I'm sorry. I just can't resist Uranus jokes...

From Fox News...
















More Rings Found Around Uranus

Thursday, December 22, 2005

LOS ANGELES — Astronomers aided by the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two more rings encircling Uranus...

Get the whole story here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179538,00.html

Did you also know that Uranus has features named R/2003 U2 and Rosalind?

Zach!

Finally, baby Zachary is here! He was born Dec. 15 at 12:12 p.m. Daddy is so proud.

Remembering Rex

I was honored to write an article for this month's Chatter (church newsletter - www.chattermag.com) about Rex Greenstreet. Rex was an incredible person who I looked up to. Even though I didn't know him well, what time I did get to spend with him was very encouraging. I suspect that if I spent every day with Rex, every day would be encouraging.

Rex Greenstreet, a Legacy of Service

On October 1, 1987, Rex Greenstreet was baptized in a backyard swimming pool in Irving. He was carried to the water by friends and held afloat by IBC Pastor Andy McQuitty and, as his roommate John Roberts remembers it, he was terrified. It might have been the first time Rex had been completely submerged since a swimming accident 26 years earlier had left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Rex recalled the accident in a 2001 interview. “I dove for the water headfirst and hit bottom. I was immediately paralyzed from the neck down, but I never went unconscious. I thought I was going to drown lying there face down in the water. I couldn’t move.”

But despite his memories of water, despite being a quadriplegic, despite having every excuse not to venture into that pool, Rex did. Turns out, that wouldn’t be the last time Rex overcame fear with obedience.

Rex’s life mirrored his baptism in many ways. He had every reason to avoid obedience, to be bitter at the hand life—or God—had dealt him, to sit back and let others leave their comfort zones while he stayed in his familiar, if not ever entirely comfortable, chair. Instead, his ministry was so faithful and so courageous he became the first person ever to have an IBC ministry named in his honor. Rex died on September 25, 2005. He was 67.

Rex Wharton Greenstreet was born in Fort Worth and raised in Midland. He loved sports and the outdoors. In his youth, he was a cheerleader at Midland High School and a middle weight boxer, winner of Gold Gloves awards. He went to the University of Texas, played a lot of handball, married, took a job with Liberty Mutual Insurance and had a son. The photographs on display at his memorial service showed him young and strong, standing tall with broad shoulders and a broader smile.

Then there was the accident at Lake Lavon that severed his spinal cord. Rex was 23 when it happened; his son was nine months old. He spent three weeks at Baylor Hospital in Dallas and 10 months at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital in Boston. He was separated from friends and family. His wife left. The doctors said he would never walk and probably never regain use of his hands. Physically, emotionally, relationally, his was a paralyzed life.

Remarkably, Rex regained enough control of his body to return to work. He moved back to Dallas and to his job at Liberty Mutual where he became a claims adjuster. But Rex was convinced there was something more to do—something his life was missing besides strong legs. He started to watch Billy Graham on TV and listen to Charles Stanley on the radio.

“It seemed like every time I turned on the TV, those guys were on. And every time they were on, they were giving the gospel.” Rex said. But the gospel they were preaching was about humility and surrender—a message that didn’t sit well with Rex. “My dad was a survivor, and I was brought up to be that way. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Frankly, I had always thought that anyone in any religion was just escaping from the world. Just wimps.” Even from his wheelchair, Rex held to his strength. The prospect of yielding to anything—misfortune and God included—scared him.

But there was a night when Rex awoke in tears and gave his heart to Jesus. “That night, it just all came together,” he remembered. “I said, ‘God, I don’t know about all this, but I want you in my life.’”

Not long after that experience, Rex’s nephew invited him to IBC. Again, he faced a frightful prospect.

“You can’t really sneak into church in a wheelchair,” Rex remembered. “I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if they were going to run me up to the front and try to heal me or what. I was scared.”

But the pattern of obedience over fear was being established in his life. Rex came to IBC and stayed. That first visit was in 1986. He was baptized in 1987. And soon after, he was invited to take on a ministry that would make him the voice of Irving Bible Church to thousands of visitors. Again, it was an invitation that terrified him. He was asked to take visitor cards from the service each week and call visitors at home.

“I was a claims adjuster for 26 years. Most of that time I was on the phone and it was always confrontational,” Rex said. “I didn’t want any part of phones. The last thing I wanted to do to serve the church was to call people.”

By now, though, Rex knew what to do with fear.

“People really appreciated me calling,” he said. “I just got to where I loved it.”

And he was good at it. Years of phone calls with insurance claimants had taught him to listen well and take copious notes. Soon, the church staff discovered the value of what they called “Rex Notes” for discerning visitors’ interests and ministry needs.

From 1988 to 2003, Rex called every IBC visitor—sometimes more than 50 calls per week. In the last five years of his ministry alone, Rex placed more than 20,000 calls, and prayed for as many people. “I always pray before I dial,” he said. Often, the calls were all protocol and information. But many times, Rex said, they were personal and poignant.

“Sometimes people are hurting and they just want to talk,” Rex said. “Most of the time, people just need someone to listen.”

Hundreds of people who are now serving in IBC ministries made their second visit to the church because of Rex’s call.

“I’ve had people come to me and say, ‘You know, Rex, the only reason I’m here at IBC is because of your phone call,’” he said. “That makes you feel like you’re helping.”

But the greater blessing may have been for those who knew Rex beyond the phone calls. IBC Community Life Pastor Nat Pugh can trace his ministry at IBC to the welcome phone call he received from Rex after his first visit. And Nat can trace the route Rex took through the IBC halls every Sunday, stopping for a cup of coffee that he placed on the make-shift rubber pad he had glued to the cover of his Bible so it wouldn’t spill. “He always stopped at the kiosk and got three butterscotches,” Nat smiled. “I’ll miss seeing him.”

His roommate, John, remembers Tuesday and Wednesday mornings as the highlights of his week. Those were the mornings after Rex made his phone calls on Mondays and Tuesdays.

“I couldn’t wait to get out of bed and go to the living room,” John said. “Rex would be there drinking coffee, and I would get to hear the stories about the phone calls. Imagine living with someone like that. You grow every minute you’re with him. Rex used to drive around the neighborhood and give out money or food. He used to mail his testimony to people blindly. One of his favorite verses was ‘faith without works is dead’. Rex was alive.”

When his failing health finally forced Rex to stop making phone calls, the church placed an announcement in the worship bulletin telling of the need for volunteers to take over the job. The project was named the Greenstreet Ministry. And it took eight people to do the work.

At his memorial service at IBC on October 5, the photos from Rex’s later years seem to look more and more like those from his youth. The broad smile is there. There is strength in his expression if not in his legs.

“I’ll miss that sparkle in your eyes that revealed the depth of your love for Christ. You gave so much to us and never complained about your situation,” eulogized Barbara Greenstreet, Rex’s sister-in-law.

But the most concise praise at Rex’s memorial service may have also been the most complete, from the man who baptized him in that swimming pool in 1987, a witness to Rex’s fierce obedience in the face of fear.

“I couldn’t imagine myself being in the position he was and having the level of joy he had,” Andy said. “Rex, you lived more powerfully and influentially, from your chair than most people do in perfect health.”

On September 25, Rex answered the call to come home. Now he stands—yes, stands—in the presence of God, his smile broad, his fear gone, his reward complete and, probably, with three butterscotches in his pocket.

Identifying Jesus

Still thinking about getting to know my heart, cultivating it, keeping tabs on the issues of my soul. It’s not easy for me. My heart seems a fickle, inscrutable thing that may lead me down a risky path only to stop at its precipitous end, peel off a mask and declare, “I was only joking. You are not who you thought you were!”

Jesus must not have been like that. He must have been as confident in the mettle of his heart as he was in the Father’s. I’ve often wondered how he gained such confidence. Just from the still, small voice in his private prayer?

Brennan Manning wondered the same thing…

“I believe that at some point in his human journey Jesus was seized by the power of a great affection and experienced the love of his Father in a way that burst all previous boundaries of understanding. It may have happened during his hidden years in Nazareth (sometime between the ages of twenty and thirty before he began his public ministry). Throughout the equivalent of his high school and college and post-graduate years, Jesus prayerfully ponders his relationship with his Father. Finally the day arrives when Jesus announces to his mother that he has to leave Nazareth. The intimacy of trust and love for God has become decisive enough to call Jesus away from home. He must follow his own inner light and be where the Father is for him.”

I don’t know if I agree entirely. If Brennan is postulating that Jesus experienced some extraordinary measure of grace or an avenue or experience with the Father that defined his person and heart and mission with some extra measure of certainty, I don’t want to buy it. After all, isn’t Jesus even more impressive if he went on with such great courage and faith as to give his life in torture without an iron-clad, etched-in-stone, videotaped-for-replay-and-reassurance declaration that he was a member of the Trinity?

But I guess he did have those kinds of experiences – his transfiguration and baptism. Brennan continues:

“At about age thirty Jesus sets out for the River Jordan to meet with the Baptist. John is bluntly calling the Jewish community to repentance and arousing the first stirrings of conversion. Jesus gets in line. His behavior reveals the sense of identity and mission that has been growing within him. John reluctantly confers baptism and Jesus identifies with the brotherhood of sin. ‘He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf’ (2 Cor. 5:21)

“Then it happens! Whatever the external manifestations were, the baptism of Jesus Christ in the River Jordan was an awesome personal experience. The heavens are split, the Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and Jesus hears the words, ‘You are my Son, my Beloved, on you my favor rests.’ What an earthquake in the human soul of Jesus! The heavenly voice confirms and fulfils thirty years of search and growth in Nazareth. It ratifies his reply to his mother in the temple at age twelve: ‘Don’t you know I must always be where my Father is?’ In this decisive experience at the Jordan Jesus learns that he is Son-Servant-Beloved of his Father. The Father speaks the word that confirms Jesus as the Christ: ‘You are my dear, beloved Son,’ a clear, core identity experience filling Jesus with a profound sense of his person and his mission.”

Is the Jordan where Jesus “learned” those things about himself? Was he going on hunches before then? Can I go on hunches? Has God given me such defining experiences (sans the dove and voice) but I have been too dull to notice? And even if I had such an experience, would I etch it in my heart forever? Would it fade over time or would it take deep root and direct my paths every day until I met a glorious, sacrificial end? Would it take daily or weekly or monthly attention – revisiting the identity God gave me – in order to stay pole-straight?

Just wondering…

Kids, Restaurants, Trouble

Two days ago, my daughter turned two. Last night, Christine and I took her to a restaurant. Turns out, we were one day over the cuteness age limit. I think they almost kicked us out. The disturbing thing is that we did this even after reading and laughing at the column below this week...

Babies and restaurants are the
Chernobyl of parenting

BY DAVE BARRY

If you're a new parent, there will come a time when either you or your spouse will say these words:

''Let's take the baby to a restaurant!''

Now, to a normal, sane person, this statement is absurd. It's like saying: ''Let's take a moose to the opera!''

But neither you nor your spouse will see anything inappropriate about the idea of taking your baby to a restaurant. This is because, as new parents, you are experiencing a magical period of wonder, joy and possibility that has made you really stupid. You are not alone: All new parents undergo a sharp drop in intelligence. It's nature's way of enabling them to form an emotional bond with a tiny human who relates with other humans exclusively by spitting up on them. Even very smart parents are affected, as we see from these two quotations:

Albert Einstein Shortly Before The Birth Of His Son: ''To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.''

Albert Einstein Shortly After The Birth Of His Son: ''Daddy's gonna EAT THESE WIDDLE TOES!''

After a month or so of bonding with their baby, the typical parents have the combined IQ of a charcoal briquette. This is when they decide it's OK to take the baby to a restaurant. I know what I'm talking about: My wife and I have a baby daughter, and we have repeatedly taken her to restaurants, even though by now experience should have taught us that it would be far more pleasant and relaxing for us to stay home and play tic-tac-toe on our foreheads with a soldering iron.

But we cannot help ourselves, and neither can you, if you're a new parent. That's why today I'm presenting these Helpful Tips For Dining Out With A Baby:

1. THE INSTANT YOU GET TO THE RESTAURANT, ASK FOR THE CHECK.
You want to be able to pay and get out of there as quickly as possible when your baby screams, or decides -- as babies instinctively do, in restaurants -- to grunt out an impossibly large output, such that you experience a dreaded condition known to diaper scientists as Projectile Huggies Leakage (PHL). So it's best to pay your bill as you enter the restaurant, adding a little extra (say, $800) to compensate for the fact that after you're finished, your table may have to be burned. Some parents never actually enter the restaurant: They simply drive up to the front door, hurl money out the car window, then speed off, their baby wailing like an ambulance siren in the night.

2. REQUEST A TABLE IN A LOCATION THAT WILL NOT DISTURB OTHER DINERS.
For example, if you want to eat at an elegant restaurant in New York City, you should try to get a table on the roof. Or, better still, at a Bob's Big Boy in Cleveland.

3. SELECT AN APPROPRIATE CUISINE.
Of the wide variety of cuisines available today -- Italian, French, Chinese, Tiny Portions Of Meat With Some Kind Of Inedible Decorative Stuff Dribbled On The Plate In A Pattern As If It Were An Art Project Instead Of A Meal -- I would say that the best kind of cuisine, for the parent of a small baby, is a cuisine that you can eat with one hand. You, of course, need the other hand to keep putting things into your baby's mouth, so your baby can spit them out (a baby is not happy unless it is emitting something from somewhere). In fact, you may need both hands for this activity, so you might want to order an entree that you can eat with no hands, sporadically lunging your face down to your plate and snorking up food Labrador-retriever style. You will not have time to taste anything. Restaurant employees know this, and sometimes, for fun, they serve prank entrees to new parents, to see if they'll notice. A Boston restaurant recently got a new father, distracted by a small baby, to eat a whisk broom covered with melted cheese.

At least he ate something. Sometimes I spend the entire meal carrying my daughter around the restaurant, crossing paths with other nomadic parents carrying THEIR children around, each of us leaving a trail of drool. Our big night out! It may not sound like fun to you, but we parents of newborns are able to enjoy it because of our philosophy of life, which can be summed up by the immortal words penned by William Shakespeare shortly after the birth of his first child: ''Woogum woogum WOOGUM WOOGUM WOOGUM!''

Steep Reentry

IBC Director of Missions Kathy Appleton likes to say that missions ruins you for the ordinary. I’m ruined. Here’s why.

Today I started my day driving my four-year-old truck to my air-conditioned job. I checked email. Read some news online. Traded phone messages with coworkers.

A month ago, I started my day with a counselors prayer meeting held in a 40-year-old permanently-disabled school bus with torn seats and broken windows. I served meals for free to kids who usually have to steal their food. And showed my lack of Spanish literacy at the twice-daily Bible studies.

The difference is hard to take.

This summer, I was part of a team working with homeless kids from the streets of Mexico City. The presence of the enemy was palpable. Spiritual warfare was being waged constantly. We really were in a battle for the souls of those kids. I have never fought in war, but I understand from those who have that several things happen to soldiers in battle.

Time slows down. Soldiers say they can sometimes see what’s going to happen before it happens. For us, the enemy’s tactics were predictable if not easy to rebuff. Kids leaving addictions were rowdy, sometimes violent. Kids dabbling in witchcraft were scared away when the light of Christ began to shine too brightly around them. We knew such things would happen. We had people back home praying for just those situations.

Soldiers grow close to their buddies. When you face death arm-in-arm with others, you share a special camaraderie. Our struggles weren’t between life and death but between heaven and hell. Our team (five people from IBC and 16 from a church in San Diego) was certainly drawn together by adversity. We helped each other struggle and pray and fight.

Soldiers get a feeling of importance and find it hard to readjust to life at home. No one else charges into battle like they do so no one else should walk with the same swagger. Right or wrong, short-term missions tends to give the same perspective. You’ve spent a week or two handling matters of eternal importance. Somehow, when you return home, the “big game” or the TPS report seems trivial, almost beneath you. Your mind wanders. Your work can suffer.

Of course, by comparing my summer trip to a soldier’s deployment, I don’t mean to equate them. I never ducked a bullet this summer. Never feared for my life. My deployment required far less courage. But the similarities are there. Battle changes you, whether it’s a battle for political freedom or eternal freedom.

This summer, more than 150 IBCers waged war with the enemy in 10 countries on five continents. Back home now, they are changed. They are battle-hardened and, very likely, battle-weary. It’s hard for them to put their experiences into words. It’s hard for them to readjust to daily living. If you know such a warrior, do them a favor. Ask them about their trip. One of the best ways for them to readjust, I’m told, is by talking about their experiences. They’ll get to tell their war stories. You’ll get a chance to hear of God’s glory. And, if you’re lucky, you’ll both be ruined for the ordinary.

My to-do list today:

· Check with the printer to see when that job will be done

· Send a state-mandated notice of policy change to unemployment offices

· Update a media contact list

· Make changes to a logo design for a picky client

My to-do list a month ago today:

· Tell Jonatan I’m proud of him. He joined the kingdom yesterday and burned a symbol of witchcraft that he used to wear around his neck.

· Talk to Moises more about early church fathers – a subject he’s passionate about. Offer to help him buy more than the one book he owns on church history.

· Pray for Tapia, a new Christian who confessed to counselors this week that he has killed two people.

· Talk to the kid who practices “Santa Muerte” about why he cuts himself.

· Get to know Mariano better. He’s kind-of a loner, but said he’s interested in leaving his life on the streets.

Mexico Photos

Here are a few pics from the trip...














Me and Mariano.
















The Tapia brothers (in blue) and some kid I don't know. Eyebrow Tapia (middle) snuck over to a nearby trout farm and caught a huge rainbow.
















Here's the team from IBC along with the daughter of the missionary family who lives at the camp.

Mexico Report #1

My flight from Mexico landed at 2:35 p.m. yesterday and at 9 p.m. I finally finished telling Christine all about the week. There is that much to tell. I'll never get it all posted on this blog. But here's a very cursory overview...

• It was hard. The kids are tough. Their lives are hard. The whole situation is hard to witness, hard to address, hard to change. The kids are rude and immoral and sometimes violent. They steal (even from those who came to help them) and they do drugs. It's just hard.
• It was fun. Getting to know the kids, the other counselors (there was a group from a church in San Diego), and the Lampas staff was a treat. Plus it was a youth camp so it had to be fun! In 5 days, we probably played 20 hours of soccer! They loves them some soccer!
• It was rewarding. Seven kids received the gift of salvation! About five showed serious signs that they may be ready to leave the street. By the end of the week, all of them were much more calm, and much less dependent on drugs. One of the kids who was born again had been to camp and heard the message before. But he told us that he had killed two people and that he didn't think that the Lord could forgive him. He was one of the most rowdy, disrespectful, angry kids there. I was shocked when the counselors who prayed with him told me about his decision.

There are, of course, lots of little stories and lots of kids to describe. And there are several prayer requests for kids and for the Lampas ministry and for the camp itself. I think there's a big need for prayer in terms of a change of position with regard to discipline with the kids at camp. It's very hard to discipline them there, but I believe it should be done nonetheless. It's a big issue that I may write more about later.

Anyway, that's the overview. And here are a few kids to pray for specifically:
Tiapa: The new Chrsitian who said he has murdered two people. He left home at age 7 (abusive father) and was arrested for theft and in jail by age 9. Now he's in his late teens. He will have a terribly hard time following Jesus on the street, especially given his background, his drug addiction, and his attitude. Please pray for him and for the Lampas staff who will minister to him in the days to come.

Mariano: I got to know this kid the best of all last week. He was kind-of a loner. He said he was a Christian but I think his understanding of that was pretty limited. I gave him a Spanish New Testament with the Roman Road underlined. Pray for him to read it (he was reading it the day after I gave it to him) and understand it and give his heart to Jesus. And leave the street. I almost had him convinced to leave the street last week but when all the other kids loaded the bus to go back, he couldn't resist.

Mauricio (Caballo): Lots to tell about this kid. He was a big problem all week. But on Friday morning he gave a "testimony" about how he was thankful for the camp. He doesn't know Christ, but his heart was softened. He and I butted heads all week but as the bus was pulling away, Darren told me that he stuck his head out and, when he didn't see me, told Darren to say good-bye to me. Seems like a small thing, but after watching him all week it's a miracle that he even acknowledged another person, much less shown any thanks to anyone.

Lance

I know I'm a little late, but let's talk TdF for a sec.

1. Lance is clearly the greatest TdF champ in history. I would even say the greatest cyclist in history. Undoubtedly, if he had chosen another race on which to focus, or a series of races, he would have dominated those too. He chose the biggest and toughest race. I doubt we'll see any cyclist as dominating anytime soon - probably ever.

2. Lance has convinced me that he's reached these heights without the help of illegal drugs. I'm not saying that because I trust him or think that he's above such behavior, but because he has been tested so much and never tested positive. If he is doping, then he has spent more time working on how to get past the tests than he has training for races.

3. Lance, his kids, his mom, the Discovery Team, etc. are all living the rock star life right now. I worry what may happen next. If people forget about Lance, he might crash. Oddly, Sheryl Crow might be his saving grace then. She knows fame's harshness. If people don't forget Lance, he might go on into politics. He has mentioned running for governor. I wonder what party he would run with (I'm guessing Dems). But I almost hate to see that because I think the best thing for Lance would not be to have another distraction - another race to win. I know some guys who know some guys who know Lance. They confirm (so I obviously have this on the best authority) that he is a fanatic. He has said so himself. For seven years (more, actually) he has completely immersed himself in cycling, and specifically the Tour. I heard a story about him calling up a young rider from Dallas who had recently been named to his team on Christmas Day and asking him if he wanted to go for a ride. Family time is not as imporant to Lance as saddle time. If it had been, he might not have won 7. With that challenge gone, I suspect he'll look for something else to eat, sleep, and breathe. But I suspect that the thing he needs most is not to have such a distraction so that he can deal with the deeper issues of his life - a father who left, a stepfather who cheated, a divorce, etc. Of course, I'm psychoanalyzing Lance without even having ever met him, and that's not fair. But it's also the price of fame.
So I look for Lance to do one of two things: become a successful politician (he'll run campaigns like he ran USPS team and squash competitors) or crash hard, losing his wealth and family. Whichever happens, I hope he finds some quiet time to reflect and a Christian friend to help out. From what I know of him from his book and other interviews, he wants little to do with Christians (the stepfather who cheated was a Sunday School teacher), says he doesn't believe in God, and (though I don't know all the details) left his wife to date movie mavens and rock stars.

It's hard not to like the guy who cheated death, beat cancer, and then became one of the greatest athletes in history. You've got to admire that. But I also see that his life is not all wine and roses and I wonder if he thinks the price was worth the glory.

Big Steps

Lots going on:
I've taken a new job (though I haven't given notice at my current job yet so if you know my boss, keep it on the down low, will ya?!)

On the side, I've started to organize a small group of creative people that, I hope, will someday become its own Adverstising/PR firm. Our group is called ICHTHUS. You can read about it at www.ichthuscreativeguild.com. Pass the word and bring us business!

From Colorado to Mexico. I leave for the mission trip tomorrow (7/29) and get back August 7.

We found out today that we're having a boy! Zachary James Sanders is due December 17.

Rocky Mountain High...

Well, I'm off to Colorado so I won't be blogging for a while. I know, all the thousands of people who read this blog will be devestated.
As a parting gift, I'm posting a short story for your enjoyment. Enjoy.

It had been less than thirty hours since the gully-washer that filled the low spot called Crooked Creek and only a few puddles remained. The ground had returned to the light brown shade that revealed no evidence of the rain, as if the water had slipped through its fingers into a hidden, forgotten chasm. Cagney Wolverton bounced in the cab of his 1992 Chevy pickup along a quarter-mile stretch of fence that marked the southernmost boundary of his family’s acreage, dust rising behind him like smoke from rain cloud sacrifices to a jealous, parched Earth.

An early morning phone call from Jess Niberts, his neighbor whose home, two miles south of the fence line, was the closest to the spot, had Cagney jostling Eastward over yucca toward one of those Texas mornings whose clouds and colors quiet the soul and the scenery. A fence was down. Jess had noticed a Wolverton momma and calf wondering along the county road just beyond the fence on his way into town. Cagney had thanked him for the information. Must have been the storm. Neighborly of him to call.

Cagney’s Chevy steed hit a rut and coffee sloshed from the Styrofoam cup he had been cradling carefully. He switched hands with the cup and shook away drops of the steaming elixur without taking his attention off the waking land around him.

Ahead, he could see the section of fence in question, stretched over Crooked Creek well above any height that could normally be called a waterline. Two years ago, Cagney had braided a grid of barbed wire and hung it from the bottom of the fence with a long, horizontal post fixed to its low side. The grid served as a downward extension to the fence in dry weather, and when the water rose, the wooden post served as a float that allowed the creek and small debris to pass beneath it.

Now, the grid was gone and the barrier to which it had been tied had been pulled to the ground for fifty yards on each side of the gully. Reaching the bank of what had been a roaring channel the night before, Cagney spotted the culprit. In a muddy bottom one hundred yards downstream, a mangled wad of wire and cottonwood rose higher than the banks.

The posts on this section of fence were wooden, black and gnarled. Driven into place by Cagney’s father, thirty years before, probably on a similar cloudy morning after much-needed rain had come so fast it had slipped to greener climes before the thankful Earth could take a sip.

Cagney sipped his coffee. There were 30 posts to set, 100 yards of fence to stretch, and a floodgate to build. He looked over his shoulder at the pile of T-posts and spools of wire in the scratched bed of the Chevy and surmised he had enough, barely enough to do the job, but it was going to be a long day.

He dismounted the Chevy and unloaded a few posts, a post driver and come-along. He pocketed a few black metal cylinders – knobs they called them – around which he would wrap the wire once he had attached them to the posts. He could see the escapees just to his east, grazing on the narrow stretch of land between his fence and the county road, their squared frames silhouetted against a salmon-colored horizon. Jess would be back down the road in an hour and had promised to stop and help gather the strays – a task Cagney didn’t want to attempt alone if he didn’t have to.

He walked to the Easternmost post that hadn’t bowed to the weight of the rafting cottonwood with the come-along. He would stretch the wire to the post, then cut it on the downed side. But as he was starting to ratchet the fence taut, he saw two more would-be escapees meandering toward the breach. Most of the herd was at the north end of the pasture, where Cagney had sounded the Chevy’s horn and then dumped one hundred pounds of cake on the ground. This pair must not have heard the horn.

Cagney whistled, walking toward the cattle. He needed to turn them away before they left the property. The whistle didn’t work. Seeing he wouldn’t reach the hapless animals in time, Cagney picked up a rock and took aim. It struck the lead cow in the neck, just behind the right eye and she wheeled and loped away, leading the other with her.

Still got the arm, Cagney thought with a smile. He always had a good arm. As a boy, his father took him along on outings like this one – mending fence or doctoring cattle or cutting pregnant cows from the herd. Between tasks, Cagney would kill time throwing rocks at any target that presented itself – cattle, barrels, tires, birds, other rocks. He dreamed of being a baseball player, taking the mound in a major league park. After high school, some of his coaches said he was good enough play Double A ball, but his father frowned on it. Wanted him to save money and go to college instead. Now, thirteen years later, Cagney wondered if he could still play in the minors. He knew he’d never be a star, but maybe he could be a professional. Few could say that had done so. Maybe he would talk to his wife about it tonight. Maybe he would lease the farmland and chase a little boy’s dream for a few years.

Maybe.

By the time he had set the fourth post, the salmon sun had turned yellow and baked away the clouds. Sweating, Cagney walked back to the Chevy. He pulled it forward, abreast of his progress. From the bed, he retrieved a pair of chaps that encased their wearer’s legs in metal from the knee down. He put them on over his jeans and walked back to the fence, armed now against rattlers who might be sunning themselves in the grass and might not like being interrupted.

The chaps flapped against his thighs as he worked and reminded him of his clandestine career in rodeo. It had lasted one summer. It was never the rodeo lifestyle or the competition that drew him to the arenas on Friday nights in his early teens. It was the experience of doing something dangerous, and doing it without his parents’ knowledge. He rode saddle bronc, partly because the junior division didn’t allow bull riding and partly because he had his own saddle, which gave him an advantage.

While he could manage to smuggle the saddle in and out of the tack house on rodeo nights, he couldn’t hide the broken arm a bronc gave him near the summer’s end. His parents were offended but understanding, and more open to the idea of a rodeo career than Cagney expected. But the injury and his parents’ blessing seemed to take the thrill from hiding under the lights of the arena, and he soon abandoned the pursuit. While he drove the next post, Cagney wondered if he would still enjoy the thrill of riding a wild animal. Maybe even a bull. Maybe he would take a hand in the Jaycee’s annual amateur rodeo next year.

Maybe.

By noon, the strays were in. Cagney thanked Jess for his helped and bounced back toward the fence. On the way, he looked over his herd. There were two cows who would calve soon. He could tell by the way they walked – slowly and unevenly – and the way they grazed – rapaciously. He wondered how the cow’s body knew that it needed the extra fuel for the coming birth. Wondered how even a dumb animal could instinctively plan ahead. He used to ask those questions, but he grew dissatisfied with the answers. “That’s just the way it works.” “That’s the way God designed it.”

Surely, the design and the designer were reliable. But Cagney wanted to understand that on which he relied. He knew that the more he learned about the cattle, or the crops, or the computer software his father used to keep track of their business, the more successful his herd, harvest and family could be. He studied doggedly in college, but college had been short-lived. Two years at a junior college had cost his family more than tuition. It cost them time that Cagney could be helping his father. They hired another hand, but his wages and the payments for school mounted quickly. As strongly as Cagney believed in the importance of education, he believed more strongly in the importance of family, and fulfilling responsibility. The Good Book said it’s a man’s duty to take care of his family. He earned an Associates Certificate in agronomy before he quit.

Unloading the last few posts from the Chevy, Cagney thought he might return to school some day. Maybe he could take night classes once the kids were in school. Maybe he could finish his degree. Maybe he could learn what makes a cow hungrier two days before she calves.

Maybe.

The last post seemed the hardest to drive. On the higher east bank of the gully, the water had only smeared the top level of soil before running to join the current below. The earth was unforgiving and his hands rattled with every vertical stroke of the T-post driver.

The sun, which had woken, warmed and dried the pasture while he worked, now turned malevolent. It parched Cagney’s throat and coated his shirt and the brim of his hat with sweat. Clicking the come-along, he stretched the wire until it moaned and twisted in a taut lament. His father had taught him how to stretch fence. Now, too weak to do most of the work, he spent his days in town at the coffee shop and his evenings doting on his grandchildren. Cagney winced at the thought of his father’s weakening. For Cagney, fatherhood meant strength. His father was never weak in frame, in fortitude or in faith. He was a leader that his son, and his community, followed instinctively.

Cagney wondered if his son would see the same strength in him. Would Jess Nibers? Or the other men in town? Maybe, he thought, he would show up to a few more Lion’s Club meetings. Maybe he would be mayor some day and carry on his father’s legacy. Then maybe a state representative, and make his father proud.

Maybe.

Before it reached the horizon, the sun found a patch of cloud and seemed to split it open with rays of unimaginable force. Cagney had driven the last post and stretched the last wire. He was in the gully now, twisting wire around two of the downed wooden posts that he would use as the bottom of his flood gate. With the last twist of pliers, the new grid was finished. Cagney stood and wiped his brow. Before he attached the gate, he paused and surveyed his work. He ducked under the fence and walked up the gully bank on the other side, looking at his land and his work from the outside. The new fence was set firm. It was good work from this perspective – work that he could be proud of.

The sun appeared below the patch of clouds and turned the drying brown landscape to gold. Ragged edges of yucca flowers turned to silk and sent streamers of silver into the light. Balls of cottonwood coasted past like floating festival lights.

Cagney lingered outside his farm. He turned and faced the road to which his cattle had escaped – the road that led to town and beyond it. To dreams awaiting chase. To adventures unembarked. For a moment, the world was quiet in quandary.

As slowly as sunrise, a smile broke onto his face. Cagney took one last look up the road, then turned with purpose and stepped inside the fence.

When he got home that night, maybe he would hug his wife once more than she expected. Maybe he would give his young son his first baseball lesson. Maybe he would thank his father for teaching him how to mend fence.

Certainly.

Cols Are Cool

Today the storied tour made its way to the high mountains where the riders turn upwards toward the heavens...where the roads lie on the hills like pieces of discarded string...where men dance on the pedals of anger...the great and fearsome Col du Galibier represents the highest point in this year's race and a high point in the career of Alexandre Vinokourov.















Vino deserved this win. His all-day breakaway was the first of this year's tour that didn't end in heartbreak. And he looked, on the slopes of the Galibier, comfortable and formidable, as if he was suffering no more than the race leader in the pack or the ghosts of great climbers before...

A Terrible Shift

One of the security pundits I saw discussing the London bombings on TV yesterday made an interesting point about this latest attack - it's the first major attack in a western country directed at the prolitariate. Usually, it's the government or the establishment that is targeted in the west - the Pentagon and World Trade Center or consolates, etc. But this one was only aimed at regular Joes going to their jobs. In Arab countries, this kind of attack is more common - usually aimed at regular Joes (albeit Jewish Joes). But this represents a shift, or at least a new strain, of terrorism.Scary.

Mengin Morose

I hate to cheer for a Frenchman, but you've got to feel sorry for Mengin today. Man, what a heartbreak! So far, the story of this Tour de France has been crashes at key moments.

CRASH!!!!

Mengin has hits the deck on the turn... sliding on the white paint of a crosswalk...
Vino' avoids the crash, but puts his foot down.
Bernucci is off on his own as Vino gives chase.

Now the peloton comes through...and crash...20 or 30 riders skid in the turn.
4:52 p.m. -
Bernucci takes the win... Vino comes in second.

McEwen and Boonen were delayed in the crash... they are coming across the line, chatting.

Poor Mengin... He's okay, but man... denied the win in the last 700 meters

www.velownews.com

Terrorism Pact

I heard some folks talking about this morning's London bombings on the radio on the way to work. They were debating whether this would strengthen the anti-terrorism sentiment or the anti-Blair sentiment in England. Thoughts?

Here's an idea: let's start circulating a pact that says, "If I'm ever taken hostage by a terrorist, just bomb us both!" We don't negotiate with terrorists. That's good. But what if millions of Americans had signed a document that said, "If I'm ever on a plane that is hijacked and may be used as a weapon, the U.S. military has my permission to destroy the plane." I guess this would only work with airplane hijacking because with other hostages, the terrorist isn't a threat to others. Ruthless idea, I know. Sounds like something Israel would do. I think I would sign it.

A Quote from Chris Columbus...

It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel his hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures...
I am a most unworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous presence. for the execution of the journey to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps. It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied...
No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour, if it is just and if the intenion is purely for His holy service. The working out of all things has been assigned to each person by our Lord, but it all happens according to His sovereign will, even though He gives advice. He lacks nothing that it is in the power of men to give Him. Oh, what a gracious Lord, who desires that people should perform for Him those things for which He holds Himself responsible! Day and night, moment by moment, everyone should express their most devoted gratitude to Him.

Talk amongst yourselves...

Greatest Days In Dallas/Fort Worth Sports History

• January 16, 1972: Cowboys get first Super Bowl victory against Miami

• May 1, 1991: Ranger Nolan Ryan pitches a record-setting seventh no-hitter versus the Toronto Blue Jays
• February 11, 1996: Jason Kidd become the first Maverick to play in an NBA All-Star Game
• June 20, 1999: Stars Winger Brett Hull scores in triple overtime in NHL finals Game 6 against Buffalo to give Dallas it's first and only Stanley Cup
• June 23, 2005: Shawn "the-Praying-to-Joseph-Smith-Mantis" Bradley retires with career totals of 8.1 points/game, 6.3 rebounds/game, and 38.5 wussified tantrums/game.

Cuban: Bradley leaning toward retirement

Oh...were we still boycotting? Gosh, I fogot.

Southern Baptists end 8-year boycott of Disney

The boycott cost Disney millions, Drake said. Disney officials have denied that. They had no comment about Wednesday's action.

So many things wrong with this on so many levels. Can anyone name one?...

My Problem with Dignity

This Sunday at church, the A/C went out in the auditorium, so we held the service in the Commons (a smaller auditorium). It was crowded and hot, but I liked it. It reminded me of when we used to hold five services in that room before we built the other auditorium. There were two older ladies sitting two rows in front of us. During the music, they seemed to be doing their best to focus on the Lord and not on the conditions. One of them kept raising her hand. She would do it falteringly. Like she was unsure of herself. Not sure if she should raise her hands or if she was doing it right. She would do this funny little half-raised thing with her hand open, and then point up with a finger, then kind-of lower her arm but then wag a finger upward from shoulder-height. Occasionally, she would glance at her friend to the right or at the person on her left as if to see what they were doing with their hands. Or maybe if they approved of her finger-wagging. I guess you would have had to see it. Kinda funny.

But I can really identify with that lady. I think she might be a lot like me when it comes to corporate worship. And a lot of people. We’re unsure. We’re easily distracted. Of course, we’re concerned with what the people around us think. But it’s more than that too. I think if my private worship was more intimate – if my experience with God was more profound during the week – then my worship on Sunday would be less inhibited. I wonder what keeps me and that lady from throwing our hands up and falling down on our faces right in the aisles. Probably two things: decorum and neglect. Decorum b/c we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. And neglect of our day-to-day walks with God that would allow us to see Him more clearly and thus adore Him more genuinely.

David danced before God mostly naked. He must have been so focused on the Lord not to worry about seeming “undignified.” I would have been like what’s-her-name who scolded him for behaving that way. And if I ever found myself in a loincloth between the Ark of the Covenant and a whole crowd of people, I doubt I could focus on anything besides what those people must be thinking of me. But David’s focus was the other direction – on God’s covenant goodness and what He must be thinking. Guess I’m way too dignified to rank with the likes of King David of Israel.

Masonic Musings - Part 2

There's an interesting article about this very topic on Yahoo news today. You can read it

here.

or here's an excerpt:

Civic participation is not creating more bowling leagues or boosting membership in traditional community groups such as the Lions Club or the Elks, whose numbers have dwindled for decades. Today's social capitalists are investing their time on their own terms.

"People are not members of the old hierarchy organizations," says Ronald Inglehart, professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and president of the World Values Survey, which conducts surveys about social values and beliefs of people in several countries. "They have much looser ties but many more ties. Lots and lots of loose ties."

Masonic Musings

I was in South Carolina last month with my friend Michael. We were staying with his grandmother. She’s 84, a strong Christian, fun to listen to. She’s involved in an organization called Eastern Star. It’s sort-of a Masonic Lodge for women. While we were there, she told Michael, “You should join the masons. The best friends you’ll ever have come from those groups.”

That got me thinking about “those groups” – Masons, Elks, Lions, Rotarians, Optimists, etc. – and why my generation really isn’t that interested in them.

Yesterday, on the drive back from Houston, Christine and I listened to Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation. It’s a collection of stories about the generation of Americans who came of age during World War II, then came home and built strong families and communities. Brokaw said they are the greatest generation any civilization has ever produced. I find it hard to argue with him.

I don’t know much of the history of fraternal organizations like the Masons or Elks, but I’ll bet that many of those lodges were founded by returning GIs. It seemed to be a theme with those men in the book. They had experienced intense esprit de corps during the war – situations in which their lives were, literally, in their buddy’s hands. Brokaw tells stories of men carrying each other through German POW camps so that the weaker wouldn’t be shot as a straggler. About one medic who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for fighting off a wave of Japanese soldiers alone, with one hand, in an exposed position, while the other hand held aloft a bag of plasma for a wounded officer.

After the war, more than 12 million GIs came home and, suddenly, in most cases, they were separated from that camaraderie. Whether because most of their buddies died in battle or lived in other parts of the country or simply separated themselves from memories of the war on purpose, they went from eating, sleeping and fighting with buddies to no buddies at all. This is just my hunch, but I’ll bet that’s why many of them joined fraternal orders.

Now, consider a young man from my generation. Likely growing up in a suburb, or, more likely, several suburbs. His extended family lives in another city. As their family and salaries grows, his parents may move to different school districts or attendance zones throughout his schooling. At school, he might be involved in some clubs or activities, but not necessarily the same clubs every year, or with the same classmates. He may experience some camaraderie in, say, a team sport. But, unless he has a great coach, the team’s teens see themselves like the pros they model – each a free agent looking out for his own good. The young man goes to college and finds the same level of mildly-intimate friendship in a fraternity or Bible study. But these groups, without any clear mission or opposition, don’t produce the kind of esprit de corps in which members depend on each other. The young man graduates and finds a job. Then another job. Since companies are likely to RIF workers if need be, workers, in turn, have little loyalty to their companies. Employees come and go, and our young man finds himself in his third job out of college looking back on a third of a century of disposable friendships. This, you may think, should drive him to an organization like the Lions or Masons. But not having experienced close camaraderie, the young man doesn’t know where to look or what it would look like when he sees it.

I don’t really have an answer for all this and I’m not advocating that every guy my age go out and join the nearest Elks Lodge. I’m not doing it. But I just see this difference in generations. My generation has it easier. Some of my contemporaries are fighting overseas still. I know some of them who are. But my entire generation hasn’t gone to war like the Greatest Generation did. And though I don’t envy their experiences in war, I see that those hardships made them stronger people, equipped them to build a stronger nation of strong communities. And made their friendships stronger.

Jesus Taxis

I had this great idea last night for a new kind of ministry...Jesus Taxis! Kind-of like what I college kids do on Beach Reach trips when they offer free rides. You start a taxi service but instead of paying the fare, people have to hear the gospel! I know that's kind-of "out there" and a lot of people would rather pay money than be preached to. But hey, I would probably listen to a Muslim for 20 minutes than pay the 20 cab fare. I bet there are people as cheap as me out there. You'd have to get licensed because there's already going to be the perception that you're a "crazy" who might abduct people and make them drink Kool-ade. Then you just sit in the queu at the airport w/ the other taxis and when someone hails you, you tell them before they get in, "This is a Jesus taxi. I won't ask you to pay a fare. Instead, I just ask that you listen to what I have to say on the way. If that's not okay with you, feel free to take the next taxi in line." This might work better in a tourist town where people aren't traveling for business and are more liesurely with their time. But I bet it could work somewhere.

Argh. Keep away from me puffs if ye know what's good fer ye. Grrrrr... 

Swing

I'm overdue for a blog entry and too busy to think of anything original so here's a poem I wrote a while back. You can also find it on www.coffeefaucet.com.

(Disclaimer: My dad has NOT been diagnosed with cancer. I know that makes this poem seem kinda dark, but I wrote it after hearing bad health news about family of other people I know. I started to imagine what they were going through...)

“Swing”

All of life is in the swing of a bat.
That’s what Dad taught me,
pointing to players and stances
too far away to see while he held my Coke
so that I wouldn’t spill.

In a sense, life is all physics.
The ball is wound tight,
stitched with knotty, red twine
and hurled at you with speed.
The bat is hardwood –
sanded, polished, solid and heavy.
There’s a pitch and a swing
and life is ignited in the material.

But in another sense, the batter swings supernatural.
With rhythm, timing, momentum, strength, hope.
Toward the mystic union.
The critical time, the living part of the swing,
is in the instant that contact is made.
The hands feel the shock that reports that
they’re alive and they’ve arrived
at the right moment.
The pitch is fast and the crack violent and stunning
so that it feels like the bat should shatter or fall
helplessly from the hands and the pitch continue
on its ripping course.
But then the weight of bat and arms and the strength of hands and hips
carry forward faith until,
as quick as that,
the course is changed
and the bat swings away wide
and shoulders open to the field before them
and eyes look up to a sky of clarity and possibilities.

Last week, Dad’s doctor said “cancer.”
The pitch was fast and, for a moment,
I wondered if he would strike out.
He seemed to swing free and I expected to hear the pitch
forever sink into the padded mitt behind him,
the chances gone.

But then the bat shook
and hands and hips carried forward faith until,
as quick as that,
the bat swung away wide
and shoulders opened
and eyes lifted.

And all of life was in the swing of a bat.

The Hermit

Last night, Christine and I were watching Globe Trekkers on PBS (I recommend it) and the traveler, a girl named Megan, was in Egypt. She went to a monastery in eastern Egypt – St. Antony’s – said to be the oldest monastery in the world. Established when St. Antony came to the area around 200 AD. The monks there told her that in the hills above the monastery there was a hermit who is trying to live as St. Antony did. I don’t even know who St. Antony was, but this got my attention.

Megan hiked up the hill and found the old man. He lived in a cave – had a wooden door on the cave and a little place to sleep in a little tunnel of a room with candles. He wouldn’t allow Megan into his cave because she was a woman. (I suppose if word got out that there had been a woman in his cave, the other hermits might talk.) But he sat on the rocks outside with her and talked. He talked as though they were meeting at church. I expected him to be a pop-eyed, quivering thing, afraid of contact with other people and spewing curses or ancient hexes. Or to be so excited to see another human that he jabbered on about his cave or his new clay pot. But he seemed normal, informed, well-adjusted. I wondered if he was a more complete human, more connected to what it really means to be human, than the people I see at work every day.

He must not always stay in the cave because he talked about society. He said it saddens him to go into town where the people use Jesus’ name in vain. He said, “But when I say that name here, in my cave, it’s beautiful…Jesus. Jesus. I call to him here. I have called to him many times.”

The hermit said he decided to live there after his mother died and he realized that suffering was the path to maturity…or did he say enlightenment? I don’t remember, but it was something good that he was seeking up there on the lunar-looking hillside with nothing but sand and rocks around.

This morning, I was reading 1 Samual 1&2 where Hannah takes her son to Shiloh and gives him over to GOD and leaves him with Eli. What commitment to God! To leave your child with a stranger. And what voluntary suffering! Is it worth it to have a son if you should only have him until he’s weaned?

And what a life Samuel must have had. What did he think of himself? That he was special to GOD or that he was abandoned by his mother? Or both?

There’s something about the life of Samuel and the hermit that is enormously appealing to me. But any time I get close to something like that – to the writings of the desert fathers or St. Fancis or Thomas Merton – I realize that the treasures of that life can never be reached on a try-it-out basis. You can’t take a retreat to a hermitage and call yourself a hermit. In fact, I doubt that you can spend a year in seclusion and reap the benefits of that seclusion if you know that, at the end of the year, your seclusion will end. It seems to me to be an all-or-nothing affair. When the hermit gave up all hope (and desire?) of rejoining the world, then the whispering of Jesus name in his cave became sweeter to him than the world he gave up – but not before. I don’t know this, but it’s my hunch. And I suspect, too, that I’ll never know because I’ll never be able – because of fear or weakness or selfishness or destiny – to renounce the world as clearly and thoroughly as the hermit has.

Oooo....

Did you know that today's date is 5/5/5? Also, this Friday is the 13th. Wasn't this in the Da Vinci Code?

Francois the Frog

I don't know what possessed me to write a children's story. The baby woke us up at 4:30 this morning and I couldn't go back to sleep and I had this thing in my head about Francois the Frog that had to get out. So here it is:

Last year, when I was in first grade, my teacher was Ms. Hollabaugh. She liked to give homework. She didn’t like to smile. She didn’t like recess. And she didn’t like to wear anything but frumpy, green dresses with puffy shoulders.

For science, we had a frog. We named him Francois. Francois liked to eat. We fed him dead house flies.

My friend Oscar liked math. He said Francois could eat ten flies. He said that was three more than most frogs could eat.

My friend Kaylee liked science. She said Francois was a unique frog because he had bigger shoulders than most frogs.

My friend Keisha liked stories. She said Francois reminded her of a fairy tale about a prince and princess.

One day, Keisha brought some powder to school. She said it was magic fairy dust. She sprinkled some on Francois.

After that, Francois started eating more. Oscar said he could eat fifteen flies. Then twenty. Then thirty.

Francois started to grow. He grew too big for his glass cage. Then he grew too big for our classroom. Then we kept him outside in the school courtyard. He could eat one hundred flies.

The ladies from the cafeteria started feeding him leftovers from lunch. Francois liked hamburgers. He didn’t like fish sticks. He could eat fifty hamburgers.

Then, one day, Francois came back to our classroom for a visit. He was as tall as Ms. Hollabaugh, and she looked nervous. Francois sat quietly in the corner until it was time for recess. We all lined up at the door and walked out to the playground. But Francois and Ms. Hollabaugh didn’t come with us.

When we came back from recess, Ms. Hollabaugh wasn’t there. Francois smiled at us and asked us to take our seats. He looked frumpy and he had big shoulders.

Francois the Frog taught our class the rest of that year, and he never mentioned Ms. Hollabaugh.

This year, in second grade, my teacher is Ms. Hildebrand. She likes math, and science, and stories, and jellybeans.

She doesn’t like frogs.

Generous

Here's the first update on Mexico Missions fundraising...and it's a good one. The first response to the support letter I sent out a week ago came this weekend, from a couple that Christine and I haven't seen in two years. And they were very generous. I was shocked at their donation. They're not rich people. I should probably go on here about the widow's mites and priorities and yadda yadda. But I could never figure out what Daddy Longlegs had to do with giving anyway. Instead, I'll just say, "Thanks R. and S." I have hundreds more to raise, but this is a great start.

Oh Mexico. Never really been, but I'd sure like to go.

Wasn't it Five Iron Frensy who sang,
Mission trip to Mexico
Mission trip to Mexico
Get in the van, come on let's go
On a mission trip to Mexico?

Ah what a classic musical composition that was.
Well, I'm taking their advice (sans the van). This summer, I'm going to Mexico City to work with homeless kids. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm hoping to post some updates here about planning, fundraising, the missionaries we're going to help, etc. The paragraph below is the first of such. It's an email from Jesus Guttierez, the founder of Lampas International, the ministry I'll be working with.

One of the staff at Lampas, Joy Jimenez, just had surgery - a procedure that a lot of my friends from church helped to pay for. She had an infection in her sinuses and if she hadn't had the surgery, doctors said, she might have lost her hearing. So she seems to be back at work already. I got this this morning so I'm assuming that "tomorrow" in Jesus' message is today (22 April).

Hello! Greetings from all!

Joy is doing well, recuperating from the surgery. She is still getting her strength back and has some pain, but is much better. Please pray for her tomorrow as it's the Children's day activity and she's in charge of the games. It's her first full day back, but she's planned simple games and think it should go fine. We have invited over 80 street kids to a local park, and will have the typical piñata, games and Bible message, and will serve them "tacos de canasta" & rice and beans for lunch. We would appreciate your prayers that all goes well (we don't have very many helpers this time), and that the Lord will touch many hearts. Thanks so much, and we'll be in contact. Joy is planning to write a thank you letter soon!

In Christ,
The Lampas team

Check back for more Lampas updates and more clashing musical quotes. Only on Otter Fodder do you get references to James Taylor and Five Iron Frensy together.

Enlightenment On Demand

I went for a run this morning. I haven't run in a while, but I felt like I needed to clear my head. Plus, I couldn't sleep. So I ran.

I've got some decisions to make - a lot of stuff going on with work, family, church, etc. Kind-of stressed because decisions always stress me out. I'm working on being more decisive.

Anyway, I went out running and I think I was expecting some kind of illumination - like God would speak while I panted. He didn't. No illumination. Not even a decent sunrise. Too cloudy.

I do that a lot - try to schedule my enlightenment. I'll go on a retreat or just to the park to pray and expect to hear from God - especially if I'm facing a big decision. I go off somewhere and piddle around waiting for the answer to slap me in the face, and then I'm kind-of disappointed when the retreat is over or I finish my run around the block and I get back home without any answers.

Maybe it would be enlightenment to realize that answers don't come that way. Maybe God doesn't always want to give me a skirt to hide my decisions behind so that, if it turns out to be a bad decision, I can't say with pursed lips, "Well, I really felt like that was what God was calling me to do." Maybe he's forcing me to be a man - stand up and pull the trigger and deal with the consequences of my decision - good or bad.

Or maybe things were just too cloudy this morning.

The Death of Smart

I have this idea for a book: The Death of Smart. Here’s what I think: I’m starting to question the value of knowing stuff. I was just at a meeting at church with some other teachers and some of them are in seminary and they were complaining that people in their classes don’t want to learn a lot. That is, they don’t want to learn Greek or study ancient creeds and history of theology or textual criticism. I’ve heard that before from teachers, and felt that way myself when I taught youth. One of the guys in the meeting today expressed it this way: “Well you’re in that world where everything is subject to academic scrutiny and everything is analyzed and thought through.” (I think he meant seminary.) “And you just have to accept that this class will never be that. They aren’t going to want to go deep like you do.”

The Newsboys had a song about this that I used to like. The lyrics said:
I want to preach the word. They want massages.
I check chapter and verse. They check their watches.
I spy another yawn. I might as well be gone.
Let’s stand and say, ‘Amen.’

The implication, I think, is that people in Sunday School classes just aren’t ready for such deep study. They haven’t “arrived” at that point in their spiritual walk. I don’t think I believe that any more though, and that’s what my book would be about. There are two reasons for this.

First, I think the church may have over-emphasized the importance of intellect and reason in recent years. That would have been only natural in the cultural of the last two centuries in which reason and science have dominated. Our churches meet in lecture halls. Our classes are based around a teacher. The very geography of our meetings reveals what is most important to us. If the church considered service to be its most important task, wouldn’t we meet in soup kitchens? If we considered evangelism our most important mission, would we meet at all? If fellowship were our primary goal, why not meet in homes? Instead, it’s learning, knowledge, and growth (which even for all of our “life application” baubles is still seen as an intellectual exercise: we have “life application studies” not “life application activities.”) that form the central mandate of our modern faith. Worship is encouraged, but better not to worship too late on Saturday night lest we miss the worship service on Sunday. Fellowship is important, but let’s keep the retreat to Friday night and Saturday so that everyone can be present for lecture on Sunday.

I don’t think it was always like that. The first church met in homes. The original rule of St. Francis included a vow to abstain from education. Francis originally didn’t allow his brothers to own books. I wonder how important learning is to God. Certainly, He doesn’t want us to float through life “fat, dumb and happy”. But if learning is the central purpose of the church, why didn’t Jesus talk about it more? In fact, I can’t think of many people in scripture who are praised for their learning. The Bareans, I suppose. And there were “men of Issacar” who “understood the times.” And Jesus himself “grew in wisdom” and said to “take my yoke upon you and learn of me.” But those seem to be more about wisdom, as influenced by lessons learned living life. I don’t know that any of those have a classroom in view.

I hope, in saying this, that I don’t seem to be complaining about church. I love my church’s worship service. It feeds me. It encourages me. I miss it when I’m not able to attend. Nor, am I complaining about format. I enjoy a good lecture, and my church works hard to avoid the “sage on a stage” format and present messages in creative ways. But when I try to put myself in the shoes of a non-Christian, I can’t think of any format that I would find less appealing than a church service. Which brings me to the second reason for my book: smart churches aren’t post-modern churches.

Fifty years ago, what you knew was very important. We elected leaders and trusted teachers if they had amassed an impressive amount of information. They must have studied. They must have done research in windowless libraries with dusty books. But now information (both good and bad, accurate and inaccurate) is available to a much wider audience with must less effort in its discovery. Thus we don’t value knowledge as much as our grandparents did. We elect politicians because we liked them in a movie or a sport. We shrug when a president can’t recall the name of a country’s foreign minister. And we raise an eyebrow when our pastor reads a suspicious quote from Winston Churchill. We may even visit famousquotes.com after the service to see if Churchill was really the author.

Witness this blog. I don’t have a degree in social science of any kind so why read something by someone who is obviously not an authority on the subject? Or consider the blog format at all: part of the function of newspapers and publishers used to be that they were vouching for their content. The reporter or essayist was someone who knew their stuff, someone the public could trust. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have his own book or column. So why do post-moderns read blogs by people they don’t know and don’t know if they can trust? Because facts aren’t as important as they used to be. Facts are cheap. Thus the teacher, the person with all the answers, is no longer the leader we’re drawn to follow. In fact, we’re suspicious of anyone who has answers. And because of all of that, the target for a “culturally-relevant” church has moved while the intellectual format has kept its static aim. As a result, we might as well be shooting blanks.

Churches nowadays like to talk about being “culturally relevant.” It’s a buzzword. But I wonder if we are making ourselves relevant to the wrong culture. For instance, our services, programs and auditoriums have gotten increasingly modern. The church in America has spent millions of dollars so that its leaders can “repackage the ancient message in a culturally-relevant way.” I think what that means is putting hymns and Bible verses in PowerPoint. That’s a very modern idea. (So modern that it took years for my home church to come around to the idea. The old lights called it, “music on the wall” and wanted no part of it.)

But the post-modern person isn’t impressed with PowerPoint. She uses it in office meetings. Not only that, she has experienced life on Tatouine and watched some roughnecks blow up a meteor to save the world and seen a lot of other fancy tricks with technology that’s way better than PowerPoint. Years ago, before I thought of any of this and when I would get really excited that a Christian band could pack out a football stadium and put on something really cool like a laser show, a friend of mine saw all this coming. His name is Andy. We were at just such a concert. It had smoke and it was very loud and I thought it was so cool – just as cool as anything a secular band could do, so there. (Except that it was in a church, which wasn’t as cool as if it had been in a football stadium.) Anyway, my friend told me, “You know, we will never be able to outdo the world, the secular bands, with big, expensive, flashy shows. That’s not what the church is about anyway. The one thing that we can offer the world that secular bands can’t is genuine relationships. Love.”

<>I nodded as if I agreed with him, but deep down I was thinking. “No! My youth pastor told me I could be Christian and be cool too! And that’s what I want! Plus, we’re doing this to be ‘culturally-relevant’.”

But my friend was right. In the post-modern culture, my friends don’t care that much what I know or how convincing I am. So they won’t really care what the people at my church know or how convincing my pastor is. If there is one, highest virtue of our post-modern culture it’s tolerance. But if there’s a second-highest virtue, it’s genuine-ness. We have enough data. We want something more.

So the book will be called The Death of Smart, or Smart Church. Dead Church, or something like that. And it will sell millions of copies. Watch for it coming soon to an amazon.com page near you.

My Prejudice

I just finished reading Blue Like Jazz. It was incredible. Donald Miller has written a book without pretense about, among other things, his struggle with being pretentious. It's disarming. Entertaining. And he read my mind. Or, more precisely, my heart.

There were so many things from the book that I would like to discuss. But one (and I don't even know if this was really in the book, but just came to my head while I was reading it) is that I have this problem with intellectual snobery. I really think I'm smarter than most people.

I don't know how I've come to such a conclusion, but I have. Most people that I meet, I assume that they watch too much TV, don't read much, don't know the capitol of China, haven't thought clearly through their political affiliations, haven't thought critically about the literary merits of Napoleon Dynamite, etc. If I disagree with them, I don't say so because I know I'm right and to show them so would either make them mad or ashamed that they could have not known what I know. Ya know?

The other day, I had written something to someone that included a reference to the UK. They asked me "what's UK? Ukraine?" I said, "United Kingdom." They said, "Oh. Where's that?" I said "Great Britain." They said, "Oh."

I sometimes wish I were part of some deeply spiritual, rigorously academic, culturally hip crowd that could talk about Derek Webb and the Gaza settlements and Second Temple Judaism and Eric Dampier without missing a beat and always have something insightful to say about each topic. We would meet in a coffee shop, of course. Not like, have meetings, but just run into each other there like at Central Perk in Friends but without the lame jokes. And even though I know hardly anything about the topics I just listed, we would all know everything about them and lots about lots more because we would pay attention to such things so that we could talk about them at the coffee shop.

I even have this problem with people who know more than me. My brother-in-law, for instance. He's a genius. He knows like six languages. He picks up languages like I pick up movie lines. He learns them so he can study ancient manuscripts and stuff. When you ask him about a difficult passage in the Bible, he can quote it to you in the original language, tell you the three most common interpretations of it, and give at least two textual insights to support or discredit each. I'm not kidding. But even with him I have this idea that I'm smarter. At least in what matters, right? I mean, who wants to know about the Old Testament Pseudopigrypha anyway? Only seminary professors and dorks who hang out at coffee shops and don't have a real life. And bloggers who want to drop words like pseudopigryha so they sound smart. I don't think I'm spelling that right.

Like I said, I don't know how I've come to this point. It might have been the newspaper. My editor at the newspaper was never surprised at anything. He had a mental cubby-hole for every story. He would say things like, "The city is cleaning up the streets again. Big campaign. No more litter. Gonna clean things up this time. Give me 12 inches on it." This really impressed me. I thought, "Wow, he must have seen dozens of city street-cleaning anti-litter campaigns in his time. He's been around the block. Nothing impresses him. He knows it all." But he wasn't a know-it-all.

I've written 601 words now (I checked) and just realized I don't really know what point I'm trying to make. Other than, this is the stuff that clangs around in my skull and I think that's what a blog is supposed to be for. So there ya go. Go check out Blue Like Jazz.

The Back Nine

Here's your two-paragraph, behind-the-scenes report from the Masters.
1. The golf was incredible. Tiger is the Michael Jordan of golf. On the biggest stage, when he needs it most, he can just turn on this overdrive. It's amazing. We saw him putt one into the creek on Thursday and hit a tree on Friday. And then he comes back on Saturday with 7 straight birdies.
2. Augusta National (just "the National" to locals) is everything you're afraid it would be - rich, stuffy, elitist. It's like a Dixie white supremist camp that puts on a golf tournament. Well, maybe not that bad, but it's clear that the members enjoy having their boys club - I can go in the clubhouse and you can't - I have a green jacket and you don't - I can drive a golf cart around the course and tell people to get out of my way and you can't. Not that they shouldn't be that way. I mean it's their club, they can do what they like. But you definitely get the feeling when you walk through the gates that there are two kinds of people in that world - friends of Hootie, and the rest of us.

Georgia on my mind

Well, tomorrow I leave for Augusta. Yes, Augusta National where I'll hang out with Phil, Tiger, Justin and the boys. Probably give them some pointers...
"Phil, you're dropping your left elbow..."
"Tiger, try putting more weight on your left foot..."
"C'mon, swing Vijay! Mom mamma can hit it farther than that!"
Well, maybe not. But you can watch for me. I'll be the one in a khaki cap and maybe a maroon A&M windbreaker. Also, I'll be the only one there who knows secret nunchuck moves from the government. I will NOT be the one who yells, after every swing, "GET IN THE HOLE!"