Becky's Garden

howdy

2009-01-18T14:27:00.002-06:00

My brother (gregruder.wordpress.com) and my sister-in-law (http://texasnomads.blogspot.com/) have each started blogging in the last couple of weeks, and so I thought maybe it was time to retun to the genre.

Who knows where it will go. My thought right now is to make it a blog of my weight loss journey. In the aftermath of Becky's death (now almost five years ago, shockingly), I gained a lot of weight and wasn't skinny to begin with. About a year and a half ago, I lost about 35 pounds on weight watchers, and I have basically been able to maintain that weight loss over the last year, but that is not much more than a downpayment on the amount that I need to lose.

The family seems to be doing well. Kim has throughout our relationship told me that I was welcome to blog, but not about her, so she is going to be basically left out of it. That is the primary reason for my silence the last couple of years - what else is there to talk about? Katie is an amazing little third grader, though she is sick this weekend. We thought it was just a cold, but this morning, she has had a fever and a spot of vomiting. Hopefully, it is not too bad, but I was hoping to go on the MLK march tomorrow morning, but something seems to conspire against me doing that every year.

And now it is time to get psyched for league bowling this afternoon.

A bit about our caucus experience

2008-03-08T18:09:00.000-06:00

It is too bad the reporting could not be as civil as the process was at out voting site. We had six precincts. I was the precinct captain for Obama, and the first thing I did was have a conversation with the Clinton precinct captain. We had three Obama caucus captains - who had Clinton secretaries - and three Clinton captains - who had Obama secretaries. Our overriding concern was to make the process such that everyone knew it was fair. After the final precinct finished, we made copies of all the documents, so that I had a complete set and the Clinton captain did too. The individual caucus captains called in the results, and I called the Obama campaign with the results, as I assume the other captain did as well. I had the microphone most of the night trying to get 500 people organized in an elementary school cafeteria, and what I said over and over was that we really are on the same team here, and we need to be sure we send Noriega to the Senate and a Democrat to the White House. The simple fact of the matter is that Bush did win in 2000. The rules of the game affect the way the game is played. If we didn't have the electoral college, perhaps Bush spends the last two weeks running through the South drumming up more votes where he was going to win anyway, and Gore does the same in New England. Who knows what would have happened if there had been no electoral college? The campaign would have been so significantly different that we will never know. Similarly, down here this week, I spent all of my time on Monday and Tuesday talking to Obama voters trying to get them back to the caucus. My targeted audience was people who had already voted and indicated they had voted for Obama. In a normal primary, I would have scratched them off and not contacted them again until October and instead tried to focus on undecided voters who hadn't yet been to the polls. The mistake the media made was not in reporting that Clinton won the Texas primary since she did - their mistake was in making these sound like significant wins when they were certainly not in delegate terms. We won't know the results of the Texas caucus until March 29 at the earliest because all results are unofficial until they are certified at the county conventions. But from what I have read and seen at the Texas Democratic party page, it would be shocking for the results to be any closer than 37-30 for Obama, and the highest total for the primary for Clinton would be 66-60. The bottom line for me is if there had just been a primary or just been a caucus, the strategy taken by both sides would have been significantly different.

my last first anniversary

2008-02-29T13:45:00.003-06:00

I think today has to be considered my last first anniversary on my grief journey. It is leap day, and on February 29, 2004, four of our good friends had come out to see us. Kurt and Joanna were two of Becky's best friends from high school, and they remained good friends for the rest of Becky's life.

Kurt went to Georgetown, and while there met an exchange student from Scotland, and skipping ahead rather quickly, ended up married and living in England by the turn of the millineum. And so it was (and is) a super-rare treat to get to see him and his bride. But they were back in Texas, and made the trip out to see us, and since they were, Joanna and Burt came, too. And we had a wonderful time. A picture of the seven of us that day has stayed on my bookshelf ever since.

I look at it now, and it should have been so clear that things weren't going well. Becky's body is already misshapen from the cancer and its treatment. Her right shoulder sagged well below her left shoulder because cancer had deflated most of her right lung. And yet the next two weeks would be good ones, with Katie's cousin coming out to visit, a birthday party, and a trip to the zoo in Tyler that was the last unfettered happy memory of our lives together.

And yet, I remember sitting in the car the next morning after having breakfast with this motley collection. I knew deep in my soul it was the last time Becky and Kurt would see each other. It was the only time in that entire cancer journey I felt like something was happening for the last time. Not on birthdays or Christmases or whatever. But that morning, it hit me like a truck.

I am exhausted today, whether by memories of last leap day, the extra hours at work which are numbingly unproductive, or the pressures on family life that come from working 20 extra hours per week. Probably it is the combination of all of them.

identity politics

2008-02-27T12:20:00.003-06:00

In reading before bed last night some of the immediate reaction to the debate, I was startled that noone seems to have commented much on Clinton's discussion about her desire to make history as the first woman president and how that would represent a sea change in the way things are done in this country.

Obama, to the best of my recollection, has never done this with respect to his race, and has gone quite in the opposite direction to refuse to be painted as the African-American candidate, which is what Bill Clinton in particular tried to do in the run-up to the South Carolina primary.

The thing is that there is only one president at a time. And the different groups don't get to take turns. One term is not for the white guy, the next for the Latino, and the next for an Asian. Women don't get to alternate. It is not a good thing that we have had basically nothing but white Protestants (and Kennedy).

But the simple truth as I see it is that we don't improve things by electing a woman because she is a woman or a black man because he is black or a old guy because he is old. There isn't a women's America and a men's America, a young America and an old America. Obama touched on this deeply in his convention speech four years ago, and has unflinchingly refused to allow his campaign to delve into identity politics.

Last night, Clinton proved that she still couldn't. And in doing so, demonstrated why she really isn't ready for the job.

thoughts on the debate tonight

2008-02-26T23:50:00.002-06:00

Before I forget, I really can't stand Tim Russert as a debate moderator. When he asked the question tonight about the Russian election coming up this weekend, Senator Clinton gave a very detailed answer about the strategic situation in Russia, about the failings of President Bush's Russia policy, and the challenges going forward. But she didn't use his name, and, as it turns out, she did know his name but fumbled the pronounciation.

It would be one thing if a candidate fumbled all over the place - say, for example, the way Mike Huckabee answers any foreign policy question - and then you could follow up with, do you at least know the guy's name. But Clinton demonstrated even to this Obama guy that she knew exactly what was going on in Russia, what our strategic interests were, and what the challenges were. Knowing the guy's name is certainly secondary to knowing the strategic situation. But Russert presses on and looks like a high school debate nerd. He is so out of touch. It was depressing.

But that is a minor point.

I am a biased observer, certainly (precinct captain for Obama who has spent at least a couple of hours per day the last couple of weeks working with the campaign), but this struck me as his best performance in the primary season. I thought Obama nailed the difference in their war records perfectly in simple terms. Clinton has tried to downplay the importance of Obama's argument in 2002 by saying that since he has arrived in the Senate, they have voted the same way on every major issue regarding the war. Obama argued that once a bus is in the ditch, trying to get out of the ditch limits your options. At least he didn't vote to drive the bus into the ditch in the first place.

I thought he also did a wonderful job on handling the Farrakhan discussion. Senator Clinton made a tactical mistake in getting into that discussion. When Obama left his answer the first time, I thought he might not have gone quite far enough to separate himself from Farrakhan. It was clear he disagreed with the sentiment - and his speech this weekend that made both Marty Peretz and Matt Yglesias happy when they vary widely in their views make me think that he won't have lingering Israel problems - and yet he had to walk a fine line. When she popped in, he was able to make her response sound like a fight over silly semantics. It turned what could have been nervy in the spin to a clear win for him.

The bottom line is that this was a clear win for Obama. He looked presidential, and there was nothing that happened tonight that changed the dynamic of the race, which is set to be over in seven days time. Obama will win Texas.

an answer for Dan Thomasson

2008-02-26T19:29:00.002-06:00

I came across his column in the Corpus Christi paper, that was a stupid, idiotic waste of pixels or ink. Don't bother with it, if you ask me. But it asked Senator Obama what he would do if he actually won, as if there is no substance to him. And so in ten minutes I ranted back at him, probably taking more time to answer him than he took to write the column in the first place, since he certainly did no research.

Anyway, here was my answer.

This column is idiotic, I am afraid to say. If you want to know what he will do as president, go to his website. Look at his position papers. Read the Audacity of Hope. It is all in there, and, as opposed to the junior senator from New York, he did not need a ghost writer.

But let's get specific. What will he do? He will close Guantanamo Bay's detainment camps. He will pursue universal health care without mandates. He will pursue sensible changes to the laws governing credit cards, so that companies cannot raise their rates on old debts, and must seek permission before changing the terms of the contracts.

Most of his supporters are not supporting him because we "believe it is more important to elect a black to the presidency than a woman." We believe he is the best person to be President of the United States, regardless of race, gender, creed, or orientation.

As for his legislative accomplishments, there are several worth noting. He wrote a law that won the support of law enforcement, legal communities, and victim advocates to require that interrogations and confessions be recorded on video for all capital cases. It has become a model for similar laws across the country. He has passed a law to make government spending more transparent to taxpayers. He worked with Senator Luger to pass legislation to fund and supervise the disposal of weapons before they can find their way into the hands of people we'd rather not have them. Take a look at Obsidian Wings for more on this topic.

Evidently, doing any research is too much to ask for your column. Evidently, you believe that because you have charisma, you cannot have substance. You are, however, wrong. You don't get to be a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago based on charisma.

All that glitters is not gold, it is true. But gold does glitter, and Senator Obama is gold.

what she said

2008-02-13T12:38:00.002-06:00

I saw a link from Ezra Klein at the American Prospect to the Brennan Center, who asked various people the following question:

If the president-elect calls you the day after the election and asks you what is the first thing to do after inauguration, what is your answer.

And this is how Dahlia Lithwick, who does great work at Slate writing on all things affecting the judiciary, replied:

Close Guantanamo.

It's not that warrantless surveillance and the state secrets doctrine, broad, inscrutable signing statements, and water boarding aren't problems , but I am assuming here that the President elect would have scrapped all this before putting his or her toothbrush down that morning. There may be some temptation to keep Gitmo open for a few weeks. Don't. Close it down. Move the remaining prisoners stateside and give them trials. Torch the camp. Issue a press release. And walk away. No one thing has been a more damaging daily—often hourly—reminder in the foreign media of this administration's contempt for American and international law.

archbishop

2008-02-13T09:38:00.002-06:00

So Hillary Clinton is campaigning this afternoon and evening in San Antonio. I am a precinct captain for Obama, and want him to win more than any politician I have ever followed. So I don't consider this so much a pro-Clinton rant against our arch-bishop at the blatant hypocrisy he represents this morning.

As it turns out, Senator Clinton is going to be at St. Mary's University, a Catholic university on the southwest side of San Antonio, a largely working class and Hispanic area of town. (This is an ideal place for her to campaign, as those are two of her key demographics that she must dominate on March 4 if her campaign is to be viable on March 5.)

Enter the San Antonio archbishop, who is on the radio this morning complaining that Clinton will be using a Catholic university's facilities to campaign. Presumably, this is because she is pro-choice.

I, too, am pro-choice, though it is an issue that I have some difficulty with. Ultimately, in my mind, there are a couple of arguments that are decisive for me on this. First, it is unclear whether having abortion be illegal actually reduces the number of abortions. Several studies seem to point in the opposite direction. So making abortion illegal wouldn't make it less common, but would only make it less safe. Second, I am not convinced that life begins at conception. Most of us can agree that life ends when brain activity ceases, and so one very reasonable position is that life begins when brain activity begins. There was an article the other day in Slate about parthenogesis - or asexual reproduction in animals that usually reproduce sexually - may be a more common phenomena than we had previously thought. If it is possible for female sharks to have their eggs turn into baby sharks without fertilization, is the same process possible in humans? And if so, does that mean even unfertilized eggs have all the rights of humans because they too are the perfect possibility of life? Just a little thought experiment.

After that aside, I can understand why abortion is such a huge issue for many people. What I don't understand is why the Catholic heirarchy believes that this is an issue far above any other. All of the Republicans support the death penalty, against Catholic teaching, and yet noone threatens to refuse Communion from its proponents. John McCain runs around singing, "Bomb Iran, bomb bomb Iran" and yet I could find no complaints when he visited Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, as recently as 10 days ago.

I am not arguing that religion should not be part of our politics, especially at a personal level. I am a liberal because I am disciple of Jesus Christ. There is no way for me to separate one from the other. I view the immigration issue, for example, through the lens of Matthew 25. How do I meet the Jesus in the illegal immigrant? How do I treat him with dignity and respect? I think the Democrats give us better answers than Republicans. I think the Democrats give us better answers about the social safety net, about the connectedness of all races and genders, and so on.

I understand that reasonable people disagree, and I know plenty of faithful Christians whose beliefs lead them to disagree with me on these positions. And pretty much all of us disagree with the official Catholic teaching on some point or another. (Who is calling for the outlawing of birth control?)

And yet our archbishop wants to refuse St. Mary's facilities to Senator Clinton because she is pro-choice. And he does this after the university has received countless tax dollars.

Every now and again, I find myself waxing nostalgic and wishing things would change enough for me to feel welcome in the church that was (and in many ways is) my home. And days like these remind me that it is so far away.

Is it over?

2008-02-13T07:37:00.002-06:00

I think it is. The Guiliani strategy of absorbing major loss after major loss and creating a big state firewall was a disaster for Rudy and it will be a disaster for Hillary. I don't know if she had much choice, given the mismanagement of her campaign and the financial straightjacket they found themselves in.

Polls going into yesterday showed Obama garnering about 30 net delegates, but the true number from last night alone is going to be closer to 50-60, and his lead among pledged delegates is going to be well over 100. The margin is larger than Hillary can expect to make up in just the big states left - Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

waterboarding and torture

2008-02-12T08:50:00.000-06:00

I just read a story on Slate about the ongoing debate about waterboarding, and whether it qualifies as torture under the law. It makes me hate the Bush administration even more than before, which is rather saying a lot.

What I cannot believe is the number of people who think this is okay and necessary in the war on terror. The logic appears to be "the president is good; terrorists are bad; therefore, anything the president does to the terrorist is okay." I continue to think that the only people left supporting the president do so out of a quasi-religious conviction that simply isn't vulnerable to external criticism.

But the reason I started writing about this is somewhat different. What I fear is that at some point, the Congress or the ongoing campaign will raise our consciousness about waterboarding so high that even this president will make an admission that it is torture and will no longer be done by Americans. And then victory will be declared, except that there are dozens of other torture techniques that might well still be on the table.

I understand, somewhat, that all the legislation in the world is going to be fuzzy. I must admit to be shocked that there is an actual debate in this country about whether the Geneva conventions apply. The name George W. Bush, forever to be linked with Jefferson, Lincoln, and Kennedy, now will also forever be linked with names like Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Now we can get from the Declaration of Independence to the gulag with less than six degrees of separation.

Torture is also, in my opinion, why patriotic Americans must support Obama for the Democratic nomination for president. Hillary Clinton's worldview is that the president, almost by definition, is the most important person in the country. I think that is the take away from her discussion of Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights legislation of the 1960's. The Clinton administration was notorious for asserting executive privilege in new ways. The simple fact of the matter is that I do not trust her to reject the unprecedented power grab attempted by the Bush administration. Sure, that power grab will be used for better ends, in the mind of this progressive. But the Clintons inheriting the castrated justice department is something I don't want to happen. Happily for the nation, the Republicans are on the verge of nominating the only candidate in their field willing to hold Bush accountable. I disagree strongly with McCain on most of the main issues in this campaign - certainly, the war, Bush tax cuts, and abortion are issues that jump out immediately where I disagree almost entirely with him - but I admit that I would be tempted to vote for McCain over Clinton for the simple fact that I think the torture regime would be ended once if not for all.

Because if democracy has taught us anything these last few centuries, there is no battle we don't have to win anew with each generation.

I'm back

2007-08-25T17:14:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted here in almost a year, and I am not going to go out of my way to advertise that I am writing here again, but I have been feeling called to it for several weeks. I am not sure what I will be writing, maybe just a bunch of ramblings about the Royals and Spurs.

I had training the last two nights at the Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas; I will be facilitating the adult portion every other Monday night. The training has been okay; I have enjoyed meeting the folks who will be doing the work with the kiddos. Most of the volunteers are students taking practica and so have a different set of life experiences. But they have big hearts or else they wouldn't be there, and so it has been a good couple of days, if exhausting.

The wedding in June came off basically as perfectly as could be imagined. We used a reading from the Song of Solomon that celebrated the coming of spring, since both Kim and I have had winter times in our lives. And so that got me thinking about the metaphor for seasons and the metaphor of a garden, and I wrote the following poem to myself in winter. I guess that the impetus more than anything is that though it is again springtime, it is delusional to deny that winter preceded it.

Garden in Winter

You seem such a waste, muddy and unkempt with rotting leaves.
Can you even see what had been?
Do you hear the echoes of her humming as she worked, planting, pruning, arranging?
Joseph's coat is faded and threadbare;
the ark is abandoned to the breeze.
The stones that line you mock you.
Why were you set apart when everything is cursed by the absence of her care?

letters

2006-12-04T20:56:00.000-06:00

Tonight we went to the Child Bereavement Center for the last time in 2006, and so they had a holiday party. The children wrapped intangible presents (i.e., empty boxes) to remind them of all the gifts they received from their departed parents that they could never lose. I am really looking forward to what Katie has to say when we open this on Christmas.

The adults wrote letters to the children about the gifts they received from their spouse. Here is my letter to Katie:

Dear Katie,
I am thinking tonight of all the ways you remind me of Mommy. You look like her, with her eyes and hair in particular. More and more, you move like her. I noticed this when you got your glasses, and your bangs got caught between your eyes and glasses. You flicked your hair the exact same way Mommy used to. You love to read just like she did, and I am looking forward to reading with you the books that she loved when she was just a little older than you are now, like the Wizard of Oz books and the Little House on the Prairie books. And you love to help others the way Mommy did, and enjoy their success just as much as your own. To me, you are a little monument of Becky.
Love,
Daddy

random thoughts

2006-11-29T23:59:00.000-06:00

Is Michael Finley going to suck shooting the ball all season? Ditto Horry?

If Utah continues to board the way they have this season, they won't be leaving the top of the standings anytime soon. From what I have seen this season, they are the cream of the crop. Dallas and San Antonio won't be going anywhere either, but this team is for real.

I went to a conference today about writing case statements for non-profits. And while that sounds like a complete yawn, it was actually quite good. I learned a great deal and hopefully will be able to apply some of it.

Arsenal hosts Tottenham on Saturday in the first matchup since the food-poisoning incident at the end of last Premiership. It also marks the Spurs first trip to the new stadium, and it is time for us to open up a big can of whoop-ass. That's all I am saying.

I really am falling head over heels for this new gal. This is unlike anything I have experienced since Becky's death, and I mean that in only good ways.

28 hours

2006-11-21T23:13:00.000-06:00

I don't know that there are words to describe how quickly my life has changed. Katie went to Austin on Friday night to spend most of the weekend with Becky's mom, and I got to spend Friday evening and most of the day Saturday with Kim.

There was this moment Friday night that was seemingly like any other. But Kim looked at me and in that moment I knew that she loved me and that she couldn't help it and would love me to the ends of the earth. I don't know how I knew that, but I did and do. And I also knew that it was reciprocal.

And so there we are. This is the big one.

a relaxing weekend

2006-11-12T23:33:00.000-06:00

It was a good weekend here. Pat and Bonnie (and Tony, I guess, since he is pretty much stuck with Bonnie for a couple more months) came down for the weekend. Katie was a co-hostess of the baby shower held on Saturday, and she was a very serious hostess.

Kim and I went to see Stranger Than Fiction on Friday night, which has to be one of the all-time greatest date movies. And since we were on a date, that worked out well for me. I like this woman, and I will leave it at that for now.

Saturday while the girls were all at the shower, the guys got to hang out and watch football and do nothing important. And then we met up with Bonnie's family at a Mexican restaurant they really like. It has never struck me as being anything particularly special, but it is good and they love it. Which is good enough for me.

Today we all met for breakfast, though I skipped because I wasn't feeling great, and then we all went to Mass together. It is good for me to do that because I realize again that as much as the Catholic church is my home and always will be, I make a really terrible Catholic. But the homily was wonderful, though I am not sure how the mother fox ended up with neosporin, and even if I think he missed taking on the fundamental point of the gospel reading. But it was wonderful nonetheless. He is a wonderful priest and will be missed after his retirement.

And then we just had another relatively quiet day around here. The Chiefs were disappointing in Miami, but if that is my biggest complaint of the weekend, I will take it. And now I am off to bed.

GREAT BIG DVD

2006-11-05T00:21:00.000-06:00

http://store.greatbigsea.com/catalog/product.aspx?Id=CV000001

Go there. Buy this.

This is a Great Big Sea concert DVD. The first one is fabulous, and the songs on this DVD are even better than the songs from the first.

I saw a concert from this tour in April, and it was an absolute blast. If you have ever heard this band and liked them, you will love this DVD. If you are not a complete fuddy-duddy, then you will enjoy this DVD. Trust me.

The only bad thing is that it is so close to the holidays that I feel honor bound not to buy this for myself but home that someone thinks of this for me.

thirteen years

2006-11-04T21:31:00.000-06:00

November 4, 1993 is a day I will remember as long as I draw breath.

Becky and I had been friends for over a year, and for a little while we had been becoming more than that.

And then on November 4, we had our first evening that would be described as a date. We went downtown and had dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse. We walked along the river, and then we had cheesecake somewhere on the river.

And then we went back to school, and I dropped her off at her dorm room.

And she kissed me.

And I would never be the same again.

speaking of pictures ....

2006-11-02T23:30:00.000-06:00

Here are a few of Katie in her Halloween get-up.

glasses

2006-11-02T23:22:00.000-06:00

Well, we went to the eyedoctor today. Katie had been sent home with a note about her vision test earlier in the week, and so off we went. I had my eye test first so that Katie could see everything that happened and know nothing was scary, and then she did hers, and sure enough, she has the same eyes I have, nearsighted with astigmatism.

And so she is getting her glasses tomorrow.

She picked out the frames, though she had to be talked down from some obnoxious, hot pink, thick, goofy looking frames. And so she ended up with some understated, cute thin pink frames. Hopefully, I will get some pictures up of her in her new glasses fairly soon.

She looked about 11 years old when them on, I must say. She is growing up so fast.

a ridiculous Chief's game

2006-10-29T15:30:00.000-06:00

They should have won by about 30 points, it seems, but they made enough mistakes to take it to the last minute of the game. But a win is a win is a win, and they still have a shot to make it into the AFC playoffs with some weaker teams left on the schedule.

When Green got hurt in the opening game and with a tough schedule, I thought they were pretty much toast. But Huard has played well and the defense has been improved except against the Steelers. But the record is 4-3, and they have several winnable games remaining on the schedule - on the road at Miami, Oakland, and Cleveland, and home games with Oakland, Baltimore, and Jacksonville. (The other three games are at St. Louis and San Diego, and home for Denver.)

My guess is they will win ten games. Five of the six labeled easier, and one of the three labeled tougher.

Anyway, back to today's game. Chiefw win by seven, but it did not need to be nearly as stressful as it turned out to be. Consider that of the four touchdowns Seattle scored, one was the result of a turnover inside the ten, one was the result of a botched KC field goal (which was a ridiculous call by the official and should have been overturned), and one was the result of a 50 yard bomb when the KC defender was an idiot and looking into the backfield instead of covering his man.

Throw in a missed field goal, a dropped first down pass by LJ that set up the missed field goal, the botched field goal, the interception that should have ended the game except the defensive lineman was too stubborn to get on the ground, a defensive holding penalty on third and ten, a dropped interception, and you have the reason why one team completely controlled the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and still was behind with two and a half minutes left.

But a win is a win. It is a key game in St. Louis next week. A win here and I think you can pencil in the Chiefs for a post-season berth.

read this .....

2006-10-27T18:31:00.000-05:00

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19590

a long week

2006-10-26T23:54:00.000-05:00

It has been a long week around here, and I am certainly looking forward to the weekend. There is not a whole lot scheduled around here this weekend, which is nice.

Katie has her last soccer game on Saturday morning. I have enjoyed her being on the team, but it will be nice to be done with the scheduled stuff three days each week. Her coaches are great and the kids are nice, and maybe the best part is how supportive as a group the parents are without being obnoxious.

She will have to decide soon whether she wants to play soccer in the spring or do the play at the church since they both are Saturday morning commitments. I would prefer that she continue to play soccer; she has improved much this season, but she is still very shy and I would like to see her be somewhat tougher. And she needs to deal with a little bit of failure to understand it is part of life. But she came off the field crying last week when someone scored on her a couple of times, and so I would like her to learn some of the important lessons of sports.

And I don't want to be in the church yet another day.

Granted, by then, I almost assuredly won't be working there anymore. So maybe it won't be so bad.

And now, to bed.

the closing comment

2006-10-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

From the episode of Everwood that Katie and I watched tonight. This rang really true for me ....

When things are working right in the universe, the loss of innocence is usually followed, in time, by an increase in humanity.

Time is funny like that.

For everything it robs us of, it grants us something.

Sometimes it is a new friend.
Sometimes it is a better understanding of ourselves.
Sometimes it is just a perfect day.

And I close with a thought from Gonzo, one of my favorite Muppets, who reminded us that "there's not a word yet for old friends that just met."

But I do think that it is in the time of brokenness, and of being robbed of something, that we allow ourselves the kind of vulnerability that makes the people who would be just new friends and allows them to be old friends that just met.

Off to bed now ....

Everwood again

2006-10-14T23:37:00.000-05:00

ABC Family started showing Everwood in syndication a couple of weeks ago, and to them I am most grateful. I started watching it again today and saw the first couple of episodes, and it is simply as amazing as I remembered. The first episode in particular is so perfectly executed and so real in terms of the emotional content that it is just stunning.

I think my favorite character of these early shows is Julia, the wife who has died. The actress and the character are so well done that she continues to be a real presence in the series even though I don't think she appears very often after the first few episodes. Compared to the dead mom in Providence, for example, which is a show we used to watch back in the day, Julia is so real and vital and such a part of the family though she is gone.

I am passed the time of feeling Becky around us much. I guess that is healing. It is also sad for me, I must admit. And I don't know how true that statement is anyway. Simple things, like coming across her handwriting, still brings her so tangibly into my life it is amazing.

Anyway, if you have never seen the show, check it out in syndication. It is so worth it.

a great party

2006-10-14T00:23:00.000-05:00

We went to a birthday party this afternoon, and it was just wonderful. Jay will turn eight on Sunday, and he and Katie sing together in the children's choir at church. The party was at a park towards downtown, and there are so many things I enjoyed about it.

First of all, I thought it was pretty cool how all of the attention was not on Jay. He opened presents as they came in, and they had presents for all of the guests, and so both sides were very gracious all the time. They didn't do a huge singing of happy birthday, or else we missed it during a trip to the bathroom.

Fred and Rocio brought enough food to feed a small army. I have no idea how many people they expected to have, but they had at least twice as much food as was required. And so they went out and brought in complete strangers from around the park, people just walking their dogs or working there, and had them eat some pizza or a plate of barbecue. And we didn't just feed them and send them on their way, but visited with them and got to know them a little bit.

It was just a really generous, outwardly directed party, and I so appreciated it. And then we went to the planetarium across the street, and watched a little movie called "Rocket Ride" or something like that and pretended like we were visiting all of the planets in the solar system. (And the movie was already modified to demote Pluto down to a "dwarf planet" or "Plutoid." I was suitably impressed.)

And then we came home and Katie went to bed and I talked on the phone with Natalie for over an hour. I dig her. She has the cutest giggle. It is a silly thing to be attracted to, perhaps, and I am certainly attracted to more than her giggle, but when she laughs I am happy. And we find it very easy to talk.

I have been trying to figure out for a week why our date last week was so much better than most if not all of the dates I have been on since Becky died. I think, fundamentally, it comes down to this: I didn't have to be careful. She was so willing to be known and so interested in knowing me, and I reciprocated that, and we both cared much more about getting to know the other person than we did about whether we were doing the things we were supposed to be doing on a first date. She didn't have to be careful about admitting that she wants to marry someday and have children. I didn't have to be careful about whether it would be okay to put my arm around her or kiss her or whatever. I just was myself, and she was herself, and there was less of a barrier between us than I have experienced in the dating life. And we have agreed about a lot of things and disagreed about some things, too, and disagreeing doesn't mean we don't value the other person implicitly.

What does this mean cosmically? Who knows? But I am looking forward to Friday night in Austin. The rest can take care of itself.

a great first date

2006-10-08T01:13:00.000-05:00

I had a great first date on Friday night, the best first date I have been on since Alisa, if not Becky. Those are the only two on this level, for sure. It is just a first date, but it was a really good time.

We went to a great bar called Luna's on San Pedro. It is a smoke-free establishment. The band playing was Collective Soul, made up mostly of people who play for our church's 11:00 service. They were awesome. The bar was very cool with cabaret style seating and a small dance floor and great ambience.

We got there about 8:30; the band started at nine, so we had a chance to visit and get to know each other a little more. I was very impressed with the conversation. I think it is that Natalie has such an openness about her, a real desire to know and be known. I appreciate that and really crave that. I miss the emotional intimacy more than anything else from my marriage.

And she is totally cute. Which isn't everything, but it doesn't suck.

And she has the cutest giggle. I thought that the first time we talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago.

One of the many things we talked about was a somewhat goofy question of if you could see five years into the future, would you? To me the answer is no. Worrying about the future takes us out of the present, and this moment right now is too precious for that. And she said she would like to know the answers to some big questions like whether she would be married or have children by then. I agreed with that at the time, but upon further reflection, it is the answer to the big questions that might be the most misleading.

Because if you sat me down seven years ago and gave me just the answers to the big questions, and told me I would be widowed and a single dad and working for peanuts at this time in my life, then Katie wouldn't even be here. I wouldn't have thought myself capable of being the kind of single dad that in fact am. Which is far from perfect, to be sure, but also far better than I ever imagined.

But it is only when you get past the headlines, and past the big questions, that the really meaning of the story comes into focus. Yes, I am widowed, but it is the fact that our love was proven in the fires of cancer that is transforming me into the kind of man that only Becky could ever see before. I never would have signed up to be a single dad, and yet it is the most meaningful journey I have ever been on, with the possible exception of walking with Becky through cancer.

So if I could see five years out, I would need to know I could spend some real time seeing to know whether I could answer the questions I would most want to know about.

Anyway, this is the kind of stuff we talked about, as well as the staples of first date conversations like where have you travelled and what are your favorite movies. And we shook our booties some on the dance floor, which is always a good time. And during the second set of music, I just hauled off and kissed her because I couldn't imagine not kissing her. It was just sweet and simple and as natural as can be.

And now she is heading off to Seattle in the morning, and I am going to Houston on Monday, so probably it will be two weeks before we get to see each other again. And I will choose to think of that as a positive thing and not as a torment. At least while I can, though my guess is that within another day or two it will just be a torment.

One More Day

2006-10-04T00:40:00.000-05:00

Katie and I went to the Child Bereavement Center for the first time on Monday night. It was "family night," which means that there are not just children that have lost parents but also siblings, grandparents, or friends.

One of the interesting things is that an adult must accompany the child and participate in the adult group. So I couldn't just drop Katie off and come pick her up at the end of her time.

Katie seemed to have a good time and is excited about going back.

The adult group was good except for one thing. After doing introductions, they asked us to tell them what we would do if we had one more day with the person who had died. And I answered, but this is the kind of question that drives me nuts. Why do we want to dwell in the land of the impossible? Why not discuss something that could happen?

In actuality, I have no idea what I would really do if I had another day. What would I have done if I had known March 28, 2004, was the last I would have had? I know that I am not going to torture myself thinking about things that I will never be able to answer. I know what I hope to be true, but I also know how far I usually am from doing what I would hope to do.

We will go back. But I hope the adult time becomes more productive.

On being a grown up

2006-09-30T12:32:00.000-05:00

I have mentioned in this space before how much I enjoy Frederick Buechner's writing. I have been most recently reading "The Season's Difference," which has thus far not really captured my attention. The books on Leo Bebb were amazing, and this is just not to that level.

And yet, then you come to passages like this one ....

"It's only in a fairy tale," he went on, taking his time, "only in a story written for children, that you can trust life -- not really life, you understand -- to that extent; where you're told and can be certain that if a particular thing happens or does not happen, all will be well. If only the prince can kill the dragon and set the princess free, you're promised they'll live happily ever after, and you know they will, Peter, and they do! But in the real world, my friend," the softness left his eyes, "and in tragedy too - how funny it should apply to them both - you can't help but realize that no such problem is made or, if it is, that the chances are it will be broken, broken because there are the haggling, miserly demands of so many other facts and conditions, and the world is no longer innocent enough, as perhaps it once was, to be unaware of them and to live a good and happy life on the simple basis of the fairy tale: do this, and all will go well for you. In real life, Peter, you not only have to kill the dragon and set the princess free, but you have have to set a hundred other and less innocent things free, too, and imprison as many more; you may have to kill more than one dragon, maybe thirteen, maybe even yourself, and even then, when you've done all of this, done it nobly and well, the whole situation will have changed. Then you may discover that all you've done was not only unnecessary but sometimes even worse than that, sometimes even as wrong and harmful as you thought it was right and good."

Even in the middle of an otherwise mediocre novel - thus far, there is still time for it to grow and become more than I expect - there are bits like this that make the whole endeavor worth the time.

two and a half years

2006-09-28T23:47:00.002-05:00

It was about halfway through the afternoon when I realized it was 2.5 years ago that Becky died.

There was a time when I counted the days, and a time when I counted the weeks, and a time when I counted the months. And now I am to the point where a half year almost slipped by without me noticing. Will I ever not notice when another year has passed? Do I want that to happen?

Heck if I know.

It has been a busy time at work. Tomorrow is the end of the fiscal year, so there is tons of work to do surrounding that. I am going to a conference in Houston in a couple of weeks.

I started Katie into a group counselling thing sponsored by the Children's Bereavement Center here in SA. Anyone looking for a charity to support need look no further. All of their services are free to families who have lossed a loved one. They have groups for children who have lost parents, grandparents, or siblings. And they have adult support groups that take place while the children have their group. Our first actual group meeting will be Monday night, so I will have more to report then, I guess.

Katie is doing fabulously well at school. Her reading and writing have skyrocketed. She is reading chapter books easily by herself, and now I tuck her into bed at night and she reads for a bit, and then she gets out of bed and writes me a note on her whiteboard easel. I go to turn out the lights after an hour or so has passed and she is asleep, and I erase her note and write one back to her.

Talk about a memory to treasure.

This wouldn't publish for some reason last night. So I am trying again this morning.

two and a half years

2006-09-28T23:47:00.001-05:00

two and a half years

2006-09-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

Wherever you are

2006-09-22T23:46:00.000-05:00

This desert wind is burnin’ my face again
God I’m missin’ you
Been runnin’ blind under a broken sky
With regrets I was sorting through
But lesson learned baby
I’ve made the turn

Wherever you are
No matter how far
Girl I’m gonna find my way to you
Through rivers of rain
Over mountains of pain
Do whatever on earth I’ve gotta do
I’ll follow the dream I’ll follow my heart
Girl I’ve gotta be
Wherever you are

So many miles to where we said goodbye
To the street of shattered dreams
I’m prayin’ hard you didn’t start a life
With someone who’s not me
And if you’re just gone
Girl I’ll be movin’ on

(Chorus)

Let the sunrise find me searchin’
Let the west wind carry my plea
Give this changed man one more last chance
Open your arms to me

Wherever you are
Through rivers of rain
Over mountains of pain
Do whatever on earth I’ve gotta do
I’ll follow the dream I’ll follow my heart
Girl I’ve gotta be
Wherever you are
Wherever you are
Wherever you are

WHERE ARE YOU?

Goodbye Girl

2006-09-22T23:39:00.000-05:00

The two choruses read thusly ......

'Cause baby, goodbye doesn't mean forever
Let me tell you
Goodbye doesn't mean
We'll never be together again
If you wake up and I'm not there
I won't be long away
'Cause the things you do, my goodbye girl,
Will bring me back to you

So remember, goodbye doesn't mean forever
Let me tell you goodbye
Doesn't mean we'll never be together again
Though we may be so far apart
You still will have my heart
So forget your past, my goodbye girl,
'Cause now you're home at last

lonely tonight

2006-09-22T23:00:00.000-05:00

It is sad that spending a fun evening with most of best friends leaves me feeling so lonely at the end, but it does. I had such a good time. It was four couples and me, and the whole time I was there, I didn't feel like an oddball because I was there by myself.

And yet, the second I got in the car to go home, I was as lonely as I have been in months. I got to spend an evening with good friends, and have new friendships on the bloom, and have so much going for me in my life right now. And none of it seems to matter to me tonight.

Grrrrrrrrr.

prosperity gospel

2006-09-13T00:40:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting article in the newest Time magazine about the so-called Prosperity Gospel. I sent the article to my Sunday school class. Basically, the argument turns Jesus's preaching on its head by arguing that God wants us to be prosperous in the here and now. It takes a misreading of John to get to this, in which Jesus tells the disciples that he came that we may have life and have it abundantly.

I am reminded of Jesus's teaching about those who fast and do so by not shaving and looking miserable so that everyone will know what they are up to. They have already received their reward. And I wonder if those who distort God to chase riches haven't received theirs as well.

I wonder how well prosperity theology works in the bad times. How do you handle life's inevitable downturns. How do you handle growing old, getting sick, losing the people close to you? I know how the preachers handle it - they count on society to hide and ignore the sick and poor and dying. That is why we have prisons and nursing homes after all. They make their millions from the people in their primes; after all, they are earning all their money then, and they sell them on invincibility and prosperity and never mind what Jesus actually meant or had to say about the dangers of wealth throughout his ministry.

Anyway, off to bed....

the first game ....

2006-09-09T23:53:00.000-05:00

Well, we had a blast at Katie's first soccer game. She was very excited about playing today, which was fun. We got out there an hour early to kick the ball around. She is not the speediest or the strongest, but she sticks her nose in the pile and usually is in good position.

They do not have a goaltender yet, but play four on four and one kid is usually kept to the back to be a defender. Katie, I thought, was especially good at that. Some kids came running out to midfield anytime the ball came towards the goal, and some kids stayed rooted to the spot five feet from the goal where they were told to stand, and some kids completely abandoned the goal as if the point were not to stay between the goal and the ball but to keep the ball from going out the baseline. But Katie kept herself in position.

In the middle of the third quarter, she took the hardest kicked ball of the day right off the side of the head, which flattened her. She bounced right back up, but the official blew the whistle and everyone gasped which gave her time to remember that it had hurt some. She sat out for a minute or two, and then was back in there. I was worried that she would be afraid of contact and shy away from the ball and the other kids, but she did great.

And I was really pleased with the parents. We were all very encouraging, and by the end of the game, all the parents pretty much knew all the names of the kids and cheered for everyone without being ugly. It was very cool.

Seven more games to go.....

Soccer schedule

2006-09-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

All games are at the Pepsi fields in Schertz, field number 9.

9/9 1:00
9/16 2:00
9/23 9:00
9/30 11:00
10/7 1:00
10/14 9:00
10/21 10:00
10/28 9:00

Speaking of Phil.....

2006-09-05T23:30:00.000-05:00

A great song about the lunacy and arrogance of falling in love before you know anything of the world. Man, those were the days......

In A Real Love

Well, I was 18, makin' minimum wage,
With a Letterman jacket and a Chevrolet.
I thought I was cool, yeah, I ruled the school.
You were Coolatta with the strawberry lips,
You had the whole world danglin' at your fingertips.
Your senior year, an' I was your daddy's worst fear.
We ran off on graduation night.
Thought a couple of left-hand rings would make everything all right.

With a little bit a-live, little bit a-learn,
Little bit a-watchin' a few more candles burn,
And findin' out what life was.
Ooh, with a little bit a-fuss, little bit a-fight,
Little bit a-kiss and makin' up all night,
An' one day wakin' up, oh, in a real love.
Yes, that's right.

Well, I was 22, workin' double overtime.
I was spendin' dollars an' makin' dimes.
We were overdrawn an' barely hangin' on.
An' then one night you came to me,
With tears in your eyes and the EPT and said:
"Guess what? Yeah, baby ready or not."
Well, I just smiled but I was scared to death:
How am I gonna' have a kid when I'm only a kid myself.

With a little bit a-live, little bit a-learn,
Little bit a-watchin' a few more candles burn,
And findin' out what life was.
Ooh, with a little bit a-fuss, little bit a-fight,
Little bit a-kiss and makin' up all night,
An' one day, wakin' up, oh, in a real love.
Whoa, in a real love.
Yeah, it's a real love.

Mmmm, with a little bit a-live, little bit a-learn,
Little bit a-watchin' a few more candles burn,
And findin' out what life was.
Mmm, with a little bit a-fuss, little bit a-fight,
Little bit a-kiss and makin' up all night,
An' one day, wakin' up, oh, in a real love.
Yeah, baby, it's a real love.
Yeah, it's a real love, baby.
Whoa, it's a real, real, real, real, real, real, real love.
Yeah, that's right.
Hey.

A great song

2006-09-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

I heard a new Lonestar song on the radio this morning. It is called "Come Crying to Me," and the lyrics are wonderful like most of theirs are. I don't purchase many CDs anymore but listen to the radio mostly and my Ipod. But anytime there is something out by Lonestar or Phil Vassar I can't get away from it.

I can see it in your eyes
You're livin' a troubled life
And you've been hurtin' more and more these days
You don't have to hide it
Don't even have to fight it
Baby all you have to do is just turn and walk away

When you're tired of it all
And tears need to fall
You back's to the wall
Come cryin' to me
You don't have to be strong
You don't have to hold on
You've been there too long
Come cryin' to me
I'll leave the living room light
Burning all night
No don't even pack
Don't even look back
Baby come cryin' to me

You can get beyond this
All those empty promises
They don't have to hold you down no more
Nothin' to explain to me
You don't even need a key
All you gotta do is knock and I'll unlock the door

When you're tired of it all
And tears need to fall
You back's to the wall
Come cryin' to me
You don't have to be strong
You don't have to hold on
You've been there too long
Come cryin' to me
I'll leave the living room light
Burning all night
No don't even pack
Don't even look back
Baby come cryin' to me

I'll leave the living room light
Burning all night
No don't even pack
Don't even look back
Baby come cryin' to me
Baby come cryin' to me
Baby come cryin' to me

Anyway, this one goes out to my dear friend Caroline for whom September 5th will always be the saddest day of the year. Today is four years since her beloved Alan lost his battle with brain cancer.

I never could have asked for a better friend or mentor on this journey. I know my love can't replace Alan's any more than yours can replace Becky's, but you have it anyway.

Go Nole!

2006-09-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

Now that was an impressive victory. FSU lost four starters off of the defense to the first round of the NFL draft and still looked like the best defense in college by a wide margin. Holding Miami to something like ten yards for the entire second half on their home field was spectacular, to say the least.

Both defenses were phenomenal today. The momentum of the first half was changed entirely by a punt. FSU had the game on the Miami side of the field until they unleashed a 68 yard punt that pinned the Nole deep, and we never recovered in the second quarter. The second half was played again on the Miami side of the field, and a couple of huge third down plays made all the difference.

Had you told me coming in that Miami would double up FSU on the ground and the turnovers would be even, I would have thought we didn't have a chance. Of course, I never would have thought doubling us up on the ground would be two yards to one.

As for the ESPN 360 thing, I found it largely annoying. Who wants to look at the coach during a play? If they had more different views of the field, it would have been cooler. My dad and I were talking during the ND-GT game that it would be fun to have a wide angle shot from the endzone for a game, just to see the whole field.

And now to bed....

a new low?

2006-09-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

I am trying to decide which is worse. Maybe my readers, such as they are, should vote on this.

I am riding home from my parents today and I hear a country rap song. Scary enough, I know. It is called, "I play chicken with the train." Within the song, he refers to it as "hick hop."

The word brutal jumps to mind.

And yet, even without a single round with Jose Cuervo, I must admit that I found my boots tapping along with the beat. I listened to the whole thing. And find myself thinking about this song hours later.

Egads.

a commenter

2006-08-29T19:46:00.000-05:00

I got a comment from a post back in April that warrants some discussion, I think. It was in response to a statement about my support of gay marriage and that opposing it is simply non-biblical, though I guess I would have to change that word to "extra-biblical."

Anyway, here is the comment....

pam said...
What do you make of the verse that states homosexuality is an abomination? or how about the one that says, "Verily I say to you (Jesus speaking) that a homosexual shall not enter the kingdom of God." Do we only take as truth that part of the word that we can tolerate or do we take the entirety of the word as truth? I have many good friends who are practicing homosexuals; they are very nice, good people. It grieves me that they are giving up their inheritance.

Me back.

First of all, I think it is the height of arrogance to claim that anyone has lost his or her inheritance. As if the blood of Christ is good enough to wash me or you but not this person over here. Who are you or I to limit God's redemptive power?

But as to the larger point, the bit about homosexuality being an abomination is from Leviticus. We throw out almost all of Leviticus as being irrelevent. We as Christians don't eat kosher. We don't worry about ritual uncleanliness from touching a menstruating woman. Maybe Pam does those things. I don't.

Jesus may have said something like what Pam quotes. However, if so, it is not said in the canonical gospels. I just spent a half hour looking at every quote that was red in the Matt, Mark, Luke, and John, and nary a word was about homosexuality. I don't doubt that Jesus said a lot of things that aren't reported in the four gospels I use, but I don't know what access Pam has that I don't.

If, however, we want to look at what Paul said, then we have some things close to what Pam has reported. However, her report is based on a mistranslation of the Greek. What Paul is talking about is sex that is unnatural in Romans 1, for example. (Same is true in Corinthians and Timothy) When it came time to put together the King James Bible, unnatural sex was translated as sodomy, and later as homosexual sex.

One of the things we have to remember is that "homosexuality" as an orientation did not exist as a concept until the 19th century. The old testament references to homosexual sex are all about rape. The letters of Paul address the context of the communities in which he was writing, in which homosexual relationships between men and boys were commonplace. Certainly, it is possible to distinguish between rape and child abuse versus a lifetime orientation.

But Paul warns us against unnatural sex, and for me, that is a warning against homosexual sex, which to me is unnatural. I like girls. Always have, well, at least since the day I saw down a girl's shirt in journalism class that day in eighth grade. I went from zero to puberty in like 0.4 seconds. But I digress. But what is natural to me may not be natural to everyone else. If you are a homosexual, then heterosexual sex is unnatural, and would be sinful.

John Wesley, who founded Methodism, wrote that we needed to use four things to make religious decisions: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. This is a framework that makes sense to me. It is what has allowed us to move away from things tacitly approved of in the Bible that are clearly immoral, like slavery. We have to be very careful in reading Paul as a social critic. His eschatology (expectation of Christ's return within a generation) made him unconcerned with changing society as a whole. Why worry about changing the structure of society when it is all about to be ended anyway?

But the main point I would ask Pam to consider is why some sins are outside of the ability of God to redeem. That is a theology that is very sad to me.

my next crush

2006-08-23T18:12:00.000-05:00

In an hour, I am off to meet the next woman I am going to have a massive crush on. I just got a call from Katie's first grade teacher, who Katie adores eight days into the school year, to tell me that she is moving into a new classroom because they have brought a new teacher into the school because of the number of children.

So as she is describing the teacher, she says something about her being cute and whatever, and so I jokingly ask, "Single?" and she said yes, been divorced about a year, strawberry blonde, and I basically don't remember a thing about that.

I think pretty much all of us widowed parents develop a crush on our children's teachers if they are the right gender. The fastest way for a woman to crash into my heart is by loving on Katie just a little, and since by any objective measure Katie is the greatest first grader in the world - just ask me - she will get along famously with a teacher who will immediately love her.

First grade parent orientation starts in 45 minutes. Should I go get flowers or would that be too forward? I am off to shave ....

whole

2006-08-19T21:02:00.000-05:00

I was talking with a friend today, when she made the comment about a mutual friend not being ready for a relationship until she is "whole."

I have been thinking about that a lot in the mean time, and I am pretty sure she is onto something and yet basically completely wrong. Which is tough to do, when you come right down to it.

What we need is not to be whole but to appreciate our brokenness. The first is to dream an impossible dream. We don't get to go back to Eden; we are stuck here to its East. We may mend, but we can never be as if we weren't broken. It just doesn't get to be that way. (And yet, to argue with myself, isn't this exactly the kind of situation Jesus indicated when he said, unless you can be like one of these children, you will not be a part of the kingdom of heaven?)

But we can learn to appreciate our brokenness. The thing about being broken is that it exposes parts of us to ourselves we never knew we had. We can choose to have a depth about us that enhances intimacy. We can want to know someone to the very depths that we know exist from our own depths. We can speak from the deep places in our lives even when we are not speaking about the deep places, to borrow a phrase from Buechner.

As a practical matter, is there any difference in formulation of "being whole" versus "appreciating our brokenness"? Probably not. But it is a distinction in my mind anyway. I think it is a helpful one.

a busy day

2006-08-08T22:36:00.000-05:00

It was a busy day at work; I guess they pretty much all are this time of month. But I did manage to sneak out a little early. Of course, that meant I have been hovered over a spreadsheet here tonight, but that is okay, too.

I haven't been writing much. I have been busy, and that makes it tough. But it is also tough on me not to write. This is the place where I deposit my stuff. I think it is one of the hardest parts of single life after all those years of marriage. What do we do with all the stuff we accumulate during a day? All the stories about goofy things Katie has done or a funny story someone told at work or whether the latest crazy thing done by our pastor is going to close down the doors for good.

So it is what it is, I guess.

the obligatory soccer post....

2006-08-06T23:02:00.000-05:00

Katie and I have adopted the Tottenham Hotspurs as our favorite soccer team. We had fun watching the World Cup this summer, and she enjoys me telling her stories of watching soccer with her mother. Becky played soccer as a youth and early teenager, and she was a very good goalie - to hear her tell it, anyway - but she didn't like playing the position because she didn't get to run around. I think she even eventually quit playing because the coach of her team would not promise not to make her the goalie.

So it is funny to me that she always identified with the goalie. She hated penalty kicks as a concept. Not just to decide World Cup games, but anytime. And she always cheered for the goaltender. US could have been one penalty kick away from a World Cup title (as if), and she would have been cheering for a Russian goaltender.

So I have been watching some soccer; we have two whole channels on direct tv that are soccer channels, which is totally cool. I decided on the English league because it is better than MLS, or at least snootier. And I decided on the English league because I can understand the commentators, who are fabulous. First they break out great words like aplumb in their description of the games. Then they crap all over both teams if they get bored watching the game. I was watching one game where the first half was not terribly exciting, and the pace of the game to start the second half was much better. And I know I won't say this exactly right, but the one guy said, "I wonder what the coaches put in the halftime tea," and the other guy said, "I wish they put it in the pregame tea."

That is the kind of commentary you will never hear here because American broadcasters do not trust the games to sell themselves. There was a play later when a ball was kicked well over the head of a player, who as he turned twisted his legs together and fell in a heap, and the commentator says, "A sniper evidently took out Keane."

But enough about the announcers. We have picked the Spurs because we are already Spurs fans. And I have had my first soccer disappointment of the season already - and the first match isn't for two weeks. My favorite Spurs player from the matches I have seen from last year is an Egyptian by the name of Mido, and it turns out he has joined the Rome team this off-season. One of the sparkling midfielders has gone to Manchester United, the Yankees of the premier league. (Or should I say the Yankees are the ManU of of the major leagues?) But any team with Paul Robinson on it will be a threat to put up a clean sheet any time they hit the pitch.

Oh, yeah. I am even getting hip to the lingo.

And Arsenal sucks.

King Lear and preaching

2006-08-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

I started (and darn near finished) a delightful book by - who else - Buechner called Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. My birthday present for myself last week was to purchase the rest of the books of Buechner that I hadn't found yet. It will be months before I can get to them all, but it shall make the next few months delightful.

Anyway, I found this commentary on King Lear - one of my favorite if not my favorite play by Shakespeare - to be insightful as usual.....

Insofar as the word of the play is a tragic word, it rings out in its fullness when Lear comes upon Edgar standing half-naked on the bitter heath and asks for all of us, "Is man no more than this?" and then gives the answer to his own question. "Thou art the thing itself," Lear says. "Unaccomodated man is no more than such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art." Then the old king starts to tear off the few rags he has left as if in the awful lucidity of his madness he knows that IF THERE IS EVER TO BE A TRUE HEALING AND HELPING, A TRUE SHELTERING AND CLOTHING FOR ANY OF US, IT IS WITH OUR NAKEDNESS AND HELPLESSNESS THAT IT HAS TO START. Almost the last thing he says as he is dying is "Pray, you, undo this button," of all incongruous and enchanted words, as if of all the moments of his life the one he relives there at the end is the moment when in his nakedness he was the most kingly, when in his helplessness he was his most invincible, in the madness of his despair the most lucid. Shakespeare strips his characters bare and, great preacher that he is, strips us bare along with them as the high school seniors were stripped bare in their classroom. Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are vulnerable both to the storm without and to the storm within, and if ever we are to find true shelter, it is with the recognition of our tragic nakedness and need for true shelter that we have to start. Thus, it seems to me that this is also where anyone who preaches the Gospel has to start too -- after the silence that is the truth comes the news that is bad before it is good, the word that is tragedy before it is comedy because it strips us bare in order to ultimately clothe us.

Home by Another Way

2006-07-31T23:24:00.000-05:00

I heard this old James Taylor song on the way to pick up Katie today. It is one I rarely hear, but it is on my Ipod:

Those magic men the Magi, some people call them wise or Oriental, even kings.
Well anyway, those guys, they visited with Jesus, they sure enjoyed their stay.
Then warned in a dream of King Herod's scheme, they went home by another way.
Yes, they went home by another way, home by another way.
Maybe me and you can be wise guys too and go home by another way.
We can make it another way, safe home as they used to say.
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high and go home another way.

Steer clear of royal welcomes, avoid a big to-do.
A king who would slaughter the innocents will not cut a deal for you.
He really, really wants those presents, he'll comb your camel's fur
until his boys announce they've found trace amounts of your frankincense, gold and myrth.
Time to go home by another way, home by another way.
You have to figure the Gods, saying play the odds, and go home by another way.
We can make it another way, safe home as they used to say.
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high and go home another way.

Home is where they want you now,
you can more or less assume that you'll be welcome in the end.
Mustn't let King Herod haunt you so or fantasize his features when you're looking at a friend.
Well it pleasures me to be here and to sing this song tonight,
they tell me that life is a miracle and I figured that they're right.
But Herod's always out there, he's got our cards on file.
It's a lead pipe cinch, if we give an inch, old Herod likes to take a mile.
It's best to go home by another way, home by another way.
We got this far to a lucky star, but tomorrow is another day.
We can make it another way, safe home as they used to say.
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high and go home another way.

The first way home was blocked by Herod. Or cancer. Or divorce. It doesn't mean we can't go home by another way. And it is best to find that way with a companion.

can't sleep

2006-07-30T00:53:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I can't seem to go to sleep tonight. I am yawning as I type this, but I laid in bed for half an hour without going to sleep, which is way unusual for me. Though this has been happening more frequently recently.

It was a good if nondescript Saturday. My dad came home from his week in Minnesota for a class. He does this every summer, and it is a real treat for him to meet teachers from around the country. Interestingly, this was the first time he was the longest-tenured teacher in the group. I guess that will happen when you are about to start year 35. But the main reason it is fun for me and my mom is that he comes home energized about whatever new he has seen. And energized about the new school year approaching, too, I think, and just feels more a part of the community. My dad loves places; he loves National Geographic and reads atlases just for fun and so on. I have never shared that directly; I don't much care for places as such one way or the other. I don't take backroads just to see small towns that I never would have otherwise encountered. But I do enjoy how much he enjoys it.

I am looking forward to Sunday school tomorrow. We have a good topic on tap - friendship - and I think we should have a good crowd. I have a great passage from a novel I was reading a couple of weeks ago to bring in to the discussion. More and more this class is my primary connection to the church. Though that isn't fair to say exactly. I guess what is fair to say is that when the business model is to exploit people committed to the church by asking them to accept an embarrassing salary, you cannot be surprised when people respond by lowering their committment. And that, in a nutshell, is where I am. I feel some remorse about that. But it is more disappointment than it is anything else.

Ah well. I am going to knock out a spreadsheet and then try again to go to sleep.

lunch with one of my favorite people

2006-07-29T17:55:00.000-05:00

I got to have lunch with one of my favorite people yesterday, a woman who I thought was gorgeous when she was 17, but little did I know how she would blossom at twice that. It has been one of the treats of the last several months having an ongoing e-mail conversation with her.

It was a lot of fun having lunch, and just an important reminder of how important it is for me as for everyone to live out of the deep parts of our lives. We too easily get caught up in the competition to be perfect and to have everyone think that our lives are flawless, when in fact all of us are broken in some ways. I got to have a lot of those conversations this week, from the deep end of my life, and that has made it a wonderful week, excepting the bit about Katie and I being sick at the beginning of it.

happy birthday to me

2006-07-27T23:08:00.000-05:00

When I started this song I was still 33
The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free.
Just today I had my birthday; I made it - 34.
Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore.
I have a problem with my aging I no longer can ignore:
a tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar.

Harry Chapin

I have had a good birthday today. Katie was very funny this morning. As we were leaving the house, we were talking about a friend of ours who happens to be 37, and she said something about me being older. So I asked her how old I am, and she said 33, and I said no, and she said yes, and we went back and forth a couple times. And then she remembered it is my birthday, and she smiled and then frowned and said, "Just because it is your birthday doesn't mean you have to be so happy."

But she perked up and by the time we made it to her daycare, she darted in and told everyone it was my birthday, so I got a preschool chorus singing to me this morning. And then there were cupcakes at work, which was very nice, and dinner with my mom and brother, which was fun, too.

So all in all it was a good day for this tame and toothless tabby. I will go to bed not roaring, but purring, which is probably better anyway.

The Book of Bebb

2006-07-23T00:35:00.000-05:00

It is a series of four novels that are breathtaking. I think I have mentioned them before on here, but I cannot imagine a more interesting couple of characters than Leo Bebb and Antonio Parr the narrator. Bebb is part charlatan and part preacher and part philosopher and completely a saint. I am halfway through the fourth book and I can't tell if the main character died in the third book or not. But one thing is for sure: I am going to have a day of sadness in a couple of days when I finish this last of the series.

"The trouble with people like Brownie," says Leo Bebb, "is that they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird."

There are moments like this of profound insight but told through simple and even vulgar ways. And then there are moments of sheer poetic majesty, like this scene from the end of the first novel:

"Terrible as an army with banners" were among the first words Bebb had quoted from the Song of Solomon in an effort to describe her to me once, and for the first time I realized what Solomon if not Bebb must have meant by such a curious image was that one way mortal man has always reacted to beauty like hers is with terror in his very bowels. I was scared stiff as I saw her picking her way toward me through all the Indians, and as nearly as I can tell, I was scared not so much because of the terrible power her beauty gave her over me as because of my own terrible inability to respond to it in anything remotely like the way the stars themselves cried out for me to. In face of such a sight and mystery as a girl can present when she walks toward you through a firelight in a moon-colored dress, it is possible for any one of us to be like whichever prophet it was who, when he beheld the Lord himself sitting high and lifted up among his angels, could only cry out "Woe is me, for I am undone.....I am a man of unclean lips....."

Any man who has ever been in love can relate to that, methinks....

There's No Way

2006-07-21T22:10:00.000-05:00

I heard an old beauty from Alabama as I was riding around today. The refrain runs like this .....

There's no way I could make it without you
There's no way that I'd even try
If I had to survive without you in my life
I know I wouldnt last a day, oh baby, there's no way

It is one of those lyrics that is so true and yet so false.

a friend

2006-07-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

I have a good friend who works at the bank across the street from the church. We became friends several months ago when she found out I am a CPA because her fiance' was injured in the war a year or so ago, and the government has given him a settlement, and I hooked her up with my money manager in Nacogdoches to get their money invested intelligently.

Anyway, she decided recently that she needed to end her engagement, and while I am sad for her, I also am proud of her for doing this. They are so young - she is having her 21st birthday next week, and he is not much older - and almost all of their time together has been with him dealing with the surgeries and rehabilitation dealing with the loss of one of his legs. And now that he is healthy, no more surgeries required, and is moving forward with going to school, he is no longer as dependent on her, and their relationship has changed dramatically since then. And so I applaud her for not rushing into to something right now.

I guess this story is largely the reason I have taken a break from dating. I had a wonderful evening out on Saturday with an amazing gal, but I have gone out of my way not to label it, potentially not to jinx it, I guess. It is why I would try to convince my friend of a friend Kristin to stay away from guys even as she feels ready to be out there again. I am changing so quickly; maybe not so much now as the first couple of years of this experience, but probably as quickly as anytime since I was a teenager. And it just seems unlikely that anyone I would have been compatible with a year ago would stand much chance of being compatible with me now.

I think I am turning the corner on that. I certainly feel more ready for a relationship than I have felt in 2006 anyway. But part of that readiness is also not actively looking for a relationship the way I have been. I don't know if that makes sense or not. I am open to the idea, but I am reasonably happy where I am right now. I wish work were less stressful, and I wish I could get a better handle on losing weight, and I wish I had more discipline in general. But I am also getting better at turning things over to God so that I stew on them less. So all in all, I am happy in a way I haven't been since Becky died.

I think one of the things that can happen when we enter relationships while grieving is that we tend to push aside a lot of the grief work. But the closet is only so big, and the door only stays closed so long. It is just not wise. Because when the new relationship hits its inevitable bumps, the doors open and so much of the old hurt gets projected onto the new person. I want to be past that. I don't know if I am, but I want to be.

But back to my friend. I think she is wise to postpone the wedding. She hasn't ended the relationship, and my biggest wish for them is that after time to have the new relationship settle down, that they can decide anew that this is what they want for the future. But I applaud her courage for making the decision she has made, as difficult as it was to convey to her fiance and their families. Please pray for them all in the tough days ahead.

why is it .....

2006-07-18T23:38:00.000-05:00

I feel like I have so much to say on here that I can't even get started. I have so many questions about my life right now. I wonder so much what to do with some things going on in Katie's life. I wonder what to do about work. I wonder whether to go to seminary. I wonder whether to ask a cute girl out on a second date. I wonder why I am so lonely after having a good first date. It never fails. It seems weird, but it is true.

I guess most of all I just wish I could share responsibility in my life again. I want to be part of a team again where I am not always the captain. Katie and I do make a formidible pair, but it is not quite what I am looking for. Every now and again, it would be nice to give my input into a decison and then trust the decision another came to, but I can't do that.

It is a part of spiritual discipline. I want to give these questions over to God, but I am not even sure what that means. I pray about these things. I try to lay them at God's feet. But I don't get burning bushes or the stars rearranged into words or voices telling me what to do, so in the end, it still seems like me making decisions. Hopefully more peacefully and in a better frame of mind, leading to better decisions, but they are still mine.

Katie tonight listened to a message my parents have saved from almost four years ago now. It is a call Becky and Katie made to them not long after we moved to Nacogdoches in 2002. Of course, they saved it because of Katie's voice, as Becky tells her what to say, but they have kept it all these years at least as much because of Becky's voice. I hadn't heard that recording or any recording of Becky's voice in quite a while, and yet when I heard her talking it was as if not a minute had passed since the last time I had heard it. It reminds me of a bit from a Paul Simon song:

"She comes back to tell me she's gone.
As if I didn't know that.
As if I didn't know my own bed.
As if I never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead."

And then,....
"I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending,
Or maybe there's no obligations now."

I sat at the concert on Saturday night, and the first couple of pieces in particular were very lyrical and peaceful, and I found myself praying about the stuff going on in my life, the stresses I listed above. And then I found myself praying about the woman next to me, who I have known for a while that God put into my life. Why, I can't say yet. It is not for me to know yet, I reckon. Which got me thinking about the other people that I would say without question God has deliberately put into my life. There are men I would say that about, certainly two in my life right now. But what amusing to me at the time and since is how the list of women all seem to be slender brunettes between 5'3" and 5'6".

Things that make you go, "hmmmmmmm." I guess the immediate lesson is that if you want a message to get through to me, send it in that kind of vehicle. They don't have to struggle much to get or keep my attention.

Anyway, my prayer settled on a simple request - let me be the person she needs for whatever purpose You have for us.

It is a prayer I haven't formulated so explicitly since Becky had cancer. Then it was let me be the husband she needs to battle this successfully. I guess I needed to be a little more explicit about whose definition of success I was after, but that is a whole different post. As I am sitting here, it strikes me as funny that I have never articulated my prayers for and about Katie in quite that way. I think I shall from now on.

And now I am off to bed.

it's been a while

2006-07-16T21:26:00.000-05:00

Since I posted. I have been very busy; work has erupted in the last several weeks, and so most of the time I spent at home when I could reflect and write, I have been working on stuff I could bring home. Which is not good. I need the time to reflect, and I haven't been getting it.

In general, it has not been a good couple of weeks for me. The family reunion was not the outright disaster it had been the last couple of years, but it was not good. Work has sucked recently. I am tired of the personality conflicts and the politics. Two of my best friends were on vacation at the same time, and gone for far too long, and I missed them and the organization missed them as well.

But there has been good stuff as well. I met a wonderful woman last night for a delightful evening. I am hesitant to call it a date, maybe a friendly date is the way to label it. We went to a concert at the church that was just lovely, but the music paled in comparison to my companion. A half dozen people at church this morning came up to me and asked about her. It was certainly a nice evening, a well-deserved one for both of us as well. We have had a series of delightful phone calls over the last several months, but we both need to be taking things slow. I am not sure what I am capable of right now, and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew and then have to retreat from it.

Who knows? I am tired and going to bed.

birthday transformation

2006-06-25T22:25:00.000-05:00

I hinted at this the other night, but I wanted to come back to it. Our lives were transformed by Katie's birth in all of the ways I reckon most people's lives are changed by becoming parents. One way was maybe a little different than perhaps most mothers' experience, and that was in the relationship Becky had with her own body.

From the time I met Becky, she was absolutely beautiful. In most ways, she was not "my type," to the extent my type existed or exists. I tend to be drawn to tall women with slender or athletic builds, and Becky was short (5'3", which maybe isn't particularly short for a woman, but I am close to 6'5", so 5'3" is certainly short to me) and voluptuous. That is one of the reasons I am so hesitant about "types" because Becky simply transcended type.

But she always had an uncomfortable relationship with her body. She didn't particularly like being attractive to boys and hated when we stared at her breasts, for example, and so she always dressed in a way that understated how attractive she was. She just never went out of her way to attract attention from boys. And she was very modest even with me in the years before Katie was born.

And that changed fairly dramatically when she became pregnant. It was if all of a sudden she understood why she was enfleshed as opposed to just a mind or spirit. This body was capable of creating, protecting, and nourishing life. And her relationship to her body changed because of that appreciation. Which is not to say that she wasn't modest anymore, but at the same time, I was amazed that she would breastfeed in public - with a blanket tucked over her shirt or just her shirt pulled down lower. And she did become more comfortable with being looked at by guys, too. We would go to the gym, and those T-shirts that she picked to be loose and hide her figure got sticky in all the right places when she was sweaty, and she was much more comfortable with herself than before.

I am grateful for those three years or so. Once cancer came into the picture, Becky's body became her enemy. After being so long indifferent to her body, she was able to love it for a time. And then she despaired of it.

It was the one thing she said that hurt me while she had cancer. I would ask her if she needed anything as she settled into bed, and she would answer, "a new body." Even with the tumor inside of her, I loved that body. I loved that body from the first time she kissed me on that chilly November night. I loved far more than her body, but I never stopped loving it the way she came to, I think. I keep her ashes on my bookshelf; it has never occurred to me to even consider moving them from my living room. I wouldn't say I love the ashes themselves, but I am not ready to be apart from them either.

birthday tomorrow

2006-06-24T01:15:00.000-05:00

Katie turns six tomorrow. It is hard to believe, just as it is hard to believe it will be 27 months since Becky died later in the week.

But this is a post about Katie, my amazing little girl. We were playing in the pool at the gym, and I told her the story of the day before she was born, and a little bit about the day she was born, and it was delightful to both of us.

She was due on the 16th of June as I recall. My mom was rooting for the 13th of June; I was cheering for something between June 15 and 21 so that sometimes her birthday would be on Fathers' Day. But she was comfortable and persistent in being unwilling to be born. Finally, on Friday, we scheduled to have her induced on the following Thursday the 29th if nothing happened before then. And I guess that rattled the cage enough.

In the summer of 2000, I had bit off as much as I could chew. I was working full time for a little CPA firm in Tallahassee, while finishing my master's of accounting as a grad student at the same time. And I had started studying for the CPA exam in the fall. But other than that, not much was going on. Becky and I went to the movies Friday night as we often did; across from the theatre was a Garfield's restaurant where we often went. So we had dinner and a movie. We met one of my coworkers on the way out of the movie, and she playfully scolded Becky about sitting through a movie. You have to walk if that baby is ever going to get born. We watched Dinosaurs, the Disney movie, and then we did stroll through the mall a little bit before heading home.

Since the baby could be born at any time, I decided to do all of my homework and reading on Friday night after we got home. Becky was justifiedly tired and went to bed, and I went into the back bedroom with my financial accounting and marketing homework and listened to the Royals game on the radio through the internet broadcast of the game. And I worked until about 2:30 in the morning and crawled up to bed exhausted.

I had been asleep about 45 minutes when Becky shook me awake. Her water had broken, and it was off to the hospital. We settled into triage and they checked this and that and the other thing. The water breaking was only partial; it wasn't as dramatic anyway as we had been led to expect. But it was go time, and they eventually got us into one of the birthing suites at the hospital. We walked around and around in an attempt to get the contractions going, and after a couple of hours, they started in earnest. For whatever reason, they didn't want to give Becky an epidural until she was dilated a certain number of centimeters. I don't remember the details except that she was one centimeter away from that for a long time, and the contractions were really hurting. I sat on her right side and gave her ice chips, and when the contractions hit, she grabbed my left arm. To this day, when I close my eyes, I can feel exactly on my arm where each of her fingers were as she squeezed, hard enough to make my fingers tingle a couple of times.

And then she finally made it to the right number of centimeters, and the anesthesiologist gave her the epidural, and another medication to speed the contractions along, and then it was really on. Becky was hooked up to a monitor that measured each contraction, though I don't remember the units, and in the first few minutes after the epidural, we watched the monitor spike much higher than the ones that hurt so much, and we could see the muscles tighten, but there was no longer any pain. And Becky went to sleep.

I was horribly exhausted, and they told me that the chair I was sitting in would fold out into a bed, and so I did so and the chair become a four foot bed. But I was so tired that I slept dreamlessly for two hours when the bed didn't go past my thighs. And after a couple of hours sleep, we were both refreshed and ready for Katie to be born.

The Royals game was on that afternoon. It seems like they were playing Oakland on the road, so that it was a late start. And I am sitting here thinking Brett Tomko pitched for the Royals that day while at the same time I don't remember him ever pitching for the Royals, which is a weird confluence. I don't know why I am reporting this, but I remember watching the game on Fox that day while the labor intensified, still basically painlessly.

Our dear friend and Katie's godmother Barbara came to the room for the delivery. Our parents were all hundreds of miles away, and Becky had decided that she would rather wait for the help for when Katie was actually born, rather than schedule someone to come out and then miss seeing her altogether if she was late. And so it was the three of us with the doctor and nurse for the delivery. Becky had a slight fever throughout the labor, and so they warned us that Katie would likely be born with a fever herself, and they would take her to the infant ICU as a precaution. I stayed up at Becky's head; the action lower down was just plain nasty. I know I was largely responsible, but during this time I was longing for the days when the men could just smoke cigarettes in the waiting rooms, and I don't even smoke. But Barbara was brave and she even cut the umbilical cord as I recall.

I have wondered from time to time whether I should have cut that cord myself. And everytime I have thought, ewwww, yuk, and am grateful that they toweled off the purple martian a little bit before handing her to me. Childbirth is a miracle, but it is an ugly, stinky, painful miracle. Someone told me you forget about all of the yucky stuff once the baby is born, but not me. I can remember all of those little details of the day.

Sure enough, the baby did have a fever, and they gave us a minute or five with her and then whisked her away to the ICU and told us to come down in a while. And that gave us a minute to name her - at the time, we hadn't decided between Katherine or Shannon - Becky needed to look at her first. How very different our lives would be if we had chosen Shannon, I think. But in looking at her then, there was never really another name for her than Katie.

And then I took a long walk through the hospital to call family and tell them everything was reasonably okay. Becky was fine and while Katie was wrinkly and slimey and off in ICU, they assured me that this was normal. But it took me a good while to get over the trauma of the day. I have heard countless people tell me that the happiest day of their life was when a child was born, and for me, that just isn't the case. As miraculous and meaningful as that day was for us, as much as it transformed our lives in obvious and subtle ways, it took me quite a while to get over the angst of watching Becky hurt for hour after hour. I was spent from that, and it was only after some time to collect my thoughts that I could call family and get the chain in motion that Katie was among us.

I want to talk about one of the subtle ways this transformed Becky, but it is already too late, and I am going to bed. Hopefully I will get a chance to continue tomorrow.

a wonderful quote

2006-06-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

I just opened The Book of Bebb tonight, a series of four novels by Frederick Buechner, who I assume I have referenced previously on here. And in the introduction to the novels, there is this remarkable little statement:

"Maybe the reason any book about something like real life is a love letter is that in the last analysis, that is what real life is too."

I think the reason I so love Buechner's writing is that it is exemplified by that. His writing is not pie in the sky everything is always wonderful stuff. It has darkness throughout it, and while there is trust that the light will overcome, it never quite gets there.

I guess that is my faith experience in a nutshell. Two of my good friends just could not stand the Buechner book we did in Sunday school a while back. As I have thought about it, I think it is likely because they seem to have a lot more certainty about things than I do.

Buechner's father committed suicide when he was a child, and the pain of that is evident in his writings. But so is redemption and hope and faith. I just started a new novel today - Lion Country, the first of four novels about Leo Bebb - and within a couple of chapters I already love the title character and the narrator. More about that later. Now it is bedtime.

I can't sleep

2006-06-18T02:22:00.000-05:00

I finally got up after lying in bed for two hours not able to sleep.

All I have been thinking about is money. I have been promoted at work, and am now the treasurer for the church and the affiliated non-profit, and when I found out what my new salary is to be, I just about vomited. There are a lot of reasons for this. The prior treasurer in an act of great generosity diverted quite a bit of money from his salary to another employee's. But the prior treasurer is independently wealthy. I can't live on the new salary, even with the social security I receive, without deeping into my savings each month.

And so I guess I am getting to a crossroads. I need to do something so that I can sleep.

intolerance is not dead

2006-06-14T21:57:00.000-05:00

For writing this editorial, a professor was fired by BYU:

http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3896635

what we are supposed to be doing

2006-06-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

http://bonusroundblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/sometimes-its-enough-to-say-thank-you.html

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for linking to this post. I think you will enjoy it.

it really is over

2006-06-06T01:06:00.000-05:00

Everwood ended tonight.

It was pretty much what I had expected. I even expected the Abbots to get the baby by the end of last week. They left a little drama about when Hannah and Bright would get back together, but not much.

It was an amazing run. I am sorry they never developed Dehlia's character as well as they could have. Being a single dad raising a girl into adolescence to me sounds like an interesting story. Now I guess I have to turn to Hannah Montana for that. (Though, let me say from the beginning that Billy Ray Cyrus is no Treat Williams.)

I was not thrilled with the way Andy and Nina came together. The way the Abbotts ended was perfect. What Andy said to Julia at her grave was exactly right. It mirrored so closely to what I told Caroline about my life just the other night when we were talking. The way I phrased it was that it was the most amazing and dreadful irony that my life has ever known that Becky was the one person who could always see this me. I am more fully the person she loved than I have ever been in my life, and that probably never would have happened unless she died.

How fucked up is that?

I went back and watched the first episode all over again. I think I will likely watch all four seasons again in the coming weeks. What with the Spurs done and the Royals sucking there is nothing exciting on television except the fifth night when Mussina and Webb are pitching.

The one thing watching the first episode highlighted again for me is how essential to the story Irv was. I wished that in the final scene, as the camera panned up from the town to the mountain, that they would have written something for John Beasley to say, not as the author/narrator he had been, but as the angel he was looking down with love on these people he cherished. It would have added a final statement about the beneficience of the universe that I would have enjoyed.

I can't believe it is over. But I am so grateful for this story in this time and place in my life. Sometimes I felt they were writing this just for me.

our song

2006-06-05T18:52:00.000-05:00

I heard our song on the radio this afternoon on the way to pick up Katie. It is a beautiful song from late 1993 or early 1994 that we decided very early on was our song. It is called, "I never knew love" by Doug Stone.

never knew the power of a song,
Till I heard the music playin',
The day that momma passed on.

Never knew what innocence was about,
Till the first time I layed eyes on the face,
Of a newborn child.

I never knew love,
No I mean real love,
I never knew that kind of love,
Till this moment with you.

I never understood the meaning of home,
Till I pulled into that old dirt drive,
After being gone too long.

I didn't know what serenity really was,
Till I stopped one day to listen to,
A river gently run.

I never knew love,
No I mean real love,
I never knew that kind of love,
Till this moment with you.

I've known the hunger before tonight,
For other loves.
I felt the yearning,
I felt the fire,
In thier touch.
But this goes deeper,
Than anything I've ever known.
Beyond my heart,
Clear down to my soul.

I never knew what beauty could behold,
Till you looked at me, and I could see,
Forever unfold.
Oh, you made me whole.

I never knew love,
No I mean real love,
I never knew that kind of love,
Till this moment with you.
Till I was loved, by you.

duh

2006-05-31T01:12:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-30T22:44:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-29T21:34:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-28T22:01:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-26T00:51:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-25T22:50:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-22T23:25:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-22T17:41:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-17T22:08:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-15T00:13:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-11T23:16:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-09T00:03:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-07T07:39:00.000-05:00

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 ....

2006-05-06T21:09:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-06T20:07:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-03T21:38:00.001-05:00

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

2006-05-03T21:38:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-01T23:15:00.000-05:00

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.

avuncular

2006-04-29T23:27:00.000-05:00

That is how I am feeling these days, based on the exciting news from up north that my brother and sister-in-law are expecting. It is an exciting time for the family.

I have a nephew on Becky's side of the family, 14 months older than Katie. But this will be the first cousin of Katie's I can expect to be in her life a month down the road. Katie adores her cousin the two times a year or so she gets to see him even though he lives just across town. But I have never felt close to him. Perhaps it is because his parents were such a miserable couple; each of them alone nice people, but together absolutely horrible. Throw in the fact that Becky's family simply isn't close, that they don't put in any kind of effort to actually see each other, and I think I always just knew that this was not a child that would be much a part of our lives, as sad as that is to admit.

And even more sad is what a relief that is to me. After the disaster that was our trip to Austin in September for Becky's brother's wedding reception, I am glad that they are a marginal part of our lives.

But that is all the negative, when the overwhelming positive is that there is a new cousin on the way.

Hugs to Caroline

2006-04-28T02:37:00.000-05:00

I had planned on posting this before midnight, but played too much poker. Thursday was her 10th wedding anniversary. And today the church secretary was making plans to travel to Denver for her parents' 70th anniversary. Such an amazing thing. And yet 70 years would have been far too short to be married to Becky, or for her to be married to Alan.

Hugs to you on this day.

a great tournament

2006-04-28T02:31:00.000-05:00

I just won $353 on Poker Stars tonight, coming in fifth in a $10 tournament with about 700 players in it.

In the first ten minutes, I was down from 1500 to 140 chips after my pocket aces were cracked by pocket queens. I got him all in after the turn (one card to come) and he hit is two-outer, a 5% shot. Sadly, it was a harbinger as I had aces cracked three times in the tourney.

But I battled through and played well. Got lucky to stay alive when I had about 600. I had A6 against AQ, and moved in when an ace hit the board. Fortunately the board then paired and a K came on the river for a split pot as neither kicker played. I won a race with ten players left to get down to the final table and played well there. I was chip leader for a brief moment - just one hand, I think - but was always in the top three or so. And then I called a dude's all in with AJ when he had 10-4. And he caught a full house with it to stay alive. Two hands later, I picked up pocket aces, and the dude moved in behind me with KQ, but made two pair on the turn to crack those aces. And so instead of being a prohibitive chip leader, I was the short stack and ended up in fifth place.

But it was a blast and the second biggest payday of my online poker career, so I will certainly take it. I really thought it would come down to me and a player from Dallas; he was solid. But it wasn't to be.

the five biggest shots in Spurs history

2006-04-27T00:06:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking for a day about where Brent Barry's shot ranks in modern Spurs history. Modern being since 1986 when we moved to San Antonio.

Here are the biggest shots in the last 20 years in Spurs history, according to me:

5. Avery Johnson hits the game winner to clinch the 1999 NBA title. This would rank much higher - after all, it is their first title - but the Spurs clearly outclassed the Knicks that season. And losing game five would have just meant we would have partied here instead of watching them cry there. (Which brings up an interesting point. I always like it best when the Spurs clinch on the road. This is especially true when playing a hated team like the Lakers. What could top all of those celebrities leaving the Forum bawling like babies? We can have a parade in our town a couple of days later and do all the celebrating we need to. Winning at home deprives us of watching the other team and its fans having their spirits' crushed. Am I alone in this?)

4. Willie Anderson to David Robinson for a 50-foot alley-oop in the regular season finale in 1990 against Phoenix. Robinson's rookie year, winning this game won the Midwest Division by a game over the Utah Jazz and completed the best turnaround in NBA history. The game was nip and tuck throughout. Nervous fans are watching this game and the Utah game. The Spurs edged out a bit, and then this play was simply amazing. Hemisfair Arena was the loudest I ever experienced it, and the party was on. We won't talk about the Rod Strickland no-look pass to no-player in game seven of the Western Conference semifinals. This is the play within the game within the season that put the Spurs back on the map in the NBA.

3. Tim Duncan over Shaq in game five of the 2004 Western Conference Semifinals. This is the shot that should have put Timmy in the pantheon of all-timers. Series tied two games each. The winner of this game is all but certain to go to the Finals as the lowly Wolves await in the Western Conference Finals. The Spurs would have put Bowen on Cassell in that series and it would have been all she wrote. Duncan hits an 18-footer fading left with .4 seconds left to give the Spurs a one point lead. We won't talk about what happened next.

2. Memorial Day Miracle. This shot by Sean Elliott finishes a ridiculous comeback in game two of the 1999 Western Conference Finals and was such a gut-punch to the Blazers that they never recovered. It was a remarkable design, and the degree of difficulty of the shot was very high. Sean is on his toes to shoot, and had his heels come down, they would have been out of bounds. Never mind the fact that he is playing knowing that he is months away from having to either go on dialysis or get a kidney transplant.

1. Robert Horry wins game five of NBA finals last year. Bottom line, this shot is the difference between winning a championship and not winning a championship. After being embarrassed in games three and four, losing five would have forced the Spurs to win games six and seven both. And even with the momentum of winning game five and the emotional high, they couldn't win game six. The whole game five fourth quarter should be included here, I think, with several threes and the dunk out of nowhere for Horry. Put it all together, and this shot is the greatest of all time.

So, all in all, Barry makes the top ten but not the top five.

And as my brother pointed out earlier, both of the top two were three's made right in the mug of Rasheed Wallace. I lost whatever sliver of respect I had for the Wallace brothers when they didn't turn over the championship belts after the Spurs won last season. It is why the Pistons won't win this championship. Bad karma. They have three whole seasons with no injuries, and someone will go down in the Eastern Finals and they will be bounced. Just one man's prediction.

home

2006-04-25T00:51:00.000-05:00

The trip was lovely. Caroline was beyond hospitable. Vermont is beautiful. I cannot remember a day as gorgeous as what Friday was; I certainly didn't expect my first sunburn of the season to come there. In Texas, we could not have a day so sunny without the heat being ridiculous. But it was perfectly sunny and the temperatures were in the 70's.

I talked at length about the concert, but I don't think I could do it justice. If you are a fan, then you get it, I reckon. And if not, there is no way to describe the music intelligently. The energy of the crowd was palpable. As they were introducing Helmet Head, for example, they were teaching the crowd to respond to the song. And we all knew the song and how to respond. And you could tell he expected to chide the crowd, to try to get them to be louder and more enthusiastic. But we did it right the first time. We were enthused; we didn't need any more stinking encouragement than for them to just play the song. They knew it; they fed off of it; we reciprocated.

And I have a hockey puck out of the deal, too. Wins all around.

I don't have time to post all the thoughts I have about the weekend except to say that I felt very much appreciated, which was nice. And that I got the warmest welcome home anyone could ever want when picking up Katie from school this afternoon. And it is good to be back to my chaos.

There are times I think this grief journey should be stabilized; that the love and loss of Becky are now my companions the way they will be for the rest of my life. And then there are times when I think that my grief journey is still on the runway. Tonight is one of the latter times. It is not intimidating the way that statement would have been a year ago or more. But it does make me more reticent about dating, more determined to find myself, my voice, my vocation before trying to merge someone else into this mess. (That being said, I spent a delightful hour on the phone with Tina tonight, so maybe I am not really that reticent. If the right woman came along, ..... But at the same time, I am so content to let things move glacially with her. Maybe because I sense a real potential for this relationship that I have not felt in a long time, since Sally perhaps last April and May? Ah, who knows. It is late.)

I am excited by the prospect of the new Sunday school class. I read a delightful book called Affirmations of a Dissenter today on the plane. I would recommend it to anyone interested in spirituality and religion that is beyond the neoliteralism of the Religious Right in this country.

I have also started reading the Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, who wrote the Secret Life of Bees. Bees was simply delightful, though a story about a girl spending her childhood coming to terms with the death of her mother when she was four hit rather close to home. And within the first chapter, I was hooked to this story. I doubt it will take much more than a day or two for me to inhale this novel; she is a wonderful story-teller with an interesting subject and something to say. That makes for quite a combination.

And now to bed.

AMAZING

2006-04-20T22:25:00.000-05:00

I am thoroughly exhausted after a day of travel followed by getting to see Caroline and the kiddos and then the best concert I have been to in years. Certainly the last one to compare would be seeing James Taylor in 2002 in Shreveport, but Great Big Sea is such a different experience, it is basically useless to compare.

They were brilliant tonight. They opened with a stirring rendition of Captain Kidd from their newest album. The show lasted nearly three hours. They played 80 minutes, then took an intermission, then played an hour, and then had three encores - probably nine songs in the encores - for another half hour. They played roughly half of the songs from the new album - Polina, Charlie Horse, and the Mermaid song in the first half. Come and I will sing you was one of the encores and well done. They did not play as much of Something Beautiful as I would have liked; I think that is their best album; they opened the second half with a stirring rendition of If I were King that had the place jumping. But I would have loved to hear the title track and Let It Go. But Sean's very emotional version of John Barbour may have been the high point of the show for me. And if it wasn't John Barbour, then it had to be the very mellow version of Sea of No Cares, which is a very meaningful song to me anyway.

All of their old songs - Merry Mac, the Day that Patty Murphy Died, Rant and Roar, Consequence Free, Jack Hinks, I'm a rover, and on and on - they played. I would have loved to hear Boston and St. John, and I would have loved to hear She's Going Up. I am trying to think though of what I would take out to fit them in, and the only song I can think of is Helmethead, which I just have never really liked. But it did get a ton of audience participation, so what would I know.

Early on, Sean sang Forget-Me-Not, a beautiful ballad. And it was then that the show was emotional for me. I had such a good time at this show watching this band that Becky loved so much. I so wish she could have been there with me. Of course, I never would have met Caroline except for the ywbb, and so at the same time I never would have been at this show if she hadn't died. And that is so confusing and weird. It is something so true of my whole life. Except for my family, almost none of the people I interact with even knew Becky. Nobody at work and church. None of my widowed friends. None of the women that I have remained friends with through dating. When I think of how few of the people in my life actually knew her, it saddens me because they would all have loved her so. They know her through me, and the proof that they would love her is that they loved me, and what am I but what Becky's love transformed me to be? Which is a weird train of thought to have during a concert. But such is a widow's life, I guess.

This place was the perfect venue for the concert, too. I think it was called High Point or something like that. It used to be a movie theater evidently. There were no chairs, so we were standing, and dancing, and hopping, the whole time. I don't know how many it held, but the whole place was small and so every spot was an amazing one. And the crowd as a whole was well-versed in the music, and we sang and sang and sang, but none so much as me.

And now as the adrenaline rushes out of my bloodstream, the day of travel and standing for five hours and the lack of sleep last night are all catching up with me in spades. So I am off to bed. If you ever have the chance to see Great Big Sea in concert, do it. The music is catchier, more enthusiastic, more fun in person than on CD. It was an amazing event tonight. Not only did I get to see that, but now I have three days to spend with one of my best friends in the world, too. Lucky Me.

a big day

2006-04-19T22:23:00.000-05:00

It has been quite a day.

Since I am headed to Vermont first thing in the morning, I had a ton of work to do so that the place can survive without me for a couple of days. Ha ha ha. One of the most interesting things in the book about the Ten Commandments we just did for Sunday school was that sabbath is a testimony of faith. Sabbath acknowledges that God is in charge and that the world will not go to hell because we don't work for a day. So I am sabbathing for four days this week.

I listened to Great Big Sea at work today, annoyingly singing along with all of the songs. So people knew I was in a joyful mood all day. I got a ton of work done, so all will be well until Monday I am sure. Not that there was much doubt before this.

My boss took me out to lunch today and told me he is likely going to be quitting his job during the summer. So it seems very likely I am going to be the business manager of the church and Corazon Ministries within the next couple of months. I think I have found someone to take over my job already, so that is a good sign. She is a great gal and her strengths match my weaknesses, so I think we would make a good team. She is very detail-oriented, very organized, works well with the people she will be involved with. The last one I am okay with, but the others, not so much. I may be an accountant, but I have basically none of the ordinary accounting traits.

But the good news financially is that this will be a big enough raise that I don't have to worry about pulling money out of savings on a regular basis. My budget works fine, but then when property taxes or insurance comes due, then I need to pull money out of savings. It has been less than I have made in my investments so far, but it would be nice to let that money grow and not need it.

Oh, and the day of Katie's baptism is set for May 14 - Mother's Day - at the 11:00 service. All are welcome.

announcements

2006-04-18T23:21:00.000-05:00

Today was a big day for the Katie bug. She was one of the team from Mrs. Massey's marvelous kindergarden class to do the morning announcements, including leading in the pledge of allegience and the pledge to the Texas flag. (Why we should have allegience to the Texas flag I don't know. I am not in favor of littering on the highways or rampant pollution, but how would we be disloyal to Texas?)

Anyway, Katie had to be there early this morning, and of course I went in with her and listened to the announcements in the library. She did a great job reading her announcement; it included tough words to read like "reasonable" and "responsibility." Words that are not exactly in the wheelhouse of the average kindergardener, but she did great.

It is not everyday that gets to have a highlight by 7:50 am, but today was one. And the water in the pool is officially warm enough for swimming.

Happy Easter

2006-04-16T00:02:00.000-05:00

We have had a very nice Saturday. I awoke to the sound of Katie crooning Joe McDermott songs on the karaoke machine and found a woman's t-shirt in my bed. I almost wondered if I had really forgotten something last night, but then remembered Katie went over to friends' house last night in one of her Easter dresses and changed into Maggie's T-shirt at bedtime. I sighed, and then thought it would be way worse to have finally gotten laid and not remembered it, and with that thought in my head I hit the showers.

We watched some videos from my new Great Big Sea DVD and sang some of the karaoke tracks on there. Very fun, though I think I would have to practice for five years before I could ever come close to MariMac. The concert is but a few days away. Woo-hoo.

Then we went and had some lunch and ran some errands. I cannot get out of Target for less than $100. I went in looking for lightbulbs, a half gallon of milk, and some underwear. By the time we were done, there was a soccer ball in there and who knows what all else, and it was right at $100 as always. And we got a couple of books at Cokebury. I was planning on getting the books for the Sunday school class, but they were not in.

And then we came home and played soccer for an hour or so. Katie has a sense of the game. She is a decent dribbler, and does a good job of keeping her body between me and the ball so I can't get to it, which is pretty good instincts. We were basically just having fun kicking it back and forth, but I got her leading me with passes. At first she would always just kick it at wherever I was as opposed to where I was going, but she got the hang of it. And she was even using the inside of her foot to kick most of the time by the time we were done. I didn't even tell her that, but I think she was copying me.

And so then all hot and sweaty, I watched the Royals lose again and played a little poker online. I came in second in a 45-er tournament, which took my cash total there back over $200, which is where I cashed it down to the last time I got money out. It had gotten down to about $60. The other tournament I played was just a one-table, so it paid three places. Down to four players, I was comfortably second, and third and fourth were both short-stacked. On three consecutive hands, I went to the river card with someone all in. The first one, the guy had three outs (A9 against A8 and down to needing an 8) and caught one. The second one, the guy had two outs (big pair versus small pair - needed trips) and caught one on the river. And then against the chip leader, I was all in and he had one out. I raised from the small blind with K7 and he called, and the flop was king high. I moved in, he called with 77. So only the case seven could help him, and he caught it on the river. So three, two, one outs against me on three straight hands all caught, and I was out on the bubble. Never had anything like that before.

But I played well in both tournaments, and ended up well ahead on the day, probably close to $50, and I am positive since cashing out for the first time since, so that is good, too.

And now I am going to bed so that tomorrow I can worship with clear eyes. Have a blessed Easter tomorrow.

in all her glory .....

2006-04-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

one picture

2006-04-10T22:44:00.000-05:00

I am having some trouble uploading. Not sure what the problem is, but here is one picture working. It may take a while.

Easter fashion show

2006-04-10T22:36:00.000-05:00

Katie and I went out shopping for an Easter dress tonight. And because I am a sucker, and because Kohl's had a really good sale, we came home with three Easter dresses. And a hat and stockings, though they didn't have shoes. So tomorrow it will be off to Target or Payless in search of Easter shoes.

And then we headed over to my parents' house for a little impromptu fashion show. I also have a picture of both of us from the Easter Egg hunt we did at church yesterday. I don't have a scanner at home, so it may be a while, but I will put it up as well.

Enjoy.

Body Theology

2006-04-09T22:59:00.000-05:00

I have been reading a delightful book called Body Theology for the last week or so. A friend of mine in my Sunday school class recommended it to me. I have found it fascinating. It is not a particularly recent book, written I think in the early 90's. But I have been trying to come to terms with my own sexuality within a Christian framework that is both true to myself as a sexual individual while at the same time embraces the sort of holiness and discipleship I am seeking.

Part of me just wants to make the proclamation to myself of "No sex until marriage." And yet for all the good reasons I can think of for making such a pledge, I don't think I can. Not just because I am horny as heck, though I am. After church I sat around the picnic table where we had lunch and an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos, and was surrounded by all of these beautiful married women with Coleridge lines and a bit from Matthew 5 or 6 running through my head.

But that is not why. That I think I could overcome with grace. But I know that when sex was taken away from us a few months before Becky died, that our ability to communicate was cramped. It put so much pressure on every other way that we communicated - almost like losing four or five letters of the alphabet and trying to get by without them. Losing that means of communication meant there was more that had to be carried with every word, with every look, with every touch. And that was exhausting to both of us. I didn't miss the sex then the way I miss it now. Then it was inconceivable to be looking for sex in some other fashion; it literally never occured to me. It was just part of the better or worse thing.

We wait so long to get married in this society. I wonder if it is practical or reasonable to think that celibacy until marriage can work again. And yet is that the measure of discipleship? What about the Christian walk is supposed to be practical or reasonable? But why would a couple headed towards marriage castrate their own alphabet? I am not looking to be slutty - it has a certain appeal, no question - but at the same time I want to be honest with myself. Making a proclamation now would be easy since there aren't exactly women lining up and being kicked out of my bedroom.

Anyhow, that is the process that led me to this book, though it is about much more than sexuality. Fundamentally, it is about the unity of personhood. It is easy to think of myself as my mind as separate from my body. But Christianity is in fact at its heart about incarnation, about the Word made flesh. There is no duality, no separation of mind and body, spirit and body. We are all "bodyselves."

One of the things that happened as Becky grew weaker with cancer is that she grew to hate her body. That is something I couldn't do, and I didn't understand that at the time. But I remember as she would be going to bed, I would ask her if there was anything I could get her, and she would reply, "A new body." And that always hurt me, though I didn't show it, because I understood where she was coming from. But I loved that body that had among so many other things brought our little girl into this world.

And yet, when I first got started dating, I had in my mind that I would have loved Becky in any body. What I have come to realize is that there is no way to know that. There is no Becky in this life outside of that body. I have a good friend in a new relationship, and she quoted something he wrote to her in an e-mail and made the comment that she would love him if he were just a brain in a jar. And as I thought about it, I think that is hogwash. I loved Becky's mind and spirit; her gentleness but fierce determination. But those all have to be seen within the context of her holistic person.

The mistake I made when first dating then was completely ignoring attractiveness as a feature. If I would have loved Becky in any body, mightn't I love this woman even though she really doesn't do anything for me? Which lead to a bunch of really lousy dates. (Duh.)

And then the pendulum swung too far to the other side, leading to dates with insipid hot chicks. Bad idea, though at least there is more short-term fun possible.

Online dating is weird, because it is possible to be really good friends with a person before actually meeting. It causes all sorts of problems, I think. Not that they are insoluble, but just so different than when I was doing this the first time. Because attraction can develop over time, but if you already develop this really amazing emotional connection with a person, it puts a lot of pressure on there being a physical attraction basically immediately as well. As opposed to that attraction sort of developing at the same time as the friendship or emotional connection. I don't know that there is an answer to that.

But the question I try to answer now before I meet in person someone I have met online is whether if there is no physical attraction, I would still like to be friends with this person. If I don't think so, then there really is no point to going out. I am not dating just to date. But if the emotional connection is such that this is someone I really value and treasure, then, hey, let's give it a whirl. It is more work this way. It is more disappointing if ultimately there isn't a romantic relationship. But at least I think it gives me a chance to find something meaningful.

I may write more about this book later. But for now, I am going to finish the chapter I am reading and get some sleep.

stuff you can't make up

2006-04-09T00:12:00.000-05:00

Being a baseball announcer has to be a tougher job than it looks. It is a long, long season, and there are many games over the course of the season that are just not all that entertaining. And so sometimes you will find announcers talking about bizarre things in the booth.

But this doesn't excuse Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin "DJ" Jackson for this exchange. It was the top of the first inning after a major comeback. It was the first start of the season for both pitchers, so you could talk about their careers, their springs, something. Instead, we get this:

(In the middle there is baseball play-by-play talk, like "low and outside, ball three" and stuff like that that is deleted from the transcript.)

Hawk: It is a beautiful but cold, cold day here in Kansas City, especially in the shade.

DJ: I'm looking over at my partner and he has an icicle hanging from the tip of his nose.

Hawk: I wish it was an icicle.

DJ: (Laughs) My bad.

Hawk: I got my hanky on the ready.

Now, I have been watching Sux games on WGN for 20 years now, and anyone familiar with me or this blog knows just how much I hate the Sux. For the better part of 20 years, the only time I could see my beloved Royals on television was when they played the Sux on WGN or the Rangers on Fox Sports SW. (The baseball package is a must have for all baseball fans unfortunate enough to live outside the media market of their team.) And the WGN guys just insulted the other team left and right for three hours. Harrelson was partnered with Tom Paciorek, who is the worst color guy ever. And so I grew to hate the Sux over time. Which is kinda sad, given how horribly the franchise had performed over the last century or so. I mean, who hates the Clippers? But that is how bad Hawk and Wimpy were; they could make you despise a team so far on the fringe of the American sports scene as the Sux. (Wimpy was always worse in my mind. Hawk played for the Royals for a short time, and always has something to say about how great a teammate George Brett was, and now always has something pretty decent to say about Sweeney. It is the color guys who turn those comments into backhanded insults.)

And so I expected today, when the baseball package wasn't carrying the game, forcing me to watch on WGN, to have an insufferable afternoon. Now that the Sux have actually won something through a series of seismic reactions it may take generations to understand fully, weren't they going to be more arrogant and obnoxious than ever. That is what happens to hometown announcing crews the year after a championship. I followed the Angels pretty closely through their run to the title in 2002. As it turned out, that was my first year in fantasy baseball, and I had Glaus, GA, Erstad, and Percival all on my fantasy team, and since I followed a midwest team, as soon as the Royals game ended, I would flip over to the Angels game and listen to Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler call the action. And the Wonder Dog is so energetic that it is sometimes tiring, but it is a good crew, and I was seriously cheering for the Angels throughout the post-season. But the next season, Hudler and Physioc were simply unwatchable. Every single pitch of every single game caused them to mention something about the play-off run the year before. I wanted them to win every game that post-season; I didn't give up when they were down 3-2 in the world series and 5-0 in game six. I knew they had it in them to come back. But the next season and a half, I just couldn't watch them. It was too brutal.

And so after all that, I thought it was going to be so much worse today. And it wasn't. I enjoyed this game today - except for the booger interlude - as much as I have ever enjoyed a Sux game on WGN. (Except potentially opening day a couple of years ago when they insulted the Royals for eight and a half innings only to have Billy Koch implode and the Royals score like six runs in the bottom of the ninth to win. But that was enjoying the game from vindictiveness.) This time, they were actually relatively unbiased. I would have enjoyed the game even if Sweeney hadn't gone deep in the bottom of the eighth to win it. Ok, I don't know that I would have enjoyed it, but the reasons I didn't wouldn't include the announcers. That is probably more accurate.

Maybe it is a new day. Maybe actually winning something - all winter I expected an apocolypse, something major, but nothing too bad has materialized - they have lost the chip on the shoulder that came from so many generations of suckage. Don't get me wrong: I still hope they finish 1-161 this season. But for the first time in my recollection, they might be watchable.

A deceptively large game for the Spurs

2006-04-08T22:37:00.000-05:00

Of course every game is big when there are this few left and the race for homecourt is this close. But tomorrow night's game with the Grizzlies is all the more important because the outcome affects the tiebreaker between the Spurs and Mavericks.

With the win over the Hornets tonight, the Mavericks wrapped up a southwest division record of 13-3. The Spurs division record is 11-3 with tomorrow's game with Memphis and the finale April 19 at Houston. If the Spurs lose one of those two games, then they will lose the tiebreaker against the Mavericks. If the Spurs win those two games, they are assured of winning the tiebreaker with the Mavericks, since the next tiebreaker is conference record, and there is no sequence that allows the Mavericks and Spurs to finish with the same record unless the Spurs have more conference wins.

So it looks like winning tomorrow is just the difference between being a game ahead and tied in the standings. But in fact, it is closer to the difference between two games ahead and one game behind. A huge game tomorrow night.

slow Saturday

2006-04-08T21:55:00.000-05:00

It has been a slow day today, which has been kind of nice. I played some with Katie this morning - she slept in some after having so much fun last night at the Blue Cactus. So we got up about nine or so this morning and played and watched cartoons. Then about lunch time I took her over to my parents so I could have some quiet time. I got some shopping done, talked to my friend Caroline on the phone for a half hour or so, got some work done, watched the Royals kick around the White Sux again. (There was the most bizarre exhange between the WGN announcers ever heard during the second batter in the top of the first. I have it TiVO'd so that I can go back to the tape and get it verbatim.)

Then we had dinner with my folks and brother, came home and karaoked for 45 minutes or so, then she left me watching some baseball while she watched a cartoon, time for the bedtime chapter of Narnia, and then she was off to bed. I am playing in a little poker tournament and then I will put away and the laundry and head off to bed.

My favorite day of the year!!!!

2006-04-03T15:02:00.000-05:00

Is there anything that compares to the first Monday of April? The smell of chalk and grass clippings, beer and pretzels, and the crack of the bat?

Opening day is the best. The Royals are in first, and I could spend the afternoon at the office cheering against Tom Glavine because he is on this week's fantasy opponent's team.

And the White Sox suck.