Fling Carefully

Asherel was assigned another Science Olympiad event and I was asked to coach a second area I know nothing about. We will be flinging things. The goal is to fling things further and more accurately than other teams fling things. We must design our own flinger, called more scientifically a "trebuchet", and then we have to practice flinging things zillions of times and chart all the parameters that might help us to fling things to within centimeters of where we hope to fling them. We will receive scores as long as we fling them at all, unless we fling without warning. This results in immediate penalty.

I think this should be applied to oak trees as well. Depending on how high the acorn is when it begins its descent, factoring in the pull of gravity and rate of freefall acceleration, many acorns have been known to bore holes 3 inches wide in unsuspecting skulls .  It would be a safer world if God had programmed the oak trees to give some sort of warning. Just a simple 3 second advance notice, an Acorn Warning System.  I would not presume to improve on the Creator's Design as I have noticed He has not left a little "Suggestion box" at my bedside, however, perhaps just a few quick words that harmonize with the lovely tree, like, "Look out blockhead!" or "Incoming!".

This is the season when acorns are falling all over the place. As I pull out of the driveway, there is frequently massive crunching crashes against the roof of the van. As I cringe, I hurry to back out from under the trees. Sometimes I see squirrels pointing at me and high fiving, and I am not sure the acorns have fallen of their own accord.
"Penalty!" I scream at the squirrels, which only makes them chitter louder.

It is a season of flinging. Friends are being felled with dire diagnoses, temperatures are plummeting, money is being ricocheted every which way as the holidays approach. Sometimes damaging words are bandied about too as the stress of the season mounts. The leaves that were so magnificently brilliant are now being ripped from limbs and tossed in the air to swirl madly to collective brownness.  Soon it will be all laid bare, and then all that can be flung will have succumbed to the unbeatable call of gravity. Quiet will descend.

But in that silence, maybe we can listen more deeply to the warnings God has been flinging since time began; and maybe we can catch those words of comfort and delight that always accompany what He throws at us. And words we have thrown to others might then be carefully and thoughtfully considered. We have the power to inflict damage by what we fling, words that don't encourage, inspire or point to the One who could fling us all away if He so desired.  It can be a season of reflection and sometimes dismay.

"Fling away!" I say to my trebuchet team, "But fling thoughtfully, or you will pay the penalty!"

Galatians 5:9-11 (New International Version)

⁹ “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” ¹⁰ I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. ¹¹

Thanking God for the dishwasher

As I stood washing the sinkfull of dishes by hand while Asherel dried, I realized I had forgotten to thank God....ever.... for the dishwasher. But now it was too late. The dishwasher was dead.

As we washed the dishes, and the first real cold snap was settling its icy fingers around our city, I told Asherel how in the days before modern appliances and indoor plumbing, imagine what a typical evening was like.
"There was no time for Beatles Rock Band, I assure you...they had to carry a yoke of icy water either from a cold stream a mile away or a well if they were lucky, haul it home, heat it over the fire, wash the dishes...."
"What if the rags they had to dry them with were dirty?"
"Well of course they had to wash those first by hand also. And all their clothes, though of course they didn't have many clothes because they had to spin the wool to make the thread to make the cloth all by hand."

We went on in that vein, while washing the dishes, enumerating the harshness of life before Nintendo one thought after another. Strangely, I felt a camaraderie, and a peaceful joy standing in the kitchen with my daughter washing the dishes and recounting a time much more difficult than we had ever had to live.  We argued good naturedly about the most efficient way to dry the silverware, Asherel insisting it was better that she dry and I put away, and I insisting each person should dry and put away their own utensils.

"But they knew about the assembly line in the old days," she insisted, "And that each person does only one part and wastes less time."
"First of all, the assembly line came much later, and second of all, while what you say is true, with assembly line work, they also lost a great deal of satisfaction in their labor. I mean who can be proud of poking a hole in a widget a million times a day?"

Thus in one dishwashing session, we waltzed through a few centuries, from the frontier days, to the industrial revolution, and even onto musing about leisure time and its pitfalls and the value of pride in one's work. She probably learned more in that half hour than we had learned all day in "school".

When we put away the last dish, and she scurried off to her modern conveniences, I paused and felt something like peace in the pit of my stomach. And this morning I have remembered to thank God for the lack of a dishwasher....and for the coffee maker.

Jeremiah 6:16 (NIV)
This is what the Lord says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

The Elephant in the Room

My sister Holly and I were discussing writing, and she noted that being a great writer involves painful honesty, and was perhaps ultimately too self revealing for most people to dare attempt. This is true. I think it is immediately evident when a writer is holding back a piece of themselves. Like the elephant in the room, it is too obvious an omission to ignore. Most mornings, God brings to mind some event from the past day or so, or even a distant memory that suddenly springs upon me with a message that had been lurking on the fringe of my consciousness.

But some mornings, the elephant is standing right in front of me, and try as hard as I can, I can't see beyond it. I think we all have those "elephants", those painful parts of our reality that we try to dance around. Sometimes we can shove them aside, to a corner of our thoughts and tie them tightly with laughter, or chocolate, new haircuts, new shoes, or busy-ness.... but they seem to invariably loose themselves.

I can't see around the elephant today. So I will just let it stand there, obscuring my vision of a beautiful fall day, and pray that God will shove it away for me.

Romans 8:25-27 (New International Version)

²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
 ²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

And a Star to Steer her by

As a child, when I would mention the ocean, and how I loved it, my mom would invariably chant, "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky...."  I knew this was the first line of a poem- she seemed to always have available a first line of a poem to fit a situation. She almost never finished the poem, and it was always with delight that I would stumble upon the complete poem and feel a rush of familiarity, of childhood joy. This is an old friend, I would think, and reading the full poem was like climbing back into the willow tree in our front yard and munching apples while watching the red bugs march along the bark.


You never know what little aspects of who you are before others are flaking off, drifting into their souls, and becoming permanently a part of them too.  Knowing this, you would think I would be more careful about what flakes off, but ultimately, there is only so much I can be conscious of at any given moment. I wish I were more "other aware", that I could more consistently view the world through others' lenses, view my own actions as though I were standing beside me, not in me. The funny thing  is, as soon as I try to do that, I am no longer me, and the interaction feels false. It is like being forced to say ,"I'm sorry" or forced to kiss a relative you really don't want to kiss, and don't really even like.  Then all that flakes off of me is hypocrisy.

Martin Buber, the philosopher thought a great deal about this- you know the one that wrote the book "I and  Thou".  He also felt that the ability to love others and enter into true communion with them involved the ability to understand and empathize with them in such a way that we are completely "with them", and not with any preconditions of where that interaction may go, or even what use it might be to us.  Despite being a Zionist, a devout Jewish man who longed for and saw in his later life the establishment of a Jewish state, he lobbied for a Palestine state as well. He could look beyond his own very legitimate needs, and see the desires and needs of another that in many ways conflicted with his own goals and desires.  He truly believed that we could enter into a completely harmonious and deeply vulnerable, sharing relationship with others when we ceased to see them as objects of use, and saw them as precious fellow souls. He called that relationship "I-thou", and the ultimate "I-thou" relationship was with God.  He also admitted, as I so often have found, that as soon as one becomes too conscious of trying to "be", one ceases to "be" and becomes false, strained, and the interaction becomes one of "I-it".

I get this. I didn't when I first read Buber, but I get it now, at least a little. And it helps me to understand more fully why God just doesn't part heaven like Curtain #1, clap His hands and shout, "Ok, you scoffers, look and see! Now don't you have egg on your face? Here I am, as real as the blushing cheek on your faithless face. You better love me or behind curtain number 2 awaits someone not quite as merciful to your careless, faithless choices."

God enters into a relationship with us, longing for "I-thou", but we turn it into "I-it".  We long for God not for His Presence, but for His presents. And God knows better than to try to force us into a relationship. He waits, and tugs at our hearts which have gaping holes of longing and incompleteness.  I don't quite know what it means to be truly authentic in relating to others, but I know I long for it, and I have seen it. For brief periods, I have lived it. When my mother, hearing the word "seas", smiles at me and recites the line of a poem that she loves and only wishes that I might feel its magic too... and thirty years later I see the poem and think not of the ocean but of deep, abiding, unconditional love.

"Sea-Fever"

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

By John Masefield (1878-1967).

1 Peter 4:7-9 (New International Version)

 ⁷ The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. ⁸ Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

A Patriot's hat

As I sat in the comfortable chairs in the voting precinct lobby, Asherel and her fellow Kids Voting volunteers manned our booth in the room just down the hall, and tried to lure voters. I wore the duct tape Uncle Sam hat Asherel had made, and drew on my iPod.

The adult voters had to pass me on the way to the voting booths, and many commented on my patriotism in wearing the hat. Ah, if that were all it took to be a patriot, I thought. If being something meaningful were only as easy as putting on and off a hat....the things I would be! Right away, I would put on my "rich and famous" hat. I know that "rich and famous" doesn't guarantee happiness, but I would be delighted to provide some statistical analysis to foster understanding about just how rich one can be and still not happy.

Then I would put on the hat of "perfection".  Really, I would probably need no other hats. I could draw the perfect picture, write the perfect story, love perfectly, pray perfectly, teach perfectly, dust and vacuum perfectly, and the most elusive undertaking of all- floss without breaking the string in between my molars perfectly.

But alas, we all know really that I am not a patriot just because I wear a patriotic hat, anymore than I can attain perfection by wearing my "perfect" hat. Our outsides usually have very little to do with our insides.

As I sat there, in my patriot hat, an old gentleman shuffled over, leaning on his cane. He was huffing and puffing, and he collapsed into the seat beside me while his wife went to bring the car closer for him.
He commented on my hat. He was cheerful, despite obviously being worn out. Earlier, I had been chatting with the precinct judge and knew the voting line had been consistently an hour and a half long all day. The tired man had finally voted.

"How long did you stand in line?" I asked.
"An hour and fifteen minutes!" he said.
"Wow, that's a long time." I observed insightfully.
"It is," he agreed, "But it was a privilege."

I glanced at his cane, and listened to his labored breathing, and thought, now that is a patriot.

Psalm 136: 21
²¹ and gave their land as an inheritance,
            His love endures forever.

Cosmic Consequences

With the Giants the new World Series champions, we can now go guitar shopping. Asherel was quick to remind Arvo as the Giants began flooding the baseball field, spitting sunflower seeds like confetti and leaping victoriously on each other's heads that per his promise, she was now owed a celebratory guitar.

But it will have to wait til tomorrow. Today, for the 13th year in a row (or so) we will run a Kids Voting booth. We are asked to do so little to keep this democracy running. Pay taxes, be informed, and vote. I guarantee more people know the exact statistics of every major league batter better than the Bill of Rights. We are so good at excuses- let some one else be informed and vote. Let someone else pay for my health care, for my retirement, for my chocolate bon bons.  Running the Kids Voting booth is my little way of saying "Informed voting matters. It is a duty and a privilege. And you get a cute sticker that says you voted."  The research seems to indicate that in countries where mock voting for kids is promoted, the kids tend to grow up and vote. I feel like I am investing in the future of my country.

Election Day for our family has always been a big deal. We gather around the television as the polls return with markable maps in hand. Anders, our oldest, was fanatic about staying up til the wee hours of the morning on presidential election nights, marking the states red or blue and counting electoral votes. We buy special dinners, cheer our team on when they are winning, and despair when they are losing. This is an event with consequences though, and more than a guitar is riding on the results.

Choices matter. Today we get to choose who will serve us in this wonderful country that I sometimes fear is collapsing from within. We have to wait til the first Tuesday in November to make that choice each year. But God gives us a choice every day. I love how Joshua reminds his people that the most important choice for leadership they will ever make they can make NOW. This day the choice is spread before you.
And the reward for the winners in that cosmic election will be plucking strings to a heavenly choir. The losing team  will find their strings a little too hot to pluck.

Joshua 24: 15
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

Go Giants!

We were in despair Saturday night. The easy waltz to victory for the Giants who had dominated the first two games lost its grace and ease.... and they ended up losing game 3. For those of you who don't follow Sports, don't worry. Neither do I. This is not a post on the World Series. It is a post on greed and opportunism, maybe. Sometimes God changes my direction mid-word. Anyway, this was despairing because Asherel desperately wants the Giants to win. It is not because she cares one whit about baseball either.

When the Giants won the league playoffs, Asherel happened to be nearby as the Giants were closing in on victory. Her dad, a lifelong Giant fan was sitting on the edge of his seat.
"If the Giants win," he declared, "I will buy you a Wii drumset."
Now Asherel had wanted a Wii drumset for some time, since she had become quite good but then the drums broke.
So she settled down to watch the Giants finish the game and go on to victory. As Arvo settled down happily to check his email, Asherel reminded him of the drumset, and true to his word, he ordered it. The trick is to catch him in the full flush of victory.

So quickly Asherel began calculating. What if the Giants won the big one, the biggest one- the World Series!? What could she procure if she could manage to be around at that moment? Having started guitar lessons and loving them, the idea of her own guitar began to take seed.
"I will buy you a new guitar if the Giants win the World Series!" proclaimed Arvo.

So Asherel has been sitting with him every single moment of every single game. I sent her to bed last night when the Giants had a commanding lead because she has developed a cold from all the late night baseball watching. And she needed to rest up for the pivotal and hopeful final victory tonight.

I like baseball, so I watch as well, but I am more interested in things the typical baseball fan doesn't notice. Things like why would a man with all the money of a pro baseball player not have the 3 unsightly large moles removed from his face? And things like pondering whether Buster is a nick name or his real name, and how can someone who looks 15 years old possibly be such a great catcher in the Major League? Does the lazer eyed shortstop look that wildly eyed intense all the time or is that just his game face... and has anyone tested him for steroids or over-caffeination? In short, I notice all the important things that shockingly disturb Arvo when I try to get answers to these riveting questions.

Anyway, they won last night and we are one game away from a new guitar. This is great, because I want my guitar back, which has gone from kid to kid to kid as they learned, and I have yet to get my paws on it, though it was originally my guitar. Currently, Asherel is using it.

So Asherel and I will be perched on the edge of our seats, like opportunistic vultures tonight. Asherel tells me that if I time it right, I might be able to bargain for a new laptop. It all hinges on the Giants.

God also tells us to ask for anything and everything. He says we do not have because we do not ask. Asherel and I aim to fix that problem. And while we chuckle over our avarice and plotting, we do know that God perhaps meant something a little differently when He made that promise.  If we just read the first part of the promise, we can go away thinking we just need to ask away, and Mercedes and diamonds will be flowing like manna from Heaven. But then there is that little caveat He tacks on at the end of the verse. We are not supposed to ask with the wrong motive, and the wrong motive seems to be asking for things that we use for our own pleasure. Well that eliminates about 99.9 percent of what I ask for......

It would seem that we should be asking from pure motives. Drat. So I am making a deal with Asherel- she asks for the computer for me, and I ask for the guitar for her. Selfless greed! Go Giants!

James 4: 1-3

 ¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.