Fee Fi Fo Fum....

Let's talk about football.

Now I know most of you have just stopped reading. Some of you are reading junkies so your eyes just kept moving in spite of your opinion of gladiatorial idiocy. To tell you the truth, the whole thing kind of astonishes me. I've read articles about concussions, I've seen people get into fights about teams, I realize this whole thing is a repressed primitive symptom of testosterone poisoning. I really do understand all of that and I don't minimalize it. But the long and the short of it is, I'm a Giants fan.

Go ahead, screw up your face and shake your head. I do it myself. It's a conundrum.

But truth be told, I love the whole cheering thing. I love the strategy. I love yelling at the TV. I love getting together with other football idiots and yelling at the TV. I love hearing "Fee Fi Fo Fum... The Giants are coming to spoil the fun." I even like cheer leaders, but paradoxically I'm proud the Giants don't have any. I love bad mouthing Eagle and Cowboy fans. And I love it when they do it back. It's what we do. See? It's a very paradoxical situation.

Studies on brain function have found that when people talk about politics they use the mid brain, not the cerebral cortex, the fore brain. In other words we’re just as primitive in our discussions about Republican and Democrat, Conservative and Liberal as we are about why Eli Manning is a great quarterback and why the Cowboys need to lose more often to keep civilization on its feet. It’s very paradoxical.

But then so is most of life. We live in the midst of nothingness and appreciate the view. We are vicious vermin who can be self sacrificing. We adore our off spring in spite of their propensity to make us nuts. See? I also know that most of our options in life are to appreciate or to scorn. We can function just fine. The larger question has to do with something more than function. Enthusiasm, hope, sharing, appreciation, fun, all of these are choices that we make, choices to claim a moment and cheer, or to be reasonable and get on with business. I find such opportunities with football.

So, when I put on my shirt and sit down to watch Big Blue struggle to live up to their traditions of greatness, please forgive me. Call me names if you want. That’s your choice. I’ve made mine.

Go Giants!

Where's the Advil?

Romans 3: 19-28

It’s been one of those weeks. Challenges, threats, and grumby weather. I’m not sure if I have a sinus head ache or just a pain in the neck. What did I do wrong? I must have violated some basic tenant of ministry to get slammed with all this stuff at the same time. Long suffering Job I’m not. No running sores, and my wife is very supportive, but it feels like I must have said something, forgot something, didn’t deal with something that got me into this swamp.
My mother told me more than once not to worry about the reviews. Good or bad they have little value except as someone else’s opinion. Interesting in the short run, to be laid down next to all other opinions beyond that.
But it’s hard to wade into issues shrouded by entangling emotions. Exhausting at best, intimidating at worst. Dreams sprout from them. I wake with vague feelings of unease. Solutions and resolutions are shrouded as well. They depend so much on the opinions and reactions and attitudes of others that there are few reasonable agendas to follow.
Oh, to be a legalist. Wouldn’t it be great to have a list? Then I could wack myself or rear in self-righteousness with a clear conscience. This letting God be God is a pain in the neck. His is the only review I need to pay attention to. And this grace thing keeps bringing me back to being loved rather than condemned. Come on God, a nice neat condemnation and a good swift smack would be so much more convenient. Then I could rebel or at least be angry.
And I can’t even condemn the ones that are angry with me. They may be legalists, but even they belong to God, not to mention carrying around the burden of their anger. My job is reconciliation.
Ya know, I’m beginning to think God isn’t done with me. Where’s that Advil?

Thank God for Plumbers

We got the call on the last day of vacation. "The plumber just told us he found the leak in your bathroom. It's everywhere." This rather penultimate statement led our trustworthy pipe manager to condemn the entire pile of plumbing and tile and recommend a redo. Demolition and reconstruction time. It didn't owe us anything. We figured the last time it was torn out and redone was sometime just after outhouses. It's about a two week job. It's the only full bathroom in the house. We've been going to the gym at odd hours. They have such nice shower facilities.

Transitions are weird. What will be isn't here yet. What was is gone. It is a time of grieving and letting go and expectation and anxiety and new opportunities. The trouble is that all of that lands at the same moment. It's nice when the transitions are scheduled and prepared for, and we are able to batten down the hatches emotionally and logistically. But transitions rarely come on our schedules and even when they do the new intrudes in ways we just didn't expect. (I had a dream the other night about soap dishes in the shower. Might be a little late to deal with that.)

To me this is very instructive about my sanity. If I'm sane, which I like to consider myself, I'll be able to roll with the hassles and anxieties and disappointments and upsets involved in ushering in a new era,
and a new color scheme. When I get nuts, angry, or just plain anxious it usually means I'm not processing well. A new bathroom is a minor speed bump on the road to tomorrow. However, there are, some transitions that are terrifying and horribly disruptive. But I consider the dust and discomfort and
inconvenience of this change to be training for the monsters. I'm trying to pay attention to my limitations and my sillyness. They indicate the when and where I need to breathe and pay more attention to the grace and the glory that surrounds me, in spite of the plaster dust. At such moments I make lists of gratitude.

I am very grateful for the competent people who work so hard for the church
I am very grateful for the lovely and graceful home in which we live.
I am very grateful for the artisans who know how to do this stuff.
I am very grateful for the patience and good humor of my family, particularly my wife.
I am grateful for the half bath we have down stairs.
I am grateful this will be over soon.

I think it's time to go to the gym for a shower. Whew!

September

We just got home from the beach. In Jersey we call it the shore. This shore from which we've come is in North Carolina. Emerald Isle to be exact. Two years ago we honeymooned there and have gone back to the same place since. There's nothing to do except be. Admittedly, being at the shore is considerably easier than being other places. There's waking up and watching the sunrise with your first cup of coffee. There's reading on the deck. Did I mention the deck hangs over the beach? Then there's saying good morning to a sleepy eyed bare-footed young lady. She sleeps in 'till 7:00 or so. Then there's the morning walk on the beach. Two grocery bags go along, one to pick up garbage and one to bring back treasures. There’s very little of the former, but there are always heavy twisting conch and freckled scallop shells in various stages of wear, jingle shells shimmering in the palm like doubloons in a stream, and oysters, lumpy digits worn, all worn and smoothed and crenulated and carved by the sea, the ceaseless sea.
You get the rhythm. It doesn’t belong to our agendas. It coincides with the sun and the wind and the tides. Its sound track is laced with the speech of laughing gulls and the dry crackle of sea grass. And under it all is the karumph of the waves finding the shore.
We just got home from the beach, but no matter what the calendar says, September hasn’t claimed me, yet. I still have sand in my shoes. I have been washed up here, worn, washed, smoothed and carved by the sea, the ceaseless sea.

Building a Bench

I do Bonsai. I need a place to do it outside, dirt, clippings tend to mess up the kitchen. So, I built one, a bench that is. We already have a kitchen. Scrap lumber from the basement and one eight foot two by four. I got it all screwed together. Not pretty, but functional. But it wasn't right. It sloped toward one corner. I sat and looked at it, bothered.

Just then six, yep six titmice, that's a bird, came into the back yard and proceeded to comment on everything while they ate and trounced each other and generally acted like a bunch of teen aged boys in a gym class. As I sat wondering and smiling at this display of general disorder and fun I looked up. A humingbird had lighted on a branch above me. It was a dark form, cut out of the bright sky above.

I fixed the bench. No big deal. But the afternoon was transformed. I ought to make mistakes more often.

Out of Darkness

Ephesians 2

I spent some time in Africa. I was young. The kind of young that is still impressed in the open mouthed, eyes wide, stand still and stare way. I lived in a monastery out beyond the end of the bus lines in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We got to know a lot of people where they lived, by name, who they were. It was there I first ran into paganism. It stopped me as cold as seeing my first pack of hyenas roaming around outside the walls of the compound. The thing that blew my mind about the worship of small gods was the terror of the worshipper. These folks lived defensively. The gods were their enemies, very, very powerful enemies, bullies that rolled over them like a motorcycle gang over children in a playground. If these powerful beings noticed you it was not a good thing. The only reason you worshipped was to get on their good side. It was no guarantee they’d be nice to you. Gods have bad hair days. But when and if you came to their attention, maybe, if you shed some blood and offered some sacrifice, maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t swat you like the bug you were to them.
These folk saw these young Americans as allies of another god. The guys in the black dresses, the Christian Monks were magicians. They had given their lives to be servants of this Christian god. He wasn’t very nice. No god was. But he seemed to be very powerful. And we young Americans were allies of these men in black. We were living proof of the power of this not very nice god. Look how big we were, six feet tall, though we were considered barbarians, uncouth at best.
I wondered about this one day to a woman we knew who knew enough English and some Italian words to communicate when assisted by the high art of charades. I wondered why she didn’t consider worshiping the Christian god if He was so powerful. Her eyes got big and she shook her head very slowly, hunching and looking over her shoulder. She leaned forward and whispered to me, “They listen. They will take my children.” She cried and then told me she would live. “Each day without death is life.”
I still have dreams about her, hunched and whispering, “…alienated…, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
We have a gift. Too often we forget. We forget about the covenants of promise, sealed in God’s blood, not curses sealed in ours. Thanks be to God. Amen

Bonsai
Thoughts

There are few things I do that can be said to be classical disciplines. I sing. But I don’t have the time to pursue the discipline of classical voice, or the time to hook up with a choir to do music that constantly raises my game. My writing is a lot like my reading, not very classical or consistently disciplined.
But Bonsai is classical in its very nature. “Trees in saucers” have been around for a couple thousand years, and the maintenance of them demands discipline if I’m going to keep them alive. I’ve lost a few because of lapses. Years of work down the tubes because I wasn’t disciplined. Not to mention the loss of a life.
Anyway, loses aside, this is a rather unique presence in my existence. It is a sanctuary from the frenetic norm of my day to day and it demands a focus and an awareness of the needs of another. In short it gets me out of myself and forces me to slow down.
Every once in a while I bump into another bonsai’er. They consistently light up to know that there is another weirdo in the world that sinks into this small world of trees and moss and rocks and crockery. We talk about what a pain cedars are and have we had any luck with flowering trees and what kind of fertilizer we use and stones. Stones are very important. It’s one of those moments that you tend to remember, relationships built on common interest.
But the relationship that matters, the real center of the whole thing is the tree. You get to know something when you spend time with it and watch it and partner with it. But this can’t be compared with a human relationship. I really think when we do the first sit down with alien species, the ones from out there some were, there should be a bonsai’er in our delegation. They’ve spent a lot of time in communion with another species, like years.
It’s a lot different than having a dog or a cat. But that’s a different story. Just ask Sam.