Excuse Me, But Your Geek is Showing

One time I had a dream about a squirrel.  It was a giant squirrel and we were wrestling.  I was watching the dream in the third person, as if it was happening on a tv screen and the squirrel and I were wrestling in front of an oak tree surrounded by a low brick wall.  The bricks in the wall looked like bricks do in the Super Mario Brothers' games, all red with white flecks and yellow mortar.  In each corner of the screen were two power meters, one for each of us.  As we wrestled and completed moves against each other, our meters would go down little by little.  Eventually one of us would bottom out and the round would be over.  We would sit on the brick wall under the oak tree and discuss things in Romanian while we rested.  I don't know what we talked about, as at that time I only spoke a few words in that language, so I couldn't follow what was being said by the character that was me--or the squirrel for that matter.  And after a few minutes, we'd get back up and start in on the next match.  I think I went three matches before I woke up.  I don't remember the score.

I tell that dream for two reasons.  The first one is that its one of my favorite dreams.  Every now and then I have a dream so vivid and telling I've never forgotten it.  I'm not sure where all the elements came from (especially the giant squirrel!), but I had just started to study Romanian and I always figured it was some sort of mental game my brain was playing.  Or maybe I just played too many video games as a child.

The second reason is that I was reminded of the power meters this evening.  I was laying on the couch with my wife, telling her about some day dreams I had when I was a kid.  I think she was impressed by the amount of detail I had put into this story and wondered why I had never told her about any of it before.  But she fails to understand how much time I spent walking to school with nothing else to think about and how slightly embarressed I am at having made up such a make believe world in junior high and even into high school.  I don't think cool people with cool things to occupy themselves have such worlds in their heads.  I've always wished I was cool.

But I digress.  She was so impressed by the story that she began to encourage me to write it down.  I assured her that would be pointless, for as much detail as I was telling her, it was still missing some major features, such as an actual plot.  "No," she said, I must write it down.  And then she began to tell me all sorts of nice things about myself that I can only hope are true.  And that little power meter in the corner of my life?  It started filling up.  Its a little unsettling sitting on the couch with your wife, listening to her say nice things about you and suddenly seeing your "hit point" meter getting fuller just abover her right ear.  It makes you wonder if maybe you shouldn't have had that last piece of pizza after all.  I don't think she noticed me staring at it.

I think we all need somebody like my wife in our lives.  Someone who plays the role of the fairies in Zelda, or the green and white mushroom in Super Mario Brothers.  Someone who speaks into our lives the truth of what could be there, what actually *is* there, lying under the surface, sometimes so deep we don't even see it ourselves.  Someone to give us just a few more minutes to make those final few blows on the boss at the end of the level.

I'm not ready to write a book yet.  I think I need to find a few more bonus levels first before I have enough gold coins to buy a plot.  But until then I will continue to wrestle squirrels under oak trees, knowing that no matter how many times he gets me in a choke hold there's a 1-up waiting for me at home.

A Rock and a Hard Place

I'm at home.  And by that, I actually mean my parents' home, but it seems that I still refer to it as my home despite not living here for thirteen years.  I know I'm home for several reasons beyond the more obvious ones (like looking around me and seeing my parents' house).  For instance, there's a bottomless pot of homemade apple spice tea sitting on the stove.  Mom's been making it at Christmas time for nearly my whole life and I've never had anything like it anywhere else.  I think mom and I are the only ones that drink it, which might be why the pot seems to be bottomless, but it still means I'm home.  My dad is sleeping in the chair on the other side of the room.  Sometime in the decade since I've left he's given up the charade of "watching tv" and doesn't bother holding the remote or even turning on the television.  And there's a pile of theology books sitting on the coffee table.

I always pick up one of those books soon after arriving and start reading, trying to get a gauge on what's interesting my dad at the moment.  This year it was a small book on Calvinism.  I skimmed the first few chapters and then quit after two more.  It was the same old calvinistic arguments that I don't really follow and which sound cold and heartless.  The calvinistic god, as far as I can tell, is a tyrant.  And at the end of time, there is a fiery lake that forever stands as a monument to his selfish tyranny.

I am aware that I just made a lot of readers angry just now.  It was unfair, really, to what calvinist really believe.  Personally, I hate it when I read stuff like that myself.  Calvinists don't really believe that about God, just the reverse actually.  When they read of his ultimate sovereignty, his control over all creation, his mysterious reasons for judging the lost, his equally mysterious decision to choose some of us for salvation, they kneel down in worship.  But I can't.  The god they paint doesn't seem like the kind of god I *want* to worship.  And I'm a firm believer in the idea that God *wants* my worship.

Opposed to these theological ideas is Armenianism.  I don't like their view of God either.  They give all the responsibility of salvation to us--it is our responsibility to choose to accept God's gift.  But here's the problem.  God doesn't seem to be trying very hard to win over those lost souls.  And there's lots of people who've never even heard of the offer.  So, in the Armenian view of the universe, Hell stands as a monument to God's failure.  Of his inability to win over man's heart.  And I'm also a firm believer that Love never fails.

So that's where I've been the last few days.  Wandering in the no-man's-land between two opposing theological viewpoints, wondering how to resolve them.  I've been here before.  Last christmas, I believe.  And as I study and ponder and pray, I find myself challenging things I wonder if I have any right to challenge.  It's a weird feeling to discover that you don't actually agree with the weight of history--at least the part of history you're familiar with.  Here's the thing though.  God is God, no matter what we say about him.  And everything we say about him is going to be lacking somehow.  We can't even summarize each other with bullet points, why would we think we could do it about God?  But that's the point of knowing someone.  You never really actually know them, you just know more than you did yesterday.

So for now I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  Maybe then I'll know more about who God *is* rather than who he *isn't*.

Through the Looking Glass

He's a tiny boy, not even four feet even at eleven years old. He loves to climb trees. Once up inside one, he's hard to get down. When he's up there, he's in his own world and you might as well try to coax a whale out of the ocean. His dark skin and blue eyes captures your gaze and holds it as his face lights up into a smile that warms the heart and makes you feel like your eleven again. If you're lucky.

His name is Chadwin. We all knew it. It takes a special kid to be known by every member of the staff, and Chadwin is a special kid. Chadwin's counselor was more tired at the end of the week than the other counselors. The other counselors on his team were more tired than the counselors on the other teams. And we were all a little more tired at the end of that week than we were the others (though admitedly, Chadwin wasn't the only reason for that!).

The thing about Chadwin that made him kind of hard to deal with was that you never really knew where you stood with him. One minute you and he would be best buddies. He'd come over to you at lunch, give you a little side hug, laugh at a joke and go skipping off in that happy-go-lucky way that little boys have and we're all a little jealous of. Then you'd pass him in the hallway shortly after that and he'd look up at you with disgust and say, 'You. I don't like you.'.

I could never figure him out. But fortunatley for me, and probably for Chadwin, the continual love and admiration of an eleven year old boy doesn't make or break my day. Especially in his case, when I knew he'd be giving me another high five by that evening.

Chadwin face as he looked at me that day in the hallway--the face full of disgust, not the other one--kept popping into my head today. It occurred to me that maybe I was looking into a mirror of sorts. Except that on the flip side of the reflection, Chadwin's face was my own and I was seeing it through God's eyes.

How often have I joyfully climbed into the tree that God has led me to, only to adamantly refuse to come down no matter what? How many times have I seen God from across the field and run to greet him, only to rue the day we met later on when I don't get seconds at dinner?

A lot of times, let me tell you.

Fortunatley for God--and forme--the continual love and admiration of a thirty three year old boy doesn't make or break his day. And he just goes about his business, knowing that I'll be back.

And he's right.

The Greatest of These

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is a whole mess of other things that are spelled out pretty clearly in one short chapter in a letter to the Corinthians. I've been fascinated by the concept of Love since I was in college. John says that God *is* love. That's a pretty big statement about God and love and it confounds and amazes me whenever I give it a good thinking. A friend of mine once said the thing he likes most about God is that he's powerful. It makes him happy to know that God could take anyone or anything in a fist fight. But power is just one of God's traits--his defining feature, the one that sums him up in one word is Love.

Lately I've been pondering what else John says about Love. He says that we don't really just love God, we only love him because he first loved us. Now that's a powerful statement about how we learn love. I don't think we're born knowing how to love. After all, the loving thing to do would be to let poor mom have a decent night's rest and not wake her up every two hours. Instead it has to be shown to us. I'm not sure I believe that we'd even understand it intellectually until we'd experienced it personally.

I'm reminded of the times when I just didn't get something until I actually saw it in action. For a long time I strugged with Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination. The details aren't really that important, but suffice it to say that I just didn't see how that doctrine could be correct simply because I'd never met someone who followed it and wasn't kind of a jerk. How can you just not care that people are going to Hell in the carpool lane just because God didn't choose them? Then I read a pamphlet about the doctrine that was written by someone who actually seemed like a nice person. And even though nothing intellectual changed in my understanding about the topic, I was suddenly able to belive it. (Someday maybe I'll write about what I think now).

For the last two weeks, my wife and I have been helping to run summer camps in South Africa for kids from the townships and squatter camps. Our goal is to show the kids the hope and love found in God. These kinds of short term projects are sometimes hard to justify in my mind: the thousands of dollars spent, the time given up, if nothing else the ridiculously long time spent in a confining, uncomfortable airplane seat. But when you realize that the only way to teach someone about the love of God is to *show* it to them, the budget starts to balance. After all, the flight from heaven is longer, I'm sure, than the flight from San Francisco and an entire childhood lived through makes the jetlag look like nothing. And that's just God coming here. It's not even the part where he shows us what love really is: giving up your life for another.

So what is Love? I'd define it for you, but you won't get it. I'd show you if I could, but even then it would just be a glimpse of what love really is. You must experience it for yourself. And you can.

A Lament

Metal shack huts
Electricity but no plumbing
Door to protect what little is inside
God is good

Mismatched outfits
Hand washing clothes that never seem clean
Thrown away by others
God is good

Dogs, mangey and hungry
Wander through town wishing for food
Man's best friend
God is good

Babies clinging to mothers
Seeing the world for first time
Soon to have children of their own
God is good

Children running in the street
Snot covered faces
Eating candy off the pavement
God is good

Fathers sitting in the sun
Ambition is worthless without opportunity
Wondering where to wander today
God is good

Poverty is handed down from mother to child
Like the family silver
The sins of the father to the seventh generation
God is good

God is good
God is good
God is good

Turkey Time

Thanksgiving in South Africa. Of course South Africans are thankful, but-and this comes as a surprise to most Americans who've never thought about it before-they don't actually celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday in South Africa. And so it is with great excitement that our team was able to put together something that looked vaguely like a thanksgiving dinner to share with the South Africans on our team and to remind us of home.

One of the first things we realized we were thankful for is how easy Thanksgiving is in the US. Canned yams, crunchy fried deep fried onions in a can, cranberry sauce, ovens-Thanksgiving is like a take out dinner at home. Here we had to figure out how to make a casserole on the stovetop and learn how to get cranberry sauce to act like sauce instead of juice (it was actually based on cranberry jelly, the only hint of that particular fruit we could find). We toasted our garlic bread on the grill in back and sprinkled corn flakes on our green beans. It was amazing.

As we sat down to eat, the conversations around the tables (one of them invariably being nicknamed the "kids' table") were centered around holidays and what we ate during them. It struck me how much Thanksgiving is centered on food. It's not Thanksgiving unless there's a turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans and some sort of jello substance. In my family the entire holiday is almost exclusivley centered on the Yam Casserole-a creamy, buttery, crunchy, sweet bowl of yams and sugar and pecans that blurs the distinction between side dish and pie. We joke that we only serve the other dishes to moderate our intake of yams, for if we were to feast only on that casserole, we would all have heart attacks by the next morning.

So it seemed good when James climbed up on the brick barbeque and proclaimed to us the three things he was thankful for. One by one we followed, balancing on the metal grate and making each other laugh and cry with our gratitude. Thankful for the amazing provision we had seen through the rather difficult financial year, thankful for relationships that were budding or had bloomed, thankful for our familes and their health, thankful for a God to whom it is easy to thank.

Some would say that Thanksgiving is just another example of American gluttony. That the thankfulness is just a cover for our unrelentless search for more pleasure. That Americans love to eat so much, we've even invented a holiday to do nothing but.

I think this takes the wrong idea of what it means to be thankful though. You cannot be truly thankful until you have enjoyed the gift you are supposedly thankful for. I cannot thank you for the gift of a diamond ring and then refuse to wear it-even pawn it off. Thankfulness is the memory if the giver in the gift. It is the enjoyment of the present for the reciever and the enjoyment of the presenting for the giver. And so it is right to gorge ourselves on Yam Casserole once a year, just as it is right to gorge ourselves on the love of friends and family, the the thrill of making that backyard football touchdown and the sweet peace of a late afternoon nap.

God is good. Enjoy Him and his goodness. Then climb up on a barbeque and tell us all how good it was.

Origami Wads

It was hot. Not I-could-really-enjoy-a-cool-glass-of-lemonade hot, but more of a mind numbing, head pounding sticky clammy hot. And yet she found herself more comfortable than she'd been all day. The games had gone by in a confusing blur, one minute wondering how anyone would know how to play the game through the din of the crowd as it was explained and the next being mobbed by hundreds of South African children desperate to get the much needed mark on their arm so they could get a point. She wondered if they even got the point or if having an American draw a short line on your forearm with a Sharpie was reward enough.

Then it was craft time. The origami crane had seemed simple enough when they had practiced it the day before, but then she hadn't realized how much shared "language" and "experience" had gone into that practice session. Things that she and her rowdy bunch of ten year olds did not have in common. They had ended up making balls instead of cranes and even those wads of paper weren't properly round thanks to the random creases and folds they had awkwardly applied to the paper beforehand.

But now it was worship time, and this she could do! Sing, dance, put an arm around the kid next to you-this was what she'd been waiting for. So as the song began and the children started singing and bouncing as if they'd never even heard of dehydration, much less experiencing it now, she suddenly saw the girl in the front row. Her friends her dancing with wild abandon while she moved carefully back and forth, careful not to jostle the baby sleeping on her shoulder. "Why does that child have a baby," she wondered. "And why was it here?" So she made her way over to the young pair and asked where the mother was. "She's at work," the girl replied in a thick accent that sounded like the origami ball was in her mouth. "Can I hold her for you?" she asked. "Yes!" the girl replied, eagerly handing over her burden and launching herself into the air to join her sisters in the last verse of Brother Friend. And as she made her way outside, into the unrelenting sun and away from the joyful ruckus of the singing, she realized that this was why she was here: to hold a baby so a child could sing.

For The Record

My wife and I are currently in South Africa. We are helping to run a camp for disadvantaged kids from the townships and will be there and other places through Christmas. I just wanted to let the interweb know on the off chance that a) anyone wonders what happened to me, b) anyone has noticed that my commitment to daily writing has slacked off, or c) (the mot unlikely in my opinion) anyone misses the writing itself.

You can know more (a little more, anyway) about our trip by visiting http://www.allianceredwoods.com and finding the Camp South Africa link. You can donate there as well ;)

And one more thing: this means I'm blogging on my phone. So give me some slack in the punctuation department.

Cheers.

It's a Pity

Just after college, I was a member of a tight group of friends in Redding. We referred to ourselves as our "Redding Family", as most of us had little to no actual family within several hundred miles. One by one we started coupling up and today all but two of us are married to other "family" members. As one of the last to get married, this was a little hard for me at times. One of the couples especially were quite cuddly and affectionate. They were (rarely) inappropriate, but as a single person who wished very much to experience what they were experiencing, I found myself wishing they would tone it down just a little. It was all well and good to be in love, I believed, but if it could express itself a little less publicly, it would be easier for the rest of us lonely people. Have a little pity on us, would ya?

I realised yesterday that this attitude was wrong. It happened because my wife and I were sitting rather closley--not cuddling, really, but very nearly so--and a friend next to us asked us if we could stop touching each other so much. After a moment of the kind I've heard referred to as a "pregnant pause", he added that it was because it made him miss his girlfriend. I immediately felt sorry for him--after all, I've missed my girlfriend before as well and I would agree: it sucks. And so my first thought was that maybe we should tone it down a bit--or even a lot. It's cruel of us to rub our love in his face, he who has such unfulfilled longing. But then I thought, "wait a minute. Why should I stop enjoying my wife's presence just because you cannot enjoy yours?" It suddenly seemed very unfair of him to even ask. And I suddenly saw my former requests of my Redding Family as what they were: jealous attempts to hold their joy hostage.

I get that phrase from C.S. Lewis' book "The Great Divorce". In it he describes the difference between true pity and perverted pity. True pity makes you want to help a person get out of their sadness, their poorness or their misery and enter into the happiness, riches or joy that you are experiencing. Perverted pity makes you want to give up what you have so that together you can be miserable. The thing is, people don't normally feel perverted pity on their own, their pity has to be twisted by the other. Why would anyone want to give up their joy? But when we are miserable, we ask others to do it all the time. 'Misery loves company', the saying goes, and it's true. We try to take others' happiness hostage so that we will know that while we may still be miserable, at least there are few people who are less miserable than us.

This, I believe, is why the Bible says to rejoice in each others' joy and suffer in their misery. The second part calls the joyful to have pity, to not flee from the sadness that inevitably surrounds them. But the first part calls the miserable to not pervert that pity. While they are commisserating with you in your down times, rejoice with them in their uptimes. There again is that theme of selflessness that runs so strongly through the Faith and so weakly through our lives.

For now I'm going to enjoy my wife (what he didn't know was that we were already making an attempt to 'tone it down'!) even as, when I talk with my friend, I allow myself to remember the loneliness I felt not that long ago. God give me the grace to do so.

Four Eyes

I've never really been a fan of the Fall.  I blame it on growing up in Arizona...and, quite frankly, the process of growing up.  Fall meant school was starting, there was another year until my birthday and it was going to be getting cold.  It never gets that cold in AZ, but when it's all you know, it gets pretty dang cold.  Some days, I wished I had a hat.

Anyway, as I was saying, I've never been a fan of the Fall.  Even moving up here to Northern California, where we have at least three seasons (Rainy, Hot and Pleasant), I never really got excited about it.  Here, it meant the end of daylight savings time (and in the Redwoods, where I lived, that meant night starts around three in the afternoon) and the beginning of the fall season of outdoor education at the camp I worked at (a significantly more rigorous schedule than the summer one).

And so, it was my hmphh-ing and  silence that accompanied my new wife's exclamations about the beauty of the Fall.  She loves the vineyards, the maple trees, and the crisp cooler weather.  She loves to walk to the coffee shop and take the route that has inadequate sidewalks and low hanging branches just because that's the street that has all the leaves along the side.  She likes the sound of the leaves under her feet and giggles when she finds just the right kind at just the right stage of decomposition to make just the right crinkle.  She ooohs and aaahs and points...and its catchy. 

Another thing my wife loves to see--which I had never really noticed before--is the golden light of sunset.  I mean, I don't usually close my eyes during that time, but I've never stopped and said "Wow".  She has.  She's done it several times a week since we've gotten married.  She'll stop whatever we're doing, wherever we are and point at some wall or rock or telephone pole and exclaim in reverant awe how beautiful "this time of day" makes everything.  Its her favorite time of day.  I think if the sun set in the morning instead of the night she'd get up early every day. 

Needless to say, I notice these things now as well.  I noticed the vineyard behind our house this afternoon, all decked out in a pantheon of color that says to the still green oak tree standing in the middle, "I'll see your evergreen glory and raise you eighteen shades of yellow."  I noticed the golden glow of the sunset splash across our wall--the big blank wall we'd put pictures on if we had any--and realized that if we could just capture that particular shade of golden rapture, the pictures would just be in the way. 

There are a lot of things I see now that I've been married for a few months.  My wife is like that sunset illumination, taking objects I considered ordinary and commonplace and revealing the beauty that's been there all along.  Showing me, without ever actually showing me, what is good and pleasant and beautiful right here, right now.  Things in nature, things in other people, things in myself.  I think that's one of my favorite things about marriage--even just community in general.  The way it helps you to see and feel and experience things you'll never have time or opportunity or ability to see or feel or experience for yourself.  Our world is just too big, too beautiful and too exciting for one pair of eyes alone.  Good thing I now have two.

Expect the Unexpected

This was my favorite wedding gift.  It was a grey box with a silvery pillow top and pretty white lace.  We were expecting a nice gift inside, but instead we opened it to find a seemingly bottomless pile of money not just sitting in the box, but actually springing out and overflowing the sides.  Each note was a $2 bill (remember those?) and was folded into a bow-tie shape.  Just to be sure, we dug through the bills making sure there was nothing else inside--moreso for the thrill of digging through a huge pile of money than the expectation of anything else.  It was like an episode of DuckTales (remember that?) with Scrooge McDuck swimming through his vault full of coins.  I have always been somewhat dissappointed whenever I've put my hand into a pile of coins because it never really feels like it looked when he dived and flipped like some ecstatic porpoise.  But this pile of bills came about as close as anything.

Yesterday I finally finished unfolding all the bills and they now sit in a slightly crinkled pile of financially artistic beauty on our coffee table.  One of these days we'll take them to the bank, but for now they are the most expensive piece of art I've ever owned.  As I went through them (there were a hundred bow-ties), I came across one that was reversed.  Instead of a picture of Thomas Jefferson smiling regally at me from the knot, there was the chests of three unidentified men signing the Declaration of Independence.  It struck me odd that this one somehow passed through quality control and joined the other ninety nine.  Then it struck me that maybe there was a reason.  I imagined seeing my brother and his wife (the generous givers of the box of bow-ties) at christmas time and my brother telling me that if I could produce the bill that was folded backwards, there was another $100 for me.  So I set that bill aside.  It's now the bottom bill of that artistic crinkly pile I mentioned earlier.

The thing is, it's not going to happen.  I noticed a long time ago that the general rule of thumb for my life was that if I imagined it happening, it probably wouldn't.  Like some sort of anti-predict-the-future superpower.  I have no idea what's going to happen later on, but I can come up with all sorts of things that won't.  It seems to work for bad things as well as good things also.  So far, I haven't been decapitated while riding my bike, or fallen onto a piece of rebar and impaling myself at a construction site, or been in a plane crash.  Also, my teeth haven't crumbled and fallen out like so much sand.

The future is such a pointless place.  I mean, when it becomes the present then its all well and good--unless it isn't--but until then, its just the future.  A friend of mine has started studying Revelations and has been really frustrated to realize that all the things that she thought everyone knew about the end times is really just a second-class set of novels sold in Christian book stores and at Walmart.  There's a really angry guy on TBN that thinks it's real too.  I think he needs anger management classes.

An interesting thing to notice about Biblical prophecy is that even though a lot of it gets fulfilled during the history recorded in the Bible, nobody at the time of its fulfillment saw it coming or realized it was happening--if anything they realized something was up, then dismissed it because it didn't fit their interpretation.  So what do we learn from this?  That prophecy is for hind-sight, not fore-sight.  It gives us hope that in the end things are going to work out for the best; that when it's all said and done the good guys win.  It allows us to indentify who the good guys are because they fit the criteria.  But nobody fits the criteria until they do.  You can't see it coming.  You can't say "oh, there's another big storm this year and China's about to take over the world, so that means Jesus is on they way."  Because that's ridiculous and pointless.  Jesus is going to sneak in here and tap us on the shoulder and say "sshhh, come with me, we'll surprise them all!" and then we'll both sneak around some dimensional corner and come out the other side and yell "Boo!" and then ...well, some other stuff will happen and how you feel about it will depend on how you feel about God and then everything will be the way it's supposed to be and not screwed up anymore.  That's my take on Revelations anyway.

Until then though, I'm a little disappointed I'm not getting another $100 from my brother but quite thankful my house didn't burn down yesterday.

Hm.

Pumpkin spice lattes, if you make them yourself, have actual pumpkin in them.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Once, I listened to a guy tell a story about meeting a bear in the woods.  He described in great detail how beautiful the bear was, how graceful it was as it climbed up into the tree.  The sheen of its fur, the bright intelligent eyes, it made me get teary listening to it.  And then he shot it.  He was a hunter and this was one of his best stories.  Apparently, hunters like the kill even better when it's a beautiful animal.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Apparently, according to some people who really believe they know what they're talking about, the new health care plan of Obama's is going to make us all get on a six month waiting list to buy Tylenol.  But the only insurance plan I can afford right now only covers Tylenol--and only if the condition isn't pre-existing.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I'm not really a fan of this particular blog entry.  But the point was to write for 15 minutes, not necessarily to write well.  And its been at least thirty.  So I'm calling it here.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Radio Voice

Today, on the way to the library, my wife and I were listening to NPR.  We do that sometimes because it makes us feel cultured and snobby.  And other times there's something interesting on.  Today it was a talk show where some director I've never heard of was being interviewed about his work on several movies I've never seen and what it was like to work with actors I didn't recognize.   It was fascinating.  No, seriously, it was.  Well, maybe not "fascinating" per se, since when we got to the library we summarily turned off the car as if the radio wasn't even playing, but it was interesting enough to keep on and not resort to the ipod.  He (the director) had had many different jobs all over the entertainment industry.  He'd been an actor, an actor's agent, a screenwriter, producer and a lot more jobs that I've heard about and been impressed by--but can't actually say what it is they do.

As he was beginning to tell a story about this one time when he was an agent, I was suddenly struck by the thought that really this guy was just some guy.  So he'd made a movie that played real big in independent theaters in Berkeley where only truly caring people live.  Ultimately, he was just some guy who got a job--or rather a string of jobs--that he happened to really enjoy and who had a lot of fun stories to tell about them.  But that could describe a lot of people.  And this led to my next thought.

What if there was a radio show where actually ordinary people were interviewed and their lives explored as if they were really fascinating?  Because I think they actually are.  Here's how I see it.  We get a NPR type interviewer.  They have to have one of those great radio voices that lilts and tilts in on all the wrong words and who speaks really clearly with just enough of an accent to make you think they're not only better than you, but also honored to be talking to you.  And then they'd find guests who are from all over the place and do all sorts of things.  But they can't be public figures.  They can't have names that have scrolled by in credits or have been plastered on billboards.  They can be popular, in a sense, but not so popular that random passerbyers on the street would recognize them.  You know, people like you and me.

Then the interviewer would spend some time with them getting to know them.  She'd actually have to spend time with them because these are the kind of people who haven't written memoirs or had articles about them in the newspaper.  She'd ask them questions about their hobbies and their children and funny things they did in college.  She'd be good at it though, so the only stories to come out would be ones that would be entertaining and show us how interesting and good the guest is.

Interviewer: Our guest today is a barista at the local Starbucks.  He works the morning shift and spends his afternoons renovating his car, walking his dog and playing basketball at the local YMCA.  Tell us, Peter, what it is about car renovation you find so addicting?

Peter: Well, its not really "renovation" as much as it is just trying to keep it working.  Its an old car and half the time I'm praying I can get to work in the morning.  Its tough trying to hitchike at 3 am, you know?

Interviewer: [understanding and commiserating laugh]  Yes, I'm sure it is. Have you actually had to do that?

Peter: [I-knew-you-were-going-to-ask-that chuckle]  I don't normally.  But one night last week, I was walking down the road and I was going to be late.  This car came down the road and I don't know what came over me, but I just stuck out my thumb and gave it a shot.  Amazingly enough, the car actually pulled over!  So I walk up to the passenger door--a little hesitantly--and just as I arrived the engine sputtered and stopped.

Interviewer: Really!?

Peter: Sure did.  So I leaned over and it turned out to be one of our regulars!  The guy couldn't get the thing to turn over, so we decided to try to push start it.  After several tries, it just wouldn't work.  So we ended up throwing it in neutral and coasting almost all the way to the Starbucks at the bottom of the hill. 

Interviewer: Wow.  So did you make it on time?

Peter: No, I was about 45 minutes late and they'd already called in someone to replace me.  He needed the hours and my ride needed the help, so I just gave him my shift and spent the rest of the morning getting the guys car working.  Turns out it just needed a new battery cable.

Interviewer: You gave up your shift to fix a stranger's car?

Peter:  Ya.  I figure one of these times he'll pass by me at 3am and the car will actually work then!

Interviewer: Fascinating.

I'd listen.  On my way to the library anyway.

私は残念である

There are some days that I sit down to write and I don't feel like I have anything to say.  There are, I suppose, a plethora of topics, but none seem to be grabbing me tonight.  Really, the only reason I haven't "forgotten" to write at all today was because my wife remembered.  But its not like I've committed to writing anything in particular, just that I've committed to writing something.

It reminds me of playing team building games with the kids at the camp I used to work at.  I usually gave the kids an objective, told them everyone has to participate and then gave them no more than three rules.  Just three.  For instance, in one game where they have to cross a bridge over a river of boiling peanut butter, the only rules are that (1) only one person is allowed on the bridge at a time, (2) They must step onto an adjacent tile of the bridge and (3) they may not use a tile twice.  Its not really that hard and there's no reason anyone should fail.  And yet I never had a group finish it perfectly.  And it was always because someone thought up at least one more rule that I never gave and which made the game really hard.  I, of course, would just stand there and watch this whole thing play out because that is the nature of team building games.  And then I would share my wisdom on how they shouldn't make up rules to make life harder than it needs to be, how to stop from judging each other based on those non-existent rules and why peanut butter would have to be boiling if it was going to be flowing, so of course it makes perfect sense for it to be doing both through the redwood forest.

So anyway, I've decided to write a haiku.  Why not.

Screen glows on her face
Her words pour into the light
Hands dancing out life

I probably need to apologize to Japanese poets in general, but I promise I'm just trying to kill twenty minutes, not the art of haiku.

No I Don't Play Basketball...Do You Jockey Horses?

I'm tall.  Maybe you wouldn't know that from just reading this blog or from the title, but its true.  I'm pretty sure I've always been tall.  I have to say "pretty sure" because there was a time in my life when I didn't know I was tall.  The moment of realization was sudden and I remember it well.  It happened in the courtyard of my high school at the beginning of my senior year.  I was walking between C Hall and A Hall was was near the gazebo where my friends and I would eat our lunch.  My backpack was over my right shoulder and the weather was sunny and mild.  Like I said, I remember it well.

Anyway, it was the first week of school and I was noticing how many new freshmen were about.  They were everywhere--ours was the last small class and the classes to follow were getting bigger and bigger.  That year's freshman class was huge compared to ours.  And, like I said, they were everywhere.  The other thing I remember thinking was that not only where they, as I mentioned, everywhere, but they were also really small.  Like child small.  All of them.  Tiny.  Like little elves.

I remember stopping (and this is where my memory has probably taken the liberty of dramatizing the scene a bit) and looking around the seemingly endless traffic of freshmen students move past me.  It was like that scene in The Matrix where Neo is being shown the computer simulation for the first time.  And it dawned on me: These kids weren't "short".  I was "tall"! 

Duh.

The thing is, I didn't just wake up one morning and find myself suddenly a whole head taller than everyone around me.  Growth spurts are one thing, but I started walking across that courtyard as a totally average person who didn't--and didn't want to--stick out in a crowd, and I left that courtyard as "Ben" [hold arm above head with palm out flat to signify height and to which "Ben" you are referring to].

Its funny how we don't know stuff like that about ourselves.  Everyone around me knew I was tall.  But for some reason, I didn't.  I'd be willing to bet that people had even told me I was tall.  Especially because nearly every day since that moment someone has.  But I didn't see it about myself.  I had never really noticed.

Red Light, Green Light

My wife and I were driving down 19th Avenue in San Fransisco the other day.  At the end, right were it turns into 280 you actually take a right turn.  To continue straight down 19th, you have to pull left into the straight lane at the stoplight and wait an obscenely long time for the light to let you through.  I've never seen anyone in that lane.  When you look down that street, you don't see any cars moving.  A few parked on the sides, but none moving anywhere and apparently no where to really go.  The reason I was looking at this street was because the left lane on 19th Ave seems to move the fastest in that area, but I'm always afraid I'm not going to be able to turn right.  As it turns out though, every lane on 19th runs right onto 280 and the rest of the avenue is a quiet, single lane road to the kinds of places only a few locals actually go.  I actually felt pity for a street.

I have a habit of personifying things.  My car, computer, even some of my phones actually have names.  Most of the stuff I interact with during the day has at least a personality.  I can't help it.  For some reason, when I open my backpack, I feel comfortable with it, like I do with any friend I've had many adventures with.  And then annoyed at its habit of hiding things from me, moving them from pocket to pocket.  It thinks it's funny and I can almost see it smirking.

Anyway, I felt sorry for that street.  I wondered if it looked at the 280 on-ramp and wondered what made traveling down that freeway such a more interesting and exciting option than continuing on to wherever that street goes to.  I don't even know.  I've never gone straight.  And that led me to wonder if streets actually prefer the quiet life or the busy one.  I guess it depends on the street.  The street just down from my house likes it quiet.  I know this because it has those stupid speed humps on it and make you go less than 20 mph.  That street is like a grumpy old man who doesn't like kids kicking balls onto his lawn.

I'm only telling you all of this though because it led me to have another deep thought.  It happened as I was telling someone about the townships in South Africa.  In these townships, thousands, if not millions of native african people live in squalor just outside the predominantly white cities which are full of wealth and decadence.  It occurred to me that people live in similar situations in other places of the world as well, but we don't feel the pity we feel for those poor people near Capetown.  I think its because of the contrast that appears.  It isn't so bad if you live in a grass hut and eat grubs if everyone you know lives that way.  A corrugated metal shack might even seem pretty fancy.  But when you live in a metal shack next to a mall selling $100 sunglasses, life is pretty unfair.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.  Its just an observation at this point.  The pity I feel, that we may feel for ourselves, is often only pity based on a comparison with someone else.  I suppose you could apply this to our view of how athletic we are, or how pretty or wealthy or intelligent we are.  But when it comes down to it, those people in grass huts live happy contented lives eating grubs and walking everywhere.  Little boys dream of growing up to be shepherds and are happy to do so.  Its only disappointing when you realize that you could have been an astronaut--if you even know what that is.


I hope, for that neighborhood's sake, that the rest of 19th Avenue doesn't feel jealous of the northern half or of 280.  It may not be the route of choice for 99% of the traffic, but in the end its still going somewhere.  And one of these days, I'm going to veer left and find out where that is.

(For the record, the townships in Capetown are a huge problem, the result of much evil that still exists and the people there deserve so much more.  My wife and I are actually going there to host free summer camps for the poor kids who grow up without hope that things will ever change.  We're hoping to give them some.  And since I'm not above a shameless plug for support--we still have some funds to raise.  Please specify it's for Ben/Frodo)

Numbers Are Just Organized Scribbles

"Squiggly circles refuse straight lines."  That was how my wife summarized the point I had just made about the irony of pens working fine when you squiggle them in circles, but scratch ink-less when you try to write an actual number.  She's taken to writing down interesting things I say or notice for me or her to blog about later.  I probably should do the same, I had several great ideas for this blog just this evening.  Unfortunately, you'll have to endure this one.

The problem I've been facing these last couple of days has been one I've struggled with all my life.  See, apparently my last blog was fairly well received.  You'd never know it from looking at the actual blog, but there were a lot of comments on Facebook asking me when my book was coming out and saying other terribly nice things.  I would be lying if that didn't make me happier than a California cow (which, by the way is a terrible analogy because I think cows look pretty miserable wherever they are--but you get my point).  That being said, I suddenly found myself in this position of having to live up to my newfound status as a future pulitzer prize winner.  Or whatever it is they give to good bloggers.  And, not coming up with any ideas, didn't write anything at all.

What is it in our human nature to go to such extremes?  One minute I'm timidly posting my blog to Facebook where people I actually know will read it and know I wrote it.  I'm satisfied with my work, but embarrassed to actually show it to anyone.  And then, a few encouraging remarks later I feel I cannot top myself, my creative glands blocked and swollen and my head following suite.  There is a narrow, knife edged line dividing the pitiful from the prideful and it is painfully difficult to walk down it.

The key, I think, is the key to walking any narrow path.  One foot in front of the other.  Not just swinging it forward, though, like you're strolling quickly down the "awkward" aisle at a department store, but carefully putting each foot actually and literally in front of the other.  Our feet, just like our pride, naturally go to the left and right.  Self condemning with one step, self praising with the other and back again.  Knowing them the way we do, we should see it coming and work to bring them in.  With practice, patience and the grace of God, maybe someday we will be good enough for the Romanian gymnastic team.

That being said, it is ironic about the pens.

Stranger in a Strange Land

There are some things about myself that I have never considered abnormal.  Well, not abnormal in the I-have-an-arm-growing-out-of-my-right-ear kind of abnormal, just the not-quite-like-most-people kind.  My latest discovery happened the other day as I was helping my wife buy some long underwear.

I've never really shopped in the woman's department before--especially the underwear section.  That's not surprising since I didn't date too many girls before my wife and really didn't have too much reason to.  I didn't just not go there though, I actually kind of avoided it.  That aisle in every department store that always seems to be the shortest route to anywhere and its lined with bras and panties?  Ya, I hardly ever used that aisle.  I went the long way through the luggage and shoes.  In the rare times that I just sucked it up, I kept my eyes pointing straight ahead of me; I guess so that anyone who was watching me--another weird thing about me: I'm pretty sure someone is watching me whenever I'm in public--would assume I just wanted to get to the housewares as soon as possible and not some other weird thing.

In parallel to this, I have always been annoyed when I've had to buy underwear for myself and there has been someone else browsing the same aisles.  Even more so if that someone was a woman.  I remember one time in particular there was an older couple there who were having a very frank discussion about the various virtues of the types of underwear and which one they should get for the husband.  As far as I could tell, he couldn't remember what kind he wore and so they were having to figure it all out again at 60 years old.  It made me very uncomfortable.  I think I went to look at bath towels for a while until they remembered that he just wanted plain whitey-tighties.

So here I found myself in the women's underwear department, trying to decipher which package of long underwear was the best with a wide variety of bras, socks, panties and other items I couldn't even see the usefulness of on every side.  And to make it even more confusing, women's stuff just isn't very utilitarian.  Men's long underwear is right there with the other stuff whose sole purpose is to keep us warm.  It's in a package that has a warm looking man on it and it looks, first and foremost, warm.  Women's long underwear (if I can even call it that) has a picture of a woman on it that looks like she's seducing me.  It was between some very creative but definitely not warm socks that go up much farther than a sock needs to go and a display of belts lined with fuzzy fur--I guess so your waist doesn't get cold.

There were, of course, women everywhere.  And since I'm married now and have every reason to be looking in that aisle (or so I had convinced myself), I felt a little sorry for the discomfort they must have certainly been feeling.  And then I turned malicious.  "Serves them right!" I thought to myself, since they insist on always crowding me as I try to find the right combination of style and size in the men's section.  I even blatantly glanced at the bras.

Later, when I told my wife about this new turn in my life, this new round of courage I had summoned, this new bit of maturity I had attained, she said to me, "I doubt anyone even noticed you were a guy.  Most girls don't really care."

"Oh," I said.

"But these look really cute!" she replied.  "Good job!"

I hope that "cute" and "warm" are somewhat synonymous.

In One Word

There are certain people that I think God has put into my life in order to embody certain ideas for me.  Much like we know God because he came to earth as a man, I feel like I understand these ideas more deeply because I have known these men.  For instance, when I worked as a Program Coordinator at a camp, I wanted to be the best leader for my team and for my program as I could.  My mental "target" for this was a camp director I worked for for several summers before: Ed.  Ed claimed that to be a leader, you didn't have to know how to actually do any of the things your team did, you just needed to gather those people who did know how to do those things around you and enable them to do so.  There was something about him that made me excited about coming to camp to work my butt off.  I always hoped to have that effect on my staff.

I started thinking about this because my wife and I have recently arrived in Romania to stay for a couple weeks.  (Side note, if your keeping track, I missed a few days due to traveling and such.  Trust me, while its debatable how valuable any of this is, anything I would have written during that time of endless airports, vans and restaurants would definitely be a waste of your time).  As we were talking as a group this morning about what we would be doing today, we explained to Charlie that one of the reasons we had come was to be an encouragement to him and his wife.  Charlie is the Romanian side of the organization we came with, Romania Building the Next Generation.  I loved working with Charlie at a camp here last year and was glad to see him this year.  I suddenly realized as we talked that Charlie's face was what came to mind when I thought of the word "humility".  This is a man who is about to become the number two man in the organization, who could probably be the only reason we're able to do anything here at all and who leads a team of people from all over Romania to minister to the local children and teach them about God.  He has every reason to be proud of himself--we certainly are--and could easily flaunt his position.  And yet he considers himself to be nothing.  Not in that self-degrading hide-my-pride-with-humility way that most of us trying to be humble end up putting on, but in a quiet, caring, servant-like manner.  There is nobody I would rather be working with in Romania than Charlie.

I makes me wonder what kind of effect I'm having on the people around me.  What my "legacy", to use my former camp's lingo, will be.  The word doesn't have to be a positive one.  The word "obnoxious" brings a face to mind, as does the words "two-faced".  But I hope that my word is a good one, that I've been an encouragement to someone.

Maybe, since I've spent almost an hour now on my "15 minutes of blogging" (as I usually do), I should be remembered as "long-winded".

...And Flossing is Important Too

I was doing the dishes.  It was the last thing I could see that needed to be done before we leave for Romania tomorrow morning.  My wife was on the floor, stuffing just enough supplies into our bag so as to maximize our luggage allowance and not go over.  She was talking to her mother at the same time (a skill I will never master).  Suddenly, she cries out, "oh, we still have to do our blog!  Uuuuhhhh, we never have time for that blog!"

And that's the funny thing.  Of all the people I know, and most of the people I've ever known, we certainly have the time for this blog.  We don't have jobs, so we should have time for all sorts of things.  But the thing is, I feel just as pressed for time, just as harried, just as tired trying to get my video back to the Red Box as I did before when I had a full time job and all the Red Boxes were a thirty minute drive.  How ridiculous is that? 

What is it about us--and I'm willing to admit that this may be a personal problem and there are only a few others than can sympathize--that makes us feel as if responsibility is such a downer?  Its this feeling that I don't get to make a choice for myself.  I've been pressed into a corner by that stupid Red Box.  If I don't get there by 9pm (and God forbid there's a line!) then I'm out another $1.09.  So I have to go and that's such a burden.  Even when the entire rest of my day is spend doing exactly what I want when I want to.

But here's the flip-side.  And hopefully the part that makes me look a little more mature.  When I actually give into the responsibility, it feels good.  I can't help it, but I actually like saving $1.09.  I like writing this blog.  There's just this little part of me that doesn't like having to make the decision to actually be responsible.

I like to think that little part of me is getting littler.  But then I'm sitting in bed and I realize I forgot to brush my teeth.  UUUHHHHH!

Divine Joviality

One time, when I was in Romania, I ruined my favorite pair of shorts because I sat in goose poop (that's pupa de gusca in Romanian).  That's only mildly funny until you realize that I was playing Duck, Duck, Goose with a bunch of village kids.  That's the sort of stuff that happens to me.

I'm reading this book called the Book of Joby.  It's a modern day version of the Book of Job (of biblical fame) that happens right here along the northern coast of california.  So far I absolutely love it--though to be honest I'm only three chapters in.  One of the things I love about the book is the way God interacts with Satan, his angels, and even people.  One of my favorite scenes so far is one where Gabriel, who has been worshipfully contemplating the light of the sun reflecting off the waves of the Pacific for a couple of days, suddenly realizes that there is someone on the beach in his "territory" that he wasn't aware of.  He flys over for a closer look and sees a fisherman casting his line into the ocean.  Scanning the man's memories, his fears and desires, he gets a good idea of who the man is and finds him to be completely ordinary.  Average.  Just what you'd expect of a man of that age fishing along the coast.  Its all very unnerving to Gabriel, though, as he's not sure how the man got to where he was without Gabe knowing.  Suddenly, he notices a certain detail and swoops down next to the man, suddenly appearing as a human being.

"Kind of risky, doing that in front of humans, isn't it?" the old man asks. 

"It would be if I was in the company of humans, my Lord," Gabe responds.

Smiling mischievously, the old man asks, "What gave me away?

"You're not using any bait," Gabe chuckles.

"Can't an old man who loves fishing just cast into the water for the enjoyment of it?" the old man challenges.

"Yes, but even then he'd use a hook!" Gabe laughs.  And the gig is up.  God admits who he is.  He and Gabriel continue in this bantering fashion as God prepares them a meal and they eat together.

I love this picture of God interacting with his creation.  I feel like sometimes we get really caught up in the omni-s of God: his omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence.  We forget that God is a person, just as we are persons, and he tends to interact with us as persons do with persons.  What kind of conversation can you really have with someone who knows everything, including what you're going to say?  What's the point, even?  Why tell God about your day when he was there?  What's funny about sitting in pupa de gusca to someone who not only wouldn't allow it to happen, but technically doesn't even have a butt?

But that's the beautiful thing about God.  He does interact with us as persons.  He's not--and I daresay, never has been--an intangible spiritual entity that we cannot comprehend.  Well, I guess technically that's exactly what he is, but he loves us enough to stoop to our level of limited comprehension so we can at least relate to him in the way we're used to.  That's why prayer is important.  Because I think if you were to pass God in the street and he saw your unhappy face, he'd ask what was the matter (even though he knows).  That's why he says that "where two of you are gathered in my name, there I will be also."  Because he knows that we need to be physically present with people sometimes--including him.  We need to shake their hands and punch their shoulders (even though he doesn't really have anything to shake or punch).  And that's why he came to Earth as Jesus.  Because we were never really going to know God until he sat down and ate a meal with us.  Walked down the street with us.  Used the bathroom before us.

It reminds me of my interaction with kids.  I had a little buddy named Isaiah that I used to hang with all the time.  He was like five or six.  We didn't talk about the latest episode of the Office or how much gas mileage our cars got.  We talked about how, well come to think of it, there wasn't actually much "talking".  We just chased each other around a lot, built stuff out of sofa pillows and assembled things out of Legos.  And I never thought less of Isaiah because he didn't have an opinion on the Iraqi war.  Isaiah knew me as well as any five year old can know a grown man.  Not much, but enough for me to be his best buddy.

 I hope there are geese in heaven.  And that Jesus has a change of robe.

Did you feel that?

The other day, my wife asked me a question.  I think it went somewhere along the lines of, "so how do you feel the presence of God"...or something like that.  She was asking about my experience of God, more or less.  But, as often happens when I'm talking with someone about the Faith, I found myself hung up on the particular phraseology used.  The "Christianese", if you will.  I often hear phrases like "presence of God" and find it really hard to actually talk about it because I'm not really sure what they mean.  Like when a church service starts and the worship leader says that we're entering into "The Presence of God".  I'm actually somewhat ok with this usage now, as I see it as a spiritual metaphor for what we're doing physically--though that took a good two days of my life to work out.  But I'm not sure that the people in the audience understand it that way.  People come to church and want to actually feel the presence of God.  And I can't help but wonder in confusion, what does that actually mean?

Of course, we of the Faith will readily admit that God is always present.  That's just part of the package when you worship an omnipresent god.  But that's obviously not what is meant because people wouldn't be asking for it then.  It would be like asking for another serving of air.  There are stories in the Bible where God was actually physically present the way my wife is present across the table from me as I write this right now.  He shows up in clouds and pillars of fire.  He shows up in a gentle whisper and has a conversation with his prophet.  He goes walking in the garden and he is even born as an actual man and eats and sleeps and everything.  But I don't think this is what people mean either.  Because there are times when I've heard people say that they have felt God's presence and nothing of this sort happened, at least not that I noticed. 

I've asked people about this feeling and haven't really gotten straight answers.  Apparently, feeling the presence of God isn't something one can describe or explain.  I can accept that.  But it does make me feel a little jealous.  I mean, I think I have a pretty good relationship with God.  But I've never gotten a spiritual "hug" or had this weird mystical sense that he was physically there in the room with me. 

I guess in the end I don't feel left out too much.  I think I'd rather know that he was always there whether I sensed him or not.  That way, when I don't sense him, I don't have to wonder where he got off to.

Dirty Pant Cuffs

Ok, Entry # 2.  I've now gone farther in my blogging career than I have ever gone before.  Yes, there have been other blogs.  Two others, to be precise.  The first one I don't really remember much about.  I think it was back when blogging sites were just coming out and I was wondering what all the hype was about.  I set up a blog, filled out my profile, and then wondered what I was supposed to do with the dang thing.  I didn't do anything.  In fact, the only reason I even remember that blog is because when I went to set up my second blog, my username was already taken.  (I discovered a long time ago that my username, though nothing super original, is *never* taken--with only one exception.  Someone has already taken it on gmail.  And that bugs the heck out of me.  Especially since I can't be entirely sure that its not actually me and I just forgot the password).

Anyway, thank God for password recovery links (when they work, anyway).  The second blog was for a mission trip I was going on and because our pastor had just mentioned blogging as a spiritual discipline.  I'm not really into spiritual discipline as a rule, but one involving a cool web site and sitting in coffee shops sounded like one I could get into.  Plus it would be a great way of staying connected to my friends who were supporting me on the trip.  I wrote one entry.  It was dumb.  I know it was dumb because I read it a year and a half later and it sounded forced.  Unnatural.  I've read stuff I've written a long time before and much of the time I impress myself.  I have an uncanny ability to forget stuff that I've said or, apparently, written. And I find great enjoyment in learning that not only was a story I just heard retold enjoyable, but one that had I told in the first place.  I'm not bragging about my skills.  I just think most people don't get to experience themselves that way and I'm thankful for it.  Its the only plus side to having a terrible memory for things.  There may actually be other plus sides, but I can't remember any of them at the moment.

So when I started this blog, there it was.  The dumb entry.  I deleted it and started over.  And now I've gone into unexplored territory.  The unknown.  The Star Trek theme song is playing in my head right now.

One of the interesting things about starting this blog yesterday was the plethora of topics available to me to write about today.  I kept thinking of new ones and, to be quite honest, had to hold myself back from sitting down and purging myself of all my deep thoughts.  But I knew if I did that I would find myself feeling bored and done with the whole thing after I finished.  So I kept them to myself.  And now I'm just typing away about how many things I have to say to the world without actually saying anything.  My wife is sitting across from me, spending her own 20 minutes (she's doing 5 more minutes than I) sharing her deep thoughts with the world.  She's  a deep person, always thinking deep thoughts.  I can be deep too; but where she's like a somewhat clear lake where you can actually see the depth even if you can't see the bottom, I'm more like the muddy shallows.  Who knows how far down you'll have to sink your feet in the sticky mud before you hit the firm ground underneath?  I certainly don't.  But you can bet a lot of people have ruined a good many pairs of pants trying to find out.

And with that I close this entry.  Sorry about your pants.

The Infamous First Post

The time is currently 10:02 am.  My wife recently mentioned some favorite author of hers that said if you want to get good at writing, try writing for at least 30 minutes every day.  It doesn't matter what you write about, just write something.  Thirty minutes seems like a long time to me--which is weird because I'm totally unemployed and have all the time in the world.  So I'm going to write for at least 15 minutes.  That should be a good start.

Why am I doing this, though?  Good question.  I like to write.  I just don't do it.  And I find myself writing in my head all the time, those thoughts just never seem to make it to paper.  And when I read a good author (I recently finished a book by Tim Keller who qualifies), I find myself thinking, "I could do this--and actually kind of want to."  But I don't.  So now that I'm employed and find myself on the other side of the phrase "If I had more time I would...", I think I'm going to give it a go.

Yesterday I actually wrote something for real.  Meaning that people were actually going to read it and it has my signature on it.  It's a devo that my wife was asked to write for her home church in Torrance, CA.  She was asked to write it, but since we're married now and we want to be a part of that church as a couple, we figured maybe I should write it.  And, though it was difficult to admit to even her when she mentioned it, I really wanted to!  So I wrote it yesterday.  Its good, I think.  I like it anyway, and that's all anyone can really hope for.  But when I finished and let her sit down to read it, it was the most frightening thing I've experienced in a long time.  She's read stuff I'd written before, but this wasn't just anything...this was a devotional on a Bible passage.  It (supposedly) communicates Truth about God.  What it has to say could be the difference between Heaven and Hell for someone.  Well, maybe its not that dramatic, but it felt like it.  As she sat down to read it, I went to the couch, crawled under a blanket and peeked out with one eye to watch her.  She, like most readers, was quiet, occassionally smiling or even half-laughing (a good sign, there were some half-jokes in there).  Meanwhile, I was a nervous wreck.  Seriously, it was the longest five minutes I can remember from recent history.  It was like I was on the line being picked last for elementary school football or about to ask out a girl for the first time or standing at the edge of a zip line platform about to put my full weight into a very very skinny cable. 

And when it was done, she turned around and smiled.  Then she laughed as she saw me cowering on the couch and ran over to me.  Pulling the blanket away from my face, she looked me in the eyes and said she loved it.  That she always loves it when I write.  That she knows how frightened I feel (she's been writing for years).  And that she's so happy I did it.  And then some more stuff happened ;)

So that's why I'm doing this.  Because I've always wanted to and because someone I love loves me.

The time is currently 10:22 am.  That's twenty minutes.  And easier than I thought.