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"