Boards of Red Tulips

Party Spirit

2012-01-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

Do you know what that is?

Check out Robert Capon's book, The Party Spirit. The end times meets us in the kitchen! With our guests--and how we host them.

7 Years

2012-01-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

Seven long years. It's a long time since we publicly pledged our "I do" to each other. Seven years is a turning point in the life of a child, in his growth and development, as many educators and physicians recognize. It's enough time to get some history under the belt of a marriage. Time to "I do" to that and "I don't" to this. Doing about two of those seven years at a distance, like long distance dating, it's tempting to forge ahead with one's separate lives, forming plenty of survival habits and self-made schedules that will all need to change with reuniting. It's tempting to pretend like nothing happened in those seven years to need readjusting. We've gotten along thus far; we are basically fine, right? Where the hand of God is at work, there is no pot-in-the-fire "fine" for long.

Wow.

2011-12-18T19:35:00.000-08:00

A new Advent season. Reading our recently old posts, I can report that we have indeed "minimized," moving to a 2 bedrm apartment and rediscovering what is "essential." I want to get back to writing, but the deployment and repeated moving needs-based survival schedule took over. So, I guess I haven't actually simplified enough if there's still no time for what I used to think was most important. Maybe re-ordered priorities happened in the process.

Moving Day

2011-04-28T10:40:00.001-07:00

The time has come to say goodbye to our old house and make our way into the new. With the help of our church family and friends, we are able to pack it all up in a timely manner and make the transition with the comfort of their presence. I'm looking forward to the new neighbors we'll meet, even as we will miss our good, good old neighbors. I'm looking forward to the new things O can do since we'll be within walking distance of ice cream cafes, library and his favorite playgrounds. With many tears through our thanksgiving, it's good to have a time of leaving one's "old life" behind and pressing forward into a new.

[disclaimer: the house in the background is not ours]

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

As we wait expectantly for the new life that comes with the Springtime,

our inner man is under reconstruction,

and we are ready for ashes and confession.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Listing one's Thanks

2011-03-01T10:51:00.000-08:00

Ann Voskamp's new book, One Thousand Gifts, made it into our house and is challenging a very small group of discontents to make that list of things one is thankful for, to list the things we thought were ugly and mere distractions from "real life"as the things that help refine our hearts. It sounds way too simple, and perhaps like wishful, positive brainwashing, but the exercise of giving thanks is akin to weight lifting and squats--small intense movements that produce long term, major effects. There's a way of understanding the common, everyday things that we miss in the blindness of a perspective of mundanity.

Our morning toast is a gift of someone else's labor, therefore we owe thanks.

The cream cheese on my bagel is a gift of produce from a creature of the earth, therefore I am indebted and render thanks.

And tea--what would the day be without it?!--a gift that travelled far and through many hands to reach us, thus multiple layers of thanks is offered for this one cup.

I am impressed, upon thinking about the things I'm thankful for, what a debtor I am.

living in light of joy

2011-02-07T12:23:00.000-08:00

For our friends who are trudging through the nitty gritty red tape of adoption; I read this poem and thought of you.

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

Learning to read

2011-01-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

"For most of us it takes years and years and years to exchange our dream world for the real world of grace and mercy, sacrifice and love, freedom and joy."

In Eugene Peterson's book, Eat This Book, I am studying to read again.

on occasion

2011-01-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

What's the one household chore one can do while in labor (with child) and recovering from violent illness? Laundry, of course. The exertion is minimal, the industrious hum of the dryer and washer, and the reward of fresh diapers, towels and socks that need no immediate folding are a satisfying way to make oneself feel not entirely useless even when gravely weak.

My latest FlyLady habit to practice is a load a day. Before one goes downstairs for the day, grab an armload of dirty clothes, and fill the washer to the brim. But only one load. I admit to cheating sometimes, calling diapers that extra load that's more it's own project than regular laundry.

Laundry Room. Not something we commonly take pictures of of think too much about!

Snow day!

2011-01-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

In the recent snowfall, we bounded outside before the hidden sun disappeared completely. We bundled O in his rainbow fleece suit, layered on socks, and grabbed the camera. While Herbie ran wild around the neighbors' yard, chasing cats, and the children next door dragged out their round sleds, Eric got the ball rolling for the snowman, carefully stacked and defended from O, who wanted to attack and topple the little snow guy.

After a while, the cold became too much for even rainbow fleece suits. O was becoming a grumpy snowman by the time we hauled him back in for dinner....

And eating at the table is always fun time, especially when aunts give you vest-like bibs with patches!

This Year's Theme: Minimize

2011-01-17T15:30:00.000-08:00

You know that seasonal feeling of cleaning out the closet, the pantry, or the garage? Well, this year Kelly and I have felt that same feeling not just as a seasonal feeling, but as a general life calling. Why? I am really not sure. I wish I knew.

Sure, we are up for orders this year, but in all reality we will propably just stay here. True, we have put our house on the rental market in order to move from a lovely home in the suburbs to a small loft or home in the middle of the city, but we could still fit most of our stuff in there if we wanted to. So why? Why would I want to get rid of so much of our "stuff" and live with as small a footprint as possible? Am I running from something? Are we having a mid-life crisis already?

To be sure, I am not sure. But I would say that this idea of minimizing is in response to a feeling of the heart. Ok, so maybe feeling is not the right word, but pressure may be. I have met more people over the past year who have seemed to be light posts on a dark and lonely road. . . and they have all felt the same thing. Over Christmas, I was talking with a friend and he said "if I could put a word to what we are doing this year, it would be minimize."

Christ Himself was all about minimizing. All He asked us to do was take up our cross and follow Him. Maybe that is the key. Maybe I am finally just learning to live as a Christian. At least that is what I would like to think is true. Perhaps I want my identity to be more tied up in who Christ is and what He wants me to do with my "stuff" than tied up in just my "stuff."

Regardless, the urge and desire is there. Our prayer is just that we would be wise to follow the desire with discretion and follow wherever He may lead.

Rest

2010-12-12T14:02:00.000-08:00

"As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest. . . So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief." Heb 3: 11-19

I consistently fall into the trap of thinking that if only I could get the proper amount of time away from my work, or go on a real sabbatical, or maybe even get 8 plus hours of sleep per night I might finally feel rested. But the heart of the matter lies not so much with the rejuvenation of my body, but with the rejuvenation of my heart.

And so in order to find the rest that I need to carry out the work I have been called to, I need to seek out not just time off, but time with my Lord, the giver of life and the rest that He provides through His strengthening Spirit. Rest for us in God is rest forever. Let our prayer be then that we have belief in Him with the finality being a rest that is eternal and real.

Advent Musings

2010-12-05T16:11:00.000-08:00

"A voice cries in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord: make straight in the desert a highway for our God." Isaiah 40:3

This Advent season is proving to be one of great preparation for me. And well it should be. Advent is the season in which we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ, our Saviour. Perhaps more than any other Advent season, this year is allowing me to prepare myself by looking into my heart, which is in turn the catalyst for driving me to Christ and the miracle of his birth.

As I ponder the hardness of heart, the lack of grace, and my critical nature in general, I recognize a darkness in my spirit that is devoid of life and warmth. Despite my greatest efforts I can not fill this void or add heat to my cold heart. Only God, through Christ, is able

And so I pray that this season of lights proves to be a season in which my dark heart is illuminated by His grace, love, and sacrifice. Praise be to God, for his gift of Light and Life, and may His Spirit cause me to make straight in the desert of my heart a highway for our God.

Reading:

2010-08-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. Excellent explanation of the work God did and does for us, as illustrated in the parable of the "Prodigal Son." The chapter that got to me is the one in which he compares the laying down of Christ's life to that of an elder brother paying the cost of my profligate lifestyle. What real brother would give up even half of his inheritance to enable my life, support my place in the household?

Meandering

2010-08-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

In these last dog days of summer, the gardens are wilting and going to seed. We've sadly neglected the flower beds and need to give them some fresh manure and mulch on the washed out soil. The dogs think they want to go out for a walk every day, but Herbs falters half way down the neighborhood, panting his complaint that the road is hot, his feet are sore, and he's going to die if he can't lay down in the shade for five minutes. Sweetpea simply puts her paw down and declares "you can drag me but I choose to stay here in this nice neighbor's yard." So, Sweeps just stays home.

While Eric's been putting in some long hours, O and I have gone to town, walking. We walk around the neighbourhoods of downtown. We scope out rentals, dreaming of the day we can live in walking distance of the harbour.

O decided he likes a later bedtime than what we were doing before, so a long evening walk is a perfect way to end a long, hot day.

(This photo was actually from 4th of July, so he's aged a bit since this was taken. Thanks to Molly and Grandpa for the hat and overalls to match. He likes to wear them red neck style, no shirt).

All smiles this summer

2010-08-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

We spent a lovely afternoon in Emerald Isle with our "Webster Family" a couple weekends ago. They know how to live at the beach, with a huge tent to stake claim to a piece of the beach and enjoy a nap without frying. O was intrigued with Elle's beach toys, who was not so fond of a wee boy snagging her loot. I wouldn't either! Boys are notoriously destructive of dolls, dirty the carefully protected dress up clothes, and are generally creatures to beware until further notice of good manners.

(Regretfully, the photos are poor quality; consider them impressionistic). Check out more of O's happenings at The Talking Lion blog.

hot dog summer

2010-08-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

It's been warm here, so much so that we are glad to be busy and indoors and since we (sadly) are not farmers we need not be out in the dry dirt.

But we've had good Saturdays to read on the couch, mow the grass, and stock the fridge at the Farmer's Market--the "normal" things.

Because we live within an hour of the best beaches around, we make obligatory drives down every weekend, or find a pool to swim and soak in the cool waters.

Omari has found his favorite place to be in the water and sand, relishing the texture and salt spray, and mysteriously knew that when Papa built him a sand castle last week, he was supposed to knock it down!

home again

2010-06-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

Jiggidy Jig. We return to home base with no little sadness and resignation that life as we know it continues, with work and "back to normal" and learning what that means all over again. If deployment is our dividing line for time together, the child is the line of a new race for us to run. May our hearts rise to the occasion.

fair warning

2010-03-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

Her majesty Orual has rescued and revivified her journal: Deadlands and Courtyards, as linked to the right.

Blog Friend

2010-01-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

On these wintry days, it's a pleasure to hole up in the warm house and read, drink hot beverages, and talk.

One of our good friends sent us a link to their new blog, created as a forum for discussion. As a group who meets regularly, they are thinking through the book of Hebrews. Now, the rest of us can join in on their musings and add to the community of thought.

Check out the side link of "Batter my Heart"
http://battermyheartblog.blogspot.com/

Did you see it?

2010-01-15T18:18:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from an email Eric sent when the moon was full:

It is a beautiful evening here. The moon is full, and there is to be a partial eclipse at midnight. I may walk outside to see it. I got some great pics of the very full, big moon rising this eve. It was lovely. We see such shadows here. In the midst of war, death, and fear there is beauty. God's mercy is indeed evident in everything, and I can not wait until we all can see it beyond the shadows.

Three moons since he left, and we look to each new moon with the anticipation of pilgrims seeking their homeland, where their heart may rest and their true love waits.

New Addition

2010-01-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

Our blog family is growing....again. Check it out on the sidebar: Talking Lion. Now, he won't quite take over the shelf of red tulips.

First Christmas

2010-01-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

He got lots of presents, little gift-child! We think he enjoyed the tree lights. He most loves the swing that we put in front of the tree, thanks to the Smiths for loaning it!

Daily diaper

2009-12-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

...and out of his newborn clothes!

He's growing into his cloth ones....

Second Leg

2009-12-25T13:34:00.000-08:00

From the hospital, he travelled to his first temporary quarters at the Air Force Base Inn...

...then on to Tennessee to visit the farm where his daddy grew up.

Welcome home, baby boy!

2009-12-25T13:28:00.000-08:00

He slept as he flew out of the hospital.

New Addition

2009-12-25T13:23:00.000-08:00

Welcome baby Omari! Born 15 December 2009, Kansas.

Turkey Trot!

2009-11-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

On a team of five, we ran, shuffled, and pushed our aching legs for 4.97 miles! Through a thin white fog, we trod a track of stately homes and fallen leaves, past deluxe duplexes and fancy hotels back to the Bojangles where the warm biscuits and coffee went home on the arms of moms, dad, and grandpas in bright yellow boxes, the sunshine of happy taste buds. The start line was packed; it was the obvious the race had sold out. Though we five started out together, we separated in the massive herd, so Kathryn, Patrick and I ran the whole way together, despite Kat's aching joints and side stitches. Kristie and Elizabeth kept a brisk pace for themselves, wisely pacing their jog to gently challenge their muscular endurance. They finished a mere quarter hour after us.

We finished with quickened beat and wheezing lungs--but fast!--over the finish line, right under an hour for the 8K.

2009-11-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

Visiting the hills of Tennessee in the fall of the year is a walk into another world than the one we live daily on the flat coastland. On the flight over, we saw the Appalachians crowned with deep lava-red and girded with remnants of green at their warmer feet, where lakes and winding rivers lie like piles and necklaces of diamonds that glitter in the sun. This time of year, they are no mere hills and hollers. With the sun shining through thinning branches of yellow, red, orange, and punctuated by sturdy evergreens, the wind whistles and hums tunes of long-ago memories and hints of the future, preparation for coming storms.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

2009-10-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

I am under the predisposition that all of life points to the glory of the Kingdom. No where should this be more apparent than in our worship. This past Sunday we had the opportunity to worship with a body who allowed the Beauty and Truth in the Liturgy to direct our hearts and minds toward God, the Father.

Anyone who knows me understands that I have a very strong opinion on the act of Worship. I believe it is a never ceasing act that encompasses all of our life. However, there are aspects, such as the sacraments, that you can only engage in corporately. In particular, the act of taking Communion has particular importance to me. For it is there that we feast on the Body and the Blood of our Risen King. And a feast it is indeed. It is no meager meal that consists of a flake of cracker and grape juice. It is a sensory filling feast of warm, wonderful bread and rich, full bodied wine. The fact that we live in such an affluent society and reduce the Body and Blood of our Lord to the cheapest of materials is a tragedy. But I digress. What I witnessed and participated in this past Sunday was a beautiful representation of the Gospel.

After the appropriate fencing of the table the body began to come down. One by one down came the sick, the lame, the depressed, the old and infirm, the young and athletic, children and infants, sinners all. But as they came down to partake of the feast there was hope in their eyes. Though many of their bodies had failed them, their Lord had not. He had come to prepare a feast for us all, and it was beautiful. It was good. Thanks be to God.

And Yet, and always just yet. . .

2009-10-01T18:08:00.001-07:00

Life is hard right now. Very scary. Very stressful. The weight of an unforeseen, but very real load weighs down upon us. And yet, just yet, there is hope.

Blest be the God of love,
Who gave me eyes, and light, and power this day,
Both to be busy, and to play.
But much more blest be God above,
Who gave me sight alone,
Which to himself he did deny:
For when he sees my ways, I die:
But I have got his son, and he hath none.

What have I brought thee home
For this thy love? have I discharg'd the debt,
Which this day's favour did beget?
I ran; but all I brought, was foam.
Thy diet, care, and cost
Do end in bubbles, balls of wind;
Of wind to thee whom I have crost,
But balls of wild-fire to my troubled mind.

Yet still thou goest on,
And now with darkness closest weary eyes,
Saying to man, It doth suffice:
Henceforth repose; your work is done.
Thus in thy Ebony box
Thou dost enclose us, till the day
Put our amendment in our way,
And give new wheels to our disorder'd clocks.

I muse, which shows more love,
The day or night: that is the gale, this th' harbour;
That is the walk, and this the arbour;
Or that the garden, this the grove.
My God, thou art all love.
Not one poor minute 'scapes thy breast,
But brings a favour from above;
And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

Evensong by George Herbert

We sought a way of escape

2009-09-15T11:58:00.001-07:00

The movie, Gigantic, is paradoxical in the worst sense, of being about small-world, admittedly messed up and weird people, who think all their own problems are gigantic (perhaps that's the title's reference??)--again, like we all do--but without changing in a satisfactory way, nor accomplishing anything worthwhile (to themselves), and refusing to face the mess in which they find themselves. And the filming is all gray, grey, dark, gray. We found a good stopping point; the girl was leaving the guy, and she might have come back, but we'll never know...or wonder.

Thoughts On Work

2009-09-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am slowly learning through my discourse with friends and associates that it is very important to define your terms when walking through a conversation. When speaking a language that is constantly in the process of transforming the meaning of its words, a common meaning is essential. In particular, I have found that this is no where more necessary than in the discussions which take place within the confines of the Church. Of note, when we discuss the intricacies of good works, do we mean my personally defined "good" works, or do we mean art of good work? And really, what is the difference? Perhaps, if you are a Christian, you have spent a great deal of time considering what it means to do "good works", but how much time have you spent considering what it means to do "good work?" Ok, you ask, is there a difference, and if so, what is it?

C.S. Lewis brings up an excellent representation of this in his book, The Joyful Christian. "When our Lord provided a wedding party with an extra glass of wine all around, he was doing good works. But also good work; it was a wine really worth drinking." In short, while a fruit of our faith is finding ourselves serving in good works, we should care that our works may also be recognized as good, as defined by a standard Other than ourself. Okay, fair enough you say, but what defines this good work, and where does it come from?

The easy answer is hope. To borrow from C.S. Lewis yet again; Lewis describes "hope as one of the Theological virtues." And what he means is that hope is an understanding of the here, but not yet. An eschatological view that neither discards the ramifications of this life, nor builds them up to be something more than they really are. Lewis goes on to say that "if you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought more of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who fought for the abolition of the slave trade, all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven."

If we are only focused on doing good works, we will never do work that is good. It is the same principle that may be applied to your health. Taking care of yourself is an important obligation, but the minute you make your health your number one priority you become a self obsessed human who never rises beyond the minutia of your own selfish needs. Likewise, Lewis goes on to say that "if you aim at heaven, you will get earth thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither."

By the way. . . Did I tell you that I hate leaving for Dets/Deployments at 0400 in the morning?

2009-09-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

more on religion

2009-08-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

We like to think of ourselves as running with the band of merry men who wake up one day and find themselves freed of Religion. The attempt to explain leaves me more often tongue-tied and my hearers confused and perhaps concerned for my sanity. Thus, I leap at the opportunity to share C.S. Lewis' explanation, as I discovered it today, in The World's Last Night and Other Essays.

"The word religion is extremely rare in the New Testament or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practises to which we give the collective name of religionare themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about religion; he hasn't the time. Religion is what we (or he himself at a later moment) call his activity from outside."

~From Lilies that Fester

Under the Shadow

2009-08-01T07:05:00.001-07:00

My Mother loves to tell the story of a me as a little boy who, when going around the house with a black cloud over my head, would send me to my room until I could gain a better perspective on life. In other words, I was banished until I could cheer up. My response was to cry, yes, literally cry, "I AM happy now....I'm HAPPY now!" That little story is a cute anecdote, but perhaps the scary thing is that I am still that little boy. It is an interesting perspective on the redemptive work going on in our lives.

This summer has been full of new challenges for us: continuing to deal with raw emotions involved in loss, sorting through the emotions of potential gain, a profession that is demanding more than is human to give, and yet attempting to love not only each other through it all, but also learning to love our neighbor. Now, I am not trying to say that I have had a tougher time than anyone else. In fact, mine in many cases is most likely better. I have no doubt been blessed. But, that is not the point. The point is that as I look to the future, I cringe.

There is a very real part of me that wants to run, run back to where there is peace and life. Or at least where I think there is peace and life. We were designed to long for home, it was built in us as a reflection of God's desire to draw us near to Him. Yet, even our desires are fallen, and what we long for is nothing more than a shadow, a haunting apparition that lingers in our mind. If we really went back, it would not be the place we have in our minds. I want to run back to a hospital where I knew my son. I want to run back to Kansas where I met a life that I pray affects my own. I want to run home.

But here is the promise; a grand but terrible promise. Home is not behind us, it is ahead of us. It is waiting for us in the Shadows of the here, but not yet. We get glimpses of it sometimes around the corner, but always it alludes us. I wish that I could do as Jeremy Huggins has phrased, "sleep for home." But I can't. None of us really can. We have to run, walk, and sometimes slog our way through the Valley of the Shadow. Which, by the way, is not a one time thing you go through, it is the whole of life.

And so, I have no choice but to keep going, to keep running. But in my running, I pray that the run is not in vain, for I have been called to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. And in my run I may still cry out, "I am happy now", but I will do so with the understanding that there is more than just my dear Mother listening to my cries and being a shelter to run to when I cheer up. But a Father whose Shadow I never leave, who guides our feet as we run, who accepts even our cries of desperate happiness, and will call us Home within the comforting confines of His Divine love.

look at the garden!

2009-07-23T15:15:00.001-07:00

These pictures are in upside-down order: 2/Early planting. 1/Today, the cucumbers are overtaking the second bed and the cabbage never balled up... The tiny white asters bloom before the daisies, before the pink blossoms come out on the bush.

mud in the face

2009-07-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

Who was it, I wonder, who discovered the cleansing effects of coating one's body with mud and letting it sit right there and dry and harden and wash it all off again? In most normal daily activities we would consider mud on the face as dirty, to be avoided in the first place and washed asap. Nevertheless, I indulge myself a mudding, faithfully, each week.

The dirt got in my eyes this week. In the form of a letter to the Philippians in which Paul speaks of his doing vs God's doings in him, as an example of what each of us ought to be, "Not that I...am already perfect, but I press on...because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (3:12). Whether it's in my personality or my upbringing or merely a part of being human, I find myself tormented and yet passionate about my own perfection. Be it a good reputation, being known for simple punctuality or blameless in murdering others--those whom I discount as beneath my company--I strive daily for confidence in the flesh. To what end? My confidence is dashed on the rocks of Paul's boast, "whatever gain I had, I counted as loss" (3:7). The pride-happy satisfaction I achieve in works of cultural right-ness will not attain for me the resurrection from the dead. And if I die like Rover, dead all over, I have failed, I lost the fight, I have nothing, not a thing to show for all my self-made veneer of goodness.

What help is there, what mud will cleanse me free me of the blemish that is my self-mutilation of good works by pride? Somehow, "it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure;" I must "be poured out as a drink offering;" I must lose everything to "gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law"--and to think how many laws I make for myself and judge others by--"but that which comes through faith in Christ" (2:13,17, 3:8-10). It's the power of his resurrection that I want, not my own flesh-zeal, his sufferings I must find in common with him, as he works by faith and patience in the spirit of a man, to revive him from among the dead, and into his glorious body.

It Came Today

2009-07-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

Beau's headstone.

Mom had stopped by the cemetary a few weeks ago for a quick visit and mentioned that the headstone was not there yet. So after a quick call to Sally, who by the way is the most wonderful funeral director/manager in the world, phone calls were made and answers were quickly at hand. Sally sent the photos for us look over and we are pleased at how the design turned out.

Admittedly, there is something odd at looking at your son's headstone. I can't really say that I ever imagined ever doing that. . . but then again, we often do many things we never would have imagined doing.

I placed the picture on the frig, as if it were something Beau had made in school and brought home. I am not sure if that is weird or not, but the picture offers something that is tangible. Something that offers proof as to the reality of his being in our lives. . . Something I really need.

(Note: The pic is not of his new headstone, this pic was taken back in January)

Hope

2009-06-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

A shred of it pierces you, fills you, encourages you to go on. Maybe I call it hope, but I wonder if it something more, more like a promise. And that promise of hope to me is that if we repent, and be baptized, then: "the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord God calls to Himself." (Acts 2:39)

Sure, maybe the face value gives comfort in the fact that the Promise so freely given is also extended to our children, and what a hope by the way. But tonight the Hope goes further than that. The Hope is in the Promise of knowing that all I have to do is repent. That is it. There is nothing more, and indeed, nothing less.

Wendell Berry Picks Jail Over NAIS

2009-06-20T12:23:00.001-07:00

This is a very interesting development from the Department of Agriculture. Thanks Bonnie, for sharing this as I had not yet seen this snake rear its ugly head.

Wendell Berry Picks Jail Over NAIS

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the dark planet

2009-06-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

Re-reading A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle is a remembering of all the truth ideas I learned from her back at the intense ages of 12 and 13. One of the main characters, Proginoskes, is a cherubim whom the little boy Charles Wallace took for a host of dragons, and Meg his sister describes: "She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing, looking at her....And wings, wings in constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes. When the wings were spread out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere. Little spurts of flame and smoke spouted up between the wings; it would certainly start a grass fire if it weren't careful" (54).

It is of Proginoskes that I think when I read of the Four Living Creatures assembled around the throne of God: "And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind....And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!'" (Revelations 4:6-8)

And then we sing the song "Holy, Holy, Holy" and I remember Progo and think of the Four Creatures with all their eyes blinking and wise and if you read further, you find that it's a not a few creatures alone, but "the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands," are all shouting or singing or just speaking as if one thunderous voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" (Rev. 5:11-12). He's worthy, because he died, and he died because he alone was worthy to redeem us all out of this dark, comparatively silent planet. And we with our weak and wobbly voices and kid voices off key are not alone when we solemnly sing "Holy, Holy, Holy." We have Proginoskes, dissolved in a shimmer of air next to us, joining with his much more heavenly voice and spurts of flame burning our hands as if mimicking the sparks of the Spirit blistering our heart.

The truth of each of us

2009-06-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

From Wendell Berry's book about a mouse:

"She lived at the center of the world. This is one of the things every mouse knows. Wherever she was, she was at the center of the world. That one lives at the center of the world is the world's most profoundest thought. So firmly was this thought set in Whitefoot's mind that she did not need to think it. Like humans, she lived in the little world of what she knew, for there was no other world for her to live in. But she lived at the center of her world always, and of this she had no doubt."

~p. 11, Whitefoot

Yet it takes me so long to know that about myself, even a mouse knows more than me!

And this at the end I see as one of Berry's repeated messages in his novels:

"Her sleep was an act of faith and a giving of thanks." ~p. 21

Always, he throws in the refrain, and give thanks. As if that were the whole point of it all. All the humans, with the mouse, are summed up in one reason for being, the sacrifice of thanks for the joy set before Him, enduring.

the curtains left open

2009-06-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

And again, I see a big house sitting on the hill as I jog by on the asphalt road near the river. The house is one of the big mansion sort, the kind I never get invited to, but love to look in curiosity. In fact, the house is so big, I think it might be a city, a multi-level complex of something like an Italian villa surrounding a garden in the middle. In the middle of the garden I think is a tree, as I'm peering through the night at the branches overarching this house from its center, the fiercely green leaves lit up as if by a spotlight hidden in the nest of branches. Reminds me of the tree of Life, that old legend.

In a slow trot as I run by, I gaze over at one of the windows, off across a wide yard on this hill, and notice that there seem to be shadows in the house, shadows of people and I can hear the laughter of voices and the bark of a dog or two. Light beams out of each of the many windows in the wide wall of this mansion, as if seeing stars sparkle on the wall of the sky on a moonless night. I peer into the closest window and see that the curtains have been casually pulled aside, revealing merrymakers dancing, and they are singing as they keep rhythm to something further inside the house, a pulse I can almost hear as far as the street upon which I run, and vibrating back from somewhere beyond my road in the deep darkness of the forest on my other side.

I glance away, checking my path ahead, dimly lit by the light from the big house. "Only sixty-nine more miles," I say to myself, and with impatience, "sixty and nine too many." I look back over at the window, but the curtain has been drawn and I can see only dimly--fuzzy shadows wobbling.

what color is your curtain?

2009-06-02T14:35:00.001-07:00

Kermit put up curtain rods this weekend. I put up the white curtains in our bedroom. I woke up to see the half-transparent eyelet-like sheets blowing gently in the breeze through the window, which struck me as surprisingly beautiful, winsome, like a girl's dress blowing in the Easter wind, like something out of a Jessie Wilcox Smith illustration of Little Women, full of the emotive sentiment of young girls and breezy spring days. Otherwise, the curtains are like walking into your own familiar room of no surprises and finding a mannequin staring at you from the corner. Nothing to make one startle.

We say there's a curtain between us and the Other world. Our eyes cannot behold the Lord because our window to the soul is dim, curtained off, thus we think it an evil that we cannot access the spirit world as we might like. But we dress our windows for comfort, for visual delight, for practical protection from extreme temperatures and snooping night eyes. Perhaps the drapes between us and the Other protect us, shield our mortal eyes from something, the things we cannot bear to see, not for their horror but for extreme goodness, the holiness of Him who is brighter than the sun.

Encouragement

2009-05-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

"Take no heavier lift of your children, than your Lord alloweth; give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If your Lord take any of them home to his house before the storm come on, take it well, the owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees, before the midsummer, and ere they get the harvest sun; and it would not be seemly that his servant, the gardener, should chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck his own fruit at any season he pleaseth; they are not lost to you, they are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in Heaven, where our Lord's best jewels lie." ~Samuel Rutherford

A Quotidian Saturday

2009-05-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday Mornings for the Boards gang usually find us heading out to the Farmer's Market downtown to do our weekly shopping. Due to various schedule issues I had not had the opportunity to go yet this year, and this past Saturday was my first for the growing season.

Our Farmer's Market is a small, but busy affair and it was exciting to see all of the same faces I saw last season, albeit a season older. It was also the first Saturday for a couple that we have gotten to know who are taking a stab at organic farming. The last time we had seen them Kelly was about to pop with a baby. So naturally, their first question was "How is the baby?" So we filled them in on what had transpired over the past few months that we had not seen them. They were sympathetic and sorry for what we had lost, and so the went the conversation. And on the conversation continued, turning next to how the season was starting for them, the frustrations of too much rain too soon, the question of whether to start raising livestock, etc.

What occurred to me during our conversation and during the rest of the time at the market was how much I enjoyed shopping here. And it occurred to me that my enjoyment came from much more than the fresh food, my enjoyment was coming from the relationships I was developing with the farmers who grow my food. It was the human connection that I was craving. We tend to live in a very detached culture that feels it is largely independent of the need for relationships to get by. And so, I was reminded from this very mundane, normal Saturday morning that people indeed matter and that we are created with the need to know and be known. It is a joy to share your trials and tribulations with another human, even when you are shopping!

The Longest Saturday

2009-05-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Greeks have a wonderful little adjective, kairos, which describes time in a qualitative sense. Not the kind of time that your watch measures, but the kind of time that is characterized by a feeling such as "this is a good time", it is time for a beer, or, as the ancient poet remarked: there is a time to weep and a time to laugh. Have you ever thought about how absurd it is for us to attempt to describe God, who is outside of time, with language that exists only within time?

Consider this: in between the days of Christ's death and his resurrection there was Saturday, the day when nothing happened at all. Christ was dead, and that was that. The Gospels have little to say about it, the Disciples themselves simply rested as they were commanded. But imagine such rest, they were most likely scared out of their skins and doing more of cowering in the dark corner of their flat than resting with a good drink and a pleasant book. And waiting, for what they were not even sure.

So too for us, Saturday is the day that we know best. We too are waiting, waiting for God knows what. Maybe we are waiting as a pessimist for the government to finally fail, maybe we are waiting as the typical American Evangelical for that supposed thousand years of peace, or maybe we wait as the good humanist for human kind to finally reach a perfected state of being. This is certainly one way to wait. It makes us feel brave as we laugh in the face of the dark night; it also tempting because as Buechner says; "despair is often easier than faith."

The other way however, is to say "to hell with the dark." The other way is to say "thanks be to God" because the darkness is not the end. Sunday morning came, and with it life. Life everlasting. As sure as the light has already broken into the darkness and will break through again, so will our Sunday morning come and put an end to our Saturday.

my little beach buddy

2009-05-09T15:03:00.001-07:00

Mac kept us busy, running from camp down to the water, and finally lay right down beside me; we listened to the music from tiny speakers by that bag in front of us, appropriately playing the country song "Blow Wind, Blow."

We girls had a great time at the beach yesterday while our guys were hard at work, flying somewhere around the same coastline. Since the water is still chilly, we did no more than wade in the waves, choosing instead to burn ourselves up on the beach. You know you've gotten an overdose of sun when you get home groggy from doing nothing more than lying on a beach towel.

Siesta in Tuscon

2009-05-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

As one of my friends puts it, being professionally unemployed frees me to "live the life" and traveling with Boards on business trips is one of those rare pleasures. While the husband was enduring lectures on the hidden art of bomb building, I spent each morning writing for hours in the outdoor nook of an Italian style cafe the first morning and a more business like Panera style cafe the next two mornings. Sipping coveted lattes followed by rich, in house-baked chocolate chip cookies was an indulgence I allowed, with the hour invested in the hotel gym later that afternoon. We ate dinner at a friendly little Guatemalan restaurant, where the chile rellenos are excellent, stuffed with spinach and walnuts--not the standard gooey cheese. The impression of the desert cities to me is always one of brown rubble, coming from the overpowering green of the east. And always after only a day or two, one begins to enjoy the ever sunny blue skies, and every piece of green cactus, each bright cluster of flowers catches the eye like no one tree will ever do in North Carolina.

The Hungering Dark

2009-04-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

We live in a world that though dark, hungers for something to fill it, to light it, and make it right. Some days we may find that we come close to making things right ourselves: the car remains clean for the weekend, a perfect summer afternoon ends with barbeque and beer, your kid scores the winning touchdown, you might even find a way to say the right thing to your wife. But like all things here, the good passes and we are left with the dark once again, hungering for something more.

Upon our loss of Beau I have found the dark to be hungry. The darkness wishes to be filled with something that is substantial. Fortunately, for those who are in Christ Jesus, the dark cannot remain hungry forever. In eternity it will indeed find its fill. In the meantime, before we taste eternity, we receive grace. And in this grace, the darkness retreats with the knowledge that it will get its fill.

The sweet taste of grace that filled my darkness today came in the form of a visit to the hospital for our final follow up check with the doctor after the events of the winter. Walking into the NICU, where we spent eight wonderful days, fills me with the sensation of being home. I feel close to my son once again, as if I am visiting his room to tuck him in. I can once again smell his smells, and hear the sounds he heard during his time here on earth. I see once again the nurses and doctors who cared for him, who remember him, and I am reminded through their testimony that he did matter.

And what is more, I am reminded that he is risen with his Christ. His life did matter. It was ordained by God. He changed us, he changed the lives of his nurses. Though he could not speak, his voice broke through the darkness of our hearts and proclaimed the reality that Christ is risen, He is risen indeed. And in that all darkness, mine, his, yours is broken and filled, never to be that hungry again.

the gardeners awake

2009-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today is the day of mild 60's, chilly to touch, but the sun calls all the neighbours out to their scruffy yards, pale with winter's faded grass, moist around the muddy edges from recent rains. A green glow vibrates from grass roots up to the trees' swelling limbs, which bud with ruddy red leaves mirroring the cheeks of children hollering in the blue, blue air. The Carolinas are known for their blue skies, a peculiar quality of robin's egg colour highlighted by the white fluffies that drift on our coastal breezes.

I woke to the gruff whine of leaf blowers, answered the door to questions of "where do you find your truck loads of horse manure?"--which we had tried to hide under secondary loads of mulch--and felt a slight nod of pride towards the lord and master of the place who insisted upon doing all our spring yard cleaning a whole month earlier, before the March rains set in. A glance at our sad seedlings, pale and weak from--what? too little sun, no fertilizer in their peat pots, over watering?? --resets my gardening pride barometer; no largess of motivation substitutes for long term experience of growing and tending year in, year out.

A Case For The Liturgy - Take II

2009-02-22T13:13:00.000-08:00

Language Has Consequences ~ Dr. George Grant

How does one settle a dispute that has been raging since. . . well, since Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians. At Least. The Church has argued for centuries now over what the best way to worship is. Should we go with the high church mentality and have a full blown Liturgy that requires a class to decipher which book you are to turn to next for the responsive reading? Or, on the other hand, is it wiser to go with the emergent/charismatic model and just let the spirit move you individually and without constraint.

I wonder if we are asking the wrong questions. After all, if God had wanted a specific liturgy, wouldn't He have set it out somewhere in the New Testament? Perhaps the question we should be asking is this: In what manner has God called me to worship Him and therefore in what manner would be most pleasing? I would offer up to you that me, an Anglo-Saxon male who was raised in the Mid-South would worship in a different manner than an African male raised in Zimbabwe. However, if our worship is truly Christ centric, it will be pleasing and acceptable unto God.

As I think through this particular issue, I am leaning more toward the idea that there is not one particular liturgy for worship, but several. And the idiosyncrasies of each particular liturgy are both culturally driven yet biblically informed. With that being said, there are tenets of a true liturgy that must be met in order for the liturgy to be true worship. 1) God calls His people to worship - we do not call ourselves. 2) God speaks to His people through His word - the Word is exegetically proclaimed. 3) A corporate confession of Sin 4) A response to God's Grace 5) A corporate confession of our faith, and finally 6) God sends His people out - the Benediction.

These particular marks can look different depending on where you live, what language you speak, or perhaps even more significantly, if you live in the rural south. But seriously, the tenets mentioned above are spoken of throughout both the Old and the New Testaments and though they may look different depending on local, they follow a specific model that has been placed before us.

Questions are good. If we ask the right questions. I want to continue asking questions, but my prayer is that my questions are biblically informed and not snobbishly mis-guided.

65 degrees and sunny

2009-02-07T10:57:00.001-08:00

The beauty of the day says that all is well, but there's fear in the air.
God comes to a virgin girl and says, fear not,
I am with you, even overshadowing you,
My power will produce a child in your frame,
A man child who will know you as mother,
To the wonder of the world, he will take up his cross,
Deny his parents and follow a trail of tears,
Pursuing the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb,
Victims of a darkened world, an unholy planet,
Lost beneath the ruins, he digs up the fallen,
Restores to the brokenhearted their brother,
Children receives he to bless and speak in parables
The sleeping children of Israel to awake,
With stories that confound these men and those who walk
With him on the path of sorrows he brings his friends.
Fear not, and walk to him on the water,
For with God, all things he wills will be possible.

Upon reading The Faces of Jesus, Frederick Buechner.

The World Spins Madly On

2009-02-02T17:37:00.000-08:00

"I think of your face, wonder where you have gone, and the world spins madly on" ~ The Weepies

The world spins madly on. How we wish we could stop it. In many ways we feel like for us it is stopped. We see transactions occur, people flash by like apparitions. Work, merciless in its dogged pursuit of fallen goals, relentless in its tugging at our shoulder, leads us with chains of iron.

I believe that God granted us a protection in our grief that shields us from returning too soon to the normalcy of life. In fact, I would go further to say that as we walk with the "crook in our lot" we are reminded that what we lived before is not normal, and what we are living now is more normal. I do not want to go back to the man I was before the birth of my son. My son has changed me, or rather, the hand of God through the death of my son has changed me.

But grief is like a chameleon, it changes. It matures. And this is necessary; grief is healthy, but when it leads to depression, the positive aspects are stripped and we are no longer transformed for the better through our grief. I have felt a tearing as of late. A desperation to run as fast as I can to the physical location where the memories of my son are is tempered by a peaceful beckoning that calls me to venture beyond his leaving. I know that his leaving led to his life, in a small temporal way my leaving will also contribute to my life.

Like a crippled man taking small steps, I tasted the breath of new life lived through friendship this past weekend. It was sweet and it was real. Electra and I, like two Canadian trappers stepping out of their cabin during the first semi-mild day of Spring, stuck our heads out into the life of our local community. The breath was sweet, and for a moment the world stopped spinning madly on.

Stories

2009-01-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

We all love them. Whether they come in the form of a movie, a song, or in a book there is an intrinsic draw to the drama, tragedy, and even beauty of living life.

All of us that live yet have a story that is already written, those who lived before us had a story, just as those who will come after us have one. The point is that the Author of life cared enough for us that He wove us into the poetry of drama that makes up His creation.

One of the anticipations I had in having a son born unto us was the opportunity to tell him stories. In my mind I pictured telling him of the tall tales that made room for Hrothgar, King Alfred, Henry V, and of Jacob. Instead, his mother and I told him a story that had the makings of an epic. A story I never would have been able to tell him had he not been with us in the manner that he was. We told him of how he was a son of Adam, fallen and yet redeemed. How that he was born into sin, but through a Mercy we can not fathom he was born into the Covenant of Grace. And of how he would leave our arms and be taken up into the arms of his Father and carried Home to a place where he could run, play, learn, and rule as a prince.

It was a great joy to be able to explain to him that this was no mere fairy tale, but a story that was in the process of being lived out and died in, and that we all would be there to see it through.

Snow In New Bern

2009-01-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

Today we had a great treat! Snow! Coastal North Carolina is not known for great snowfalls. Due to old man Gulf Stream, which flows so close to the shoreline, our winter weather is moderated accordingly. Today, however, was the perfect mix for a grand snow fall. With cold air aloft and plenty of moisture thanks to the aforementioned Gulf Stream, snow was in abundance.

We celebrated with sledding in the street and romping with Herbie. Sweet Pea was not amused.

The Great Schism

2009-01-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

"and I wear it for the thousands who have died thinking that the Lord was on their side." ~Johnny Cash

Beau's life established a line of demarkation for us. When you glimpse eternity you can not help but be changed by the reality that floods your mortality.

For some time now I have well understood Johnny Cash's "Man in Black" mentality. And it has caused me to be a bit cynical as I viewed the Church. How can a group of people who insist that their God became man, hung out with losers, suffered and died a horrible death still insist that they pretend everything is well with the world. The Christian faith makes a horrible diagnosis. This faith insists that everything is not well with us, or the world for that matter. Sure, we can pretend on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings that we are "great", our kids are doing well in Sunday School, and the choir sounds wonderful. In short, we fake feelings that we wish were real. To tell about conflict and difficulties would be denying the work of Christ in our lives right?

I am not cynical anymore. Beau taught me that yes, we do suffer here. Suffering is real. However, I saw something during the early evening hours of November 25th that proved that this suffering is real and yet powerless over us. As Beau left my arms that evening the foundations of the world shook, and my breath, instead of being sucked out of me, filled my lungs in a new and mighty way. The City of God could be seen as a reality and the City of man crumbled away behind me in so many pieces. Yes, suffering is real. And as the Psalmist says, the words of man are but empty praise, but the Word of the Lord is life. I therefore do not have to feel bad about not using the unwritten code of Christian vocabulary, but can instead feel secure in using the vocabulary of the God made Man and rest secure that though our diagnosis is grim, our hope is both real and wonderful.

A Case For the Liturgy

2009-01-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

Theology is history class. ~Peter Leithart

In my mind, one of the unfortunate byproducts of the Protestant Reformation is the way in which we Protestants view the Liturgy. In many cases we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. To have a specific order to your worship and recite creeds or prayers is just so high church and is definitely not where you want to be if you are attempting to gain new members or be culturally relevant. Or is it?

Experience is often the best teacher and I have found the opposite to be true. Since I was a young man I have had the opportunity to worship in a manner that had order. That is, we had a liturgy. In my younger years, not all of the liturgy made sense, but as I matured not only did I understand it, but worship without it was simply not worship. The liturgy became just what it was supposed to be, a conduit by which I might most truthfully and beautifully worship our Lord.

What a litrugy really does though is give you a baseline, a foundation if you will, with which to stand on when you have nothing else. I understand the argument that states that it is knowledge of the Scriptures alone that must be utilized to strengthen our faith in a hard time, and that is true. But that sentiment is worthy of amplification. There is comfort in having a tried and true statement of our faith that has been hammered out by councils of godly men, that along with Scripture, has proven the test of time and apostacy. When your world is falling down around you it is comforting to have more than a smattering of verses memorized to give you comfort and hope.

A case in point. The night I was told of Beau's diagnosis my world shattered. The room began spinning and as I began looking for any shred of hope and comfort it was the Apostles Creed which came to me first. This creed, which I have been reciting since I was a young man, became a lifeline to a very powerless not as young a man. As I went down through a mental checklist in my mind of what was and is to be, I came across this question: "What do I believe?" What came into my mind first was this: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. . ." I recited it over and over for about fifteen minutes. That Creed became my foundation with which I could then build on as I had to make further decisions that night and in the days to follow. It remains my hope even now.

Had I not recited that summation of Church history every Sunday for the past fifteen years, I would not have had it so readily available and would have thus lost a great cornerstone in the foundation I needed to move on. I am sure that had I not had the Apostles Creed memorized, God's mercy would certainly have been sufficient in some other way. But I would venture to say that God has given us many tools to use in our walk with Him and that it is harder on us when we do not use all of those at our disposal.

Grey hair of the Grandmam

2009-01-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

Jose (from the movie, Bella): My Grandmother always used to say, If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

And how often do we pray with these intentions: we ask him incessantly to fulfill our plans, pave the way for our ideas to be known, make things happen when we think they should--and why? What insanity makes us think we know the best way things should be done? He need only say: be not anxious. For we are anxious about our lives, preserving our lives, keeping ahead of death's time, carefully protecting ourselves from giving too much away.

How often we make God laugh! My hope is that his laughter is that delighted joy of what he has in store for us. Perhaps the Spirit's work today is to interpret the bowl of prayers offered before the throne tomorrow so that God is always, figuratively speaking, one step ahead of us, knowing what we need vs what we ask for and making provision for us with a superabundance we didn't think to imagine yet.

2009-01-05T16:43:00.000-08:00

"You gotta have faith." George Michael c.1988

Over the past few weeks while dealing with the cause of grief in my life many have remarked how great my faith is, as if I have now reached some sort of Christian high place. A place that is somewhat mysterious. A place that they are not sure that they really want to get to. After all, the people who get lumped into this classification are often the subjects of calamitous events. Either that or they are the elderly ladies of great wisdom in your church.

Well, I have not reached any sort of high place of faith, nor am I one of the sage elderly ladies in your church. If anything, I am simply the recipient of a grace of which I am not deserving. Take the Book of Hebrews, one of my favorite studies; in it the author talks of the ones who by faith parted the Red Sea, slew giants, and walked out of the fire. But he also mentions that there are others. Some, who even though they too possessed faith, were sawn in two. There were some who though they had faith, were forced to wander in the desert, were hunted by beasts, and were persecuted. The difficult thing for us to understand is that neither one of these groups had a greater faith than the other. In both cases, their faith was true and not found lacking. Not fair you say? Well, I am with you on that one. But seriously, who are we to judge fairness? If I have learned anything through this time, it is to leave the fairness issue to God.

To those who comment on my faith, I can only reply with this, the most incoherent of responses: It is not faith. . . well, ok , yes it is. But, it is not me reaching out--it is God reaching down. All I have done is accept this mysterious plausibility that God became man to die for me and in that I attain salvation. With that simple admission made, the Spirit comes to hover over me in that somehow Maternal manner and breathe the breath of life into a dead son of Adam. It is this breath that is breathed on us that we call faith. And it is therefore nothing that we do.

The Reflection of my Sorrow

2008-12-24T20:40:00.000-08:00

"A child was born a man to die, I don't know why" ~ The Weepies

Tonight is Christmas Eve. Earlier in the month I had no desire to celebrate the Holiday. In fact, much of the time I was oblivious to the season of Advent and Christmas. Had it not been for my occasional notice of lights, decorations, and Christmas songs I might have forgotten the time of year altogether.

However, as time has passed and I began adding to my reading the selected scriptures for Advent, I was reminded of the great paradox that this celebration entails. And perhaps I might have never noticed it had it not been for Beau. During Beau's life I was confronted with the fragility of birth, the imminence of death, and the hope, my only hope from now on, of a resurrection.

This eve we anticipate the celebration of a Virgin birth. A birth that took place in the depravity of a stable, a birth framed with pain and blood, a birth that ultimately ushered the Glory of the Lord into the presence of mere men. Emmanuel, God with us, became a reality on that eve.

God was born a man to die. And in His death He crushed our fear of death. He died so that we, his children may live. This Christmas, my eyes are finally opened to this great reality. Our first born son now resides with his true Father in eternity.

Glory to God in the Highest indeed, and Peace. For we who call the Christ our Saviour know why a baby was born a man to die.

Down at Little Beach

2008-10-21T17:49:00.001-07:00

The dogs and I walk to the neighbourhood beach every day this week, since the weather turned so fine, we can explore further down the shore than usual, with less fear of snakes and other wild creatures, like man eating mesquitoes, ambushing us. Thus, the area serves as the Herbal and Sweetpea playground. In the morning, the sun lights up a clean, businesslike sky under which everyone is going about their routine of hurrying to work, the getting of breakfast, birds cleaning their feathers for the day. The evening brings a glowing sky of pink over silver water--if the wind has died down--fish leaping in pursuit of dinner before they become feed for the dive bomber seagulls and the lone grim crane. On the walk back home, we smell grilled meat and smoke from fireplaces warming the air. The night soon closes in, as the days are shortening, calling us to the quiet rest of bed, snuggled in against the chill that settles into the house.

In A Word: Responsibility

2008-10-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

As we read about the energy crisis, the economic crisis, the educational crisis, and the political crisis that are occurring during the present, I would argue that we as a nation are not being creative enough in solving the issues we face. Instead of asking "what can I do to fix the situation?" We are asking someone else ( the Government) to jump in and do the work for us.

This issue manifests itself in how we view not only economic matters, but martial matters as well. Bill Murphy Jr. addresses this attitude in a recent article published in the Atlantic. I think that he is touching on something that we can all take on board, not just in the Military arena, but in other, more important arenas as well.

Into The East

2008-10-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

As a resident of Eastern North Carolina, it is hard to imagine that you can go any further east from New Bern and still be in the United States. You can however, and if you do, you end up in an area that is still unspoiled by the kitchy stores, chain stores, fast food chains, and motor traffic that makes up most other areas of the country. The locals call it "down east". It is a relatively small geographical area that extends east, north-east from Beaufort, NC up through the Outer Banks and ends somewhere around the Kitty Hawk area. It is an area where folks rely mainly on fishing and crabbing to make a living. Subsistence living is the name of the game, and many still speak with the accents of their forefathers. It is an accent so rare and under threat of dying out that the University of North Carolina has set out to archive it.

The land itself is very low lying, much like the land you might find in South Texas or Southern Louisiana. It is home to very large mosquitoes. Marshes and estuaries weave throughout the backcountry and islands of trees pop up where the land rises high enough to support decent soil. Pirates roamed this land up until the Revolutionary War. In fact, this part of North Carolina was the hiding place of Edward Teach, the famed pirate, Blackbeard. Blackbeard met his fate at the hands of the British near a small island on the southern tip of the Outer Banks called Ocracoke. Interestingly enough, it is Blackbeard, not his executioner, that still commands all of the attention and the lore.

Ocracoke was our destination this past weekend. Electra was deserving of a late birthday trip, and so we decided to pack up the truck and head out to this, one of our favorite places. It takes us an hour driving time to transit the 50 odd miles to the Cedar Island ferry. The drive is really quite lovely. We pass through a few small villages and little else. The villages as I alluded to earlier are all based around the fishing industry and small shrimp boats, crabbing boats, and fishing trawlers are lined up in small canals, ditches almost, that back up to the homes of the watermen.

The ferry ride is a 2.5 hour trip across the open waters of the Pamlico Sound. The Sound is one of the largest inland bodies of water in the world; we are beyond the sight of land for most of the trip. As we finally make out the contour of the island proper, the first sight we see is the lighthouse, one of the oldest continuously operating lighthouses in the US. It is still in operation, maintained by the Coast Guard. The village of Ocracoke itself is centered around a natural harbor that goes by the name of Silver Lake. All of the Village's small businesses are centered around the 'lake', so it is an easy bike ride to any of the small restaurant, artsy shops and inns tucked away in the live oaks and sea grasses lining the shore.

Our first stop on the island was to one of our favorite places: The Ocracoke Coffee Co. This quaint little shop boasts adirondack chair seating scattered amongst the trees and a wooden deck outside, or cool, bug-free seating inside next to a tiny bookstore where one can peruse books on local history and fishing. Here we read the afternoon away and listened to the locals chat both in person and on-line with laptops handy, until we felt it was time to head down to the water, check out a pair of kayaks and head out to the little coves and inlets that once harbored pirates.

A leisurely three hour tour was all that I was proposing, but as it turns out, a three hour tour was more than we got. Being an Oceanography major, I am always interested in observing the notorious currents of the North Carolina coast; today I wanted to show my dear Electra the unique inlets that make up the passageways between the Atlantic and the Sound. A great plan if she weren't 7 months pregnant, lacking her usual muscle tone, and necessitating a paddle back against the current to our starting point. After we explored a couple-mile length of inlet, meandering along with stops at fishing nets, pictures of each other with the lighthouse in the background, and a short walk down the beach at the other end of the island, it was time to turn back, with an hour to spare before sunset. Problem is, we had to fight the outgoing currents that I had been intent on showing her. Thinking this a minor setback, we paddled more slowly only to discover we overestimated the strength left in Elektra's burning shoulders and the sun seems to set faster as it nears the horizon.

We soon found ourselves alone and paddling doggedly over the moonlit waters of the Pamlico Sound. With my own wild imaginings of the Coast Guard coming to fetch us and our over-time rented kayaks, and Elektra in mad fits of huffing and puffing, envisioning a brain-dead child from oxygen deprivation, we were never so glad to turn into the final stretch of Silver Lake, the little harbor where we would beach our crafts and fight off the hoards of grandaddy mosquitoes that met us with lusty greed. We cooled off with a short bike ride to a local favorite eatery, Howard's Pub. Back at our B&B, we settled in for a marvelous soak that washed out the layers of bug spray and restored Beau to happy kicking again.

The morning found us once again out on the road, but this time heading north on Hwy. 12 up to the Pony Pens and the beach. Ocracoke is also home to many wild ponies who are the descendents of English and Spanish ponies that were shipwrecked off of the coast some three to four hundred years ago. The beach itself is largely free of people and has not a trace of buildings or civilization anywhere in sight. I was hoping for a few good waves, but was disapointed with a glassy sea which, once you got used to the coolness of the water, provided a wonderful setting for a relaxing swim.

The afternoon ended as the day before had begun. As a treat, Electra and I purchased a bottle of wine, some cheese, and some crackers to enjoy on our 2.5 hour trip back to the mainland.

Drop D Tuning and a Little Face Paint. . .

2008-09-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

on the surface appears to be the only difference between Gospel Music and Death Metal. When Slayer writes lyrics like "They say your life can change/If you take God's hand/Embrace rebirth/Your cleansing's so divine/To be reborn in God's eyes," you might think that they drew their inspiration from Chris Rice. Too bad this particular song is from the album Christ Illusion.

Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster says that "if church leaders do not want parishioners to literally bathe in Jesus's blood ('Are you washed in the blood?') or march on to Holy War ('Onward Christian Soldiers') then maybe death metal should not be taken just as figuratively." Alex goes on to say that "his material has the same intentions as a hymn like 'Power in the Blood.' They're both just trying to be over the top. With lyrics so violent and brutal it is difficult to take them seriously. For us, we are just trying to make good horror...."

Unfortunately for Mr. Webster, neither is over the top, and both are symbolic as means to a certain end. To which end though is the crucial question. For both worldviews have implications and thus, when carried out to their logical conclusions, bring about a result. One celebrates a culture of life, the other, a culture of death. So, when it comes down to it, the difference is really quite large, and some things are really not what they seem.

~All excerpts taken from "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath" a well written article in Paste

On Paedobaptism

2008-09-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

"From the beginning, consistent paedobaptists treat their children as Christians so that the social and cultural nurture of the child is simultaneously his or her nurture in Christian character and faith."

From the Westminster Confession of Faith- "Secondary means (baptism) are real and have efficacy."

"The idea is to raise your child so that he reaches the same level of psycho-social and religious maturity. The two should be indistinguishable."

Paedobaptism implies that the Gospel's solution to the gap (in culture/nature) is not to lay an entirely new set of tracks, but to close the gap by redeeming the original created means from sin."

-All thoughts courtesy of Peter Leithart

the ritual

2008-08-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

I read today, in The Baptized Body that sacraments are best described as a rite or ritual, as action done by many people together to experience and tell the same story in 'real life' time. Letter writing is a kind of rite of friendship; it takes two to complete the work. Gardening is a ritual of the seasons accomplished by the sweat of man's brow, and yet not by his strength alone; he works in covenant with creatures-- 'good' insects used against the 'bad' pests, trusting for rain to fall and the sun to do its part in shining. Leithart makes a simple case for the meaning of sacraments, claiming that there is no "real life" separate or independent from the embellishments we know as special events.

To use a very common special event, for example, most of us would say you could have a birthday party without balloons. Let us consider the fact that balloons and cake with candles melting over it symbolize something recognizable to us (yes, in our particular culture) of a rite of passage for the birthday boy, an honour granted by his surrounding friends or family in a ceremonial way. Thus, Leithart is able to say, "Rites accomplish what they signify" (22). Our next question might be: would not the child turn a year older without the party? In another example, that Leithart uses, he illustrates the importance of ceremony truly causing something to happen, for "[w]hen two people marry, their status changes from 'single' to 'married', and what happens through the rite of covenant making is said to be something 'joined together' by God" (23). Let us now sleep on these things--in the ritual of turning back the sheets, plumping our pillows and really closing our eyes.

reading on water

2008-08-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

After a discussion we sat in on about one of Peter Leithart's books, we set out to find our own copy, but it not being available, I ordered The Baptized Body instead. Thus, we are learning what we didn't know we needed to study necessarily about the sign, symbol, or sacrament of baptism. We've used all these words to describe the water rebirth, and Leithart makes a case for why baptism, as a sacrament, is neither a sign or symbol and not even a means of grace. It's a fine line of distinction: "Sacraments are not means of grace, but themselves graces" (18). The effect on ourselves in this "personal encounter with the Triune God" is that "[we] are transformed when God shows His favor through granting favors, when God shows his grace through bestowing graces" (18).

The summer heat wave passed over us this week, with heavy gray clouds, wind, rain, and the slow sweeping out of burdensome humidity. Air is breathable again and our neighbours poke their heads out of air conditioned houses like hermit crabs washed up on the beach, wondering where they've landed and how to get back into the group again. In the heat that drives us to obsess on water--beach going, pool lounging, a glass of ice water--I shall slowly seek out glimpses of its meaning.

Homecoming

2008-08-09T11:31:00.001-07:00

Our friend Lars came home with his comrades this week. After six months in Iraq, his family met him with the exhilaration of anticipation after a long absence, and the happy surprise of familiarity--as if he came home from work just yesterday. I was one of three friends chosen as family paparazzi for the event.

We arrived at the huge open hangar with some fifteen other families. At two in the afternoon, we were sweating the shade, gathered around a big box fan, watching the swarm of children bounce on the green air dragon kindly provided by the Marines for the toddlers grumpy without naps and moms' sanity when the plane got delayed half and hour. The wives drifted in clusters, chattering with their squadron aquaintances, re-powdering noses, distributing snacks and drinks to red-faced children. Behind us, a large plane is being worked on, Marines drifting slowly in and out on their daily round of business. Finally, the word spreads from one man with news from the tower: landing in five minutes. Scurry and hustle ensues; children are thrown in their strollers, babies swung on the hip, and the matching, patriotically blue striped dressed little girls with red bows perched on their heads like staked butterflies line up at the edge of the hangar's shade, all eyes glued to the sky.

We watch the wide, grey wings slowly descend towards us on the ramp. Upon touchdown, the pilot waves out his tiny window, and everyone shakes their little American flags furiously, cameras flashing to capture the wives and childrens' faces as the crouch at the ready, saying "LOOK, Daddy's coming!" No one moves except the scurry of support guys opening the doors, tractors ready to forklift the mountains of tightly packed luggage.

While waiting, unsure what's next, we see a little boy take off trotting at full speed, his red T-shirt the only colour moving across the land of concrete, towards the distant huddle of metal machines and swarm of uniforms around the plane. Out of the flurry of guys unloading, one tall, tan flight suited dad comes running towards the little boy. They tumble into one another half way across the empty ramp. Father and son fall over right there, sitting in the sun to squeeze their hot and tired necks into happy wrinkles. All at once, the whole long line of waiting families start running, looking for their dads and husbands as they slowly make their way out of the back end of the aircraft.

Between tears and camera snapping, I saw little else of the homecoming except smiling faces and lanky dads chasing their giggling, teasing children and the husbands and wives in fierce handholds hauling their loads of gear back to the car, back to home.

"dog days"

2008-07-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

Summer here is stretching out in hot, humid days, a moisture in the air that feeds not the wilting plants but feeds the deadly fungus on the rose leaves and provides molecular H2O rides for mesquitoes. We watch squirrels stealing drinks out of forgotten water vases on our back porch, never noticed by our varmit hound, who's passed out under his red chair. It's too hot to enjoy the cosiness of bedclothes; we all sleep under fans on "hi" and thank God in our haze of sleep for the mild a/c we use at the missionary level of 81F. It's almost too hot for eating, but for revelling in ice: iced water, iced tea, icy beer--depite the dieticians advice to drink at room temps to balance the bodily temperature. While we give thanks for electric lines and freezers, the obvious modern coolers, I think its more about water, the substance without which we'd be dead as the hard casings of worms who tried to cross the pavement and fried up brown there in the sun.

Thoughts On Work

2008-07-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

"If you want to produce Christian work, be a Christian, and try to make a work of beauty into which you have put your heart; do not adopt a Christian pose." ~Jacques Martin

The Church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables." ~ Dorothy Sayers

Worshipful Rest

2008-07-14T18:17:00.001-07:00

I enjoy the idea that our work can be our worship, but I am also intrigued by the idea that our rest is just as much a form of worship. This weekend we rested and worshipped with Elizabeth and Ryan. May our rest be always this wonderful and our worship this deep.

Check it out

2008-07-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Our new blog addition: see the links sidebar to discover it.

Daisy time

2008-06-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Our daisies are in full bloom today, after a three-fold series of rain storms yesterday. The daisy tends to be abused with overuse in sentimental baby girl layettes and mistily empathetic Hallmark cards. In reality, they present a cheerful, unabridged profusion of white petals shooting out from their yellow centers, like dozens of sunny-side-up eggs flying right out of the frying pan at you, the onlooker of the garden. That's what greets our visitors these days as they pull into our drive. Prepare to be chuckled at by a host of the bright yellow day's-eyes.

Fruit of our Labours

2008-06-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

We built and filled our little brown bed with local horse manure and nursery soil back in March, strategically located in the corner of the yard. A bit ignorant of our summer sun patterns, we now have tomatoes and beans growing in the shade with very tall marigolds reaching for the scattered light of the afternoon. Despite such experimental setbacks, we've enjoyed several rosy tomatoes and baby beets with green onions. The fight against cabbage moths was nearly lost upon our cauliflower, but Kermit rescued them with a concoction from our True Value, which became our preferred source for plants since last year's flower beds were planted. I am most happy with our two lavendar plants, which often languish in the humidity of the south, but produced handfuls of lavender wands to be dried.

Next To My Big Red Chair...

2008-06-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

No Time Like A Good Time

2008-05-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

You know, I have a propensity to only think about the tough stuff. Especially when it comes to work. I allow myself to be bogged down by the harshness of it, and tend not to look beyond where I am at. But seriously, is not that the way of it? Here right now in front of us is a grand world that is enshrouded in a Mystery by its Creator. And the Mystery extends into both the Spiritual and the Physical. But do I regularly take a peek into it...no. This is why I have greatly enjoyed reading Frederick Buechner's book On The Road With The Archangel. This lovely little novel is a joy to read and has more Theologically sound golden nuggets within its pages than most books sold under the title "religion."

Sample this quote: "The things the world fills time with are enough to turn the heart to stone, but the goodness of time itself is as untouched by them as the freshness of a spring morning is untouched by the yelps from the scaffold. Time is good because the Holy One made it that way and then set the heavenly bodies wheeling through the sky so there would always be a way of marking its passage. Unfortunately, not even the most devout understand this for more than possibly a day or two out of the entire year when everything seems to be going their way. The rest of the year they go around like everybody else rolling thier eyes and expecting terrible things to happen... they prefer to think that it is time itself that is terrible and that the terrible things are only another method by which the Holy One afflicts them for their sins."

Oh, so good. It is a treasure to have artists who have the ability to transfer Truth in a way in which we can understand.

the long road

2008-05-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Some things take a Long Time to process, which is an idea somewhat relative to the culture in which we are raised. A long time to me might be one week; most packages from Amazon.com arrive within a week, much longer of a wait than if I went downtown this very afternoon and bought from Books-a-Million. For the Lost Boys of Sudan, on the other hand, one month is hardly sufficient to learn three new English verbs in their hometown refugee camp. One of them might happily read a very small book within a year.

We watched And God Grew Tired of Us last Saturday, a documentary on the lives and fortunes of several Lost Boys. A few of them were very determined young fellows who, some 3-5 years after arriving in New York City and Pittsburg, could live fairly self-sufficiently (as they found to their sorrowful loneliness, Americans are trained to do) and began to search for family left back in Africa and for other Lost Boys scattered across the US.

Watching the movie, I remembered one young man and woman who came to our high school in Franklin, some nine or ten years ago, and only this week I learned the story behind why they were called "Lost." I also realise we ask silly questions of refugees: "aren't you so glad to be in a country where you have freedom?" Away from your homeland, much of your family, left-behind friends, the common language of the refugee camp, only to come to America and find cars that are out to kill you at all times and crowded apartments where no one meets you in the eye. Given time, America can be a good home. Give it years, and let yourself stumble diligently through work, busy roads, neighbouring strangers, to find the neighbours less strange and something familiar of your culture has been absorbed by them.

Turtle Huddle

2008-04-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wlaking the dogs down to Little Beach from our house, I passed a swampy pond inhabited by turtles, cormorants, and the occasional duck or goose pair. Today, dozens of turtles in all sizes were sunning themselves on submerged logs, a few piled awkwardly on top of each other, others off on their OWN log, and big grandfather turtles waiting patiently behind baby palm-sized turtles. Soon, I can take our new, grey-turtle cloured camera down to snap some pictures for you!

Considering the Day

2008-04-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

When the day's plans skid across my mind like a rush of cars to the common screeching halt at every stop light between our house and town, I grab a piece a paper before the light turns green and all the speedy plans rush away, lost on their own sidetracks. Composing an agenda becomes a daily habit not entirely intentional, conceived in the need for traffic management, lest the mind's highway become a mental wreck scene, each pointed plan a cell phoner screaming for policing. What life is there, I question, beyond the fly-by list of the day?

I want to see a master list that dictates the road of errands and laundry, a language pattern to describe the slow-motion ritual into which the need-plans riding in imaginary motorcars speed. All creatures have instictive Things To Do, man having the priviledge of manipulating the basics into elaborations of reality. My list is a declaration of ordered time, commanding myself with the end of pleasure in things done.

Spring Snow

2008-04-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

Like its brother Winter, Spring
the season, pours forth a show
all in white, decking the wayside
with blossoms cloudlike as if
suspending light on shadowy branches
in the understory of the forest,
dispels the gloom of grey days
on end, leftover clouds of rain's
essential recipe, precipitation
welcome from a burdensome sky, with
the sun be buried by her leaden veil,
a light springs forth from the woodlot--
happy the seed whose funeral rites foretold
of the lacy gown on the dancing dogwood.

A Fruitful Day

2008-03-26T15:31:00.002-07:00

Grey clouds and a cold North-East wind blew its Saturday greeting as Electra and I made the short trek to Downtown. A Sausage, Egg, and Cheese bagel for me, an everything Bagel for the Electra, and an Apple-Cinnamon Scone for both were the company to two warm cups of coffee at our local coffee house.

We followed our breakfast up with a walk down the block to the Farmer's Market to pick up our two weeks worth of vegetables, meat, cheese, and bread. The vegetables, though early in the season, look good. The meat and eggs are a treasure to behold. the cheese, being goat cheese, tastes and smells much like Soda Pop(my Mom and Dad's goat). It really is good, quite good really. Just very goaty. And the Bread, ahh, the bread...wonderful.

Seventy-Three dollars, a few plants, two pots, and a truck full of horse manure later we were home doing what we both love best. Tending the garden.

Tonight, it is Jack and Dr. Pepper for me, wine for the Lady, and an evening of good books.

The Newest Member of The Family....

2008-03-26T15:31:00.001-07:00

Electra and I had a wonderful Easter in many ways...one special aspect was that we had our first chance to meet our newest nephew. I immediately was smitten with him....and evidently he with me. I know that some nephews enjoy emulating** their uncles, but this is rediculous.

** I am known as boards due the surface area of my ears roughly approximating the surface area of a jet's speed brakes.

On A Wednesday Evening

2008-03-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

How kind, how secret, now the sun
Will bless this garden frost has won
And touch once more, as once it used,
The furled boughs by cold bemused.
though summered brilliance has but room
In blossom, now the leaves will bloom
Their time, and take from milder sun
An unreviving benison.

The Garden
Robert Frost

This poem was actually written on the prospect of a fine day in early autumn. However, it seemed to match the persona of the day, and I thought it fit in smartly.

Our raised bed is set, and is bringing new life as we speak. The downstairs of the manor nears completion and the deck awaits my vigor on the morrow. Four more days before life for Kermit begins anew.

And The Debate Rages on.....

2008-03-19T19:29:00.001-07:00

A friend sent me this video on the "front lines of Berkely"...it is great..trouble is, I can't tell these days whether I am wathcing John Stewart, Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. My solution, I stopped watching...but this is worth the 2 minutes, you will love the logic.

Another Day At The Office

2008-03-19T19:29:00.000-07:00

The alarm goes off at some horribly early hour and I quickly curse the fact that I have to leave the warm bed. It is cold and dark outside and I really do not feel like facing it. My 28 year old back is already making me aware of its presence...years of riding horses and flying jets is already taking its toll. I limp into the bathroom and do my best to turn it into a steam room. I silently thank God for hot water and indoor plumbing.

When I emerge from my self induced steam room, I find that Electra, God bless her soul is up and she decides to make sure that I drink my "Gogi" juice and have a lunch packed before I leave. She is purely amazing.

I jump in the car and suck on my coffee. A far too bright eyed Marine greets me at the gate. I wish him a good day and think of the Proverb that says something about rising early, greeting your neighbor, and a curse, though not always in that order.
After I get to the squadron I head into the Paraloft to check all my gear. The evening duty remarks: "got the early one again Sir"? he smiles.

Upstairs I meet my flight lead, the Air Combat Tactics Instructor. He is a grizzled veteran whose eyes are sunk back into his head and the black circles surrounding them make his eyes appear as dark valleys. We talk for two hours about tactics, threats, our planned fights for the day and the sequence of events. I have to rattle off a littany of threat briefing items: today we are simulating fighting a Soviet made fighter that most of our not so friendly neighbors fly.

The brief done we receive our last minute weather brief and walk down to the Paraloft to get dressed. It is cold today and the water temp is below 60 deg F. This means that we have to wear our dry suits under all of our other gear. It is physically impossible to dress yourself so one of the parachute riggers helps me.

The maintenance books signed, my lead(we fly in a formation of two) and I walk out to the jets. The sun is barely above the horizon and an icy wind is blowing, but for a pilot the day is perfect. The wind is right down the runway and the sky is crystal clear. I meet my plane captain, a young Marine from Michigan. He is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of my jet. In all reality, the jet is his and he is only lending it to me for a few hours. I preflight the jet. The Harrier requires that you actually crawl up into the wheelwell and check hydraulic gauges. Not an easy feat wearing all of the aforementioned gear. The jet looks good, I confer with my plane captain over one or two small items and he kindly asks me to bring her (the jet) back in one piece. Believe me, I will try.

I strap in, which again requires a superhuman effort with all of my gear. I run through the pre-start checks. Again, all look good and I throw the switches for start. The jet begins to whine, then lowers her tone into a deep growl and finally a deep rumble emits as she comes to life. Hydraulics, RPM, and JPT all look good. The Harrier idles at around 29% RPM, so I feel like I am sitting on a bull ready to go out of the chute. She leans against her tiedowns and chalks. I spend the next ten minutes going though my post-start checks. The TV, NavFlir, Dual Mode Tracker, and Inertial Navigation systems are turned on and warmed up. The ordnance Marines come out to check on my missile. I uncage the seeker head and the Sidewinder emits a low growl as an InfraRed wand is passed in front its nose.

Final Checks complete, my lead and I taxi out to the runway. I run through the last few pre-takeoff checklist items. We call for takeoff and I push the power up to 60% for RPM and IGV checks. "Power coming up, IGVs coming down, time is 2.15, IGV's are 14, Water not required, Nozzles set STO stop, Flaps are 62,62 nozzles 60, 60, duct pressure 45, no warnings or cautions" I call checks complete and away we go. I push the power to Mil and immediately get shoved down into my seat. All 23,000 lbs of thrust are pushing me and my 19,500 lb Harrier down the runway. 2 seconds later I hit 60 knots, my nozzle rotation speed. I throw the nozzles to the STO stop and the jet leaps off of the deck. I nozzle out to 25 degrees of nozzles and put up the gear and flaps. I then finish nozzling out and am joined up with my lead. He points his jet 65 degrees nose high in a climbing right hand turn. We have to keep the nose so high in order to keep below the 300knot speed limit near the airport. I look down at the airfield. We are just over the end of the runway but already passing 12,000 feet. I am riding a rocket ship.

After leveling off at 15,000ft I fall back into a 1 mile trail position and complete my missile checks. I lock up my lead with the sidewinder, check for a good tone and then uncage the missile. She stays locked up so it looks like I have a good missile. I then switch to my gun and pull up to a closer position. The gun looks good. Weapons check complete. I assume a combat spread position and my lead call for an unloaded acceleration into a "G Warm". I push the nose over, accelerate to 400 knots and call "speed right". We make one 90 deg turn targeting 3 G's. My lead calls "resume" and we then aim for a 5-6 G pull to our initial heading. I then pull 15 degrees nose high and roll inverted. I hold the nose up forcing negative G's and check for loose items in the cockpit.

My lead and I then spend the next twenty minutes going through various drills practicing essential air to air basic fighting skills. We run through a snap shot drill with the gun, followed by a heat to guns drill, next comes the rolling scissors and then the flat scissors.

Now for the excitement. We end our session with three neutral sets. in this scenario I take a cut away from my lead until we have three miles of separation and then I turn back into him and we pass head to head at over 1000 MPH of closure. My job is to defeat him, his job is to defeat me. My plan for this attack is to turn tight across his tail and race him for the deck, forcing him to fight me in a turn rate fight verse a turn radius fight. By beating him to the deck I deny him altitude to trade for extra energy and I can then hopefully wear him down.

All I see is a black dot racing towards me, the dot then turn into the shape...of..a..jet. We pass.. I overbank, place my lift vector below and in front of him and smoothly pull the jet into a lift limit pull. I twist my body in the straps, straining against the G forces, trying to maintain sight of my enemy. I hit 6.2 times my body weight on the way down and my vision is obscured by the large cloud of condensing air flowing off my wing. The entire aft section of the jet is obscured by the cloud...I watch for the deck and begin my rate transition... so far my plan is working we are now established in a rate fight. My goal is now to fly as smooth as possible and work into a weapon solution. Two turns later I am now getting into a good position. The enemy is not giving me any room for error and I am having to contend with a constant 4G's pressing against me. It looks to me like I moving into a good position to take a shot, but he is not going to let me get away with this so easily. I sell the farm and pull past 6 G's to get my nose pointed in front of him for a chance at a shot. No luck, he throws in his nozzles and causes me to shoot past his tail. I point the nose straight up trying to lose as much airspeed as possible. He is directly above me and slightly behind me, not a good place for me. We enter a rolling scissors. I am trying very hard to fly the jet on the edge of her envelope. I try to hard and the "bitching betty" immediately warns me that I have gone too far...I am close to departing controlled flight...and I have to ease my pull. This gives my opponent just the advantage he needs to gain a position that I can not shake and I end up losing the fight.

We call knock it off and head home. I join back up with me lead, trying to wipe the sweat out of my eyes without hitting him, and look over his jet making sure that there is no external damage. He does the same for me. I fall back into a loose formation and finally try to catch my breath. The sun is now coming up behind me and is illuminating the beach and shoreline beyond it with all of its early morning radiance. I have time to think about my flight: the mistakes I made, the lessons I learned, and maybe even a couple of things I did right. We will debrief when we get back...I know that I will get it for the mistakes that I made...but I also know that I will be better off for it.

We approach the break at 400 knots, pass the center of the airfield and my lead kisses me off. I count to 4 and then break, I pull 4 G's to try to slow the jet down. At 250kts I lower 25 degrees of nozzles and lower the gear, followed by the flaps. I check my performance for a vertical landing, it looks good. Abeam the landing pad I lower 60 degrees of nozzles and the jet decelerates to about 150 knots. My flaps program down and I anticipate the nose pitch associated with their programming. At 350 feet I lower the nozzles to the hover stop position and transition from wingborne to jetborne flight. I slow to 30 knots and align the nose with the relative wind. Once lined up with the wind I hover to the center of the pad and try to land as gently as possible.

I taxi back, complete my post flight checks, fuel up at the fuel pits and then head back to my line. As I get closer I see my plane captain waving at me. He is no doubt just as relieved as I am to be back in one piece.

2008-03-11T17:10:00.002-07:00

There is nothing to eat,
seek it where you will,
but of the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants and the sea, yield it
to the imagination intact.

William Carlos Williams

I just finished reading Wendell Berry's The Art Of The Commonplace. It was a great read and the second book in a row that I have read of Berry. I am impressed by his wisdom, his eloquence, and his outlook concerning the stewardship that we are called to give to the Earth.

There are a number of points he made that struck me as being very true and are points that very few other Christians are making right now. For example, As Christians we are called to plow in hope, both literally and figuratively. Well, what does he mean by that...? To plow in hope figuratively means that we are to be involved in culture. Have you ever noticed that it is the folks Christians usually scoff at that are running the eclectic coffee shops, the edgy, good art galleries, and truly making a concerted effort to be stewards over our resources? At best, we tend to look at these folks as liberal Christians, at worst, just plain old liberal humanists. To plow in hope culturally requires that we, the Church, involve ourselves in culture. Open the neighborhood Pubs, support local artists, write great music. Additionally, plowing in hope literally means just that. Steward the Earth in great anticipation of the wonderful day when the wedding supper of the Lamb has been consummated and we are finally worshipping as we were created to worship!

Well, ok. So to the nitty gritty. What do we do when the kids have runny noses, we are stuck in the suburbs and are barely able to afford the $3.25/gallon fuel ticket? Well, I would start with simply trying to love your family, love your neighbors, love your community. Treat people as if they matter, and let it it go from there. As far as the figurative plowing goes however, I think you will find that Mr. Berry's following advise is quite sage.

1. Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer. Only by growing food for yourself will you know all about it and appreciate it fully, having known it all of its life.

2. Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and household.

3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and influence.

4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. By such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers, and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both products and consumers.

5. Learn, in self defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions?

6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.

7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.

When in Tennessee

2008-03-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

We hibernate on the farm. However, this trip has been different. We've sat in on classes at a literally New College, met friends for lunch, visit the downtown Starbucks 3 times a day, inbetween other appointments, and plan to tote all our renewed knowledge back with us in our knapsacks of the mind. When we return to our home computer with the comfortable simplicity of a cheap PC vs the high tech Mac of the grandpapas and mamas, I'll find some pictures to post.

2008-02-08T05:03:00.001-08:00

"Maybe the bride-bed brings despair,
For each an imagined image brings
And finds a real image there;
Yet the world ends when these two things,
Though several, are a single light..."

The World
William Butler Yeats

In many communities, but in ours especially, there is a very real need for a couple to care for one spouse whose significant other is gone for an extended time. Unfortunately many of us, even those of us in the Church, do a very poor job of meeting this need. We feel uncomfortable as a man caring for the needs of another man's wife while he is gone. It seems to be difficult for us to go over to their homes and mow their yard, play catch with their sons, work on their cars. Perhaps we are afraid that a wild passion will overcome us and we will forsake our own wife. Perhaps we feel that by helping we are stepping on the toes of the husband who is gone. Perhaps we just feel uncomfortable with it because we are taught to forsake all others when we take our marriage vows.

I would like to suggest that forsaking all others is not exactly what we have made it out to be. You can demonstrate abiding love for your wife by respecting all women and caring for your friend's wife's needs with their children and household necessities when left behind by the deployed husband-father. And conversely, you can only really take care of the wife of another by having daily loved your own wife well.

Wendell Berry makes a great point in The Art Of The Commonplace. He remarks: "To forsake all others does not mean- because it cannot mean - to ignore or neglect all others, to hide or be hidden from all others, or to desire or love no others. To live in marriage is a responsible way to live in sexuality, as to live in a household is a responsible way to live in the world. One cannot enact or fulfill one's love for womankind or mankind, or even for all the women or men to whom one is attracted. If one is to have power and delight of one's sexuality, then the generality of instinct must be resolved in a responsible relationship to a particular person...No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it."

To "forsake all others" is to trap our love and the influence of grace upon the community behind a wall of partiality that is in the best sense fake and in the worst case ugly and demeaning. We have a responsibility then, not just to our own families, but also to those with whom we live, work, and worship.

Ash Wednesday

2008-02-08T05:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's now Friday, but Ash Wednesday passed by us not unnoticed. We went to our first Ash Wed. service, full of repentant Psalms and readings from exhorting passages of Scripture and experienced the dust of ashes painted in a little cross on our foreheads. "From dust you came and to dust you will return." After more prayers, knees numbed and thighs aching from kneeling, we walked out from communion with clean hearts and hands challenged to serve 40 days and nights seeking God's face.

"Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice;
but you take no delight in burnt-offerings.

The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."
Ps.51

what I would have done

2008-01-29T06:04:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, there were lots of brilliant ideas pouring forth from my overheated brain, but somehow the grey skies of this morning deflated the balloon of inspiration. I'll write instead of how Kermit is not finished but slowly getting his last flights done, and how unambitiously anxious we get when we practice loving our money in disguise as stewardship issues like financing of cars and house and insurance on everything that moves, and how Herbie sits gazing out the window, longing to join the birds and squirrels in forest romps, yet Sweetpea stays in bed, liking nothing so much as warmth and growling at leaves fluttering across the road on a walk.

Tutoring South Asian peoples in the English language shows me how fearful we are when faced with speacking to someone of a different language. We smile and nod to hide our scary vacuum of non-understanding, afraid to bend our tongue to unfamiliar sounds. After trial and error and the great struggle to learn new words, new sentence structure, new ideas come with the language and faces light up and we experience an understanding that reaches the very heart of man. I suspect we of the human species are speaking a different language than that of the heavenlies. We are, in other words, fearful and alienated from God until he teaches us his language.

Walking Backwards

2008-01-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

The greater percentage of my days lately have been preoccupied with thinking, no obsessing, about the future. No, not twenty years from now. But tomorrow. next week. My next set of orders. I think that we all fall into this predicament. It is only natural isn't it?

My dad once told me that it is easier to have faith in the past than in the future. I would have to agree with him. the funny thing is though, when I look back at where God has brought me, us, I can not help but admit that God has a pretty darn good track record. Imagine that, me not giving God the credit He is due.

Well, I ran across this paragraph from Capon while reading The Youngest Day. And yes, I am actually reading other books. Trust me. Capon says: "...It is not only death that approaches from behind. The whole future approaches from the same direction. We like to think that we walk into it forwards-that tomorrow is something up ahead of us and that, while it may be hidden by mists, we're still at least looking the right way. But in fact the only thing before our mind's eye now is yesterday. It's the past we see clearly; the future we can't see at all. And we miss it not because of thick clouds or bad vision but because it's 180 degrees out of sight. What will happen after this is, quite literally, aft of us. We walk into the future backwards."

And perhaps it is a good thing that we walk into it backwards. Because after all, Christ has gone ahead and fought the fight for us. If we walked into it facing forwards we might try to go it our own way, even more than we do now.

A Warm Welcome To....

2008-01-13T05:48:00.001-08:00

The High Meadow Lady. Her link is on the right. She is a woman who is wise, wonderful, second only to my dear Electra.

A Saturday's Morning Run

2008-01-13T05:48:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning is a morning that I look forward to all week. Not just for the obvious either. Since my days of running marathons, Saturdays have been the day that I fit my long run in. I don't run marathons anymore, but I still anticipate and enjoy my Saturday morning run. There is something that is cleansing about a long run. It is where I am able to work the kinks out of both my body and my mind. Usually these runs are done alone. However, every now and then my close friend Scott comes down to join me, and it is from our runs that some of our best conversations spring to life.

This past Saturday was a great day for a run; it was in the mid-fifties, overcast, a light breeze of about 5 knots out of the East. In this part of the state, a breeze out of the East, North-East brings in cooler air from from the cooler Atlantic currents. A wind out of the South-West brings in warm, humid air from the Gulf Stream. Thankfully, that was not the case this morning.

I left the house in clad only in running shorts and my new "cool max" T-shirt. No Elizabeth, not THOSE shorts. I walk down to the end of our lane as a warm up. I also use this time to accurately gauge the weather. This morning it is as the window forecast and so I commit. The first kilometer brings the sounds and sights of men working in their garages. Sundry projects and the weekly honey-do's no doubt. Otherwise the community is quiet and still; perfect. I notice that some of the young trees are trying to produce buds. A result no doubt of the aforementioned South-West breeze we have been enjoying for the better part of a week. The older trees wisely hold their buds in as if lecturing the youngsters to not get their dander up so early...we still have two months they say.

A dash across the state highway lands me back into a more rural area. The land of the Churches of Christ I call it. The first Church that I pass is built out of stuccato and the front forms a big, grey "W". Signs litter their grass parking lot warning not to do this and that. A large Oak tree leans over the building as if weeping. Is the building a reflection of their Theology? I hope not. But, I am afraid that it is. Further down the road I pass a nice lady who comments how nice it must be to be able to run. I comment to her that indeed it is. I praise her for getting out for a walk. She thanks me and I am alone with my thoughts once again.

Approaching me from the left is a large farm, or the remnants of one. I do not think that it is actively farmed anymore, though I have seen them cutting hay this past summer. It is a lovely piece of land. An old barn, used for Tobacco no doubt, stands in disrepair near the tree line. I hang a right and turn down a quiet lane surrounded by trees and observe the small half acre clearings of land used to grow soybeans, they are empty and waiting. The clouds have now come down so low as to seemingly touch the trees. I also note that is a bit more humid than I had previously assumed.

No worries though. I dash across a railroad crossing, retrace my steps across the highway and head back home. For the last half-mile I pick up my pace. I once read that the Kenyans, who are the best runners on Earth, train by picking up their pace in the last mile or so. And so I pretend to follow their methods. The last rise leads to our lane, and so I slowly pull up to a walk and start my cool down.

My head clear, my body relaxed, I anticipate the large breakfast that Electra is preparing. In fact, I already smell the bacon! Ahead of me is a day of rest and the activities that lead to our call to worship on Sunday morning.

how we spent Christmas

2008-01-07T12:14:00.000-08:00

Leaning into the arms of the couch with our new nephew, Patrick Hiram!

A Plumb LIne For Post Modernity

2008-01-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

Every now and then you meet an author who is able to cast a new light on an old subject and give you inspiration that you felt was never really to be had. An author who says so succinctly what you have been meaning to say for years and never had the right words. Robert Farrar Capon is that author for me, he is indeed a plumb line from which post modernity stands against. Consider this on the subject of spirits: "Once in a while someone asks me if I drink. My answer is always: No; drinking: is not a human activity. No man in his right mind can possibly set out "to drink" in the current sense of the phrase. Drinking, like Sex, is one of the big fake subjects. Of course I go on to explain to my questioner that I usually take a short vermouth at noon, a sherry or a rince cochon before dinner, a couple of glasses of Zinfandel, California Chablis, or better with my meals, and not infrequently, a reasonable quantity of Scotch with my conversation. But I do not drink. My care is for the matter and the occasion, not for the activity of drinking. By a long love for the real subject, the fake one has been made to sit down and shut up".
~From Bed and Board: Plain Talk About Marriage

Absolutely Rediculous! (Especially if you are, or were ever, homeschooled)

2007-12-18T15:56:00.001-08:00

...And yet, so true.

Bella

2007-12-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

You must see this movie! You really must. Kathryn has done a tremendous job on her blog Shrewsbury's Whimsy in really getting to the heart of the matter. I can not explain how the movie impacted me nearly as well. What I can say though is that it is so powerful and speaks to me in a way that no movie ever has. It portrays the humanness of this world in all of its glorious depravation. When you need to be reminded that human life is sacred, no matter how fallen we are, go see this movie. Hint: it would make a great birthday present for me if it comes out by March.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

2007-12-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

I highly recommend this book. Especially if you are the least bit interested in where your food comes from, or ever wonder why the American standard of quantity over quality is the de facto rule. Interestingly, when the book was finished it was the back cover that caught my eye for the last finishing touch.

Mark Danner, who is the author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, praised Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma) stating: "...the happy reader could almost miss the profound truth half hidden at the heart of this beautiful book: that the reality of our politics is to be found not in what Americans do in the voting booth every four years but in what we do in the supermarket every day. Embodied in this arrestable, picaresque journey through America's food world is a profound treatise on the hidden politics of our every day life."

This really is a gem of a statement. And yes, it does come from an avowed humanist, but Truth is reflected in many places. Consider as '08 approaches...do you think that the hope of our Nation rests on the voting booth? Or is it what we do every day...at home, at work, at school, in the kitchen, with friends, etc. I am convinced that it is the latter, and yeah, that seems somewhat small and insignificant on a Friday night...But if you think about it, would the Divine, who has wrapped the rest of creation up into a fabulous mystery have it any other way?