Theology For Dummies: Family Edition

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who read a book once, and feel they’ve squeezed all the juice out of it; and those who hang onto a book as you’d hang onto an old friend. Not that I’d suggest keeping all your friends lined up on a shelf – although, come to think of it, that would be more convenient than trying to reach someone on the phone, and synchronize schedules, and….

I have heard a rumor that there is a third kind of person: the kind who regards a book as an unwelcome reminder of an uncomfortable experience of Compulsory Education. I choose to disregard that rumor, since that’s not the kind of world I’d want to live in.

I have already noted in this space which camp I fall into; rest assured that the books I singled out in that entry are old, familiar friends. I also mentioned that my response to the cliché “books for a desert island” question would have to include both the Baseball Encyclopedia and the Bible.

If you are a person for whom baseball exceeds a pastime and approaches mental illness – quick test: will baseball be mentioned in your obituary? – you might see the appeal of the former volume. Not only is it immense, and virtually impervious to being read cover-to-cover, but all those names and numbers are like videotape to those of my ilk.

The Bible is similar in a way. When I read the stories of Scripture, I recognize a lot of people I know – selfish, cowardly, a little slow on the uptake, or any number of other common human characteristics. OK, full disclosure: a lot of those “people I know” are people I actually recognize from seeing them in the mirror.

It is, of course, quite possible to read the Bible cover-to-cover. Still, it probably supports re-reading better than most other books you can name, and that is because how you read it and understand it changes as you change.

I’ve read the whole thing through, but I still find things I would be almost sure I’ve never seen before, because I see something I wasn’t in a position to see the first time. One excellent example of this is Eph. 1:4-6 --

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

I never really understood what adoption was all about until my wife & I adopted our son in 1999. I understood the part about a child coming to live with you; you take care of him and you come to love him. What came as a surprise to me was that a child who’s not “yours” can become yours, even instantaneously. We don’t have any biological children, but I can’t imagine feeling any stronger about one. Or, as I’m fond of saying, I couldn’t love him (or my daughter either) any more if I’d given birth to them myself.

It sheds a new light on my relationship with God. I don’t have any particularly strong claim on being part of His family. God knows ;-) the family resemblance is often not very strong. And yet for some reason it pleases Him to treat me as a son, and to love me as much as if He’d given birth to me. Now I understand this doesn’t mean I’m a second-class member of the family… being a child of God represents not just a legal status but a place in the center of God’s heart.

It also means I need to keep reading; who knows what else I’ll turn up?

What Happens in Vegas...

… ends up getting posted on the Internet. I always figured people who visited Las Vegas were either the smooth high-roller type, or the plaid-shorts/black-socks tourist variety. I was always certain, in any case, that people who visited Las Vegas were people who were not me.

But here I am, attending a team meeting in perhaps the least businesslike city in America – well, I guess New Orleans has a lot of the same vibe, plus half the city got washed away, so they may win the title. I still don’t think I fit either of my theoretical demographics. I do have to admit that when I got here I was wearing my favorite bright blue pants – my wife calls them golf pants. But hey, they’re cool & comfortable, and they weigh about 4 ounces, so I think they’re great for traveling.

OK, I happen to love the color too.

It’s definitely a different world out here. For one thing, it’s been 90 degrees plus, the whole time (OK, it goes down to 75 at night). For a second, smoking is apparently compulsory. Coming from an environment where smoking is only permitted on alternate sides of the street from 9 pm to midnight, it’s a little startling to have to fight your way through a blue haze in the lobby.

Now that I think of it, hotels around here don’t really have “lobbies”, just casinos with a reception desk. So I suppose the biggest adjustment is walking past row after row of slot machines, with row after row of middle-aged women feeding coins and pulling the handle. Actually, relatively few of the machines still have the traditional handle; most of them are push-button.

Quick hotel quiz -- match the following (each "letter" may be used more than once):

1.Body bar	a. Ginger orange
2. Conditioner	b. Grapefruit & pomegranate
3.Facial bar	c. Lemongrass sage
4.Shampoo
5.Body lotion

The good news is that I get my minimum daily requirement of fruits and vegetables by means of a conscientiously-applied regimen of personal grooming. The bad news is that every time I leave my room I'm attacked by monkeys. (Quiz answers: 1b, 2a, 3c, 4a, 5b)

I certainly don’t have the time (or, frankly, the inclination) to get too used to it out here; I’ll be home before I know it. Unless you count another day of meetings and six hours on a plane, that is. I am doing my best, however, to squeeze a little adventure out of my trip. That can be a bit of a challenge in a city that bases its identity on self-destructive behavior, but if worse comes to worst, I can fall back on two things dear to my heart: leaving the work to the chambermaid, and expense-account meals.

I have proven once and for all what everyone has always suspected – I would travel 2500 miles for free food.

All In a Day's Blog

I try always to have a lot of cereal boxes in the house. Naturally we like to have a number of delicious breakfast options, but perhaps more importantly it's vital to have as much reading material available as is humanly possible.

I have written in the past about some of my reading preferences, but when the chips are down I'm an omnivore. I have a number of subscriptions in an effort to ensure I have something fresh on hand at all times, but if need be, I'll read anything printed-- English-language optional.

It was in such times of extreme distress that I would often scoop up Reader’s Digest. With most magazines I’m pretty linear – I read Newsweek basically back to front, even the business columns. But with RD I usually skip around and find the little anecdotes, especially the monthly features, like “Life in these United States” or “Humor in Uniform”.

You may have read these columns in the past and thought: I could do better than that. And we shall see, because today I am finally submitting a story that I’ve always “meant to”, since the day it happened to me 15 or so years ago. Hopefully this will turn out to be yet another of the many advantages of my somewhat checkered employment history -- a chance to be immortalized in “All in a Day’s Work”, as follows:

I used to work in a large, open office with long tables where the worker bees sat, ringed by supervisors’ desks. As a result, everyone knew everyone else’s business. I listened one day as Mary, the head of the department, told Judy she was leaving for awhile. She explained to Judy that if the phone rang, she could pick it up on her own desk by pressing “pound-4”. Judy said okay, and Mary went on her way.

Before we knew it, the phone rang, and although Judy snatched up her receiver and jabbed at the buttons, it continued to ring. Finally someone called from across the room, “Judy, pound-4!” She continued to stab frantically as she called back, “I’m pounding as hard as I can!”

Hall of Fame Numbers

One of the things I love about baseball is the central role that numbers play. They tell their own story: .300 is a good hitter; 3.00 is a good pitcher. Yet .300, 30 HR, 100 RBI means something entirely different to a baseball fan than .300, 5 HR, 40 SB. One is a power hitter, probably a big star; the other one is more of a speedy guy, probably leads off and scores a lot of runs. Even uniform numbers tell a story -- in fact, you can find an entire set of those stories at www.mbtn.net, which is a website that details every player who ever played for the Mets in order of his uniform number.

One of the most famous numbers in baseball is 44, which has been worn by such legends as Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, and Reggie Jackson. So obviously I am in good company, since I myself am also now 44. This is not, regrettably, my uniform number but instead the one which, God willing, will keep increasing every year. Next year I make the switch from slugging to pitching -- Tug McGraw and Pedro Martinez are the two most famous 45s in Mets history, at least.

I have been in many ways struggling with this new piece of my identity... not specifically being 44; birthdays are not generally a huge crisis for me. Although I can't say I'm eager to hit a half-century. It's more the mindset behind my favorite (alleged) Satchel Paige quote, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?"

At one point I would've said early 30s -- not to mention that I could easily pass for that. Hey, some days I probably would've said 19.

The other night my daughter asked me, "Daddy, why is your hair getting all gray?" I told her that happens when people get older, and since I'm only half-old, I'm only half-gray. Not long after that, my son had the kindness to point out that I have "a little hole in my hair". And it probably goes without saying my waist is a little thicker and my knees are a little stiffer (although that's the beauty of BlogWorld: absolutely nothing goes without saying).

Still, I'm driving at something a little less tangible. I am at 44 very likely more than halfway through my days, and I still can't quite get it through my head that I'm a grownup. I have two small children who depend on me for support, both financial and emotional, and who I'm supposed to be helping shape into mature individuals. I, or we, own two cars and a camp and a house full of stuff. I'm supposed to be saving for retirement, for heaven's sake. That's a real eye-opener for me, considering that for all intents & purposes I didn't even have a career less than 10 years ago.

I have priorities and responsibilities and decisions to make; and sure, I share all that with my wife -- but in some ways that makes it worse. We have to work together as mature adults in tandem, when much of the time I'd rather either

• do whatever I want, unilaterally, and let everyone else shift for themselves, or
• let her make all the decisions while I shuck the responsibility.

Seems like only yesterday I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating chips, drinking iced tea, reading The Sporting News AND watching the Three Stooges (this is how I learned to multitask). The biggest thing I had to worry about was studying for my Chem test.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not Mourning My Lost Youth, not exactly anyway. We all have responsibilities that are at least sorta heavy, and I cope with mine OK, I think. I just can't help but feel like it would all go smoother if I really felt like an adult, down deep inside -- sometimes it's more like I'm playing the 'daddy' part in a never-ending game of House.

As a (very late) Baby Boomer, I also got caught in a generational/perceptional switch. In my Dad's day, grown-up men put on a suit and a skinny tie and a hat and went off to their serious adult jobs; I'm from the generation that wears jeans to work, and listens to rock 'n' roll, and spends money like they don't quite understand it comes in finite amounts. Somehow not quite so serious, not quite so adult.

I guess this probably sounds like the standard-issue Midlife Crisis, and that soon I'll be buying a red convertible and wearing my hat backwards... or maybe taking off on a cross-country journey to Find Myself. Maybe it is, or maybe it's a side-effect of all the steroids. Maybe it's just living in a culture that tends to glorify non-grownup behavior. In any case, I'm hoping I get it sorted out soon because I think it'll be hard to find an old-folks' home that has unlimited potato chips and iced tea available for afternoon snacks.