Already Used Up All My "Season" Puns

When I started this blog away back In (a previous) Bleak Midwinter, naturally one of the first posts I ever wrote was about Christmas: specifically, how I had “flunked” it. I felt like I captured it well enough that last year’s Christmas post essentially boiled down to “ibid.”

I don’t know that my Christmas was much more “successful” in the ways I described there… but I got to thinking about the elements of the season that I crave, a must-have list of broader scope than another of my early entries on Christmas music. This is quite aside from the spiritual aspects of Christmas – I feel like my appreciation and sense of wonder about all the miracles of the Nativity story probably grows yearly – but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking forward to and enjoying the more superficial aspects of the holiday, either. Such as:

• The music. I begin rotating through my collection as soon as Advent starts – but not before. I admit this may be due in part to the same personality quirk that has me turn down lunch at 11:58, but it just doesn’t feel right to hear the music of the season till the countdown begins in earnest (this is the same way I feel about Christmas shopping, in distinct opposition to, and much to the frustration of, the spouse. Her goal this year – only narrowly missed – was to have everything wrapped by Dec. 1). Between my collection and the local Christian radio station’s outstanding and eclectic playlist, I get a pleasing mix of secular and spiritual, traditional and reinterpreted and altogether new.
• A real tree. I wrote recently about my annual arboreal struggles, but even with all that, I’d no more give up and get an artificial tree than I’d swap our dinner for the plastic food from my daughter’s Little Tikes kitchen.
• The Christmas letter. I’ve been writing a yearly newsletter, in the tradition of my mom, for probably 15 years now. I’ve toned down a lot of my more ostentatious writing tricks, now that I have a weekly (or weakly) outlet for that, but I can’t seem to help writing basically the same letter every year: hey look it’s snowing/cold/music’s starting, must be time to write; here’s what we did as a family; here’s what each of us is doing these days; here’s what the season’s really about (often using and sometimes abusing some kind of metaphor); we’d love to hear from you. I’m very fortunate that I don’t have all of them side-by-side for comparison purposes.
• Snow. Even as a kid, I wasn’t big on playing in it; I was often playing solo, and I lacked the imagination to create my own wintry fun. I’ve spent some Christmases in the South… but they felt somehow like popcorn without butter or salt. Granted, I’d just as soon it fell on the 23rd and melted on the 26th, but I won’t ever be dreaming of a brown or even green Christmas.
• Clandestine gift operations. It’s harder to pull off now, with kids to plan shopping outings around, but my ideal season would keep her guessing up till Christmas morning: Did he buy anything? Is it wrapped? What could it possibly be? (This may reflect another of my issues – see the part about the fish sticks) The most humiliating Christmas of my life was when I came up empty a couple weeks before the day; I think it was when my son was an infant, so perhaps I can plead sleep-deprivation-related insanity. Basically I had to have her lead me around the mall pointing to stuff, then leave the stores so I could buy things and “surprise” her. Do you think it’s overcompensating that I don’t even ask her what she wants now?
• Surprises in return. Even as a kid I was never a peeker or a shaker. I crave being totally surprised on Christmas morning (shocked is even better). I’d almost rather get an unanticipated mediocre gift than a perfect gift I knew was coming. The surprise, for me, is part of the gift.
• Meticulous wrapping. This is also a significant part of the (outgoing) gift. I never have the store wrap for me, and I seek whenever possible to avoid gift bags. Gift bags to me can be shorthand for, “I got this at the last minute and I couldn’t be bothered to wrap it.” In fact, I’m also semi-legendary for wrapping “obvious” shapes in cleverly camouflaged ways (one of my most flamboyant creations: a record album and 2 pieces of sheet music; I built a cardboard pyramid with the sheet music and some cardboard, using the album as the base). My sister taught me to wrap when I was 9 or 10, and I take great pride in it. This can also be a source of conflict, as my wife would like it very much if I’d just Get On With It Already, but I consider myself the Charles Emerson Winchester of gift-wrapping (“I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on.”).
• Careful Christmas-morning planning. I always predetermine the order in which I’ll present the gifts. The simple and less-impressive stuff goes first, the big important ones go last; I also try to intersperse the clothing and non-clothing items. The concept is to keep the momentum building, although not always in strictly linear fashion – if there are 10 gifts that can be “ranked” 1-10, the typical order might be 1-2-4-3-6-5-8-7-9-10.
• Tradition. I was trying to think of good examples for this, but I realized all the other entries really represent my traditions, the yearly building blocks of a season that’s merry and bright. Yes, I’d love to have a set of traditions that look more like Martha Stewart and less like Rain Man, but if there’s one thing we learn – or else – from middle age it’s that you’d better get used to being who you are. And this is who I are.

I hope that you had an enjoyable and blessed holiday season; that its meaning came to you in new and fresh ways; and that you’ve been quicker than I in learning to see the beauty of Christmas as it is in your household, instead of expecting an Andy Williams special.

Season's Bleatings

Since the major media outlets seem to have missed it, forgive me for pausing to wish myself a happy blogiversary... Tuesday marked 2 years of filling up this space every week or so. Unfortunately I was unable to celebrate in print, because I was busy living a blog.

Regardless of the obvious charms of this Most Wonderful Time of the Year (not limited to the Andy Williams rendition),there are aspects of this season that are somewhat less generously suffused with Joy to the World. For you this may include the weather, or the shopping, or the ubiquitous song about a grandparent in trouble that dare not speak its name (did you know that the "Elmo" of "Elmo & Patsy" is actually Dr. Elmo? Eleven months of the year, a mild-mannered dentist; the other, he's like Springsteen or something. Although a more apt comparison might be Rick Dees, or even moreso Bobby "Boris" Pickett).

For me, however, the bane of my seasonal existence -- in a close call over that song, and it's too late & it's already stuck in my head and oh, please, Lord, won't you put me out of my misery? -- is Tree Day.

Putting up the Christmas tree is one of those Currier & Ives / Norman Rockwell-type images, and I always thought of it as just one of those things a man's supposed to be able to do -- like changing a tire, fixing stuff around the house, or carving a turkey. Over the years, however, the tree and I have faced off in a series of epic battles.

Once it's found, bought & gotten home, the real fun begins. Now the Experts say you're supposed to cut a little off the bottom; this helps it "drink" better, stay fresher, and not drop all its needles in a big heap on your rug until next week. This frankly poses a dilemma for me. First, it's my wife that has the cool tools, and she leaves them at camp. I, on the other hand, have a saw with a plastic handle and interchangeable blades that my I think my dad bought for me at W.T Grant in about 1975. In a sense, it's the perfect implement for the occasion, since I shouldn't be allowed to have sharp objects when I'm in this kind of mood.

To be honest, better tools wouldn't clinch it for me. Let's just say that back in Junior High, I did better in Bachelor Living (managing to be both a euphemism for and a stereotype of Home Ec) than I did in Shop. Of course, I really had no chance going in -- a shop full of heavy/sharp objects, populated to a large degree with the ... less academically aggressive students ... is not a safe place for a skinny and unpopular "new kid" with glasses, suspected (with some justification) of being a geek.

I'm always wary of whether the tree will balance & stay vertical, so I also use the trunk-trim as a way to level out the bottom as well. This is more effective when I don't cut the wrong direction, as I did a couple years ago. I ended up basically wedging that cut back under the trunk like a doorstop.

That's also why I gave up on the old-fashioned metal tripod stand and got one of those enormous bucket-like plastic ones. The advantage to that is that if worse comes to worst, I can just throw away the tree and decorate the stand, since it's pretty tall all by itself. It's so deep that I had to put a wood block in the bottom to prop up the tree. It took me like a half-hour to scrape such a block out of a scrap 2x4 piece (beavers would've been quicker)... only to find at last that the "well" of the stand is wider at the top than at the bottom, so I had to hack off yet another piece.

Finally, I got the tree essentially upright (I told my wife the reason it looked like it was leaning was that "the trunk isn't straight") and brought it in the house. I was so enervated from the tussle that it's taken me the 2 days since to even get lights on it -- which also ranks well below my top-10 fave holiday chores.

For some reason, I've found myself listing at about 5 degrees from vertical since I started working on the tree. Finally I gave up and admitted to myself that the tree was somewhat less than vertical (Step One: We admitted that we were powerless over shrubbery). It was way too late to try to reset it in the stand, so I did the next best thing.

I took the piece I sliced off the end of my original block and stuck it under the edge of the stand, tipping the stand up & making the tree look reasonably plumb. If you come to visit us over the next few weeks, I hope you enjoy our festive decor -- but please close the front door very gently.

What's in a Name

One day, a little over 8 years ago, I found myself on an airplane, desperately trying to come up with a name. I don't mean "a name I couldn't remember", but a name that had never been named before. We were on a flight to Pennsylvania, rushing to try to get there before our son would be born... and rushing to come up with a name before he was born. I think a lot of first-time parents are unprepared, but at least most of them get more than the 3 weeks' notice or so that we got!

Names are tough; we wanted to find a name we liked, and one with some meaning, but one that was also impervious to stupid nicknames. Or too many nicknames -- consider the decision faced by a Robert, who might also be Bob or Robbie or Rob or Bobby (or Robert). Of course, it can be difficult to go to the other extreme... "Mark" is a tough one to come up with a nickname for.

I always impress on my kids the importance of names, especially calling someone by the name they prefer to use as a sign of respect and value. So of course, we have frequent scraps at our house because our daughter likes to shorten her brother's name; he likes to add something to the end of hers.

The Christmas season -- or more properly, the Advent season -- is also a season of names. One of the familiar Advent Scripture passages, one of the ones that's as much a part of the music of the season as "Joy to the World", is the one from Isaiah that prophesies the many names of the coming Messiah: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.... This past Sunday, we sang, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel".

There's something about that name for Jesus that really gets to me intensely. I have a great collection of Christmas music, and when I hear the "Immanuel" songs, it sometimes chokes me up a little (no tears, of course; I'm way too manly & cool for that). But the very concept that God was so invested in our lives that He came here to be with us... I just find that so profound and moving.

Maybe the best example of that is Our God Is With Us by Steven Curtis Chapman (or see the lyrics here). When he gets to the bridge, and breaks out with "Rejoice, rejoice"... well, I have to confess I'm running up against the limits of my writing skill. That song takes me way beyond myself to a place of worship, joy, and awe at the enormity of what God's done for us.

I should also add that if necessary, you should sell all of your other Christmas music and buy his The Music of Christmas. It's an astonishing meld of the traditional and the contemporary. One of the best things about Advent for me is that I give myself permission to start listening to Christmas music, and that album's always Number 1 (with a shining star) for me.

Throughout this season, keep your ears open for the different names used to identify and describe the Baby who's coming. Make it a goal to discover and meditate on the one that speaks to you the most deeply.

Hold the Boxes

One of the milestone events of my adolescence was the day cable TV came to the North Country. Suddenly a vast universe of TV viewing unfolded before me -- 11 channels, if I recall correctly. Chief among those was Channel 9 from New York (at the time known as WOR), the television home of my beloved New York Mets... the passport to many hours of watching the heroics of such stalwarts as Ron Hodges, Jerry Morales, Tom Hausman, and Mark Bomback.

Later in the evening after the game was over (and everyone else was in bed) Channel 9 presented the Benny Hill Show -- which at the time was considered pretty racy fare, but nowadays would be left in the dust by your average 8 pm sitcom. It was silly & fast-paced, plenty of sight gags, plenty of cute girls mostly standing around (or being chased by Benny), and the teenage me enjoyed it immensely... OK, I suspect the grown-up me would at least get a few chuckles.

I still remember one sketch where Benny played a TV director and the girl playing the actress in the scene -- they never had names -- read her line, as follows: "What's that in the road? A head?" Then Benny as director stepped in and said, "No, no! It's supposed to be, 'What's that in the road ahead?' "

The point, of course, is that inflection, phrasing, emphasis can make all the difference in the world. I found this out to my chagrin from my post of a couple weeks ago. I was attempting to make a point about how, since my wife is a minister, we always have the potential to be moving -- but I feel better-equipped to handle that, if and when it happens. Unfortunately, the way I phrased it made it sound like we were almost certainly moving (already packing boxes, even); I should've known something was up when two people commented on that single sentence!

So in the interests of clarity, I edited that post to make the sentence reflect reality a little better:

There's no way from here we can know when the actual emergency will be, not just a test; but we understand that’s part of the life we’ve chosen (or for which God has chosen us), and we are learning to trust that he’ll give us what we need to make it happen whenever the time comes.

I'm also posting this entry because it's rare enough for someone to read one of my entries once, much less re-reading to catch edits. And also to let you know that if you're saving up cardboard boxes for us, you can take them to your local recycling station.

The Road to 52nd Street

One of the side-effects of reaching my 100th post is that I spent some extra time reviewing all the old ones. I noticed that I've made a number of references to having a song in my head. I'd be interested to know whether this is typical -- although "typical" is not typically something I even shoot for -- because I can assure you that it happens to me way more than I write about it. I don't even want to talk about the 4 a.m. consequences of practicing the Christmas Cantata over and over and over again....

In that case, I knew why that particular song was my nocturnal plague, but sometimes the origin of such a thing is a bit more obscure. So when I found myself singing (yes, aloud -- don't worry, there was no one else within earshot so it doesn't count as hardcore-weird) on the way to the dumpster the other day, as I often do I stopped and thought, "Where did that come from?" And of course my next thought, because this is the way I've wired myself, was: "I wonder if there's a blog in that?" If anything's hardcore-weird, it might be that.

Since it was late in the afternoon, right after I finished working, I was (a) trying to knock out a couple simple chores like taking out the garbage; and (b) musing over what to have for dinner. Conventional wisdom would suggest -- and by "conventional wisdom" I mean the wisdom I'm married to; "suggest" is, of course, a euphemism -- that meals be preplanned on a weekly basis. I tend to be a bit more... improvisational. Not "disorganized", or "procrastinating"; just... "creative". As a result, I often end up applying that creativity in the late afternoon, with a matter of minutes to both plan & begin to execute.

In this case, the stakes were higher: since it was Thanksgiving week, there was a necessity both to clear out the fridge and to avoid putting more stuff in it. Unfortunately, although we had several lefotvers available, I wasn't sure whether it would add up to a meal. Perhaps if I could pad it out a bit...

... I mean, find a way to round out the nutritional and flavor profile, of course. I knew I had a loaf of Vienna bread in the cupboard; maybe in combination with miscellaneous leftovers, I could call it a meal (cautionary tale: I've been doing that a lot recently, due to various scheduling and, well, "creative" constraints -- until finally my son said, "Dad, can we have a real supper tonight?").

Whenever I see Vienna bread, it reminds me of the Billy Joel song, "Vienna", from The Stranger album -- one of the very first albums I ever bought for myself, courtesy of the ubiquitous Columbia House Record Club.

Ordinarily, free-associating over to a song name like that is all it takes to get me singing it, but in this case the beginning of the song didn't come immediately to mind. So casting about in the Billy Joel vault, I came up with the title cut of the next album -- 52nd Street. It's hardly a song at all... more like a coda to the album as a whole. Remember back when there were albums and they went together in some way? 52nd Street is kind of a jazz/blues-influenced album, and the title song is a short (9-line) piece with a bit of New Orleans flavor. If nothing else, I know I can sing 9 lines from memory; I think that's why it seems to surface so readily.

It's not his best song, or album for that matter; if you check the reviews at the Amazon link above, there's a lot of condescending 'nice try' evaluations. The singles from the album were My Life, Honesty, and Big Shot -- in my opinion, the three worst songs on the record. You can see all three videos at his YouTube page, if you miss the 70s or just wonder what the fuss was about (whatever you do, don't go to http://www.billyjoel.com/, which not only crashed my browser 3 times in a row, but also features a photo of him which reminds us all just how l.o.n.g ago 1978 actually was). You might better go get your hands on the album & listen to the cool cuts like Half a Mile Away, Rosalinda's Eyes, and Until the Night.

That's recommendation #1 -- #2 would be to listen to yourself a little in the coming days. When you get one of those "random" thoughts, or songs in your head, take a sec to try to trace it back to the source. It's terrific practice for parenting, since it helps develop your ability to understand what they're thinking & why... and it's the game the whole family can play. You don't even need a playing board or a deck of cards -- just bring your brain.

Metablog: With a Name Like Random Access...

In the mornings around here, the usual TV-viewing fare leans to the Smurfs and Lilo & Stitch, so it was out of the ordinary when I caught a bit of the Today Show not long ago. It only happened because I was on a business trip, itself a rare occurrence; I was having breakfast in the lobby restaurant with my colleagues, a meal distinguished for me by the complete absence of anyone fighting over which blanket they would sit on to eat cereal and watch cartoons.

There was a small flat-panel TV in the corner of the restaurant, and I confess that even though the table talk concerning the meetings ahead was fascinating and insightful, I found my attention straying to the screen every so often. I could scarcely believe my eyes when up popped Willard Scott. Although Willard was gracefully eased out of his regular weather gig lo these eons ago, he inexplicably surfaces every now & again to do his Geezer Bit. In fact, nowadays it even has its own sponsor, Smucker’s. Each oldster gets his or (mostly) her picture framed by a graphic reading, “With a name like…” as Willard, who’s gotta be fairly close to getting his own picture up there, reads off the particulars.

There’s no cyber-equivalent, unfortunately, but today I celebrate a milestone of my own: my 100th post. Back when I started, my stated intention was to post twice a week, so I’m just about exactly a year behind that pace… but it didn’t take me long to discover that one idea a week was a pretty brisk clip for me.

Still, I’m pretty happy with 100 posts in 100 1/2 weeks; I admit there have been occasions when I wrote something just to check off that week (wouldn’t want to disappoint both my regular readers!), but on balance I’ve written when I at least deluded myself that I had something to say.

On the occasion of my centennial (yeah, I know that means 100 years but it’s the best I’ve got), I wanted to give you an update on a few of my previous posts:

• Some time back I wrote a piece about the music on kids’ shows. Some time after that it occurred to me that I had completely forgotten to include the one piece of music that got me thinking about it to begin with:
  Actually there aren't too many finer musical experiences of any kind, if you ask me......
• I discovered the limits on my son’s powers as a human alarm clock: you can’t reset his time. On a previous business trip this summer, I needed to get up at 6 in order to drive to my meeting in time – so of course, the power went out and I awoke at 6:50 with the clock blinking 12:00. So I ended up 20 minutes late for my meeting, plus I woke him up for a change by jumping out of bed and hitting the floor at a dead run.
• In the spring of ’06, I wrote a piece which would’ve been one of my favorites strictly on the basis of how it was constructed… except the punch line was that I was apprehensive that we would be moving in the summer of ’07. We continued on pins & needles more or less throughout the interim, but in the end we were spared, able to remain in what we believe is at least for the time being the best place for us to be. There's no way from here we can know when the actual emergency will be, not just a test; but we understand that’s part of the life we’ve chosen (or for which God has chosen us), and we are learning to trust that he’ll give us what we need to make it happen whenever the time comes.
• At the very beginning of my blog experience, when I still fancied myself the next great internet sportswriter, I did a little piece featuring a bit of haphazard statistical analysis and wound up with a prediction for the Mets’ then-newest slugger, Carlos Delgado. I figured that if he followed the trend of previous Met acquisitions and his own career record, he’d end up batting .281 with 30 home runs & 106 RBIs, and an OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) of .906. The actual retail value of the 2006 season: .265-38-114 (with an OPS of ... .909). I didn’t hit it exactly, but it oughtta be close enough to get me into the Showcase Showdown, at least.
• In the summer of ’06, I wrote about my son’s fascination with Emeril, and my own envy of how easy America’s Favorite Chef has it (actually, I suppose America’s Favorite might be Paula Deen – or at least that’s how the American College of Cardiology just voted). Well, the big fella’s been dethroned from the 7:30 TV timeslot by Tom & Jerry… and as for me, one day in the grocery store I turned a corner to find a display of clean, white kitchen towels calling to me – enough in the package that the laundry schedule doesn’t pose a significant obstacle. I still don’t have a staff to do the prep or cleanup, or even to hand me the towel, but it’s a start.
• Just a few weeks ago, I shared that I was increasing my work hours now that both kids are in school full-time. I’d like to report that’s going great, with the exception of the fact that we get dressed out of the hamper now… oh, and dinner a couple times a week is crackers & cheese.

As I pass into three digits, I have to say it’s still fun most of the time, and there are still a few words of five or more syllables I haven’t managed to work in yet. A couple of people have said stuff like, “You ought to write a book,” which they & I both know is slightly less realistic than my running for president, but nonetheless kinda cool to dream about. I still put too much pressure on myself to publish so anyone looking for new material won’t give up on me (hint, if you haven’t already figured this out: if you come here more often than every 10 days or so, you’re just deluding yourself); I’m even more determined, however, as time goes on to publish not when it’s ”time”, but only when I have something to say.

So thanks to my family, and to America’s hotels, airlines, and theme parks, for providing me with such rich material. And thanks to anyone reading; if you’ve read even one of these posts, you’ve done me a great honor. I hope you’ll keep reading & I can repay you with a laugh or an insight; failing in that, please feel free to take advantage of my 100% Money-Back Guarantee.

The Sermon I Actually Did Give

I occasionally tend to pontificate in this space on matters of faith. It's pretty safe; I have close to a self-selected audience, and they (you) are not likely to call me out even if I say something stupid or obviously false. However, not long ago, I was asked to do it for real: stand up in front of my actual home congregation and deliver an actual sermon. What follows is substantially the message I gave, edited a bit for differences in audience and medium.

If you've read this space with any consistency, it won’t surprise you to know that music speaks to me as much as, or even more than, the spoken word. In fact, I’ve always had a secret dream to do an entire worship service with songs: songs for the prayers, the Scripture, the affirmation of faith, and the sermon itself. I thought that might come off just a tiny bit presumptuous and self-centered, so instead I based the service I did and the accompanying message around the Bible’s songbook – the Psalms. The "official" Scripture passage I used was Psalm 139:1-18.

Many of the Psalms are hymns of praise to God, so they’re a great inspiration for meditating on God’s greatness. I once learned a mnemonic device that helps me pray: ACTS, which stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. And although it can be tempting to skip straight to Supplication and start asking God for stuff… and it’s relatively easy to thank Him for what He’s done… I don’t think it’s any accident that this form of prayer, like worship itself, starts with Adoration.

Adoration means praising God for who He is – for His nature and not specifically what He’s done. So this piece highlights just a few of the attributes I understand to be part of God’s nature. As always, you're encouraged to enjoy the home version of our game: come up with your own list.

Many years ago, J.B. Phillips – who may be better-known as the writer of the Phillips translation of Scripture – wrote a book called, “Your God Is Too Small”. His theory is that a lot of us get a picture of God in childhood and never really grow out of it. Do you know anyone who sees God as a smiling old white-haired man – content to let the kids go play but not really invested in their lives? How about the severe, irritable God who peers out the window of heaven waiting for someone to do something wrong so he can lower the boom? Or the gentle, mild-mannered God who really just loves everyone and can’t bear to hold them accountable for anything?

Phillips’ point is that it’s hard to be passionate about worshiping a God like that. For God to be relevant in our lives, He has to be big enough that we want to respect and honor Him. It always strikes me that that’s the original meaning of “awesome”: not just “really cool”, but “inspiring a sense of awe.” “Wonderful” means “full of wonders.” One of my favorite quotes comes from Voltaire: “If God created man in His own image, then man has more than returned the favor.” Life is hard, and death is hard, and God will be no help to us if we confine Him to the limits of our own imaginations.

In fact, when I’m afraid of the future, it comforts me to remember that God is entirely outside of time and space. Talk about beyond the limits of your imagination…but David understood this. He says in verse 8, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there,” and in verse 11, “darkness is as light to you.” I think that speaks to the way that God is unrestricted by time and space.

Think back to the story of Moses in front of Pharaoh. Moses is about to face the Pharaoh and tell him, “Let my people go!” So he says to God, “If I get up in front of him, he’s going to ask me who sent me – what do I say then?” Do you remember the answer? “Just tell him I Am sent you.” What does that mean? Some of what it means to me is that God is always present tense. As verse 5 says, “You hem me in, behind and before.” So I don’t have to worry about what lies ahead; not only will God be with me when I get there, but He’s already there. He already exists in that future time: it’s all present-tense to Him.

Now if you want the perfect example of good-news/bad-news, take a look at verse 1: “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.” I can’t help but think sometimes that this would be a great place for a smaller God. A God who was too small to know me completely or to be with me always would certainly come in handy once in awhile. There are plenty of times I really wish God didn’t know what I was doing or what’s going on in my head, and I think that’s why some people have such a small God. He’s a lot less threatening.

Of course, what David is trying to convey is that God, as vast and awesome as He is, knows each of us personally, individually. Sports Illustrated has a feature every week called “Pop Culture Grid” where they ask professional athletes some semi-serious questions. We’re supposed to “play along at home” to see how well their answers match ours. One recent question was, “Who’s the most famous person in your cell?” A professional basketball player said, “Michael Jordan” – which surprised me, since he wasn’t very good; an NFL defensive back said, “My mama.” David’s really trying to tell us that we can be in regular touch with the most famous Person there ever was, and He wants to take all of our calls. Remember the Israelites were surrounded by other nations that worshiped remote gods, even inanimate objects – those people knew they had no shot of having a personal relationship with a chunk of stone or a block of wood. They spent their lives making sacrifices to try to avoid being struck down, so this was not just a theoretical concept for them.

Even a lot of people who believe God doesn’t really care about us can affirm Him as Creator – that would be kind of the Toymaker brand of small God. He builds us, he winds us up, he lets us go; after that, whatever happens, happens. But listen again: is that who this sounds like? "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

That’s not an assembly-line God; that’s a God who has His hand in our lives from before we were born. I don’t think any of us would get up on a Sunday morning and go to church if we didn’t believe that, but what do His blueprints for us look like?

Genesis, of course, says that He created man in His own image – “male and female created He them,” as it says in the King James Version. You will note immediately that this means, among other things, that God is not “He” at all, since he created female in His own image. I have used “He” throughout this piece and much of my writing, and I hope that has not posed an obstacle to anyone. When the English language develops a pronoun that works in this situation, I’ll use it!

More importantly, although we’re obviously not identical to God, being created in His image means that we have some portion of His qualities wired into us: the ability to love; the potential for wisdom; the capacity to forgive. I can find myself excusing my faults by saying, “That’s just the way I am. I was born this way – do you expect me to change?” Well, I was born with all that image-of-God in me too… so I don’t have much excuse not to show it.

There’s been a lot of debate recently – I’ve been reading about it in Newsweek – about whether belief in God makes any sense. Bestselling books have been written about why believers are sinply deluded. Now scientists have discovered that there’s a part of the human brain that induces people to search for God, to seek something higher than themselves to worship. The conclusion they draw from this is that’s why people believe in God, because they’re biologically more or less forced to. I think a better conclusion might be that God made us that way – He designed us to want to seek Him.

I came to a realization about giving not long ago. It’s not obvious from observing a 5- and 8-year-old around the house, but God has wired us to be givers. When you get down to it, it doesn’t make much sense that giving money to the church should be satisfying, or that tithing should be more satisfying (try it and see!). But God has made us in such a way that when we give, we feel pleasure in our souls.

My son has a bedtime ritual with me in which he asks me questions. It’s always “Who made…?” It could be “Who made my curtains?” or “Who made roads?” or “Who made Legos?” Sometimes he asks, “Who made the moon and the stars?” And he knows the answer already, but then I have the holy privilege of telling him, “God made the moon & the stars, and the sun, and everything in our world. He made them beautiful, and you know why? Because He knew it would make us happy.” Because He built us so that it would make us happy.

When I think about the way God made us, though, I keep coming back to a C.S. Lewis quote:

A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything
else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the
fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to
feed on. There is no other.

A friend told me a story about getting stranded on the road. She was driving along and the car sputtered, and jerked, and then just died. She was mystified because she had just stopped at the gas station. In fact, she had the pump to herself, kind of off to the side; she’d had some trouble getting the nozzle into the tank but by golly she made it go….

As it turned out, the reason it was so hard to fit the nozzle – and the reason the car died – was that she had used the diesel pump. And a gasoline engine doesn’t run real well on diesel; in fact, it won’t run at all until you apply several hundred dollars to it.

Just like C.S. Lewis said, God made us to run on Himself. We can try to fill that God-shaped hole with a lot of things: sports, drugs, relationships, career, even church. But the engine will never run as smoothly and powerfully as it was designed to unless we give it the fuel it was created to be filled with.

I’ve said this before: we’re all theologians. After all, theology is the study of who God is. Everything we think and do and say every day bears witness to who we believe God to be and whether we feel He’s worthy to take a central role in our lives. My prayer is that each of us will be tuned in to God’s presence and work in our lives, and worship Him for who He is.

Rubik's Hair

I have noticed a resurgence lately, utterly inexplicable to me, of Rubik's cube. I was a teenager the first time around; I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now.

As I was considered a bright kid -- the best part of high school is probably the fact that your intelligence is judged almost solely by grades -- and had a certain affinity for games, it was probably inevitable that the cube and I would go a couple rounds. I can tell you for sure, though, that I never laid a glove on it.

I read an article not long ago about some of the top solvers. In fact, one of them was on Beauty and the Geek last year. And it was one of the beauties, as it happens... no, of course that's a lie. Rubik's cube has become one of the reliable geek-indicators, on par with the legendary pocket protector, a fondness for Dungeons and Dragons, and a record of regular attendance at Star Wars conventions.

This guy's claim to fame is that he can solve it in something like 10 seconds with his hands behind his back. My claim is that even if I'm looking directly at it, it takes me more than 10 seconds just to get the rows lined up enough so I can turn the thing... although for me, there's no hurry since I know it's not going to do any good anyway.

I actually picked one up just the other day, but I ended up setting it down and backing away slowly. I've got enough puzzles in my life as it is...

... for example: parenting itself is puzzling, and parenting a little girl is filled with mysteries. I may have mentioned this before, but once and for all: males and females may be equal, but there is no way they're identical.

As mysterious as her personality might be, perhaps the puzzle most terrifying to me is her hair. I've come to understand the way she thinks, but I don't think I'll ever get the hang of hairstyles. We have a couple of drawersful of various hair-holding devices... I was going to list them all for the proverbial comic effect, until I realized I don't really know what any of them are called or how they're used. I do know that even rubber bands are a challenge for me; even the tiniest ones have to be doubled over to hold a ponytail, but it's really hard to get that second loop around... And hairbands! You know, those plastic semicircles -- my wife says, "OK, just give her a hairband, then." I can't even get that on right; for some reason both the band & the loop stick up and she ends up looking like she's wearing one of those rabbit-ears antennas with the UHF loop in the middle.

It's really all I can do just to brush her hair, what with all the whining and crying... and she's not very happy about it either. She has long, fine hair that in the morning ends up looking like Charlie Brown's kite string. Apparently there's some kind of Secret Girl Trick in handling this stuff that I never mastered -- despite the fact that I've gone through periods (known as "high school" and "college") when my hair length was close to hers. What can I say, late 70s-early 80s, mirrors hadn't been invented yet.

Mornings around here can be fairly chaotic; we've even voluntarily increased the degree of difficulty by watching another 5-year-old before school 3 days a week. My plan goes like this:

Me:

• get up with the kids first
• make breakfasts (no easy task since my son decided he needed three each morning)
• make lunches (no easy task since my daughter is essentially a conscientious objector with regard to sandwiches)
• pack bookbags
• arbitrate disputes
• get teeth brushed
• oh yeah -- get my own shower & clothes & breakfast to get myself ready for work
• take them to the bus stop

Her:

• pick out clothes
• brush the girl's hair

Seems about even to me.

A Matter of Some Interest

My memory is far from foolproof -- it was, after all, so Very, Very Long Ago -- but as I recall it, when I went to elementary school they had pretty much all the supplies we needed. It's true that I would not have dreamed of showing up without a well-stocked pencil box, and I fondly remember the binders, notebooks, and TrapperKeepers I used (as a matter of fact, I still have a couple of my grade-school binders. But then, doesn't everyone?). However, when it came to general classroom supplies... as I remember it, they were generally supplied by the classroom.

So I was caught a bit off-guard, even taken aback, when I read my daughter's list of requested supplies for kindergarten. Absent were the pens, pencils, and crayons of days gone by -- in fact, we were specifically enjoined not to send any of these. No, the bulk of her list consisted of: four bottles of hand sanitizer, two boxes of Kleenex, and five packages of baby wipes.

It's not really surprising when Wal-Mart experiences empty shelves at the peak of the August School-Supply Shopping Season... but I really wasn't expecting it to be the shelf that (formerly) held the store-brand baby wipes.

Looking on the bright side, she has no excuse for not being cleaner than she generally is at home.

Of course, budgets are particularly tight for public institutions all over, and all the more so in a town where the original school budget was essentially voted down because the chair of the school board was annoying. We seem to find ourselves targets of "supplemental" fundraising on a regular basis (unfortunately, the "why are we paying taxes?" argument is closed off to me; since our home is owned by the church, we... um... don't actually pay school tax).

The first scam... er, project... of the school year was the well-known Magazine Subscription Sale. This would of course suggest that we send our 7- and 5-year-olds door-to-door through the neighborhood... although it could be problematic, especially considering most of those homes also have their own students selling magazine subscriptions.

Naturally, the sales drive kicks off with an assembly to hype the kids up about all the Fabulous Prizes they'll win, so it's incumbent upon us to at least make a good-faith effort to scare up some sales... and you know what they say, charity begins at home.

I'd really like it to begin somewhere else, but it may be be poor form for my wife to solicit among her parishioners (many of whom, again, already have kids or grandkids); and since I work remotely, I don't think passing the flyer around my office will do the trick.

Unfortunately, our own options are limited by the fact that we already receive at least one copy of every periodical printed in English (with the exception, of course, of the ones which were traditionally mailed in plain brown wrappers). Or so I thought.... Browsing through the list to find publications with which to stick our friends and family, my wife discovered one she thought I needed: Family Handyman.

I read something recently that said anyone using the phrase "wrong on so many levels" should be forced to list them, so allow me to elucidate:

• After all, she's the one with the ideas and the ambition, and the brand-new tools, so why is it I'm the designated fix-it guy anyway?
• Granted my maintenance skills are largely confined to changing batteries and driving picture hooks into the wall, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of an entire subscription devoted to remedying (or remodeling) my shortcomings.
• In any case, I'm pretty satisfied with my skills, such as they are. I consider myself the Ty Pennington of assembly-required furniture. And always remember the Biblical admonition, "From him to whom much has been given, much will be expected."

When I expressed my... lack of enthusiasm... for the notion, she quickly shifted gears and informed me that it didn't have to be home maintenance -- what about something like American history? She really thought it would be beneficial for me to branch out, grow, develop more interests....

I had to really take a pause and a deep breath on that one, lest my voice rise like an American Idol contestant approaching the big finish. There are a lot of things I ought to develop: I should develop a richer spiritual life; it would be great to develop some physical fitness; I daresay there are even some photos around I need to develop. I really don't need any more interests -- to be more interesting, perhaps, but I have about 3 more interests than I can handle as it is:

• reading -- books, magazines, websites
• music -- playing, listening, singing in the choir
• sports -- watching, playing, reading about, fantasy baseball
• puzzles -- crossword or Sudoku
• church -- choir, PowerPoint production

and of course, computer-related pursuits, including a blog you may be familiar with.

In fact, what I'm really interest-ed in is a way to manage all this, plus a family and a... oh yeah, job -- in the allotted 168 per week....

Drive Time

Although we have long since been sucked into the vortex of Minivan Nation, it was not always thus. We were actually looking for a new car at the time we learned we'd be adopting our son; we ended up carrying through our original plan and buying a Corolla. It was a wonderfully dependable, durable, and economical car; but at that time, at least, the Corolla was approximately the size of a twin bed.

That was fairly adequate with one small child... but with 2 of them, less small every day, it felt like it was approaching "couch" size. Then add in a (generous) pinch of sibling conflict, and it becomes a rolling phone booth.

So time once again to do the car-searching thing -- keeping in mind that one of the reasons I like Toyotas is because I have to go car-shopping that much less often. Here's the thing I really don't understand: suppose I walk into the grocery store tomorrow and steak is $3.99 a pound. So I pick out a 2-pound steak... what do you think would happen if I took it to the checkout and said, "Tell you what, I'll give you $7 for it"? Suppose further that the store had paid $5 for the steak, so they were secretly willing to sell it for $6. So even if I save a buck, I'm really spending a dollar too much. Doesn't that kind of sum up the car-buying experience?

It didn't take us too long to narrow down our search to a few, and before long (at least for me; note that another key reason I don't like car-shopping is that at the end a decision is required, and a decision costing thousands of dollars at that) we had settled on... another Toyota. Surprise!

This time we opted for a Camry, "Motor Trend's (perennial) Car of the Year". It's dependable and smooth -- and it's also bigger than my first apartment. My goal was to get the kids far enough away that I couldn't quite hear them, or at least to get them far enough away from each other that they could inflict only superficial wounds.

Last week I got to take it on the first real Road Trip; you wouldn't want me to take the van to Boston, would you? It was a little like driving my living room down the Mass Pike (as opposed to the van, which is more like being a package in one of those US Mail semis).

I even got to do one thing I can never do in my own living room: listen to the radio broadcast of the Mets game. In my childhood, before there was such a thing as cable TV, the only way to keep up with the Mets on a daily basis was radio... even later, as I went out on my own, and the Mets emerged from the funk of the late 70s-early 80s, I spent many hours in the aforementioned tiny apartment pacing and listening to the ballgame.

Local (upstate) radio stations don't carry the Mets any more, but there's something about a car radio that allows you to bring in those faraway AM stations... so I got to enjoy the flashback of listening to the game.

Unfortunately, it seemed that would be the only enjoyable part. The Mets, already fully engaged in blowing their seemingly insurmountable division lead, were in the midst of receiving a thrashing from the more-or-less hapless Washington Nationals -- and neither for the first or last time, at that. As I approached Boston, the score was 10-3 Washington, heading to the bottom of the 9th.

Then a single, a strikeout, a walk... and like a bolt from the blue, a 3-run homer. Suddenly it's 10-6, and after another hit, a pitching change. Then another hit, and a walk, and a double, and guess what -- it's 10-9.

All this time, of course, I'm still heading west -- and after the Nats change pitchers yet again, and the winning run comes to the plate, I reach my exit. Now, the Copley Plaza exit is essentially a tunnel/underpass that extends for some distance, and maybe you remember what going into a tunnel does to AM reception!

I hustled through the tunnel with my heart in my throat, but by the time I was out the other side, the second out had already occurred. By the time I turned the wrong direction off the exit, the game was over. As it turned out, it was a microcosm of the rest of the week: in suspense till the very last second before ending in crushing disappointment.

On the other hand, the ride was very comfortable (OK, physically) and I did get great gas mileage.....

The Sermon I'll Never Give

This summer, my niece was needling me a bit for not blogging about her graduation ("I must not be very important to you!"). Reflecting on that made me wonder, "What might I have written?" From there, I started to wonder what I would say if I had the chance to address the graduates... which in turn led me to think about sermons.

As a pastor's spouse, I have been called upon to deliver a message a couple of times -- in fact I'm doing one in a few weeks -- and I find it to be a tightrope act. I may be overly sensitive, but I always feel the onus of expectations:

• Some people feel that being married to a minister gives me extra qualifications, at least an extension phone on the God hotline;
• Some are suspicious that I'm secretly up there to be her mouthpiece (maybe even to say things she's afraid to say);
• Some will discount me entirely because I don't have a seminary education.

In any of these cases I feel a burden not to stray into Forbidden Territory -- I try to be commonsense, not "theological", and to foster a sense of community rather than calling people out. I'm willing to be a bit transparent and share my own struggles in an effort to encourage folks to look honestly at themselves.

I've often fantasized about what I would say if magically dropped into a place where I could hit and run with no repercussions of any kind (however, I should make clear up front that I am talking about issues that plague every church I've ever experienced, or for that matter any church you could name) . This really won't be organized into a sermon -- it may have more or less than 3 points, I might have to cherry-pick several disparate Scripture verses, and there's no poem at the end (there might not even be a humorous anecdaote at the beginning), but I think these would be the topics:

• The church needs to stop being just another Neighborhood Organization and start being the Body of Christ, "who, being in very nature God, made himself nothing... he humbled himself and became obedient..." (from Phil. 2:6-8). I am continually frustrated with people who are part of a church and get in a snit when things don't go their way, or leave when they get their feelings hurt, or just generally act as if everything should revolve around them. I have seen plenty of Church Folks who were just as self-important as any jest-set celebrity you could name, and many who were grudge-holders to put the Hatfields and McCoys to shame. If you want to know why our pews get less crowded, one reason is that people don't have to make the extra effort of getting up early on Sunday morning for the privilege of being treated the way they often are within our doors. And for my next act, I'll be going out and applying the above verses to my marriage, and all my relationships....
• The church is broke (or at least many are struggling financially) because we don't understand the basis for giving. I believe that many in our pews toss in a couple bucks a week because for them, it's equivalent to the "suggested donation" -- or even the admission charge -- at a community fundraiser or entertainment event. There are others who decide, "Until my church, and my pastor, do things my way, they won't get a dime of my money." What they fail to acknowledge is that it's not my church or my money. Both are God's, and nothing makes more sense than to take a significant portion of His money and give it to His church. We don't give to support the church we love, even though we do love it; we don't give in appreciation of the pastor (although I hope you do appreciate him/her, and I would say the same regardless of marital status :-); we don't give to fund worthwhile ministries, though I pray your church does exciting and Spirit-filled things. We give because God gave, and continues to give, to us; because we're grateful for His blessings; because it belongs to Him and it's only right to give back; and also because He has wired us to be generous beings and to have wonderful and joy-filled things happen in our souls when we do give.

I can't help but reflect wistfully on the original New Testament church, which is described as "one in heart and mind" and giving "to anyone as he had need." And what was the punchline? "More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number." (See Acts 2-5).

Cleaning Out

I've made no secret of the fact that I've been all about the reality shows this summer. Frankly, there's not that much choice: summer viewing alternatives are baseball, game shows, repeats, or the kind of shows variously described as "gritty" or "quirky"... and none of the above score highly in the rankings around here (keeping in mind that in a group of two, the only "majority" vote is unanimous).

I always postscript the bit about reality shows with the bit about, "but only the quality ones." I should point out that even PBS does reality shows; what's more Quality than that? As a fan of the Quality Reality subgenre -- I pledge, no Flavor Flav here -- I'm already looking forward to the next season of Project Runway; till it gets here I was interested to check out Tim Gunn's Guide to Style.

If you're not a fan, Project Runway is a contest for aspiring fashion designers, and Tim Gunn (a professor at the Parsons School of Design) is the resident mentor and den mother who dispenses sage advice (often saving the contestants from themselves). He's fascinating to watch; he projects such an aura of warmth and caring, and he's the living embodiment of the phrase "constructive criticism".

His new show is a weekly fashion makeover: helping style-challenged women find a look that works for who they are. In the "preview" episode, he dealt with a 41-year-old mother/professional (which sounded vaguely familiar) who was trying to dress much younger, with extremely embarrassing results.

She was also holding on to a dress she wore when she was 21. She had no intention of wearing it again, and it didn't even fit with the rest of her misbegotten wardrobe, but she was keeping it because it represented her youth. Tim eventually convinced her that she wouldn't move forward with The New Her until she let go of the old her, and the dress/talisman.

The show really came home to me the other day at the recycling center. The weekend before we had been cleaning out a storage shed at camp -- OK, she was cleaning; I was sorting through "my stuff" As Directed -- when we came across 2 boxes of books I've been hauling around for 10 years.

They were math textbooks, a remnant of my previous teaching career; the cliche' is "a previous life", but really not that much of an exaggeration. It was, after all, 10 years, not to mention 3 homes and 2 states. I hung onto them for so long because...

Sorry to say I'm at a loss for a punchline there. I have no idea why. It's not like I was going to wake up one day and say, "You know what? I take it all back, I really should be a teacher," although with my dearth of imagination, if I failed at this career, it's unlikely I'd be able to think up a third one.

I had also kept a lot of papers, tests, projects, and notes from my college and graduate math classes. These of course were fragile, inscribed as they were on papyrus with a quill pen dipped in the juice of crushed berries, but I looked through a few nonetheless. In so doing, I discovered something perhaps astonishing, at minimum disheartening:

I was a lot smarter back then.

I found stuff, written in my handwriting, that I had clearly understood at that time -- material that to my 2007 eyes might as well have been written in [insert incomprehensibility cliche' here]. I should hasten to add, none of the profound stuff came from my teaching career; I spent most of that teaching 0-level courses (that's a zero). I told a friend that just the other day and she said, "I didn't even know they had 0-level courses." Oh yes, yes they do; believe, and tremble.

Obviously I haven't wrestled with higher-level math for a number of years, and I'm sure that if I just immersed myself for awhile I'd be right back blah blah blah yeah sure you would.

I think maybe I spent too many years with a subscription to TV Guide, and too much time talking to 3-year-olds (and have you ever seen a Strawberry Shortcake video??? I lose 10 IQ points every time I hear the theme song). No, my friends, that ship has sailed for ever and ever.

As always, I have no intention of being unduly self-effacing. I can still count my change at the checkout, and I have held a job which requires me to interact more or less equally with fearsomely bright adults. And I do have 90+ pieces of evidence that I can write a coherent, albeit over-punctuated, English sentence in a style best described as witty-ish. But I can say with a comfortable degree of accuracy that my days of aspiring to be "intellectual" are in all likelihood past and gone.

So that's how I found myself standing in front of a dumpster (recycling container, please; I'm not trying to fill up the landfill) emptying two cardboard boxes of old texts and even older papers and notes. It became for me almost a ceremony of laying aside the past and embracing who I am now: a middle-aged guy, wife & 2 kids, good job; fairly well-read, semi-informed, not a Nobel-prize-winning mathematician... but I'd like to think smart enough from most angles.

Fall Guy

Fall is one of those typical times of transition. It's back-to-school time, a time in a lot of families where some of its members have to sort of step up and take on new responsibilities -- move on to the next level. One day you only have to focus for a few hours, 3 days a week; seemingly overnight you have to adjust to a longer day AND everyday.

I'm speaking, of course, about myself.

Since our son was born, way back in the previous millenium (!), I have been working part-time -- actually, if you're scoring along at home, there was only one two-year period (1997-99) when I worked a conventional 40-hour week, but that may be a subject for another day. I went down to 30 hours at that time; then, after our daughter was born, we moved here, and my wife went back to full-time, I dropped to 20 hours. I've been working half-time since spring '03 and spending many, many hours with the kids and/or "managing the household".

Well, the household will still need managing, I suppose -- but suddenly there are many fewer kid-hours, as my daughter is off to kindergarten. So there isn't much demand for childcare during the school day.

I then am presented with two options: (1) increase my blog-posting frequency, intensify my piano practice, maybe start exercising, and fit in an occasional nap; or (2) increase my work hours. As you can guess, both options hold a certain level of appeal. Naturally, I'm also mindful that the former alternative, with its cachet of "too much free time", is probably going to imply as well an increased emphasis on the household management aspect.

In the end, I'm choosing to be inspired by my daughter. After all, in preschool she's been going 3 days a week for an abbreviated day, and now she's stepping up to five full days a week. And... so am I. Well, not "full" in the... you know... "working full-time" sense -- but starting in a week and a half, whenever the kids are in school, I'll be squirreled away in my cave-like space toiling for the greater good of A Major Multinational Corporation.

I'm certainly not going to object to the increased paycheck, and my co-workers won't object to my increased availability: I miss a lot of meetings and trainings just because "oops, that's not one of my days in the office." Sometimes they even end up covering for me, which is just really unpleasant for all concerned.

Not only that, but do you know that sensation you get when you come back from vacation? For one thing, you have a million things to catch up on: mail, meetings you got scheduled into while you weren't looking, projects that are in a whole different place than the last you knew. But besides that, don't you get a feeling that you're starting from scratch, sorta relearning your job?

I have that sensation every week. I leave work on Thursday at 3:15 and I don't come back till Tuesday at 8 (i.e. 4 1/2 days), so Tuesday morning is always "What do I actually do, again?" time.

I'm hoping that altering my work schedule will do more than just screw up my chore schedule -- it'll enable me to maintain a little continuity and momentum, and diminish that sort of jetlagged sensation. Maybe I'll even get better at my job! After all, as one of my favorite sages wrote, "Eighty percent of success is showing up."

I'm not sure, but I think that means I'll be 32% further ahead of the game.

Top Microwaver

As summertime wanes, I find that on occasion there are evenings that pass without the TV ever being turned on -- an act (or non-act, I guess) which, if committed in my Home of Origin, would have been grounds for an immediate call to the Primary Care Physician (actually, we didn't have a PCP in those days, just a "doctor". Who was a guy wearing a white coat who had been to medical school, and who on occasion could actually be persuaded to come to your house. But, seemingly inevitably, I digress).

A high percentage of the time it is on, you will find it tuned to SNY, the television home of the Mets -- with the sound down, so as not to assault the ears of the more baseball-averse among us. But on Wednesdays, even in the late innings of a close game, when the digital clock reaches 4 digits, the channel is always changed to Bravo for this week's installment of Top Chef.

This despite the fact that my program choice elicits scarcely more enthusiasm from the rest of the family than baseball. No, it's all about me; I'm not even entirely sure why, but I do love me some Top Chef.

It's not an enormous surprise; I have a documented fondness for what might be described as the higher class of reality shows -- that is, the ones where people must demonstrate some sort of ability. Still, my predilection for TC is a bit peculiar in light of the fact there's no way I'd ever eat anything they make.

Top Chef dishes are always filled with (to me, at least) esoteric ingredients from all over the world in unpredictable combinations. Any one of them would violate my First Law of Food: I never eat anything that has to be explained.

This belief is also tested spectacularly by our yearly purchase of the Entertainment Book. Since I love to eat, and avoid cooking, and practice frugality, the E-Book is a perennial in our household. I always more than get back the yearly fee in savings -- although left unasked is the question of how many of those outings would have been eschewed entirely in the absence of an opportunity to "save money".

There's a section of the book that's printed on heavier paper, with fancier fonts and so on down the line. It's called the "fine dining" section, and it's filled with all the places that serve Top Chef-ish fare. There's a printed Menu Sampler for each venue, including prices calculated to give someone of my philosophy more than a moment's pause (or even worse: "Market Price", which I suspect is menu-ese for "How much have you got on you?").

Mind you, I can be induced to crack open the billfold for good value. I can pay the price when it's warranted... but it never comes to that, because it's the menus themselves that frighten me away. There are just some words I never want to see on a menu:

• reduction
• demiglace
• fennel
• balsamic
• confit
• chutney

and other words I really, really like to see:

• fried
• pan-fried
• deep-fried
• cheese (or even better, "cheeses")
• Alfredo

I'm just not bred for the gourmet experience; I'm more at home with Friday's or Applebee's (or for that matter Pizza Hut or KFC (mmmm, fried chicken)). We went out to dinner recently for our 20th anniversary. She got dressed up in the Little Black Dress and heels -- "expensive restaurant" written all over her. We ended up at a BBQ place called Everglades. The food was delicious... although we were seated at a picnic table, under a tent (no candlelight!). She didn't sprain an ankle walking across the grass, fortunately, but she was a little taken aback at the ambience, approximately 1.5 steps up from the snack bar at the Little League field.

It's no different at home. I am the Top Chef around here, more or less by default; I enjoy cooking but I'm never going to be trolling through gourmet markets or devouring (so to speak) the latest cookbooks. I've always believed that the four basic food groups are meat, pasta, cheese/cream/butter, and frozen food.

OK, so my repertoire is somewhat circumscribed. Truthfully, if it were up to me, I'd probably rotate somewhere around 15-20 dishes, none of which require poaching or mincing, or fresh mint, or cilantro, or shiitake mushrooms. And if I were cooking solely for myself, I could probably alternate my favorites (chicken BBQ; Tortellini Alfredo with Chicken) every other day, mix in the occasional dinner out for a steak or a pizza, and be completely content.

At least for 6 weeks or so ... as I understand it, none of those menu items is available in the CCU (nor, for that matter, the CTU).

I'm probably fortunate that I'm not cooking for one; my kids prevent me from doing meat 7 days a week, and my wife prompts me to mix in some fruit or vegetables once in awhile. I think I've brought my menus a little closer to balanced... at heart, though, I'm still deeply suspicious of anything that contains ingredients.

Theology for Dummies: Sin-cerely Yours

So I've been thinking a lot about sin lately.

It's just vaguely possible that came out wrong, so let me come at it from a different angle. A lot of different inputs, including some reading and a Casting Crowns concert, have me meditating a bit on the nature of sin.

I'll mention first, as I have before, that Mark Hall of Casting Crowns has an amazing gift for boiling down the Christian life -- whether in a song or in his remarks from the stage -- to a phrase that goes straight to your heart. Well, OK, mine. Tell me if this is the way it is for you: when someone says something that's true (not just "factual", but a truth about God, about life, about something that matters), I can almost hear a little "ding" in my head. My belief, or at least my prayer, is that that represents God's gift of discernment in me. I don't think it's just me grooving on something I already agree with, because it's not always a message that makes me happy. Anyway, I find that almost everything Mark Hall says or sings sets off that little bell.

At the concert he was talking about sin -- which in itself is pretty remarkable; not the usual concert fodder, or for that matter talked about much anywhere in the Christian community. A lot of us would much rather hear how much God loves us (a lot of times with the sort of hidden implication that therefore what we do doesn't matter all that much).

But even that thought may lead us off in the wrong direction. Because although I understood this in my heart and I've probably even expressed it as some sort of significant insight of my own in the past, at the concert it struck me again and as if for the first time: sin has very little to do with what you "do" or the "rules" you might break, whether consciously or unconsciously (although one of my basic principles contends that we rarely do wrong unconsciously -- we usually look the wrongness right in the eye and choose to do it anyway, often with the help of a rationalization process that puts our "everyday" imaginations to shame. No, wait; that's just me... nobody else does that).

No (if you remember the original point before the parentheses started sprouting), the real definition of sin is anything that interferes with your relationship with God. Anything that takes your attention away from Him, anything that makes you less likely to listen to His voice, anything that takes priority.

So that can be a rule-breaking kind of behavior; anything we do that we know God explicitly doesn't want us to do -- and again, we usually do know... right? -- does move us a little farther away. Listening to that other voice not only makes the Original Voice seem less important, it also (I think) makes us a lot less eager to spend time with the Speaker. Again, probably just me... but I'd just as soon not be in the presence of Absolute Goodness when I haven't been very good.

But there's a mess of other things that are plenty wonderful that can take me away from focusing on God: jobs, family activities, blogging, church.... Yup, even church activities can make you so busy, and make you emphasize the wrong things. People who are "pillars of the church" are often so invested in making the church "work" as an organization -- and believe me, somebody has to think about those things -- that it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that it's actually one part of the Body of Christ and has higher expectations, literally, for how it behaves.

For me, I'm very involved in the "production" of worship: I have several roles in the music ministry and I help produce the worship PowerPoints. Even more than that, though, I've been occupied for so long with thoughts about How Worship Works that my first thought in any service is, how is this service going? Any glitches? What do we need to talk about fixing? How does that font/color scheme look on the screen? Is everyone singing? Maybe we need to not use this one again....

Matt Redman is a worship leader and top Christian musician who ran into a similar conundrum: he was so concerned with making the music performance perfect that he was forgetting the purpose of worship -- to meet God in person, to experience and enjoy Him, to ... um... worship. He found he needed to stop doing music for awhile in order to meet God afresh, and out of that came his classic song, Heart of Worship.

So I guess my point is that a lot of things get piled up between me and the view of God from here. Some of them are obvious, although no easier to eradicate; others are seemingly benign but can sneak into the way. I want to make sure I'm on the alert for both kinds of obstacles and concentrate on my first task: keep that pathway clear so I can see him and hear Him.

Party Affiliation

When our daughter turned 5 this summer, we let her choose three little friends to invite and we put on a "Pirate Party" here at the house; she's fascinated by pirates, for some reason. I'll freely admit that the whole affair was designed by my wife: we had bandannas and eye patches for the kids, a treasure hunt and some other pirate-y games, plus of course the fully-licensed Pirates of the Caribbean cake. I thought it was a pretty slick affair, all the way around, and the kids seemed to have a good time.

Although the spouse was definitely the producer, director and scriptwriter, I didn't get off totally scot-free. In fact, it followed the pattern of a lot of our projects around here:

1. wife hatches Clever Scheme in her head; it percolates for days or even weeks
2. she spends lots of time running around buying and otherwise assembling the necessary elements
3. at the last moment, I suddenly receive a list of tasks (OK, usually scut) that must be carried out in the last X hours before the event happens
4. then and only then do I find out, more or less piecewise, the true scope of The Grand Plan....

Oh well, I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm never going to be the visionary half of this partnership (can you sense it's hard enough for me to come up with a blog idea weekly?). And while it can be a bit stressful to be just part of the staff, in the end we did manage to execute a decent party for a handful of 5-year-olds.

This week one of the guests returned the favor and she got to attend his party... at a local family fun center. Think Chuck E. Cheese except backwards: instead of a pizza place with a game room attached, a recreation facility with a snack bar. The group of kids -- and I didn't get a count, but clearly way more than three! -- were treated to a big climbing/sliding facility with ball cannons, a laser tag arena, an arcade (with tokens supplied by the host), and a party room with pizza and cake. I picked up a flyer: the basic party starts at $179.

I can tell you that we didn't spend $179 on our Pirate Party... but I thought our treasure map drawn with markers on a piece of paper bag was pretty cool.

It seems to me that the ante's been raised these days. When the kids were in preschool, the parents whose kids had a birthday in a given month would provide the monthly birthday party. I'm thinking cupcakes, juice, maybe those little ice cream cups. I was not prepared for the other parents coming up with individual goodie bags for each child. I realize that's not quite along the scale of My Super Sweet Sixteen, but sometimes I get the feeling we as parents go a bit over the top... and why? Are we trying to please the kid, or beat the other parents?

I can be as guilty as the next one in occasionally trying to do something needlessly elaborate to make my kids happy (and often end up re-re-re-learning the "kids would rather play with the box" lesson), but I'm not going to keep up with the Joneses, and I certainly have no interest in trying to keep up with their kids.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Library

I am making every effort to prevent my writing from getting even more elaborate, florid, and generally baroque than it already is, and all because of one trip to the library.

For better or worse, it seems to me that my writing style (is it pretentious even to claim to have a style?) was inexorably shaped – or perhaps bent out of shape – in my teens. My reading habit at that point had worsened to the point where, had it been drugs I was consuming, I would’ve been a corpse within a week. In a desperate search for something/anything to keep my jones at bay, I stumbled in quick succession upon Twain, Thurber, and Woody Allen. A bit later there was P.J. O’Rourke, while at the same time I was marinating myself in Monty Python and David Letterman via TV.

That might seem like a disparate assortment, but to me the unifying thread is not just “funny” but a certain twisted sense of language – a sort of mining of the depths of the thesaurus that produces a little jolt to the synapses – as well as an unwillingness to say in four words what can be said in 12 words with a lot more syllables. In that sense, I can’t quite understand why I never became a true fanatic about S.J. Perelman, who fits comfortably on the same shelf.

In the late 70s, Woody Allen published three collections of short pieces which I eagerly snapped up, read and reread. And even though it’s been awhile since the last repetition, phrases still surface in my consciousness from time to time, and still make me laugh (inwardly, that is – I’m trying to stay out of the Rubber Room).

What I didn’t realize, as Woody seems to have shrunk somewhat from public view, and his movies are rarely anticipated Events (or all that funny), is that he is still writing pieces for the New Yorker. Unfortunately, the New Yorker always reminds me of a guy I knew in college. He was from Jersey, and when he found out that I was from Upstate New York, he remarked that he knew someone from upstate. When I asked where, he replied, “White Plains”.

The map of the world as drawn by the New Yorker would have Manhattan at the center, the other four boroughs arranged like petals of the flower, maybe Long Island along the edge, and then blank space (or as the medieval maps read, “Here be dragons.”). I’ve always felt like they’d rather go out of business than be patronized by the likes of me. I don’t read it much, is what I’m saying.

It was indeed a pleasant shock, then, to visit my local library and find not only a new book by the aforementioned O’Rourke, but also a new collection of pieces (some from the New Yorker) by Woody Allen. I dove into the Allen volume posthaste and was heartened to learn (and made to laugh aloud repeatedly) that his writing hasn’t changed a bit. Is that good, to sound the same 30 years later? Not sure, but mark me down in favor.

Some friends you don’t see for a while, and when you reunite, you're not sure why you liked them to begin with. With others, you forget how much you liked them until you see them. As it turned out, it was like a cool drink of water quenching a thirst I didn’t quite even know I had to open the book and be greeted:

Gasping for air, my life passing before my eyes in a series of wistful vignettes, I found myself suffocating some months ago under the tsunami of junk mail that cascades through the slot in my door each morning after kippers. It was only our Wagnerian cleaning woman, Grendel, hearing a muffled falsetto from beneath myriad art-show invitations, charity squeezes, and pyrite contest jackpots I’d hit that extricated me with the help of our Bugsucker.

As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was an unsolicited little journal, banner-lined Magical Blend. Clearly aimed at the New Age market, its articles ranged in topic from crystal power to holistic healing and psychic vibrations, with tips on achieving spiritual energy, love versus stress, and exactly where to go and what forms to fill out to be reincarnated. The ads, which seemed scrupulously articulated to insulate against the unreasonableness of Bunco Squad malcontents, presented Therapeutic Ironisers, Vortex Water Energizers, and a product called Herbal Grobust designed to implement volumewise madam’s Cavaillons. There was no shortage of psychic advice either, from sources such as the "spiritual intuitive" who double-checks her insights with "a consortium of angels named Consortium Seven," or a babe ecdysiastically christened Saleena, who offers to "balance your energy, awaken your DNA and attract abundance." Naturally, at the end of all these field trips to the center of the soul, a small emolument to cover stamps and any other expenses the guru may have incurred in another life is in order.

It’s quite possible that the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of any Allen 10-page story would be two or three paragraphs long, but that’s what I love about him.

If nothing else, he makes my writing look like a txt msg....

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted...

There are certain phrases that just seem to strike terror in the heart. Tax return always makes my blood run cold; anything including remodel or redecorate makes me queasy; and we need to talk is a perennial leader in this category. All of these pale, however, beside the pure existential dread associated with... family vacation trip.

I know -- a surprisingly negative approach to fun, family togetherness, relaxation. And really, I enjoyed being with my family and all of our various activities.

What makes me crazy is the vacation as an entity. I've been frank in the past about my difficulty adjusting (even at age 45) to the idea of being The Adult: the competent, authoritative one. The one with all the answers. However, when you talk about "going on a trip", all I can think about is the hundreds of logistical details: the non-stop responsibility.

See, I'm the one mainly responsible for finding where we're going, how to get there, where to stay, what to do. And I do the majority of the driving. Really, there are so many ways that I personally can screw it up that I can't help but think of "vacation" as synonymous with "disaster" -- or "series of disasters" -- waiting to happen.

As I warned in my previous post, we were away for two weeks of that very entity. And in the end, plenty went wrong, including getting very lost 3 times in 2 days, and a motel that was about a step-and-a-half above a homeless shelter... and you know what? We made it home in one piece. All-in-all, we had a great time; the kids will be talking about some of their fun experiences for months. Maybe the "point" of the trip for me (besides fun & relaxation) was to let go just a little and realize that the earth will keep turning even if we take the wrong exit now and then.

Since I've missed almost 3 weeks, I'm going to include a little "bonus" -- our vacation in numbers:

• 13 days, 2029.4 miles -- 919.1 down, 918.6 back, even though we took completely different routes.
• 7 states plus the District of Columbia; 9 pages of directions printed from Yahoo Maps, 11 different interstates.
• 92.417 gallons of gas (21.96 mpg, with a LOT of A/C) for a total of $265.93.
• 4 nights with 4 people in one motel room, followed by 4 continental breakfasts -- 2 of which made me glad I didn't live on that continent.
• 2 nights the kids "went to bed" in the van before we arrived at our destination; 2 nights my daughter woke up screaming that her legs hurt.
• 5 different fast-food chains (in order): McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, Burger King, Roy Rogers; 2 lunches packed in the van. Actually I would be reluctant to repeat any of our "road meals", although the ribs were tasty at the Texas Steakhouse.
• 1.5 oz. in the package of Kissables they give you for completing the tour at Hershey's Chocolate World. OK, it's free... still, I think maybe they did it differently in the old days.
• Several hundred gallons of water dumped on us in The Boardwalk waterpark at Hersheypark -- who knew you could get wetter than "drenched"?
• $2000 estimated retail value of a week at the beach cottage we stayed in at Sunset Beach, NC... proving that it quite literally pays to have family connections.
• 77 years' difference in ages of youngest and oldest family members at the beach house.
• 7 consecutive days at the beach, bookended by 4 motel pools, and The Boardwalk: 12 in a row, if you're scoring along at home... leaving my body at a much higher percentage of water than normally (the remaining % is fast-food fries).
• 5 other people in the theater with my wife and me for the 9:40 pm showing of Ratatouille.
• 7 and 5 -- ages of children you probably shouldn't take to any of the Smithsonian museums.
• 2 hours spent circling DC after the museum in the vain hope of a parking space, or even figuring out exactly where we are. My congressman (OK, person) will be hearing about this!
• 4 train rides to get in & out of Manhattan in the quest for the Central Park Zoo. I'm grateful to my niece for tipping me off to the PATH train from NJ... otherwise we'd still be circling Manhattan looking for a place to park.

Maybe this positive mention will make up for my inexcusable failure to write a blog about my trip to her high school graduation, how I remember her as a baby, graduations as rites of passage, and how ancient I must be to have an 18-year-old niece, blah blah blah. :-Q

The Opposite of A

First, a little housekeeping... as of Sunday we will be taking off on The Annual Family Vacation. Though I'm sure there will be something sidesplitting about spending a significant portion of the summer shuttling from van to rest area to motel room to fast-food place with two small children, I may very well be out of touch for a couple of weeks and unable to share with you my usual assemblage of wry observations. However, I promise I won't come home till I find something worthy to write about.

Anyway, before I go, I just wanted to point out what People Have Been Saying lately: it turns out I'm cool after all.

I have mentioned in the past (and if I hadn't, anyone who's paying attention would have figured it out anyway) that in high school I was voted Least Likely to Ever Be Described As Cool. And in the classic beat 'em/join 'em dichotomy, I basically decided to embrace my noncool (after all, it was good enough for Huey Lewis). But I may have to upend my worldview -- again -- as a result of a recent Newsweek article.

I have fun putting in the links, but I know you don't follow them, so let me summarize: recent movies/TV have made heroes, or at least leading men, out of guys the article calls Beta Males -- otherwise described as decidedly not Type-A.

I still remember many years back when the original round of articles came out in Newsweek and elsewhere about the "Type-A" personality: driven, perfectionist, success-oriented, workaholic. It didn't take me very many paragraphs to conclude they weren't talking about me.
I don't want to come off like a total goober; I'm certainly not the perpetually stoned, terminally lazy Slacker character favored in so many movies and TV shows in recent years. I was pretty successful in school and I've had a job of some sort for my entire adult life. I even do really have a few odd, almost random pockets of perfectionism that surface when even I least expect it. But under oath, I would be hard-pressed to declare myself a go-getter.

I have to admit that I ended up as a math major, and subsequently a math teacher, in large part because no more compelling idea came along. Then I spent a lot of years working part-time and filling in around the edges of my alleged career with a number of rather unglamorous "professions": meter reader, waiter, janitor, tax processing clerk. I understood intellectually that I probably had the ability to do something beyond stamping numbers on tax forms (hey, it's plenty complex: you do have to get the same number on the check as the form) but at the end of the day, we had money enough to live on and I didn't really know how to assemble a "career" out of the puzzle pieces I had in hand.

And I continued to muddle along -- for about eleven years -- until I decided to make a break for a new profession. And now I'm semi-established as a software engineer (OK, a programmer) but I'm still a little fuzzy on this whole career thing.

I work with people who are driven & focused, who can't wait for the next big assignment and opportunity to prove themselves. Many of them are smart and capable in ways that make me feel like I'm back in junior high, but that may be a subject for another day. They are concerned with Career Development and what they can do to snag that next promotion.

Me, on the other hand, I'm just happy to have a job. Some of that comes from all the years of not really having a job, or at least a consistent one... but for most of my life when the question came up, "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" my answer has been, "Doing what I'm doing now." Is that a virtue -- the ability to be comfortable wherever I am? Or is it a fault -- a complete lack of vision/ambition?

I have ended up getting some promotions and even raises, more or less in spite of myself, but I still find myself somewhat amazed that I'm actually getting paid a respectable amount, and that people ask me questions expecting me to be an authority. I like to be able to answer (at least some of) the questions, and although I never asked for it I'm certainly not going to say no to the increasing dollars, but the money definitely doesn't drive me. Of course, being a... um... "Not-Type-A", I'm not sure "drive" is the right word anyway.