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.