Please pray

My mother is in the ICU; she had a heart attack. She'll be having bypass surgery Monday or Tuesday, and that's all we know right now. Please do pray for her, if you see this.

Balls in Space

Lately, there have been a couple of occasions where we've had the opportunity to show Asher a globe. We point out where we live, and where we used to live, and Texas, and a few other places. Kurtis has explained that this is kind of like a map, and the earth we live on is a big ball in space. I wondered how much Asher understood -- and then he showed us Tuesday night.

We went to the outlet mall near Grove City so I could get some shoes, and Kurtis and Asher played on the playground they have there. Part of it is a big wooden "boat" with a few portholes and steering wheels. When I was done shopping, Asher wanted to drive the boat one more time. He was steering, looking out the window at us, and this is what he said:

"I'm going to drive this boat all the way to Texas! But first, it has to turn into a rocketship."

It does?

"Yes, the boat is turning into a rocketship to go to Texas. Because Texas is on the ball, and the ball is in space, so we have to go UP UP UP into space in our rocketship to get there!"

Oh.

Yes, the boat turned into a rocketship, and then it turned back into a boat when we got to the ball, and we arrived at Texas. And then we came home and went to bed.

I think we might need to explain things a bit more, but not bad for a three-year-old, huh?

The Fall Cometh

"If you've had half as much fun watching the show as we've had doing it, well, then, we've had twice as much fun doing the show as you've had watching it." -Casey McCall, Sports Night

With the end of the Olympics (and our poor old external drive that really put forth its best effort but appears to have ground itself into complete uselessness — way to take one for the team) I'm in the process of putting our media center in the den back together in prep for the fall season premieres. I usually get nervous around this time because I don't know when shows start and we don't watch commercials anymore so we don't have it drilled into our minds by the networks.

So... I'm dedicating this blog post to what shows I want to see, and when they start. This post might get edited as we get closer to the fall season.

• Chuck: This is my surprise favorite from last year. All the previews made the show look awful, but after Trilisa encouraged me to actually watch I really got hooked. I think Sharon's finally caught up with me and seen them all, but if not she's still got a few weeks. It starts back on Monday, September 29, at 8:00 Eastern.
• Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles: This show helped us survive the writer's strike. Like Chuck, I originally panned it but ended up really liking it (although watching Summer Glau makes me miss Firefly, which, if you haven't seen it yet, you should go buy right now.) It starts back Monday, September 8, at 8:00 Eastern (which will put it opposite Chuck... I wonder how that will play out?)
• Heroes: Like the first two, this was a show that Sharon and I stumbled on to after it started the first season. It was on right before Studio 60, which we were much more excited about since we're giant Sorkin fans. Ultimately we tracked our disappointment with Studio 60 by how much we were enjoying Heroes, and then suddenly we found ourselves looking forward to Heroes instead of Studio 60. The second season had some potential, but ultimately seemed sorta thrown together (despite the return of Sharon and Trilisa's evil hottie to television) but this third season arc could be interesting. It starts Monday, September 22, at its regular 9:00 Eastern timeslot.
• House: We came to this one really late (like Season 3) but, dear me, Hugh Laurie is simply amazing. The show seems to really be struggling with the "what do we do now?" problem, though, so I'm wondering if it'll be as compelling. Sharon and I just miss Chase, Cameron, and Foreman. When the slaves turned over, the show became much less fun for us. Still, we'll probably watch it some. It starts Tuesday, September 16, at its regular 8:00 Eastern timeslot.
• The Office: This show makes Sharon cringe, but in a good way. Sometimes it's almost too painful to watch. They've managed to keep it funny by becoming more and more implausible, so I don't know what'll happen this season. We missed the season finale, in which apparently a ton of stuff happened, so hopefully we'll catch the reshowing of that before it returns on Thursday, September 25, at 9:00 Eastern.
• 30 Rock: We didn't watch this show out of brotherhood with Sorkin when it debuted the same year as Studio 60, and man do I feel we missed out. This show is sharp, funny, and has a great Baldwin. I'm only through Season 1, and Sharon's not even that far, but we'll record it for later. It doesn't come back for a long time, though — not until Thursday, October 30, at 9:30 Eastern.
• The Amazing Race: The one reality show we watch, and not because it's a train wreck. We haven't been huge fans (we've missed whole seasons) but it's really well done, and maybe this year it'll actually be in HD (I think it's the show on television that would benefit the most from it, given the locales they visit.) The 13th race starts on Sunday, September 28, at 8:00 PM Eastern.
  

That's the whole list. There's some shows we like that I just can't quite bring myself to commit to (like Without a Trace) some shows that I want to like but just don't look good (like Knight Rider) some very popular shows that Sharon and I never got in to (like Prison Break) and so on, but given Asher and busy work weeks and wanting to occasionally do something in down time other than watch television, that's our current list. Feel free in the comments to try to convince me otherwise (or, please, correct my time/debut info if I've got it wrong!)

There's one show not listed above because the Sci-Fi Channel is stupid. Or, you know, they have no idea what they're gonna do when Battlestar Galactica isn't available to both make them tons of money and give them critical acclaim. We'll see thee in January, BSG, and then we'll be sad for you like we are for Firefly (we hope.)

Out of Shape

"I think that it's brainless to assume that making changes to your window's view will give a new perspective." -Death Cab for Cutie, Blacking out the Friction

Sharon, Asher, and I got bikes this weekend. Each of those stories is funny, but now is the time when y'all get to make fun of me first.

I forgot that bicycle tires are much more sensitive to low air pressure than car tires. I know, how could I forget. That's like when people tell me they forget how to work their digital camera when it's connected to their computer. But confession is good; I simply forgot. So I thought it'd be a fine idea to take my new bike (with almost no air in the tires) over to the gas station to use their pump to air them up. The air held in the front, but the back inner tube popped almost immediately, leaving me a mile from our house, with a (relatively) heavy bike with no back tire, which I then had to carry home. I'm so pathetically out of shape it took me something like thirty minutes to get home, with me stopping about every 100 yards to catch my breath and switch the side I was carrying the bike on.

It was then I realized the huge accommodation we've made for cars in our culture. Gas stations are somewhat far apart, but they're close enough together you almost never run out of gas. No one would think of selling a car you couldn't drive off the lot. If you saw somebody on the side of the road with their hood open you'd probably stop to help. Of course, if you were said person you'd have no qualms about leaving your car there to go get help for it worrying that it'd still be there when you got back. And of course the biggest: that the closest gas station to your house is a mile away, which is pathetically close when you're in your car and need air for your tires, but crazy far away when you have to carry your bike because you popped a tire.

I'm not advocating anything here (though, Lord knows, I like to advocate) just noticing an observation I had when I realized that, being new to the city, I didn't know anybody to call. There is a bike repair shop in Grove City, but I wouldn't expect (and neither would most people, I think) to call them and have them come get my bicycle and I in order to repair it, much less that an entire organization could boost their membership by offering such a service to its members for free.

We expect people riding bikes to have this stuff figured out for themselves. This doesn't surprise me; but it does surprise me that we don't make the same assumptions about people driving cars. We have developed an entire economy around making having a car convenient, and from that economy our culture has grown to an acceptance (even an expectation) of the use of one.

I know that cars are about a billion times more useful than a bike, but the centrality of the automobile is soon to be put to the test now that Americans have begun to realize that so much of their life (indeed, their whole economic world) is built on the premise that oil has a fixed price. As that fact changes, so will a whole boat load of economic assumptions.

(I remember overhearing in a conversation among the Rice speech people that the US was, more or less, an "oil standard" economy. I obviously don't know enough economics to say one way or the other, but it's an interesting premise.)

The other two stories will have to wait for another post, but I'll tease the Asher one by pointing out that this is the bike Asher really wanted and that we eventually ended up getting for him, despite the fact that we were going to originally buy him a tricycle.

No Shoes for Old Men

"When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes..." -I Got Shoes, Negro Spiritual

For those of you who know us from Rice and haven't already heard, James Gjertsen died suddenly on Wednesday. Sharon's been following James's progress on John and Abby's blog for some time, and the news hit us pretty hard (though honestly her worse than me). He had semilobar holoprosencephaly, and it's been tough following their ups and downs with him, though not for any of their doing. It's just hard not to become a ball of conflicting emotions reading it. You hurt for them, and you pray for them, and you are happy your own son is okay, and then you're guilty for feeling happy and then you feel bad for the times you take your own son for granted and by golly if you don't start to wish you could do something for them but what really can you do and what does God mean by all this anyway.

Then, of course, you put it next to the whining I did in my last post and you think, "God, I'm such a self-centered prick. Where was I when You were knitting together baby Gjertsen in the womb? Who am I to question the path You laid for him or his parents from before the foundations of the world (and even less for my path)?"

Then Job answered the LORD:

"I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
I spoke once, but I have no answer—
twice, but I will say no more."

Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm:

"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God's,
and can your voice thunder like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look at every proud man and bring him low,
look at every proud man and humble him,
crush the wicked where they stand.
Bury them all in the dust together;
shroud their faces in the grave.
Then I myself will admit to you
that your own right hand can save you."

You can hear God's voice thick and sticky with contempt and sarcasm (which, most of the time, we think God isn't allowed to feel) towards us, these little egocentric mounds of dust.

But even in this I'm unrepentant — just embarassed. Will we ever grow up?

God bless you, Gjertsen family, and be with you, baby James, in heaven so sweet. Walk all over God's heaven.

Uncommon Grounding

"My bass feels seaworthy." -What's Her Face, Teen Girl Squad #8

It's been a busy last few days. I just got back from two days in Chicago (more on this in a minute) and Sharon and I have something every night this week (which is way busier than Chicago was) so I'm a little frazzled. Sharon's a little freaked out about the start of school, and work isn't going as well for me as I'd like, and we're trading some cold around the family, so... there you go.

This week I actually helped out with the worship team at Fellowship Community Church, playing... bass. I think it's kinda funny how whenever I get involved in a new worship team, they always need the instrument I play that I've played least recently. But it worked out well once I adjusted and remembered a few things (I still keep thinking the highest string is an E, even though that makes no sense, just because I've played guitar too long) and it's been fun to pick up again. I'm gonna pimp the PodXT a little; I bought the thing two or three four (sheesh, having a kid really distorts your sense of time) years ago (when it was brand new) when I was playing a little more electric guitar. A year or so later I really needed something to help me EQ my acoustic live differently for different songs, so I bought the floor pedal to help me lead worship with it. Now, many years later, it's just a little money and I get all the bass amp modeling on it without buying new hardware. Ah... if only every electronics purchase was like that.

While in Chicago, I went to open mic night at Uncommon Ground, and let me tell you that was fun. I never went while we lived in Chicago (for a dozen reasons that are either totally obvious to those reading this or that I don't have the space to go in to now) and I'm a little sad I never did. I really really like live music. I always have. That open mic is sorta what I always hoped the Hyde Park Christian Songwriters' Group would be (since there was very little audience that weren't performing or close friends of one of the performers) or the coffeehouse I tried to run for a little while at Hyde Park Alliance. There's something both more forgiving and more intense about a live performance; music is more itself live.

I know why (well, some of it) God didn't take my life that direction, and for the most part (not all) I'm glad for it. I like being able to do the other things I do, and I like the life Sharon, Asher, and I have together. But it does make me wonder if that part of me is really gone. I have so few expectations for it, and I have (mostly) made peace with God about that. I just don't know anymore that it's worth it; every time I turn and try to embrace doing anything semi-serious with music (other than worship leading) it just always turns out so disappointing or it never turns out at all. It's hard to look back at the pattern of your life like that and say anything other than "I guess it's not God's will." But if so, then why do I care so much?

I said I wasn't gonna get into it, and I did anyway. Well, the self-pity is over for now. The sun is shining, my code is transforming terrabytes of archive data as we speak, and tonight I get to dress up and go out with my wife (even if it is with people I don't know.) Life is good.

Olympic Fever

"Some beach volleyball competitions, including the Olympics, have rules restricting the maximum size of uniforms." -Beach Volleyball entry, Wikipedia

It's the Olympics. Both external hard drives are in the den hooked up to the Vista Media Center computer: one adding extra NBC HD recording space, the other handling giant caches for the NBC Olympics on the Go plugin downloading hours and hours and hours of video of coverage.

Yeah, we're a little nuts when it comes to the Olympics. We can't really say we're sports fans; we're full-blown Olympic hypocrites. During the year, we barely watch the two sports we occasionally care about (football and gymnastics, with the stereotype assignment) but during the Olympics suddenly we're talking swimming like it's best thing ever, and offering Really Deep Insights into synchronized diving. Unfortunately, this has a downside we've never had before:

We have a kid.

I know, Asher was around during the 2006 Olympics, but we could just leave the Olympics on and he basically didn't notice (also, at the time, the only HD in the house was on the computer, so it was easier for him to ignore.) Now, of course, he sees this development as candy coated poison; it's TV, but it's not his TV. He was very excited about swimming for the first five minutes. Of course, we've probably watched several hours since then.

It is nice (even if he doesn't know it yet) to be alive in a time when you can, for instance, watch Olympic volleyball and ask Wikipedia about that strange person in the other color uniform. Hooray for the computer interweb!

For those who've been worrying/praying, we're gonna try Fellowship Community Church for a while. I met with the Pastor for about an hour and a half yesterday, and our conversation confirmed a lot of things Sharon and I have felt about the church.

So, it seems things are lining up for the fall; Asher is happy with the YMCA day care, I'm flying back for my first visit back to Jump next week, and Sharon's got her password, so she can get her volumes of email from Grove City College. This is the way life is gonna look here this year, and I think it's gonna work.

Is There a Dog?

"got a stack of books so I could learn how to live
many are left half-read, covered by the cobwebs on my shelf" -Ginny Owens, Own Me

I should be in bed, but some weird food poisoning drove Sharon and I to bed shortly after Asher went to sleep, and for me that always means waking up at midnight and having trouble getting back to sleep for a little while, so I thought I'd share.

I assume you've heard the one about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac? Well, one book that keeps cropping up in my spiritual life is Mary Ellen Ashcroft's Dogspell. Sharon and I went to a GCF conference where she spoke, and I've got to admit, neither of us really enjoyed it. We're both (to use Rice speak) more SE than academ, and I think by the end of the week, the word narrative had taken on a special capacity to send us screaming.

But (I think I remember this correctly, if not it's still a good story) while there you must visit the book table (that's half of going to an IV retreat!) and we spotted this little book. As you can see from the Amazon link above, the thing is under 100 pages. And we were intrigued, so we bought it thinking, "it's short; even if it's awful it won't take long."

Now, for the worrisome, yes, on first read some of the word pictures and analogies will bug you. You'll get frustrated by what seems to be her clumsiness with switching around the word dog and God in sentences; it'll seem almost sacrilegious. Dr. Ashcroft reminds us in the introduction that we would do well to remember Dorothy Sayers's (one of Sharon's and my favorite authors) admonition:

When we use these expressions, we know perfectly well that they are metaphors and analogies; what is more, we know perfectly well where the metaphor begins and ends. We do not suppose for one moment that God procreates children in the same manner as a human father and we are quite well aware that preachers who use the "father" metaphor intend and expect no such perverse interpretation of their language. Nor (unless we are very stupid indeed) do we go on to deduce from the analogy that we are to imagine God as being a cruel, careless or injudicious father such as we may see from time to time in daily life; still less, that all the activities of a human father may be attributed to God, such as earning money for the support of the family, or demanding the first use of the bathroom in the morning.

Once you get over the uncomfortable notion of God as dog, then some pretty amazing truths come wagging happily out of the metaphor.

What really gets me is that, whenever I see the book laying around, I pick it up and read it again. Part of that is because it's so short (it's 86 pages so it never feels like it'll be a burden to read part of again) and part is because it seems so inoffensive (God as dog... I'll be able to read a few pages of this while I'm trying to go to sleep because it's not gonna have anything too powerful to say to me) and within a few pages, I am on the verge of tears if not actually weeping. It's images are powerful; it's critique (especially of the kind of Christianity I tend to practice) is damning. I don't expect God to love me even as much as a good dog, and I especially struggle with the antiseptic space I put in my spiritual w-a-l-k compared to the physical reality (that I do secretly crave) of the welcome of the Incarnation.

(Asher, bless his heart, drives this point home relentlessly. We pray at night and he pipes up, "Where is God?" We begin to try to explain omnipresence to him and he gets right to the point: "but I want to SEE him." Not because he wants proof; he's too young to have that kind of rational extrapolation. No, it's because he longs for the other side of love he's seen: the hugs, the kisses, the tickling, the sharing.)

It's these questions (and this book) that help me understand the meat (no pun intended) behind Catholic doctrines like transubstantiation. Why do we care so much (as evangelicals) to carefully point out that Jesus is not physically present in the bread and wine (yes, I meant juice)? I find as I age that I care less and less whether or not my Lord is present in those things as I am in whether or not I (in body as opposed to carefully distanced mental ascent) am present to receive Him if he is. If I don't expect Him to show up, why should I?

But what really starts to get me about this book right now (back to Mary Ellen Ashcroft for a minute) is how Dr. Ashcroft can write a whole little literary tel. (It's obviously a talent reserved for only the highest level of Academ - with a capital A.) Every time I re-read the book I'm not just restruck by the same ideas, but I find a subtle reference to somewhere else that has expounded on those ideas to somewhere else in literature. I get the impression that she had the most fun writing this book by reveling in the fact that she didn't need to index and cross reference every allusion she made, and that by forcing herself to remain under 100 pages, things just get thrown at you: little throw away sentences contain glimpses into whole other giant works. It's fun, and again, makes the book that much more re-readable.

So I've probably read this little book 10 or 15 times now, whereas much more important (and probably better in many ways) Christian tomes (like J.I. Packer's Knowing God) sit by still unread by me.

And now, back to bed. I'll probably think this was some strange dream in the morning.

Like a Puppy am I

"Matt's there because with Harriet gone, it's like someone moved his food dish." -Jordan McDeere (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip)

Sharon is home! Yes, I hear the chuckling. Laugh away. Who would believe me if I said I had the plague a year? (Thanks Donne, though that is over dramatizing: the above quote is more accurate.) She's back and everything feels right with the world again. We've been married over nine years, and this last week is the longest we've been apart, and while the stars didn't fall from the sky or anything, I didn't realize how off things were until she came back. Like the crazy man out on north Michigan Avenue (in Chicago, in case there's several crazy men scattered on north Michigan avenues around the world) yells out: if I'm lyin', I'm dyin'.

I really don't have anything else in particular to talk about, as I'm either sick or full of histamines right now, and it seems to be affecting my ability to post random goop.

I am not good at writing blog posts

Kurtis is, you know, creative and stuff. What with his song lyric epigrams, and his deep thoughts.

I am just going to tell you the following things:

1) I could have won an umbrella today from the Madison weatherman. If I had, you know, signed up. There's a TV in my dorm room (I know! Shocking!) and I watched the news last night, with the forecast of a high of 85 and occasional thunderstorms today. Yeah. SUPER bright and sunny, over 90 degrees. And I had carefully taken my umbrella and left my sunglasses in my room. So this particular weather station, if you sign up for a particular day and the meteorologist is more than 4 degrees off in his high temp forecast, you win an umbrella.

2) It's project NExT, not NEXT. The Ex go together -- New Experiences in Teaching. It's a great program, and I'm learning a ton and enjoying the workshop a whole lot.

But.

3) I WANNA GO HOME!!!!