duh

I have been using the team name "Giant Gambian Pouched Rats" for my fantasy teams the last couple of years. It is a tribute to Gregg Easterbrook and the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. A couple of years ago, he pointed out that these rats are exceptionally good bomb sniffers and have saved many lives in Mozambique, which is recovering from a civil war. (In God's eyes, all wars are civil wars, so I guess that is redundant, but now I am getting philosophical....)

Anyway, that has been a good name since I couldn't be the Cracker Monkeys anymore now that Pat and I have split up our ownership. That name is a great story in itself.

Anyway, all season long, I have been changing my team motto to different random Great Big Sea lyrics - this week, it is "We'll rant and we'll roar like true Newfoundlanders." And in doing so, all of the sudden I realized my team name should be ......

Great Big C.

And so now it is.

first day of swimming lessons

Katie had her first day at swimming lessons today. She did well, and we went to the pool after getting home tonight and she showed me some of the stuff she had done. She is certainly more comfortable floating on her back than ever before, and she is also doing a better freestyle than ever before. So the first day must be called a success, though I do think we need to remind them to put sunblock on her, as her shoulders were much darker than before. I don't know that they were burned, but it was certainly close.

It was a crazy day at work today. Monday and Tuesday are always the busiest days of the week. Tuesday mornings, we have a group that does ID recovery for folks that need to get a driver's license, birth certificate, or whatever. And since they are only there once a week, I try to accomodate them and get them any checks they need that morning. And then you have the money from the parking lot over the weekend that needs to be unfolded and counted. And then today it was busier because we had to do the Sunday collection ourselves. Usually, we have a group of lay folks who come in to do that each week, but between the different schedule and the holiday none of them could make it. And so it was just a zoo today.

I am playing in a poker tournament tonight. They have a couple of different payout structures, which I am just noticing, for their large tournaments. Some of the tourneys have about 20% of the people place, and some of them have about 10% of the people place. Obviously, it is easier to get something back when there are more players, but the prizes are larger if fewer people win. I can't decide which I like better. Tonight I am playing in one with the fewer people placing. The tourney started with 648 and only 63 people place. I will like it if I get into the top 63; I guess that is the bottom line.

Everwood is ending

Certainly this has been the most important television show to my life. Tonight, they aired the season finale, and next week will be a two-hour series finale, and I am sitting here crying about it and then laughing at myself for crying about it.

The show started not long before Becky was diagnosed with cancer, and we were watching it from the very first night. The first season remains the best, I think. Certainly it is the season that affects me the most watching Andy deal with the pain of widowhood and grow into being a parent.

My guess is that in the finale, all of the couples will get together. The episode tonight certainly sets the table for a reconciliation for Bright and Hannah, and Amy admitting that Ephraim is her soul mate. But the story for me has never been mostly about the teenagers. For me, this whole series is a story about Andy first and foremost, and the question is whether he and Nina will get together. They have certainly hinted at it from the beginning, and I am torn as to whether I want it to happen or not. I know that it hit me like a ton of bricks when Irv finished his novel with Andy ending up alone. The thought of the series ending that way too would be far worse. And yet, and yet, ......

I know that the series can't continue without Irv. Short of Andy and Ephraim, he was the most indispensible character to the story. As the narrator, he provided such context and conscience to the story. I expect the final episode next week to be as stunningly brilliant as the first one that opened this series up in 2002. And I know that when it is over, I will have a feeling of emptiness inside of me that is ridiculous to be attributed to a television show, and yet I will.

a long day

But a fun one. The church picnic was cancelled today, which made us very sad. Katie and I were to be in charge of the karaoke, and she cried big tears when she found out that she wouldn't be going to the picnic. And so Deno and Cindy hastily arranged a little barbecue and Cindy's house. And we had a lot of fun. (And Deno intimated to me she thought the 22 year old Trinity grad - who has totally cute - was flirting with me). We did some karaoke singing - Katie had a blast, and Deno, who was unsure about this whole thing, got into it with aplomb. And we grilled some hotdogs and had some pasta salad and fruit, and then as it wound down watched a movie. It was very nice, and it was the first time since Cindy and I had had some tension in our relationship that it was clear to everyone that we had resolved it all.

So it was all good.

Sunday school was pretty awesome this morning. I might have to crack the whip a little to get everyone there on time. But it was a good crew and Deno and Cindy seemed to have taken hold of the project to beautify the room, so that is good, too. The discussion is still a little slow, but I think as people warm up to each other that it will grow as well. We are going to go see Da Vinci Code as a group on Wednesday night and then discuss it in class in two weeks. It may be a relatively small crowd this week because several of the people are going to be out camping and the like this week. So I need to do an extra good job of contacting everyone who will be in town so that those who are around do show up.

And now to finish some work before bed.....

Everytime I hear your name

This song has been playing on the radio the last couple of months, and I think about it a lot. I don't know that I will have time to comment much on it tonight, but maybe I will get to it this weekend.

Finally got over that song of ours
Stopped chasin' little red sports cars
To check the license plates
And I quit drivin' by your place
Back makin' the rounds at our old haunts
Honky-tonks, restaurants
Seein' some of our old friends
Feels good to dance again
And I can finally smell your perfume
And not look around the room for you
And I can walk right by your picture in frame
And not feel a thing but when I hear your name

1st Chorus
I feel rain
Fallin' right outta the blue sky
And it's the 5th of May
And I'm right there starin' in your eyes
And nothin's changed and we're still the same
And I get lost in the innocence of a first kiss
And I'm hangin' on to every word rollin' off your lips
That's all it takes and I'm in that place
Every time I hear your name

Got someone special in my life
Everyone thinks she'd make a great wife
Dad says he thinks she's the one
Reminds him of mom when she was young
But it's way too soon to be talkin' about rings
Don't want to rush into anything
She's getting over someone too
Kinda like me and you

She talks about him every once in a while
And I just nod my head and smile
'Cause I know exactly what she's goin' through
Yeah, I've been there too
When the conversation turns to you

2nd Chorus
I get caught in a that you were the only one for me
Kinda thought and your face is all that I see
I know can't go back but I still go back
And there we are parked down by the riverside
And I'm in your arms about to make love for the first time
That's all it takes and I'm in that place
Every time I hear your name

I start thinking 'bout the words I left unsaid
I start tryin' to change the things I can't change
In my heart I know you're gone
But in my head

3rd Chorus
I feel rain
Fallin' right outta the blue sky
And it's the 5th of May
And I'm right there starin' in your eyes
And that's all it takes and I'm in that place
There we are parked down by the riverside
And I'm in your arms about to make love for the first time
And I can't explain but I'm in that place
Every time I hear your name



There is something special in a name, regardless of what Shakespeare said. What does he know, anyway? Certainly one of the most dramatic moments in the Bible is God revealing to humanity God's name. A name has power.

There has been a name on my heart the last couple of days. I guess it is made more poignant for me by a situation a friend is in and a series of decisions she has made and will be making. And it is odd to be putting a song on here and not have it be about Becky - though certainly there is plenty about that I could relate to as well - but it is a different name with a power over me tonight.

And with that cryptic closing, I am off to bed .....

school is out

I wrote a few weeks ago about the amazing relationship with time I have had as a widower. It is some of my best stuff, to tell the truth. I should leave it perpetually on top of this thing, or maybe like the third one down, so that people would see it and think I am this insightful dude instead of this schmuck who plays poker and frets about the Spurs and Royals - don't even get me started on the Royals. ..... I got started, and just deleted that bit. Arrrggggghhhhh.

Anyway, today was Katie's last day of kindergarden. She is now, I guess, a first grader. I had to claim her report card from the office because I was $3.08 delinquint in paying for her lunches, and so they held it hostage. I gave them $3.10 and told them to keep the change, because I am a magnanimous guy even if I can't spell the word. I tried all of the vowels where that "i" is, and none of them look right, so deal with it.

Katie had a perfect report card except for she had a "developing skills" mark under expresses her feelings. She had the best mark on that until the end. I talked to her teacher about it while she was walking the kids out, and she said Katie had been acting out more a few weeks ago. No kidding, I thought. She had a rough go of it the couple of weeks leading up to Mothers' Day. And since then she has been fine. Which got me wondering whether she hadn't been expressing her feelings better than the average kindergardener. Ah well.

But it is amazing how quickly this year has gone by. 2003 through 2005 took about thirty years between cancer and being widowed. And now it seems to have picked up to a pace like "normal." Which sounds like it should be good, right? Isn't that a sign of healing. And yet I wonder. One of the reasons that the time moved so slowly was that everyday was packed with meaning. In so many ways the time Becky had cancer was the best time of our relationship. We were never closer than we were during that time.

And so the question I sit here thinking about in when I join in with the crowd that says, "How can it be Memorial Weekend? The year just started ...." is whether this sped up time is also a sign that I have forgotten to make everyday meaningful. I just don't know. I need to recommit to many things in the summertime. I need to commit to more time at the gym. I need to recommit to spending the time with Katie she deserves. With the new job, I need to be more careful to balance these things. It will be easy to pour myself into that job because I do believe in it and want to succeed here. But not if it means the lessons of the last three and a half years have to be put to the side. How do I incorporate those lessons into the new normal?

Time is a puzzle.

devastating

Ugh.

Congratulations to the Mavericks.

Did I say Ugh already?

That is one of the most entertaining series ever, with one of the greatest games I have ever watched tonight.

Like the whole world, I thought we had it when Manu came up with the huge shot giving the Spurs their first lead with 32 seconds left. But he followed that up with a bad foul against Nowitzki on the other end allowing a three point play, and then couldn't convert at the buzzer to force overtime.

Give Dallas credit. I expected them to fold once the Spurs had taken the lead. Maybe if the Spurs had taken a quick lead in overtime, it would have helped. But it just never happened as they made some quick shots and kept the Spurs at arm's distance the whole overtime.

And now I am done watching the NBA until November. I lose interest the minute the Spurs are eliminated.

For a Little While

Phil Vassar is one of my favorite songwriters. He can sing, too, but one of the things that has amazed me recently is the number of times I have looked up songs that I have liked - My Next Thirty Years is a recent example - to find that he was the writer.

Anyway, I heard this song today for the first time, and it is awesome.....

For a Little While


Hot sun dancin' on the river
We're sittin on the bank and watch the world go by
Our feet in the water she pressed her lips to mine
We were so long on love but short on time
She could be a honeymoon sweet and a little wild
But she was mine oh, for a little while

And I laugh everytime I start to think about us
We sent that summer out in style
And she's gone but she let me with a smile
'Cause she was mine for a little while

We'd take a ride and head on down to airport road
Put the seats back watch the planes leave town
She always said nobody's strong enough to tie her down
Oh but I wasn't lookin' for that anyhow
I knew she'd leave but I didn't know when
It matters to me now oh but it didn't back then

And I laugh everytime I start to think about us
We sent that summer out in style
And she's gone but she left me with a smile
'Cause she was mine for a little while

I keep seein' pictures now of me and her and those summer nights
My mind fills with her
Oh but it's alright
'Cause I laugh everytime I start to think about us
We sent that summer out in style
And she's gone but she left me with a smile
'Cause she was mine for a little while
Yeah she was mine for a little while


I never had the folly of thinking Becky was mine. She was her own, totally. I did not possess her, but I did love her.

Dreaming again

Don't you know I had a dream last night
That you were here with me
Lyin' by my side so soft and warm
And we talked a while
And shared a smile
And then we shared the dawn
But when I woke up
Oh, my dream it was gone

Don't you know I had a dream last night
And you were here with me
Lyin' by my side so soft and warm
And you said you'd thought it over
You said you were coming home
But when I woke up
Oh, my dream it was gone

I'm not the same
Can you blame me
Is it hard to understand
I can't forget
You can't change me
I am not that kind of man

Don't you know I had a dream last night
And ev'rything was still
And you were by my side so soft and warm
And I dreamed that we were lovers
In the lemon scented rain
But when I woke up
Oh, I found that again, I had been
Dreamin', dreamin' again
I had been dreamin', dreamin' again

Jim Croce

I had a dream almost exactly like this last night. Just a simple little dream that Becky was in bed beside me. I woke with the smell of her shampoo in my nostrils again. It is funny, but a pleasant funny, to dream about sleeping, at least in that circumstance. It has been a warm blanket I have held over me all day.....

Mothers' Day

Today turned out to be a very blessed day for me and Katie. She was baptized this morning at church.

When I picked Mothers' Day to have her baptized a month or so ago, I picked this day because my brothers would be in town. I picked it because I wanted to honor Becky and honor my mother and have this be my MD gift to them.

And those things happened, and yet that is not the real reason she needed to be baptized today. She needed to be baptized today because this could have been a really hard day for us, and we needed the community to lift us up and carry us today, and to shower us with love. And so they did. Family did as did the church community, and I am so grateful for both. It is amazing the number of times that I have made decisions for good reasons, and they turned out to be good decisions, but the real reasons they were good were completely unknown to me at the time I made them.

Dave and Buster's

Tonight Katie and I went out to D&B with a couple of women who are going to be in the new Sunday school class I am starting. We had such a good time. Katie fell asleep on the drive over, and so she was a grouchasaurus for a while, but she perked up fairly quickly. It was not at all crowded, which was nice. I guess showing up early on a Thursday night is key.

I am tired, so I am off to bed.

Christianist

As usual, Andrew Sullivan hits it right on the head:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1191826,00.html

Sojourners Magazine sells a bumper sticker that says, "God is not a Republican (or a Democrat)."

The Sound of Music

Katie and I had a blast yesterday at the Sound of Music Singalong. We sang and did hand motions and hissed at the Baroness and barked at Rolf and so on and so on.

The movie is delightful, though the end moves much too slowly. Did we really need all of that footage of Nazis looking with the flashlights for the family hiding in the abbey?

I think the relationship to wealth of the main characters was very interesting. In the musical, there is a song with the baroness and the captain about how hard life is with money and how it gets in the way of love. It is an interesting portrayal - one might think it was the poor Maria who would be conniving; she showed up with nothing but the dress on her back and a guitar. But it is the baroness, herself wealthy, who is the conniving one, attracted to the captain's fortune.

But my problems with the movie, ultimately, are twofold. The first one is basically the same rant as the one I made against the crappy country song a few posts down. Maria and the Captain as they are finally confessing their love for each other sing the song, "I must have done something right." We do not ever deserve the love of another. It is but a gift. Who do we harm more than the ones we are closest too? I have never mistreated another person the way I mistreated Becky. Certainly I did not deserve her love, and there is nothing in my childhood that allowed me to stake a claim to it. Her love was always her gift to me freely given.

And the second thing I detest in this movie is how they treat motherhood. In the very beginning, on the night Maria moves in with the Von Trapp family, the housekeeper shares with Maria the rumor that the captain might be marrying the baroness. (hisssssssss.) And Maria then exclaims to herself that she knows why she is there, to prepare the children for a new mother. Then again, when the captain and baroness announce their engagement to the children, he tells them, "they are going to have a new mother." Finally, after Maria and the captain have married and returned from their honeymoon, Leisl gets some time with Maria to confide her situation with Rolf. And she says something formal - I forget whether she calls Maria "Governess" or "Fraulein," - and then says, "I mean, mother. I like calling you that." And Maria answers, "I like being called that."

I guess I am just too close to this.

I sincerely hope that someday there is a woman in Katie's life that she will feel so intimately tied to that she calls her "Mother."

At the same time, Katie already has a mother. And to me it is insulting to Becky to think that she could ever name another so. It is something I want to happen, and it is also something to which I see no path.

The main thing in the movie that just really bugged me is how cheaply the word mother is tossed around. That moment, when it comes, will be one of the most emotional of my life. I don't like seeing it dirtied.

enough whining

I tell you what, I have heard enough whining from Spurs fans before this series has even started. Yes, the play-off system is flawed when the two teams with the best record meet in the second round instead of the third. Yes, a 36 hour turnaround is short. The least they could have done was make this a 5:00 game rather than noon, but the bottom line is that the Spurs could have beaten the Kings in four or five games. There is a reward for knocking out a team quickly. The Mavs did, and the Spurs didn't.

But there is also a larger truth. The better team basically always wins a seven game series. All of this crap evens itself out in the end even within a series. And if you want to be the champs, then you need to be able to beat anyone. There are only two outcomes from the playoffs for Spurs fans: champions and not champions. Is there a difference for us between losing in the second or third rounds? I say no. If the Spurs can't handle the Mavs, then they are not the champs.

Starting in four hours, we will see how it breaks out.

Just as soon as I say that ....

I get in a cheap flop with pocket threes, flop a set, and get all-in against a dude with an over-pair to the board. He caught his trips on the river, and I am just hoping to sneak in the money. Will need to double up to be competitive......

ugh ugh ugh

It has been a long, tiring day. It started seemingly innocuous enough. Katie and I got up this morning, watched the end of the Sound of Music, getting ready for tomorrow, had some breakfast, went to see my dad. They headed off to Fiesta Texas to spend the day, and my day turned to pot .......

First, I went to Best Buy because of the ongoing business with my satellite radio. I love having the satellite radio in my car. I have Sirius. When I bought a new car last year in February, I had the folks at Best Buy move the receiver and antennae from one car to the other. Which worked fine until December, in which the mounting gave way. So I went in to have it remounted on the dash, and two weeks later it came off again. And the process repeated.

So the last time I went in to get it remounted in March or so, they told me the antennae was messed up. Because the unit was old, they had to order a new antennae, and it took a couple of weeks to get there and a couple more weeks for me to get by there and have it installed. With the new antennae, it worked for maybe five minutes. And so I was back last week, and they decided it wasn't the antennae that had been giving me the problem, but the receiver. So I had a new antennae I didn't need, and didn't have the receiver I do need. So I went in and told the store manager this whole story, and they gave me a decent deal.

Back when I bought the satellite radio, over three years ago now, I purchased the lifetime subscription, and to transfer it to a new receiver is $70 or something like that.

Just annoying, but the day was young.

Get in the car to go to the gym and work out - and complain there, too - and as I get there, the car is driving horribly, and I have a slashed tire and it is horribly flat. So I call the Roadside Assistance with Saturn - which was wonderful, by the way, very professional. But it did take a couple of hours and mean another unexpected purchase of a couple hundred bucks.

And in the mean time, I did get in a good swim, but I also had to bitch at the people at Gold's Gym. I changed checking accounts in December, and since have been trying to get my dues there directly taken out of my bank. Every month the bank was kicking it back, and I would get a nasty letter in the mail saying I hadn't paid and charging me late fees. And every month I would go in and complain and they would take off my late fees and I would write a check and they would promise to look into it. Every month the same.

Finally, two weeks ago, after four consecutive months of this, I get to talk to the business manager. And he looks it up, realizes that the address is wrong, which was their fault since they just pulled it off the check and it is correct on there. And so he says that he has fixed it and it will be effective with the June 6 payment and so I paid for two months, and thought it was finally over. Except for I got my bank statement this week, and they not only cashed my check for two months, but they automatically withdrew the money for two months. And so I got to go in and complain there. And the gal said they would credit my account for two months, and while that would be fine, I am going to raise a stink because they have insulted me for months and then charged me double. So I want the money back, and they can get it when they are due it and not before.

Ahhhhhh.

But I am doing well in the Crawford Charitable Poker Tournament, so that is good. Getting close to the money .....

Frederick Buechner

A novelist and Presybeterian minister who lives in Vermont, Buechner should be on most anybody's list. And continuing the theme of wailing on a bad country song, here is what he says (written a generation ago with non-inclusive language):

But notice this: that love is not really one of man's powers. Man cannot achieve love, generate love, wield love as he does his powers of destruction and creation. When I love someone, it is not something I have achieved, but something that is happening through me, something that is happening to me as well as him.... wherever love enters the world, God enters.

an idiotic song

It is a popular song on the country radio these days, called "Must Be Doing Something Right" by Billy Currington. I can't stand it. Here are the lyrics:

A woman is a mystery
Man just can’t understand
Sometimes all it takes to please her
Is the touch of your hand
And other times you gotta take it slow
And hold her all night long
Heaven knows there’s so many ways
A man can go wrong

Must be doing something right
I just heard you sigh
Leaned into my kiss
And closed those deep blue need you eyes
Don’t know what I did
To earn a love like this
But baby I must be doing something right

Anywhere you wanna go
Baby show me the way
I’m open to suggestions
Hmm, whatever you say
Tonight’s about giving you what you want
Whatever it takes
Girl I hope I’m on the right road
Judging by the smile on your face

Must be doin’ something right
I just heard you sigh
Leaned into my kiss
And closed those deep blue need you eyes
Don’t know what I did
To earn a love like this
But baby I must be doing something right

Oh baby
Hmmm

Don’t know what I did
To earn a love like this
But baby I must be doing something right
Must be doing something right

Oh yeah
Must be doing something right


Okay, here is why I hate this song. It is for the same reason that I hate it when athletes invoke God after they win a big game. "Thank you Jesus for making me a badass!" (There are a few athletes who I think are genuine in their expressions like these, but few and far between.) They know it is rude and egotistical to just say, "I am a badass!" So they fake humility and are blasphemous instead of egotistical.

We get the same phenomenon in this song. "You can see what a great guy I am, what a lover I am, what a great kisser, blah blah blah."

Maybe this is just a song about getting a woman's body to react. And if it is, then whoopity-freaking-doo. But if this is a song about being loved, then he misses the most important point about love. Love cannot be earned; it can only be given. This singer needs a way to pump himself up - I must be doing something right to earn this love - rather than accept love humbly as a gift. He inverts the relationship because he thinks he is a stud for evoking love.

yesterday and tomorrow

I opened a delightful novel by Umberto Eco again this week; its title is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, and it is about a man who loses most of his memory. He is a bookseller, and he remembers the plots of all of the stories he has ever encountered, but he cannot remember the events of his life. The following passage has stuck with me since I first encountered it; it is the main character talking to his wife, Paola:

I let myself rock gently until I began to feel sleepy. The tolling of a grandfather clock woke me, and I almost spilled my scotch. The clock was behind me, but before I could identify it, the tolling stopped, and I said, "It's nine o'clock." Then, to Paola, "You know what just happened? I was dozing, and the clock woke me. I didn't hear the first few chimes distinctly, that is to say, I didn't count them. But as soon as I decided to count I realized that there had already been three, so I was able to count four, five, and so on. I understood I could say four and then wait for the fifth because one, two, and three had passed, and I somehow knew that. If the fourth chime had been the first I was conscious of, I would have thought it was six o'clock. I think our lives are like that - you can only anticipate the future if you can call the past to mind. I can't count the chimes of my life because I don't know how many came before.

Reading this passage started me thinking about time, and my strange relationship to it as a widower. I think Eco is right; we can only anticipate the future if we can recall the past. But at the same time, I have had to form a new relationship with my own past. Before my wife Becky died, I was quite comfortable anticipating the future. I am sure my vision of the future was not unique; it entailed growing old with Becky and watching our children flourish in their own families and careers. Of course it would be work; college educations and weddings and family vacations are expensive. So much of our energy was spent in the early days of our marriage looking far into the future to these happy times.

Cancer interrupted the flow of my history into my imagined future. I woke up knowing that I was hearing the fourth chime, but instead of hearing the fifth chime, I heard a cuckoo. This was not what was supposed to come next. There were more children to have, more students to teach, more trips to take, and one horrible word eradicated it all.

In one sense, this was liberating. The time Becky battled cancer was in so many ways the happiest time of our marriage. We could not live in the future anymore; it was simply too scary. Whereas before we talked about where we would travel when our children were in college, now we would not make plans more than a week in advance. Who knew what would happen then? And so we appreciated more fully the blessings of every day. We held hands in the grocery store, and made the purchasing of green beans an expression of our love. It was not always idyllic, of course, because there was too much stress and terror involved also, but cancer attached us more seamlessly than we had ever been before.

Since Becky died, I have been forced into a new relationship with my history. Partly, I must do this because my past no longer leads to my anticipated future. I must also do this because in many ways my history is less real to me than before because the person who could verify it is no more. I wonder how many of my memories are real because Becky was constantly correcting me in stories. Did it happen the way I remember? I certainly remember Becky wearing a blue dress on our first date, but she swore up and down that she wore that dress for our third date. Or am I not remembering a disagreement correctly? Maybe we quarreled about whether she wore this dress to a wedding and she said, “how could you forget it, I wore it for our first date.” I don’t remember these details as well as she did. How much of my own history is a collection of misremembered details? I guess I get the last laugh. In my memory, she wore the blue dress for our first date, and so from now on, she will have done so.

In there is the clue to what I really miss. I miss having her around because she knew the story of my adult life as well as I do. (“Ha, better!” she would say if she could) It is the intimacy that I miss. Maybe that is why I am closer to my mother than I have ever been. If my twenties belonged to Becky, the years before that belonged to my mom. I need her now because she can tell me I am who I am because she knows I was who I have been.

Who else can provide me this intimacy? What I need to know is not just the facts of my stories, but that I am a valuable and lovable man. It is this need that more than anything else has called me back to a spiritual journey. For God has been the constant in my life, even during those times when I would not acknowledge it. The creation story promises me that I was created in God’s image, and that I am good. Isaiah promises that God has known me and molded me from before the time I was born. Jesus promises that God knows every hair on my head.

I love a little passage in Jeremiah (25:6-15) that is like so many in the Bible because it seems to ramble and have no point, and it only reveals itself in its own time. Jeremiah is not the most popular guy in Israel. He has been foretelling the downfall of the current king and the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians. And so he is in prison. While there, the Babylonians are at the gates of the city, and all of Israel is about to be lost to the Jews.

This message came to me from the Lord, said Jeremiah: Hanamel, son of your uncle Shallum, will come to you with the offer: “Buy for yourself my field in Anathoth, since you, as nearest relative, have the first right of purchase.” Then, as the Lord foretold, Hanamel, my uncle’s son came to me in the quarters of the guard and said, “Please buy my field in Anathoth, in the district of Benjamin; as nearest relative, you have the first claim to possess it; make it yours.” I knew this was what the Lord meant, so I bought the field in Anathoth from my cousin Hamamel, paying him the money, seventeen silver shekels.
When I had written and sealed the deed, called witnesses and weighed out the silver on the scales, I accepted the deed of purchase, both the sealed copy, containing title and conditions, and the open one. This deed of purchase I gave to Baruch, son of Neriah, son of Manseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hamamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed, and before all of the men of Judah who happened to be in the quarters of the guard.
In their presence I gave Baruch this charge: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both the sealed and the open deed of purchase, and put them in an earthen jar, so that they can be kept for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards will again be sold in this land.

In Israel, under Jewish law during Old Testament times, anytime land was to be sold, it must first be offered to family members for purchase. But who would be so silly as to purchase land in Jerusalem right before it is about to be captured? Who would have felt the wind blowing on shore from Katrina and purchased land in New Orleans? Jeremiah knows the end is at hand; after all, he is the prophet who was been predicting it all along. And yet, God knows that the end is not really the end. Buy that land, and put the deeds in the safest place you can find. For in God, we find not only our history but the promise of our future. God invites me not only to experience the pain and the anguish of loss but also to purchase my life anew even when I cannot see what possible good can come from that. My eyes see the end as only the end; I trust God to see the time when houses and fields and vineyards will exist atop the devastation of my life now. Sometimes I cannot generate that hope from within.

Left on my own, I am in the same predicament as the man in Eco’s novel; I do not know the chimes that have come before in my life. Left on my own, I do not know that another chime will ever ring. But then, when I allow myself time to be quiet, I hear the tiny voice from within me with a simple message: “You are never alone.” My history is with my future in the earthenware jars kept safe by the God who knew me before I was born and promises to redeem my future.