still reading up on sensory integration issues for her and trying to help understand her in every way. We are very happy that there are two families with kids that live in the next building over and there is a lovely grassy lawn between the two buildings. It's a great place to sit on a blanket with Caleb and watch the kids. It's just outside Caleb's window, too, so really I could even be out there with Kara while Caleb naps if I open is window a bit. The other two families are both new to Tennessee, too and one is a pastor's family, so it feels familiar after being at seminary for so long!

Let's see, what else -- it's been full make-over treatment for me lately -- Lynn-nore, not Thom. It started with a bit of outlet shopping while we were on vacation in Gatlinburg. I picked up some new summer clothes and church clothes. Then my mom encouraged me to lighten my hair. Evidently, after Caleb was born my hair did some funky things including thinning out and coming back in darker, so, after much persuading my mom convinced me to lighten it some., it turned out a little more reddish-brown than we expected - but it's fun. So, to add to the dye-job, my mom offered me a visit to her salon and I got a new cut! So, new clothes, new hair, and to finish it off mom took me out for a manicure and pedicure yesterday. So, I'm a new woman!

As for Thom, he is still loving his job in every way and looking dashing wearing a shirt and tie to work everday. Thanks to all of you who gave him shirts and ties for Christmas!

Well, Caleb is presently resisting naptime, and he and I are scheduled to have lunch with Thom and the pastor of the church we've been attending, so I'd better wrap this up. Hope you all are doing well. Keep in touch!
}

What I heard last night

They may as well have been playing basketball upstairs with as much thumping and thudding, heavy footfalls running here and there, shouts and collisions. The couple (are they a couple) that live upstairs are in their early 20's, with all the lifestyle up-late's of that age, and we've become used to a general awareness. But this was something else. This was a hurricane of pounding and wrenching and leaping around. "I'm going to have to go up there," I said to myself, remote in hand. The rest of the family was in bed, whereas I'd stayed up to watch some of the "real Jesus" oxymoronic pseudo-science a-news-ualities on the National Geographic Channel. "I'm going to have to go up there and ask them to stop before they wake the kids." I grumbled and they tramped.

Then it went up a notch. A dog started howling. "I didn't know they had a dog upstairs?" I chafed. They were a symphony. Their instruments, by wind and strike, the percussive membrane of ceiling and floor, wall and window. "Woof! Woof! Woo-oof!" went the dog. "Thump, bam, bada-da-da-da-d-ad-ad-a-da-daadaaa, thud!" went the neighbors.

Then it got bad. Suddenly, for no reason, the barking dog suddenly began screaming. Its howl was one of terrible agony. Primal, bloody, almost a woman's scream, it writhed vocally so loud the room itself seemed to take it up. It was everywhere, even in my head. I stood straight up in socked feet. "What is that?" I asked it the way a man asks when he doesn't want to know. 10 seconds. 20 seconds, screaming, screaming, screaming. I stumbled into the hallway and out the door, turning in the open hallway and rushing out under the sky to look up at the windows of the apartment above. The screaming came from everywhere, an open, terrible scream. I struggled to stay, to go up and nock, and could I even tell--did the scream come from upstairs? It seemed to bleed from every window, every car, every tree. "Maybe I'm an idiot for even going up there?" I said. I went back inside. L. was awake. "It woke me up," she said. "What is it?" "A dog, I think--from upstairs." "The people on the other corner have a dog," she said. "I'm going to go back outside" I started, "I should probably call the police." Images of police vehicles, burly men and women asking questions, knocking on doors, wheeling lights biting into every cornea, every window.

And then it stopped. The screaming stopped. The noise upstairs--the gallop of an hour--stopped. Nothing.

Now, I did nothing about this. For all I know, there are bodies upstairs right now. For all I know, there had been plans to murder that dog, if it had been a dog. Would I have interrupted some scene of nightmares if I'd gone upstairs? Perhaps pulled into a struggle for life? All I can say is the scream--that scream--no living thing should ever make a sound like that.

Does Kara suffer from SMD?

Sensory Modulation Disorder (SMD), a sub-set of the larger category Sensory Processing Disorder, is at the top of the learning curve today given recent conversations with Kara's kingergarten teachers. Both of them describe a child unable to focus her mind or body, a condition that used to only be challenging for her teachers but now increasingly results in alienation from her peers. Indeed, as L. and I review our Kara in all of her contexts, it is becoming clear that something is going on, something out of the bell curve for her age group. That something is most likely SMD. For more information, visit my more technical post Decoding the Out-of-Sync Girl. Related websites are listed there.

Quick take on Friday

Thank you to all those who have called or written. We made it okay through the storm last Friday, though not without much anxiety. I was stuck in downtown Nashville; L. and kids were at home. An F3 touched down about two radial miles from the apartment, and cut a 10-mile-long swath up to the West and further north, stopping in the town just north of us and killing 12 people. The stories are slowly starting to slip out: a sick woman stays home from work and falls asleep in her bed only to wake up later lying in her front yard with the remains of her house all around her; two children who were thrown into the twister as their home was ripped apart, taken up into the funnel and deposited, alive, in a field; a mother and her son cowering in a closet are sucked out and thrown 100 feet in different directions--she dies; a church with 40 pre-schoolers is hit head-on by the tornado, the sanctuary is demolished but the nursery is untouched, one of the children asks his teacher, "Are we going to heaven today?" Lynn-nore and I were pretty freaked, watching cell after cell come up from Arkansas, each one putting a tornado or two down; unfamiliar streets and counties constantly being cited on the radio: "A touchdown has been recorded in X-ner county"; "Residents north of Sullivan Farms need to take cover now"; "If you live south of Dixon, you should be aware of high winds in your area between 1:45 and 2:30 which could spawn a tornado," etc. The worst was that the highway connected Nashville with home was a parking lot. Thus, if I went home, I ran the risk of sitting trapped on the highway with cell after cell rushing overhead. I finally made a break for it about 6:30 and made it with no difficulties (a story in itself). I started to leave work earlier, at 2pm, but, while pumping gas, saw a dark, monstrous cloud come up over the horizon, like an upturned mountain of broiling black ashes hanging in mid-air. I went back to work, and learned later that there were three linked tornadoes in that cloud, none of which, thankfully, ever touched down.

I got a digital key-chain camera from Grandma last week. Here are some pictures I took of tornado damage.

Metro Baptist Church

 

 

 

 

 

My right eye

 

My Baby Brother!

 

Flubbed up

Well, the official weigh-in was this morning, and I, with others, lost to Alypius. What's worse, of all the participants, I lost the least, just a pound less than three months ago: a single pound! It is depressing. I'm sad about it. Not that I didn't win--though the money would have been nice--but that of everyone I weighed the most to begin with and lost the least. What happened to the initial determination and discipline of January? Fizzled out in the hurly burly of March, that's what. I wonder if I'll ever be anything near a healthy weight again; if only I'd not gained so much in seminary; too much reading, not enough walking! Worse, I'm hungry now. I skipped breakfast and I'm hungry. Food has me by the gut, and I'm too fat, too undisciplined, and too lazy to do anything about it.

epigrains

This week is Kara's first Spring Break. She didn't need to be told twice how great a thing it is. "Yaay!" she says, flinging her arms up in the air. She's in Kindergarten. Not third grade or middle school or high school--kindergarten! For whatever reason, her Spring Break is going well. Yesterday, she played at a family fun center in town with a friend. Today she is going over to her Grandma & Papa's for the day and spending the night. Then, Friday, we are taking a short family weekend to see an aquarium, and our hotel has a pool (thank you Priceline!) She is so tall and skinny, flipping that hair around behind her. Who is this little person? We were brushing teeth last night (actually, she was flossing. She takes flossing quite seriously) and singing made-up versions of "Baa Baa Black Sheep." Baa baa black sheep have you any wool? No I don't it's gone to school. Afterward, she remembered we are reading the Chronicles of Narnia, and so we put aside the oversided book of Irish folk tales and legends and picked up Narnia just after Polly has vanished from the attick of mad scientist Uncle Andrew.

One of the new things I've inserted into her bedtime routine are proverbs. We read a few epigrams from the book of Proverbs each night. Sometimes, if we hit on a particularly illustrative or useful one, we might say it together a few times, or talk about what it means. Two nights ago we hit on Proverbs 13.20 "whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm." (NRSV) "You know Kara," I said, "if everyone on earth simply memorized this proverb, our prisons would be emptied of half their contents; the crime rate would be cut in half; many who are dead today would still be living; and the general suffering and grief of many lives would be eliminated!" That said, we have begun memorizing that particular proverb together.

Some other news: L has begun a cereal quest. That is, she has decided to eat every single cereal available for the sheer curious doing of it, and, most important, she's blogging about it! You can cultivate a taste for her grain-diose serial of sugary mastications at by ingesting cerealfest every morning as part of a well-balanced blogfast.

Nullus conjoinem yankee ecclesiae

Church search. No one likes to do it. Church searching is like letting the Cat in the Hat into that ecclesial part of your interior landscape. While you stand agog, he takes apart the furniture, lets loose the gremlins and thoroughly commodifies every established chair, table and lamp you cared to affix. Change, and especially the kind of change that goes along with our Western disposable culture, just doesn't sit well with the church. We sing song's like "The Church's One Foundation" and then pick and choose based on baser criteria: "The parking is crazy." "The minister was too austere." "I didn't know any of the songs we sang." "There aren't any children of Kara's age/gender." "The childcare was haphazard at best." "Seemed like there were mostly older people." "Too much of a blue/white collar culture." "The pastor's bratty kid was rude to Kara!"

A few weeks ago, L and I visited a church. After the service, we went downstairs to collect Caleb. Out of nowhere comes this Yankees fan. "Oh, you're from Boston!" he hyperventilated, "I'm a Yankees fan!" (What, did he want to start something? . . . I mean, I can put these coats down, and this shirt can be washed. We don't have anywhere to be.) The guy just wouldn't stop talking. He was talking when I left my poor wife to get our son and he was talking when I returned. At some point, he was joined by the minister: tall and serious, the smooth darkness of his cloak bespoke Transylvania and the old country or a Fu Manchu. Unable to break into the verbal torrent, Fu stood folding his hands before him, the picture of Kant at his algebra. The five of us were held together nearly in mid-air by the fast-talking Yankee. From behind, an olive skinned man with large, prominent eyes took L's hand and, bending down, raised and kissed it. I kid you not. This happened. "Quick! We have to leave now, lest we be changed into creatures of the night!" Grabbing coats, kids and spouse, I pushed past Fu and the Kisser and, with the berserker-Yank following in verbosity velocity, sprang through a set of double doors into the sunlight. We flung the kids in the Nissan and shut the doors. Panting with effort, L turns to me and says, "Ugh! I can still feel that Yankee fan all over me."

The thing about church search is that it is all about story. You have your story and each church has theirs. It is all narrative, see. This is what L and I have come to understand. We go and visit a church and listen for their story. The building and ministries somewhat tell the tale, as well as what is emphasized in the liturgy (whether intentional or unintentional). What really tells the tale, though, are the people who talk to you. For example, the Yank told us all about how we shouldn't join that church. Turns out, Fu is leaving in a year (no pastor in a year=pastor search); and it was "so nice to have visitors for a change" (he may have even said he couldn't remember the last time the church had seen visitors!) People tell all sorts of horrifying things to visitors. At one church we visited, on the outside a growing, prosperous church, an elder told us they "simply had no idea how to reach their community" and "that's why we're not growing." We've seen enough of that, thank you (I should just hand out a card that says: When in doubt, feed the hungry; visit the sick and those in prison; comfort widows and orphans; in short, go where the need is greatest and get involved. You'll forget all about wondering what you should be doing, there will be too much to do.) Each church has a tale that makes them who they are; each church has a narrative which is the combination of every member of that church.

Of course, we, too, have a narrative. We have where we have been and what we need. We have our experience, our education, and our own theological hang-ups. One thing that continues to plague me is that I seem to always wind up in churches that either don't have a building or have buildings that aren't church buildings. (Why is that?) What we want to know is, can we write our story into your story? Can our story really fit the narrative you are making together? And can our story add anything? How will it change us? How will it change you? And please don't make it hard on us by admitting up-front that you are a Yankees fan!

Is it dead?

L. called me at work on Monday of this week out of breath and stressed. “I killed a beast!” she spat. “A giant spider I found in Caleb’s room near his closet.” The corpse still available for viewing when I arrived at the apartment, I can confirm it was a beast. “It was this long!” she said, holding first and thumb apart some two inches. “Big enough to roast,” I replied in jest. What three pieces were left after scraping it from the carpet—L. had beaten it to death with a mop—went legs-and-fangs into the loo. My gosh what a monster! Not only, but in its death-dash, the creature had run behind a bookshelf, a shelf that L moved under adrenaline two feet from the wall while it was still full of books. Don’t mess with mommy!

Since then, “The Beast” has occupied quite a good deal of our minds. Both L and I are double-vigilant, our eyes sweep constantly across corners, walls and windows, ceilings and doors. L talks about it the way men tell hunting stories over tribal fires. It haunts us like a ghost. We expect to see it fleeing akimbo across the carper floor every time we go into that room. Perhaps the tips of its legs caress our feet in the dark. I woke up this morning smashing a giant, black tarantula in my dreams, a brass lampstand coming down down on its rubbery, twisted back. (And people wonder why I’m arachnophobic.) What are you, you filth? Not an insect. Not a lizard or mammal or bird. An eating thing, a creeping thing, sucking at marrow-joints in the dark. A shadow; chaos; dissolution; absolute death; the disfigured shape; demonic madness; deep black water; a void; the alien; sadism; blindness; the horrible.

(c) Thom, 2006

A young man came to our door the other night selling magazines. Tall and skinny at 21, he reminded me of myself at his age, right down to his gigantic white shoes. A side-step and we arrive at the portable writing desk of Herman Melville. He carried a motto in it: Be true to the dreams of your youth. Can any adult hear that and not pause for a moment? What were the dreams of your youth?

Kara loves a good story, and so she's always asking me to tell her some. She even helps me make them up on occasion. The ones she likes best are true: "Tell me a story from when you were a little boy!" she blurts--almost commands! L. and I both are forever trying to reach back into the past, and usually during those absolutely adult moments of living: loading the car with groceries; struggling to lift Caleb's car seat out of the Nissan; figuring out how to make dinner from fridge-flotsam; pulling knotty wet towels out of the washer and forcing them in again into the dryer. It helps to have a few favorites. When I fell out of the tree upside down. When my friend stabbed himself. When I was in the Nutcracker in school. The fates of favorite toys. My BB gun and the bigger boys. Sledding with my daddy. Yes, inevitably the grandparents come up. Parents, the borderland of our pre-pubescence. I wonder, what were their dreams of youth?

My mom and dad both grew up in the rural south. My mom's parents were entrepreneurs and loners, mostly owing to my grandfather's mercurial inventor's temperament. My dad's parents were a bit closer to the city, a collision of his mother's childhood of railroad-modernity and his father's intelligence and class-ambition. Both my mom and dad went to college, but neither of them had much of a clue about it. Their parents, the veterans and the new women working classes, were all verbs intransitive; full of GO and caring little where. Simply being alive was enough. Cast that against today's youth, panicking because they don't have it figured out by 21, staying adolescents forever. Today's youth know their Myers-Briggs by 14. My parents, like their peers, were just working or having babies, making home movies, taking Polaroid’s, shaking their heads at the junior-high kids behind them busy making up the sixties. What were their dreams?

My dad fell into computers by sheer accident. He majored in economics, and has since told me he would have enjoyed psychology. He's a bit of a behaviorist (though I tempt him with Jung just to be funny.) My mom is a musician, which is another way of saying she is open to being. She was rarely allowed the room to take out after any risky personal direction. And of course there is a temptation with being just to hold it all in. Either way, even today she keeps teenager's hours. She's just getting started at midnight, after the grown ups have long gone to bed. I'm a curious product of them both.

My dreams feel like they've been passed to me as much as I've come up with them whole-cloth. There are fingerprints. I look at my children and wonder what they will do with them. My daughter hums Mozart's Nacht Musik, her head awhirl in full-on color and polyphony--that's my mom. My son takes a hand off his bottle and traces the outline of my face, curious at the rim of my glasses. Then, seeing his own fingers, he holds them up curious and curled to give them study--that's my dad. The words, however, are mine.

two book talk

Book talk is usually pariah on this blog, which is more stuff-talk or family-talk. But I just can't help myself. So here are two books of interest for an afternoon.

First, I couldn’t help but notice the book by neurophysicist and author Sam Harris’ book, The End of Faith, featured at #5 on the Bestsellers chart in a February edition of Publishers Weekly. Harris makes hay, and a few greenbacks, out of tried-and-true Hume-and-Voltaire-era atheism. “Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for all eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.” This book won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction, with its bordering-on-hate-speech message that “even moderate religion is a menace because it leads us to respect ‘and cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence.’ ” As Harris writes, “Anyone who seriously claims to be a practicing alchemist today will have disqualified himself for positions of responsibility in our society. Faith-based religion must suffer the same slide into obsolescence.” And what would he put in the place of religious faith? Why, the American religion of choice today, a syncretic mix of Eastern mysticism, philosophy, common sense and neuroscience. (What was that critique that Schweitzer made about the first Search?) Apparently, Mr. Harris is setting himself up to be this generation’s Bertrand Russel. As John Derbyshire of the New York Sun says in his review article, “To sometimes Russell devotees, this is a trip down Memory Lane. . . . Old Bertie would be proud.”

Second is a marvelous little volume by D. Q. McInerny, Merton scholar and lecturer in logic at Notre Dame and the University of Kentucky, entitled Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. I purchased it on Tuesday afternoon, when I had hours of nothing ahead of me and a bookstore around me (Gadamer and Heidegger weren’t available). McIndery manages to survey logic, review basic argumentation, and point out hazards to good thinking all in 130 pages. Yet, his style is what charms. William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White are the godparents of this cogniscenti rudimenti, as in, “I hope that Being Logical might in some degree succeed in doing for the cause of good thinking what The Elements of Style has done for that of good writing.” Being Logical finds a place right next to D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies on my shelf. Both should be read before every meal and at bedtime (and one should consider purchasing audiobooks). Here’s an excerpt of Being Logical from the Random House website.

A note from home

For those of you who might be wondering what we're looking like these days... here are a couple of pictures to catch you up a bit. The first two were taken at my parents house back in December when my brother and sister-in-law dropped by with a belated birthday present for Kara - an easy bake oven. Kara and Aunt Sara had a lot of fun making a big mess and a little cake and we all enjoyed watching! The picture of Caleb was taken in our dining room, and yes, those are bookshelves beside him! He's growing so fast. Crawling, pulling up and thinking seriously about how to get from place to place. Those two front teeth are hoping to be joined by a few more so that he can eat more interesting things. Kara is enjoying school and loving living near Grandma and Papa and so are we all. Hope all of you are well. We miss you all!

Kara and Aunt Sara baking having fun in the kitchen!

 

Crazy Kara and Crazy Aunt Sara working on making us a "homemade" Easy Bake Oven Cake!

 

Our Big Guy! - Caleb at 7months - Two teeth!

 

Things Kara has said recently

“Kara,” said Lynn-nore, “why aren’t you asleep yet?”
“Because you turned on the light!”

“I want to invite you to my tea party,” said Kara, “It’s at 8/7 central.”

“Daddy,” she says to me last night (before the light comment), “close your eyes.”
I close my eyes and she sticks her hand under my nose.
“Ugh, I smell bum–have you been sticking your hand in your bum?!”
Kara dissolves into rolling giggles, managing to blurt out, “yes!”
(Needless to say after I stopped laughing her hands had a good washing.)

And, since we’re being a little gross, a few days ago, Kara and Lynn-nore were discussing the merits of eating corn despite the fact that Kara threw up corn when she had that stomach bug over Christmas. Lynn-nore said, “Honey, just because you threw up some of your corn doesn't mean you should never eat it again--you really like corn" to which Kara replied, "SOME of the corn?! Mama, I threw up ALL of my corn!!"

Melanin do-again

A Rejoinder. In a past post, I reported that my now-boss appeared "pasty." Such is not the case. Instead, he has slowly and progressively tanned until now he is become a handsome African-American man.

In other news, Kara wants to take Ballet. Caleb has learned to make a house by planting his feet/hands on the floor and elevating his bum. Lynn-nore is nearly done plowing through all the boxes; the place is starting to feel like home. And, after weeks of trying to lose weight, and an initial 5 lbs drop, I discovered this morning a net loss of zero. At least I learned this morning that I'll be editing Brian McClaren's next book.

Apoclalyptic country drop-in or ordo Finanjo

It takes a lot of work to move into a new place. Outside of the simple act of physically hauling all of your stuff, loading and unloading it, there is the evaluation of it all. Here is a case in point. When L. and I were first married, she decorated in “mild country” with hearts, apples and bears. Over time, most of this has been sent back to the shadows from which it came, but some pieces avoided the axe—until now. Now, as we open boxes and sift their contents, there is a reckoning. This is the Great and Terrible Day for every frame, every candle holder, every ounce of bric-a-brac and nostalgia from little plastic cards with inspirational messages to a miniature butter churn.

The new world (ordo novum) is somewhat like the old one, sage and burgundy do appear, but now in deeper, wine-colors. There is a certain commonality; both my Mother- and Sister-in-Law have picked up on the move to Napa in kitchen décor. You get the feeling of great, subterranean tides at work, such as those which design men’s ties. Gone are solid colors in favor of late-80’s geometric shazam. Pleats, however, will forever fatten the male midriff unless something truly messianic is done to stop it.

The in-laws have taken to stopping by. This is totally new. L. stopped by just last week, and everyone got a kick out of it. Continents or oceans have always separated everyone from each other; stopping by is like the miracle of train travel to 18th century humanity. I would probably stop by, too, if I had grandkids so close by. The thinking is as follows: “I could be here in my home folding laundry that only I and my wife/husband care about (and then only tacitly), or I could be playing with my grandchild.”

Caleb can sit up now. He can also execute a sophisticated combination of rolls and lunges, scoots and twists to reach any geographic location he desires. When he gets himself stuck under the couch, he cries until someone pulls him out. And, occasionally, he barfs for no reason. He did this yesterday, during the first “stop by” by afore-said in-laws.

Kara has run into her first taste of ordinary school life. Despite the “Christian school” label, her Kindergarten is showing its spots. One little girl, I’ll just call her Pushy Petunia, tries to run the show. If I understand Kara’s puzzle-like descriptions, this girl tells Kara what to do and excludes her from play. Mentally, I’ve given Pushy the forearms of a merchant marine along with sweaty, black body hair. She’s probably a sweet-looking little girl whose parents want her to reflect good values. And then there’s the teaching response. When L. brings this to the teacher’s attention, Mrs. Find-a-New-Job (Finanjo) makes it fairly plain that Kara’s problems are Kara’s fault. This kind of attitude reminds me of, say, the quality experiences I had in Tennessee’s public schools. Never mind the woman that ran the car inspection station, a 2nd year transplant from Cape Cod, who begged me not to send Kara to public schools here, “because they are years behind Massachusetts schools.” Well, Maam, when it comes to Christian love at Christian schools, I have to say I agree. The love and care that Beacon (Christian Academy) showed for every child is totally absent from the remarks made by Mrs. Finanjo, or the attitude allowed to fester in Pushy Petunia.

Good Wednesday

Since it has been forever since I blogged anything on this board, I have been getting desperate. Needing to come up with something quick, I hit on the idea of randomly keeping track of what I did during one workday. Here goes.

8:00 a.m. My coat made a clanking noise getting out of the truck. I discovered a left over lunch spoon in a pocket. Yellow stuff has dried on it. I don’t have anything to eat with today. I’m going to use it (after a little scrubbing.)

8:49 a.m. Presently, my computer is the platform for an Adobe Acrobat war between Acrobat 5.0 and 7.05. Neither of them wants to install completely, so that .pdf files are automatically assigned to them. Well, 5.0 is a little more aggressive in this respect. Both reinstall every time I use them.

9:15 a.m. Finished readying the troops for the reception and sending-to-proof for a long overdue manuscript. The similarities between being an editor and playing dodge ball didn’t occur to me until just now. Watching various employees sign on to AIM (AOL’s instant messenger client, which many of us use as a form of inter-cubal communication.), and sending “Good Mornings” because I can.

9:20 a.m. Noticed the emissions report for my truck. I’d stuck it in my pocket to leave in the glove box. Funny that a state with more smokers per capita than I’ve seen in over a decade (most of them women) is so interested in emissions testing.

10:20 a.m. Dad called & we have a great discussion about influence and mission in the workplace. I’d mentioned the book Lead Like Jesus, and picked up a copy from our display shelves on the way to the production meeting. I also resolved to finish Barna’s Revolution and blog about it as soon as possible.

11:15 a.m. The administrator of type reading gave me some pointers on how to read the production schedule – quite helpful! Then we commiserated on the difficulties of converting data into XML.

11:45 a.m. Reading blog comments on George Barna’s silly little book. More a holiness tract than a legitimate sociological investigation, and with less scriptural argumentation!

12:35 p.m. Eating lunch at my desk due to the realization that I have three manuscripts to read in the next five days. Broccoli and pork tenderloins in a teriyaki sauce. (I found plastic utensils.)

12:58 p.m. Scribbling a hasty to-do on the back of a stray piece of paper while sorting out my Outlook tasks. I task everything!

2:00 p.m. Editing a foreword to a manuscript. I’ve spent an hour checking silly things like whether to capitalize “rock” as in rock music, and verifying the rules for placing commas after introductory phrases. Wishing I had a few days to do an intensive seminar on the Chicago Manual of Style.

2:49 p.m. A friend of mine and I stop to consider patience as the outcome of submission to the provident care of God. A refreshing thought given the list of to-do’s.

3:28 p.m. I just remembered that my oil pressure gauge was dangerously low this morning. Speed demands I reduce my usual standards, so I Yahoo yellow pages a Jiffy Lube and give them a call. I have plenty of manuscripts to read. Maybe, as L. said to me once, they will give me a flower. (It’s an inside joke.)

3: 45 p.m. Deleting Adobe 5.0.

3:53 p.m. Wrote a “thank you” to some friends for a gift which proves quite useful here on the job.

4:01 p.m. Updated the Outlook tasks list to reflect progress & add deadlines on new projects. Began reading a manuscript per an acquisition editor’s request for a “theological read.”

4:07 p.m. L. calls, tired and out of it, too much unpacking too many days in a row. I’d be tired, too. I feel sympathetic and tell her so.

4:10 p.m. I leave to get the truck’s oil changed. The truck alarm is set off during the process two times. I try and get through some of the opening remarks in February’s First Things and pay attention to overhead CNN commentary on the State of Union address at the same time. A guy named Alan Mittleman writes: “Paul and his theological descendants describe a Judaism that Jews cannot recognize.” Well, the temple and its sacrifices were still standing when Paul was alive, so that makes sense. Jamnia was still a long time coming.

5: 15 p.m. I make it home at seemingly the speed of light. The President was at the Opry, and they shut down Briley Parkway so that must have redirected much of the traffic that keeps me sitting between 5 and 6 p.m. Wouldn’t you know, I left that emissions report at the office.

Eat out and take in at Amerigo's

Amerigo Nashville. Broadway & West End. Me in coat and tie at a business dinner, a meet and greet with Dr. Cardia from California. I arrived late. Interstates in Nashville are just suggestions planted here and there on whatever strip of asphalt seems to be heading in a similar direction. Just because you are on I-65 S right now doesn’t mean that the situation will remain so. Most likely, you will split, merge, turn, and split again into a half-dozen other highways, some lesser and some greater, and each one may or may not continue as I-65. The atmosphere was hushed in deep, black leathers and earth tones, lit by hanging, oversized ambient globes. People’s voices crowded into close seats and intimate booths, thrumming and hustling each other for aural prominence. White napkins. Couples celebrating engagement; young men and women laughing at each other’s stories heard for the first time; mature couples out with friends; and business dinner people. “Thom!” I turned to see my table.

“So nice to meet you Dr. Cardia,” I said, he rising slightly from behind a bruschetta al pomodoro. No memory of the handshake; he’s trying to figure out who the heck I am. I scrunched into the seat opposite, beside The Storyteller and his wife, Anne. Across the white linen, Dr. Cardia, and to his right, D.W. The conversation was of the bruschetta, of the flight – introductions still being made while I fussed over the wine list. “I’ll have a glass of the house Pinot Grigio and a water, please.”

I really had no idea what I was doing at this meeting. The Storyteller and D.W. are both my superiors, the former by several degrees. I resolved to play conservative, but simply couldn’t help myself: “Now what is anhedonism?” Dr. Cardia opened like a collector given leave to bring out his rarest finds. He talked for 20 minutes at least, and I couldn’t help smiling at him, enjoying the pleasure of being in the presence of someone talking about what they love. (My heart laid its hand on theology.) We were all leaning in, and asking questions. The rising rate of pastoral infidelity; the American ADD phenomenon and its drug of choice, Ritalin; the inhibition of pleasure centers in the brain by a culture addicted to serial melodrama and hedonistic bombasts. Ultimately, he concluded, we so deaden our pleasure centers in the brain that we can no longer enjoy anything. We become like zombies, feeling nothing, enjoying nothing. A kind of depression sets in which is not sadness but emptiness. Real pleasures, good company, ripe fruit, beautiful sunsets, and especially delayed pleasures such as those achieved in listening to good music or acquiring a foreign language, become impossible without treatment. And what kind of treatment? This sounds so much like the consequences of gluttony and greed, I thought, “So are you saying, then, that a spiritual discipline like fasting, rather than be an avoider of pleasure, actually re-awakens our pleasure centers and opens a door to the experience of legitimate and authentic, rather than manufactured, pleasure?” Yes, he said, and then talked about some studies with recovering cocaine addicts. Hmmm…now that would be an interesting book. One that addresses not only the spiritual reasons behind the ascetic disciplines, but also supplements that with good scientific-and-brain research demonstrating their impact upon the whole psychosomatic person.

The Storyteller took over, and the conversation turned to the children of famous Christians. No gossip here, just good, wholesome stories; human life together, whether one is an author or international speaker or no. When everyone ordered coffee, I thanked God that Dr. Cardia ordered a cappuccino, as I did the same. Oh, you cannelloni al forno, only that cappuccino could have done you justice! “I have to bring L. here.”

It was a pleasure to meet Anne. Sunday school teacher, philanthropist, business woman and mother who opened a story with the descriptor “infancy narratives” – a beautiful woman with a young and wonder-full soul, I could see why The Storyteller married her. And, as he told tale after tale, I could see why she married him. I liked being around them as a couple, it made me feel good about being a human being. It made me feel good about my own marriage, and I missed L. There was a sad note, though. Anne looks so much like George Eliot, aged a bit. “Here is what she would be like if she were a Christian,” I thought, and my heart felt the loss.

Afterward, we stumbled out into the cool and neon Nashville downtown. I walked and whistled to the truck and climbed inside. Checked the messages. QE, still struggling with a cold. Sir Walter Raleigh answered the phone, and Oh the happy news: a boy! A boy! A boy (and, I’m told, quite apparently so!) I’m still excited and thrilled. John G. and I wrapped up the evening, where I blabbed far too long but he got to talk library speak and H. said a few words. This day was a table of the Lord, and I ate and was satisfied, and, even now at the end of this post, please understand that there are baskets left over.

Finding Beauty in Middle Tennessee

There is a beauty to Middle Tennessee. It isn’t the beauty of the ocean. Nor is it an architectural beauty; most of the buildings around here – the one’s that aren’t strip malls – are made of brick. It isn’t the charm of European walking distance, the library, the grocery store and a playground all within a few moment’s walk. It would take an hour or more to get anywhere here on foot. Yet, there is a beauty to it.

I first noticed it one morning when everything was shrouded in fog, laying thick and quiet along the slope of the land. Myself and the other commuters sped through these earth-bound-clouds cautiously, making deadlines, going places. And then, as I crossed over the Cumberland River, I looked across the rail at the water below. The sun glinted off the strange water and refracted through the overhanging fog. The scene was strange and mysterious, and flowed with memories of the frontier.

A few days later, I saw something else. Construction is everywhere in Nashville. The city has grown so fast over the last decade that public roads and other facilities have burst against rising demand. In an effort to make up the difference, nearly every road in Nashville is being widened, and new connections are being made. Thus, cars share the roads with construction machinery and their handlers. It was just such a situation that gave me another glimpse of the beauty to be found here.

Just off highway 155E, in a knot of trucks and pylons, a group of construction workers had gathered before starting their daily labor. They stood together in a loose circle. Tattered shirts and old jeans, gloves and hard-hats, dusty hands and faces, they gripped coffee or a biscuit from Jack in the Box or McDonald’s and greeted each other. It reminded me of my warehouse days. It reminded me of the feel of the warehouse first thing in the morning. Muscles just warming up as hands and feet took up new tasks. In their faces and postures, in the work that waited all around them, I saw something else that is beautiful in Middle Tennessee: its people.

And, finally, a third thing – quickly said as this is getting long. We visited a Baptist church yesterday. A congregation of perhaps 120 in a not-unattractive sanctuary for 350 people. Just before the sermon, a man of about 45-50 years sang “Special Music”. It was a gospel song of gratitude for being a “child of the King” filled out with pre-recorded percussion, bass and background vocals. Cheesy, that’s what I thought as a kid. But, as this man, this bearded grown man, got into the song, and could barely choke out his real gratitude for being such a one, I didn’t think it was cheesy at all. It was grace. Southern religiosity takes some getting used to, and I’m not sure if I will ever totally trust it, but that doesn’t mean that it is false. It certainly wasn’t to this man. And as he struggled to sing in those last few bars, I saw something else beautiful, beautiful and beyond beauty.

The other habit

Watching TV the other night with Kara, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she had her fingers up near her face. Thinking the worst I said, “Kara, stop picking your nose.” “I’m not picking my nose Daddy,” she whined, “I’m doing the other habit!”

Fifty-or-Fit

So the lot of us were at Friday’s a week or two ago to celebrate Mary Shelley’s birthday. Mary is on my right, Dolley Madison on my left. Opposite are Idgie Threadgoode and Alypius; Mr. Darcy at the head. Little by little the subject turned to New Year’s resolutions, and, from there, weight loss. “I need to lose weight this year,” said Mr. Darcy. Dolley agreed, and in a flash Mr. Darcy’s hand was out. “Let’s make a bet out of it,” he said, “50 dollars apiece to see who wins the most by…” Dolley laughed and shook on it. Discussion followed. Alypius threw in. Do it! I thought. You need to lose weight big time. Plus, this is a great way to do that and be a part of things! Now $50 is a lot of money, and I’m normally not given to wagering anything. When the powerball was up in the 200 million, I didn’t even buy a dollar ticket. Just do it! I went back and forth, and then finally shook on it. The date set was April Fool’s Day. Whoever loses the most weight, measured as a percentage lost, wins the pot at $150.

The next morning, Dolley sent an email to the rest of us. “….one mile, x sit ups, y push ups….GAME ON!” Mr. Darcy’s shot back: two trips for beer. My strategy hasn’t so far been as aggressive. Slight, incremental changes are my forte, harnessing the power of caloric compound interest. Park further from buildings. Drink water. Cut out sweets. Take the stairs. I lost 20lbs doing just this a few years ago, and I wagered these would make a good sortie toward the goal. That is until Alypius started getting up early to work out. Now I’m thinking a good deal about that fitness center in the new apartment complex.

Lynn-nore was a little shocked when I broke the news. $50 is a lot of money! (Did I mention that?) If every couple has a spendthrift and a tightwad, then I am most definitely the former. Still, the health benefits of having me a bit lighter, coupled with the prospect of winning enough money to cover the cost of a new wardrobe sweetened the deal. Also, we have since figured that the money saved by acquiring our apartment, thereby negating the need to pick up a Y membership, is none too shabby. I even think, having been at it for over a week now, that she is a little proud of me – and that feels good.

Catching Z's

The sun is going down, and from the window next to my cubicle, I can see the tips of trees, yellow and brown. They stand on the dock, and wave to the Sun as it sets out to the west. Inside, someone is on the phone. Another is chatting to a co-worker, in this case Dolley Madison. The rat-a-tat of ubiquitous keyboarding joins the hum of ventilation. A quiet afternoon that is soporific in the extreme.

I have been trying to read a galley copy of Brian McClaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus (IMHO largely a colloquial popularization of a better N.T. Wright lecture) but keep wanting to nod off. Most days there is a good bit to do, but todays “to do” has caught fast in the wheels of others.

Domestically, we found an apartment. We went from 1250/mo for a simple 2brdm with < 1000 square feet of space to much less $/mo with 1200+ square feet + fitness center/2 pools/volleyball/tennis court AND - perhaps more importantly - a dish washer! L. and I are pinching ourselves! Caleb has begun teething. 3 little white incisors are starting to peek out on his lower jaw. It is a good thing, too, since he’s anything but covert about his desire to chomp into real food. While his sister chants “Meat! Meat!” at a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, Caleb has to make do with rice serial and bananas. He’s ready for more. This, unfortunately, has made him a very light sleeper. Suddenly we are up 2 and 3 times a night again (I say “we” but poor L. takes the brunt of it.) Once he goes down around 8, it is tiptoe time for the next 12 hours. Alas, Kara can’t help herself but shout and groan and make all sorts of noise when we’re putting her to bed – no matter how many references to the Spanish Inquisition one makes by word or sign! Kara is in her first full-week of a new Kindergarten, and she is really enjoying it. Thanks to a visual method for sight-reading, she is sounding out words and simple sentences in a leap of ability bordering on the miraculous! I am very proud of her, and sensitive to the face that spelling doesn’t always mean you keep the secret. Gramma spelled out “Z-O-O” last Saturday, and Kara had no trouble at all deciphering it on the spot.

Coming up: $50 or a pound of flesh.

Santa came to Manchester

Going through some papers, I came across this article that L. cut from the Manchester Cricket. File this under "only in New England"!

SANTA IS COMING TO TOWN AGAIN!
Mark your calendars for the annual Jingle Bell walk, co-sponsored by the Community Center and the Manchester Mothers Club. Set this year for December 3rd, Santa will arrive at Masconomo Park via lobster boat. Santa will lead children on a Jingle Bell Walk to Singing Beach, followed by an Open House at the Community Center from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Refreshments will be served and Santa will be available for pictures. Put on your best holiday outfits and come join Santa!

I gave Max Lucado a Cold

I gave Max Lucado a cold. Who? Max Lucado /loo-KAY-doe/. As comfy as a fireside chat, as pastoral as your favorite Uncle, as best-seller as an Oprah book club discount card. That’s the Max Lucado I’m talking about. I met him my first day on the job. Who? Max Lucado. White like sunlight glancing from whitened sandstone. Tall like the A in Antonio. Downy and pastoral, a tenor with a sweater-vest, a heath-hearted fire. That’s the Max Lucado I’m talking about, and I gave him a cold on my very first day.

Unlike my last foxhole, my new cubicle is open and spacious. Wide writing surfaces, with a slide-away file cabinet and drawers are topped by under lit, lockable shelving. The first day, this space was still full of K’s stuff: the accumulated junk of years of shuffling and re-shuffling. Wires, plugs and bags of materials, dusty and unkempt gave the whole a transitory feeling. There were secrets, too.

It is a premium in my new position to keep an eye on the details, details intricately bound up with judgments and manipulations of time. Underneath the dusty leftovers and boxes were a few archaeological bones of K’s own astrology: a file with a color-coded dot; the way she organized the folders in her C:\ drive; different-colored pens. I was left alone for an hour that first day like an acolyte in the temple, looking past the standing stones at the moon and the setting sun and wondering at the question of time. I squared off the site and began sifting and diagramming each of its treasures.

“Excuse me, Thom,” said Mr. Darcy, just as I was about to empty a stack of antiquated emails into a bin, “Max is in the office today, and we’re going to have a meeting with him. We’re going to pray for his upcoming book.” “Pray! How does that work?” I wondered. Not that I don’t mind prayer, but in a corporate setting. Since coming to Nashville, the borderline between religious expression and, to speak existentially, the street, are always crashing into each other in unpredictable ways. And, here on the Outlook tasks: prayer.

Fumbling with names, and coated with new-guy inapproachability, I followed the rest along toward a good sized meeting room. Suits were already there, sitting in a closed square around the center. We pulled chairs from stacks and assembled respectfully along the wall. I bumped along to the right, and found myself sitting alone beside two late-middle-aged women who took no notice of me. I barely noticed myself. And then everyone stood up, and next thing you know up comes Lucado. He takes my hand, looks me right in the eye and says, “Good morning, I’m glad you are here.” Normally I never shake hands with anyone when I’m ill, but Lucado just sort of took it. Surprised, I still managed a smile, “Thanks, I’m glad to be here.” After that he milled through the rest of the crowd, finally ending up at the head of things. Then there was a half hour or so of prayer. I wondered whether only the important people could pray. I wondered whether anyone in the outer ring would pray. What sort of “prayer dynamic” was at work? Who felt as if they had to pray? Then it was over. Time for the Christmas party.

“I hope you like the party we threw for you!” I heard this about half a dozen times as I bummed a ride from some co-workers, still strangers but probably friends. We climbed into an SUV, and climbed out into the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Inn. Our group had a table reserved, right up front. I was seated beside Mr. Darcy, who gave me a “whose who” of the room and fired off well-meaning insults, giving as good as he got, from the rest of the table. I still felt cold and new, like brittle glass.

Around me, the room, opulent and red velvet, was loud. People were having a good time, shouting and jostling each other in friendly greeting. Patsy Clairmont was the speaker. A little, graying woman with a booming voice (or were we sitting in front of the speakers?) she spoke about Jonah, and I was glad to note that she’d obviously read a commentary or two before she wrote her standup. Lucado took the stand to talk about his book.

I was taking in everything. One thing I wanted to know about this group all seated at the same table was whether they liked each other or not. In my last employ, a few hellos would go around, and small talk would be attempted, but there would be little in the way of non-office friendliness. I was pleased to discover that this was largely not the case. This group was more like a cluster of teens at a youth convention than a bevy of suits who came for the food. It is normally very difficult to get any sense of personality at functions like these, but in this case, each person seemed to own themselves. Each person shone in their own color, more along the lines of a church assembly than a collection of co-workers. I marveled at this while wondering with the rest of the table what we were to do now that the wait staff had taken our forks, when the music started.

One golden-voiced executive, with two others drawn from other departments in the company, had taken the microphone and the three men began to sing Christmas carols. The second man played a giant, black Gibson Epiphone hooked to a jazz amplifier. They sang two songs, and then asked the audience to sing one together. They chose “Silent Night” and began straightaway:

Silent Night, Holy Night
All is calm, all is bright

I joined in, lifted up by the room. Missing worship with my church, and the move having taken advent out of the December weeks, I was hungry for carols, hungry to sing, and here was a company singing together, singing in all sincerity about Jesus. And lest you think only the first verse was sung, no, they launched out into the remainder, and by the time we got to

Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace

I knew that I wasn’t the new guy any longer. I felt it all the way through. It has been a long time coming, but on this day, I said, here is exactly where I belong.