Nate's 'Davar'

Alaska with Audrey and Lance, part 2: Beluga Point, Buckeyes and a li'l mo Moose

2012-01-29T13:29:00.002-05:00

Days 3 & 4: Ohio State, Turnagain Arm, Twilight, moore moose and the beginning of an obsession

Saturday morning we awoke early and went to a local sports bar to eat breakfast and watch the biggest football rivalry in college sports: Ohio State vs Michigan. Lance is an avid Ohio state fan and graduate (I think). In fact, he's such a big fan he once again wore shorts to go watch the game. (Don't know if he intended the shorts to be a means of rooting for his team, but it sure seemed extreme enough to me to be an act of Buckeye support.)

Short story short, the Buckeyes didn't have it in'em that day and came up with an "L" on their record against the Michigan Wolverines. Booo. A sad Lance makes for a san Nathan too.

Later on that day, because it so so crystal clear and beautiful outside, we took a drive down to the Turnagain Arm. This is a inlet of water just south of Anchorage that is about 30 miles long. With snow-covered mountains on both sides and the road hugging the winding topography, it is for sure my favorite scenic road ever.

Turnagain arm, looking out toward the inlet

The tid was in at the time, but the water had so many frozen areas and some fresh snow fallen on it that, from this picture, it hardly looks like what you'd think ocean water might look like.

Audrey, in her Buckeye garb

We stopped at a fun pull off known as Beluga Point. There's a rather large island thingy that you can climb out and around on (during the summer when it's warmish). But even from the road the views are great.

Part of Beluga Point visible behind us

We never stayed out of the car long since it was fairly windy and quite chilly that day.

This pic shows how the road sits between water and steep mountain side

On to the main reason why Audrey really came to Alaska - Twilight. Since the second of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight movies hit theaters, Audrey and Heather have seen them together in the theater. As far as I know, this wasn't really planned, but it kind of happened, and now there's precedent for coming to AK to see a movie. I don't know...ask them. It's something fun, and they've bonded over the glistening shirtless muscle rippling ware wolves of Team Jacob.

Heather got them matching shirts to increase their geek-hood

Personally, I'm team Alice (*wink*). I think my friend Robert is with me on that one.

In protest to the teen sensation now turned 20-something-sensation books and movies that are the Twilight series, Lance refused to see the movie and instead went and saw The Muppets.

Dakota, rooting for the Buckeyes

One of the evenings they were here, we introduced Audrey and Lance to a knew card game called Dominion. As was expected, they liked it. But I didn't realize just how much they liked it. Because of the nature of Dominion and it's popularity, the creators have put out several expansion sets to the game, increasing the amount of options for differing games. When Audrey and Lance were visiting, we had just the one base/main game. For Christmas, I got one expansion, which is exciting and adds lots of cards to our game.

Now, before they even left AK, it became apparent that Audrey intended to buy Dominion for herself. Then, I read on her blog that she and Lance were enjoying playing Dominion in the weeks following their visit. Later I read that over Christmas she was sad, because no one wanted to play Dominion as much as she did. Still later, I read something that said a weekend was spent playing a Zelda game Lance got and lots more Dominion.

In preparation for a family trip in March, I recently sent an email out asking folks to bring a few games. I offered that if my sister can bring her base Dominion game, I can bring my one new expansion, and we could put them together. The response I got was somewhat comical to me and evidentiary of an obsession. She told me not to bother bringing my game, that since Alaska, she has acquired not 1 or 2 or 3, but 4 of the Dominion games and consolidated them all into one large box, which I hear can probably hold 2 more Dominion expansions. I cracked up as I read the email knowing my sister and how she loves to find a good thing and really "get in" to it. Nonetheless, I look forward to lots, AND LOTS, of Dominion during our family trip.

Their last day in Alaska, we took them to see a few last sights around town. The above picture is from the overlook at the Flat Top mountain hiking trail head. It's hard to tell, but over the cliff you can see the greater Anchorage area and the ocean/Cook Inlet beyond it. (Perhaps you can click on the picture to enlarge.)

The coldest Lance has ever been

This one cracked us all up. A description directly from my sister's blog: Note that we have on hats and gloves and appropriately heavy jackets. However, our legs are only protected by simple pants/jeans. At this moment in time, we are near the top of Flat Top Mountain just outside Anchorage. It is snowing and the wind is blowing fiercely. The temperature is definitely below zero. We stepped out of the truck and headed to an overlook (that’s ocean you can see in the background), and near froze in the three minutes we were outside, despite the heavy coats.

It was so funny, because once we got back into the warm truck, Lance took a moment to reflect saying, "I think that's officially the coldest I've ever been."

"Hurry up and take the #*$& picture!"

What's funny to me is how long I usually like to stand and take in beautiful views and what not. But we literally were only there long enough to snap two pictures and scurry away like warm blooded North Carolinians cowering from the bitter cold.

A good sign when searching for moose

We hadn't had a close or clear moose sighting yet, and it was their last day, last chance. Luckily, on our way to another lookout point we came across this young adolescent male, most likely freshly out on his own away from mother.

Bulwinkle's younger cousin, me thinks

Not far from our moose friend, we took in this view of downtown from across a little water.

That evening was their time to depart. After they packed, we said goodbye, and dropped them at the airport. Audrey and Lance, I'm so glad you got to see Alaska in the winter, covered in snow and majestic. Hopefully, you'll one day get a chance to come during the wonderful summer, and we can show you all kinds of new awesomeness. Thanks for coming, and we miss you already.

Alaska with Audrey and Lance, part 1 Thanksgiving and Hatcher's Pass

2012-01-26T01:41:00.001-05:00

Well, my sister, Audrey, and Lance came up to visit us over Thanksgiving. I was SOOO excited for her to come to Alaska and to just get to spend time with them.

(By the way, sorry guys for taking SOOO long to blog on your visit.)

One thing I love about these two is, they are "floor people"

After the ~12 hour trip spread over three flights, they arrived the night before Thanksgiving. The airport pick up area was packed, and the pick up event itself was rather uneventful. We inched along in a traffic huggermugger, Audrey and Lance walked to us, we loaded their luggage and jumped back into the truck trying to fight traffic just to leave the airport. It was cold and snowy out. Lance arrived in Alaska wearing shorts.

DAY 1: Thanksgiving

At dog park, missing Nugent right about about now

On Thanksgiving day, Heather had to work the first part of the day, so Lance, Audrey and I took the dogs to our favored dog park. This outing was also a trial run of their cold-outdoor clothing. If I remember right, the temperature this day was somewhere in the low single-digits.

I just love this pic Audrey snapped of our two dogs taking off after a stick

We walked to Conner's Lake, which was completely frozen over, and unless you'd been there before, you probably wouldn't even know it was there. We all walked out over the lake, the dogs romped and Audrey played in the snow flakes!

My sister and her snowy flakes!

T'was this day, we had our first moose sighting. It wasn't a great sighting as we couldn't really make him out, but you can definitely tell he's there.

They don't hide very well in this environment, just look like big dark brown spots

After the dog park, we came home, cooked a bunch of food, Heather got off work and we enjoyed a super Thanksgiving feast along with a few of our friends whom we had invited. Good times were had by all.

DAY 2: Hatcher's Pass

The next day, Black Friday, we got up early and geared up to go snowshoe hiking in Hatcher's Pass. It's about a 1.5 hour drive to this popular hiking location north of Palmer, AK. Almost there, we had a second yet dodgy moose sighting. It was snowing hard and the light was very flat. It was tough to see him, but the camera shows he was there.

Bulwinkle, up the hill from the road

We rented and borrowed 4 sets of snowshoes and polls to trudge around in for the day. Hatcher's Pass is a vast area in the Chugach Mountains with peaks nearly 360 degrees to hike and lots of places to explore. For us, it was completely covered in snow. The surrounding mountains were hidden and the light was so flat we could barely decipher, at times, the terrain in front of us.

An old mining town in Hatcher's Pass

We were so worried about being cold this day we came prepared: lots of snow gear, hand and toe warmers, extra hats and layers stuffed in a book bag, and double socks on our feet. Our formerly Alaskan uncle who's a bit extreme when it comes to 'preparedness' would be proud.

Heather was worried about avalanches all day

After all our preparations for cold weather and keeping warm, turns out hiking in snowshoes is hard work. About 10 minutes into the trekking, we stopped and all started shedding layers. I was sweating like nobody's business within the first 30 minutes, after going it alone up a steep embankment.

See, on a clear day there'd be all manner of beautiful-ness behind them, but not this day

A look-down at our get-up

We hiked around the mining town for a few hours and then took a trip down the board walk to the mouth of the mine.

At the mouth of the mine, Audrey being silly, me sitting on railing

There were several feet of snow on the ground. It was fun just to fall into it, and it caught you perfectly and gently like an expensive memory foam mattress or something.

Heather decided to beat me whilst I lay on my expensive snowy mattress

I just love capturing this side of my sister on camera

Were it summer time, that railing he's leaning on would be as high as his shoulders

Another sighting of She-Heather! Watch Out!!

I think, by the end, we hiked about 3 hours. That was enough, because we were definitely tired afterwards. What cracked me up, was the surge of energy that overcame Lance come time to head to the car. The whole day, he took up the caboose, following the other three of us quietly. But once we pointed toward the car - zoom - off he went. The picture below is Lance, at this point way ahead with his sights set on warmth and a place to sit. He eventually got so far ahead he was out of sight. Unfortunately, he didn't have the keys, so once at the car he had to wait a good 10 minutes before we caught up.

I think Lance is what you would call..."indoorsy"

After having some hot chocolate at a little restaurant thing and almost getting the truck badly stuck in the deep snow on what is probably the worst and stupidest road in the world...we started back home. Finally, then, it began to clear up a bit, and you can start to get an idea for the kind of place we spent our day.

I love the colors the sunset created

That evening we enjoyed Thanksgiving food again and got some needed rest.

To see what Hatcher's Pass looks like during the summer, click here. Also, here's a picture of the mouth of the same mine we visited but during the summer. Gives some perspective on how much snow was under our feet.

Up next in part 2: More moose viewing, the creation on a Dominion obsession and the coldest Lance has ever been!!

A way to go

2012-01-12T19:45:00.000-05:00

For two weeks now, I have been the new Bereavement Services Coordinator for a hospice organization in Alaska. So far, it's going well. I had the privilege to have worked here this past summer while I was a resident. During that time, I served as the interim chaplain of sorts while they transitioned from one chaplain to another.

My job is to see to the bereavement (grief) needs of family and friends after our patients die. These services have many different forms; however, part of my job is spending time with and counseling those who are experiencing particularly complicated or at risk grief, and during these times I get to function basically as a chaplain (which i'm trained for).

The office is a good place to work. The organization is growing steadily, which means there's plenty of work to be done by all, includinga a 4-month back log in bereavement work that hasn't been done! (Job security for me, I guess.)

Recently, one of our patients died (I know, big surprise for a hospice organization), and the nurse thought the patient's wife needed a bit of extra support. So, I went to the house to spend some time and walk with her through, at least, her first bit of time grieving. But this blog is not about that time. It's about how he died.

I've been to a few different seminars or whatnot on death and dying. And to get into the perspective of a grieving person, presenters often have participants do certain exercises which engage our sense of loss. One exercise was to draw a picture of how we want to die. For the majority of people, the answer is similar. We want to die at home, in our bed, with our loved ones around us and without pain/suffering. (Consider trying this exercise yourself. Just answer the question: When you die, who, what, when, where and why?)

The night before this patient died, his elderly wife was trying to stay up to take care of everything, the busybody she is. But her husband, now bed bound, insisted she come to bed, because he sleeps better with her nearby. "He made sure to give me a hug, and he kissed me saying, 'Good night sweetheat,' like he always does," the wife told me through her shiny and watery eyes. He went to sleep and died during the night.

But his wife didn't realize. She got up and went about her morning routine, assuming her husband was sleeping in. Even their live-in care giver, when she peaked her head into the darkened room, thought the patient was sleeping peacefully. It wasn't until the nurse showed up to do her routine care that his death was discovered. The nurse said as soon as she turned on the light she knew from his coloring he'd been gone for several hours.

But, what a way to go? In bed next to his beloved sweetheart this man transitioned from this life to be with God the way most people want to do it--in bed, loved ones near, without pain, at home. Talk about a way to go.

I'm glad to be a part of an organization that helps provide people with a peaceful and dignified death. I've been present for numerous tragic, heart-wrenching and just plain ol' not-peaceful deaths in the ER that involve chest compressions loud noise, anxiety and pain without the presence of loved ones. It's nice to see the other side of the spectrum.

Naked Spirituality, by Brian McLaren

2011-11-29T14:16:00.001-05:00

Anyone who has done any reading on the Christian spiritual disciplines has probably read the book by Richard Foster titled Celebration of Discipline. For some three decades this has been the modern authority on good writing about and practice of Christian spiritual disciplines. Foster's book presents 12 practices one might consider in one's pursuit of God, purpose, meaningful faith, a deeper sense of the spiritual, stuff like that. It was the first book assigned us in seminary. I've read it, and have always thought very highly of it.

Brian McLaren's newest book Naked Spirituality: A life with God in 12 simple words, is another book in the same vein as Foster's. McLaren typically writes mostly about theology, culture and how bad theology is influencing Christian culture. In a recent book A New Kind of Christianity he proposes just that, a new Christianity that is devoid of most of what he considers to be bad theology out there today. Because of this, McLaren receives, I can only imagine, a lot of criticism from Christians, especially from the conservative right, who like things just the way they are and are uncomfortable with any sort of theological change.

My guess is, McLaren wanted to demonstrate with this book that he, like his critics is also a spiritual person in pursuit of God, like the rest. His liberal theology is very tame in this book as he points readers rather toward their own spiritual path and offers encouragement for the journey.

Following in Richard Foster's example, McLaren offers 12 simple words, which represent 12 different spiritual practices that correspond to, and fit into, what he has identified as four seasons of the faith journey. The template looks something like this:

Simplicity: The Spring-like season of spiritual awakening
Words:
Here: The practice of invocation and presentation, awakening to the presence of God
Thanks: The practice of gratitude and appreciation, awakening to the goodness of God
O (like "Oh"): Practice of of worship and awe, awakening to the beauty and joy of God

Complexity: The Summer-like season of spiritual strengthening
Sorry: Practice of self-examination and confession, strengthening through failure
Help: Practice of expansion and petition, strengthening through weakness
Please: Practice of compassion and intercession, strengthening through empathy

Perplexity: The Autumn-like season of spiritual surviving
When: Practice of aspiration, exasperation and desperation, surviving through delay
No: Practice of rage and refusal, surviving through disillusionment
Why: Practice of lament and agony, surviving through abandonment

Harmony: The Winter-like season of spiritual deepening
Behold: Practice of meditation and wonder, deepening by seeing
Yes: Practice of consecration and surrender, deepening by joining
[. . . ]: Practice of contemplation and rest, deepening by being with (p. 26-27)

McLaren's approach or template of the spiritual life-cycle is similar to Foster's famous proposals in that each have 12 practices that one pursues to become more 'whole-y.' However, Foster's disciplines are more prescription-like: do this practice and you will grow. McLaren's approach is markedly different, and I'd argue more accessible, in that he clearly states that these disciplines are to be practiced or emphasized along with one's place in one's own spiritual cycle. If I'm in the season of simplicity, I may not be focused on the spiritual practice of lament and agony found in the season of perplexity.

McLaren is clear that this template is not a mountain to climb, that once you reach the season of Harmony you've reached the top of the mountain or highest rung on a ladder. Rather, this is a cycle, much like the seasons it parallels, that repeats time and time again within one's spiritual journey.

The author bears his own experiences in the book illustrating for instance that he has numerous times lived through the cycle. And I find myself agreeing with this approach. As I read through each season, I found myself saying that yes I've been there before. I resonated with most of the book, and especially with the notion that though I have been through each of these "spiritual seasons," I am still in process and will continue to go through them again.

I enjoyed the book, I'm proud of finishing another book, and I felt happily refreshed by it. McLaren is a gifted communicator who is able to write simply, presenting complicated ideas in accessible ways. If you are in a season of reading, perhaps you will pick this one up and consider it.

Dog Lovers Beware

2011-11-29T13:39:00.001-05:00

Isn't she adorable!

I thought I'd share my broken heart with you. But if you love dogs and have a tender heart, you might want to steer clear of this little story (which means Hannah and Yaar E should have no problem with it).

As a college graduation gift for my sister in-law (SIL), Heather and I have been planning to get her a puppy. This has been no secret. A min-pin (mini pincher) was the dog of choice, and it was decided that Christmas was the appropriate time that my SIL was ready for a dog.

A month ago I contacted a NC breeder of Minpins outside of Raleigh and reserved a puppy in a litter that, at the time, had not even been born. After the birth, the breeder sent me this picture of the little angel. I passed it along to my SIL, and the picture was shown around to friends and family both here and in Raleigh as many soon-to-be parents show off sonograms. In dog loving families, a new dog is almost as significant as a new baby.

Anyway, on to the sadness...

About two weeks ago, I got a phone call from the breeder, late one night, who said she had some "bad news." My defenses went up. Had she sold it to someone else? Had the puppy gotten sick? I waited for her to continue. And then, I recognized a "tone" of voice that I've grown all too familiar with as a chaplain talking with grieving people. Her voice choked a little, became a bit scratchy and her pace of speech slowed. Like a doctor delivering bad news to a family, the words came out like heavy stones thrown from her heart.

She has a nursery structure on her property in which most of her dogs (mommies, puppies, studs) live. The previous night, the heater for this facility went on the fritz. The thermostat malfunctioned and the heater pumped out as much heat as it could for hours on end until the next morning. The breeder awoke the next morning and walked as usual to her nursery to find it heated to 120 degrees, and 24 dogs laying lifeless in their beds. This 24 included the little girl in the above picture.

The stronger dogs that survived were drenched with sweat, and she said one of them was even coughing like a person who inhaled smoke into the lungs. She was devastated. I was shocked. Her two young children didn't understand and had cried most the day until their tears ducts were depleted. What had for years been her little oasis of dog and puppy tail-wagging life each day had been transformed over night into a mass K-9 grave.

I went into chaplain mode, and spoke with her for more than half and hour, doing my best to listen and console as she bore her heart to me, a stranger whose face she's never seen. She'd spent most of the day, burying dogs and nursing the survivors back to health. The rest of the time she spent making phone calls to customers like me to deliver the bad news. As the last piece on her pile of grief, she'd lost thousands of dollars in her business.

Yet, instead of throwing in the towel, refunding deposits and giving up all together, she expressed her strong desire to do right by me. She had a friend and fellow breeder of Minpins whom she'd contacted. The friend agreed to sell her a female puppy so she could honor her agreement with us. I was grateful, but mostly saddened on her behalf.

We still have a new puppy soon entering the family; however, this sad story is now attached to the joy that the dog will bring. My hope is that the traumatic event (and this post's telling of it) will not sully my SIL's joy of a new dog.

Our hearts go out to this breeder. So if you have a little extra, send some light and lover her way. If you're a praying person, whisper and utterance of compassion on her behalf.

Sorry for the sad story. My brother is probably crying by now reading this. I once heard someone say something like this, "Suffering bared alone is multiplied, but suffering shared is divided." (Lance hopefully, these are emotions working for the good.) I find there's healing in sharing our sadness and bearing our hearts to one another.

Until next time, shalom.

Pups + Snow = FUN

2011-11-23T17:47:00.001-05:00

Our dogs love the snow! More specifically, Lola loves running and playing it it. She dashes, leaps and then disappears as a cloud of white snowy mist arises from where ever she landed or turned. When she emerges from said cloud she is as happy as dog-ly possibly. In contrast (those of you who know Dakota best will understand this) Dakota loves to eat the snow.

Total accumulation, we probably received a little over two feet of snow so far in my part of Anchorage.

Dakota and Lola, of course, are NC dogs and not really made for this kind of cold weather. Hence, when we go to the dog park for long periods of play, they have to wear doggy vests and little booties over their feet.

Now, when ever we get out their vests, they get so excited.

In the snow, there's no need for a tennis ball. Snow balls make perfect fetch apparatuses (apparati?). Well, sort of, they can't exactly bring them back. But, at least they get to go and run.

Ready to pounce!

We regularly go to the dog park with our friend Janalle and her husky-lab mix, Dannie-girl. Around our house, whenever we say Dannie's name, our two muts get really excited.

At dog park, w/ friend Janelle and Dannie-girl

Other words that instantly excite Dakota and Lola are, "play," "outside," "go," "hungry" (and Hungary), "Anna" (Heather's mom), and daddy saying to them in puppy voice, "Your momma's home!"

Of course, the most motivating sound, the one that get's them up the quickest, the mover of those muts, the thing that has them scurrying through the house as fast as you'll see them move is....the sound of food dropping to the floor when cooking.

(Similarly, the single sound that gets me moving the quickest is... the sound of dry-heaving pre-upchuck that Dakota makes at 3am in the morning on a work night.)

Heather, Janelle, Lola and a little spit of Dannie on the right

Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

A month of 1s

2011-11-19T16:19:00.001-05:00

The first picture is without any distortions, but not the rest

November marks an entire year we've lived in Alaska. Heather started her job last year 11/1 and about a week later we moved into our apartment, (about 11 days later did our furniture show up). And it's been, I have to say, a pretty amazing year.

We skied more last season than ever before. Heather took several lessons which improved her skills on the slopes considerably. I can't wait to see how she continues to improve this season.

We've seen and driven in more snow than ever in the last year. The snow showed up early November last year and didn't completely melt around town until sometime in April, I believe. It didn't disappear from atop the mountains until July.

Talk about a tight pucker

Trying to get some corn out of my teeth

We've gone and done so many new things in the last 12 months. From several boat trips to view glaciers and Ak wildlife in Seward, we biked to a glacier, I hiked up to the Harding Ice Field (a vast expanse of ice sitting atop numerous mountains some 700 square miles in area), I hiked up Flat Top for a beautiful overlook of Anchorage, we spent a day catching halibut from Homer, we spent a day catching nothing in Soldotna, we took in gorgeous views of Mt. Mckinley and an assortment of wildlife, we biked all over town all summer, we tried out cross-country skiing, we watched sled dog mushers and the Iditarod, we saw enormous ice and snow sculptures, and we discovered that the Turnagain Arm is the most beautiful drive in the world.

We discovered that Lola loves the snow! I mean LOVES it! We discovered that Dakota loves eating snow...LOVES it! I surprised Heather with pretty new dog booties. Dakota surprised Heather by throwing up in the truck. Lola got bit at the park and we paid for minor K9 surgery. The pups discovered what a moose is. They made a new friend-dog named Dannie-girl.

We made a few new friends in people that we've worked with (most notably, Janelle who is Dannie's momma).

Lola, helping me with the corn thing

Also during this year, Heather became licensed in her second state and has worked for a year now. I took on and completed a second CPE residency as a hospital chaplain, which increased my experience, padded my resume and really firmed up my professional identity as a chaplain. After the first residency, I ended it feeling like a minister/pastor with chaplain training; but after the second residency, I really feel like a trained chaplain.

I officiated my first wedding. (Turns out they're easy!)

We paid cash for two cars. (Here's one of them.)

Oh on, turning into alien form...

We were visited by my parents and went skiing together. (Dad had a glorious wipe out and left his phone at the resort twice!) We were visited by Heather's mom and went to Seward. (Heather always feels better with her momma.) We were visited by Anna and Robert-o with whom we went to see Denali. (We almost killed Anna with an allergic reaction, and Robert almost killed Nathan for testing his fear of heights.) In a few days we'll be visited by my sister and her bo and have plans to go snow-shoe hiking. (We shall be braving the bitter cold as the high today was 2 degrees and where we're hiking it will be much colder.)

I said goodbye to my great grandmother.

We said goodbye to a friend and marine who was killed in Afghanistan.

We adopted a girl named Indah from Indonesia through Compassion International.

We vacationed very near that child when we ventured to Singapore and Bali with Hannah and Greg, marking our first independent international travel together, but surely not the last (because I want some more Mi Goreng and that skewared chicked with the peanut sauce; Hannah what's that called again?).

We gazed awe struck out of an airplane window as aurora borealis danced for us.

We celebrated out 5 year marriage anniversary. And the other set of 1s that this month marks is the 11 year anniversary from when Heather and I became a couple (Nov. 18th).

All in all, we've had a blast. I'm hoping the pictures convey this as well. My friend Robert would start crying and looking for a job up here if I said we planned on staying another 10 years, or even 5 years. Both our families would probably disown us if we said we were going to have kids and raise them up here so far away. (Actually, both the moms would probably take off work and come up for a month.) But I can't say any of these are the long-term plan. In fact, for those of you wondering, there is no plan. We're here, we're loving life, and that works for now.

So, thanks 11/2011 for being a month of 1s. Our 1st year in AK. Our 11 year dating-versary. I potentially land my 1st long-term big job (more on that later). Here's to another year, just as great!

De-ligion

2011-11-09T17:40:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard someone say that she is "spiritual but not religious"?

Personally, I don't think I have. BUT, I've heard (and read) lots of other people talking about how many people out there ascribe to this stance on the sacred--spiritual but not religious. And I have no problem agreeing that there's probably a lot of people who would say this about themselves. Heck, there's been times when I would've said it about me.

There's a short moment in the movie This Christmas where a man is talking to a deacon of the local church, and says he doesn't really do church. The conversation continues:

Deacon: Church ain't something you do. It's a place you go to commune with God in God's house.

Man: I don't believe in God. Not in a traditional sense.

Deacon: Not in a traditional sense...?

Man: I mean. I'm a spiritual person. You know, I believe in a higher source.

Deacon: But you don't believe in God.

Man: I don't believe in your god.

This is one of Hollywood's presentations of the "spiritual but not religious" position.

I was looking up the etymology of the word "religion," and I was delighted and surprised at what I found. One of the possible sources of the word (there are a few different possibilities) suggests that the root word of religion is "lig," as in ligament, meaning to connect or bind. The prefix "re-" means again. Used in the arena of those seeking the "higher source" the inference becomes obvious. The initial meaning of the word religion was to re-connect or to bind-again humans to God and to one another. Religions becomes then a means of meeting, of reuniting with the sacred and with people.

Along with that, I would contend that this is similar to the way we use the word 'spiritual' or 'spirituality.' We often say or suggest that someone who is spiritual, is in tune with the things of God, always looking for connections to God.

Unfortunately, use of the word 'religion' is not usually as wholesome, due to organized religion's history of demanding conformity under the threat of exclusion. (If you're not like us, we will de-connect with you.) But this is not religion at all, because religion is meant to re-connect, not disconnect. Brian McLaren suggests that we ought to use the word "De-ligion" for those times and those people who are misusing our religious institutions causing disconnect where reconciliation and reuniting is the chief goal. Dressed up deligion divides people based on arguments over creeds, holy lands, denominational differences. It creates in-groups of elites and out-groups of excluded others.

This isn't a new problem either. Many of the Pharisees in Jesus' day were practicing deligion--casting out the unclean, asserting oppressive purity laws on large populations elevating the few that had the time and resources to abide by them above the masses. This, in essence, was the quarrel between Jesus and the religious (or should I say deligious) leaders of the time.

People in Christian circles often use the image of wine and wineskins. Back in antiquity, wine was kept in wineskins (basically a leather pouch or bottle often made from goat skin), but eventually the wineskin would go bad causing the wine to sour. New wineskins would be changed out to keep the wine fresh. Imagine "spirituality" is the wine inside and "religion" is the wineskin encasing it. But too often the wineskin has aged and gone bad causing what we've named as deligion.

McLaren brings it all home well when he writes:

A spiritual life is a Spirit life, a life in the Spirit, and Jesus' life and work come into proper focus when we realize his goal was not to start a new religion--and certainly not to create a new religion that would seek to compete with or persecute his own religion, Judaism! No, his goal was to fill with Spirit-wine the empty [wine skins] of religion--his own religion and any other one...When people say, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual," many of them, I think, see what Jesus saw, that the Spirit's realm of activity can't be limited to the sphere of religion in general, much less to any particular religion.

So, if it ever happens that I hear someone say she is "spiritual but not religious," I'll probably find myself wondering how that is possible. And, I'll probably interpret them to mean that they are fed up with all the De-ligion around us, but they continue to acknowledge that there is something sacred out there worth pursuing. Most of us call it "God" (a placeholder word, since we don't actually have a name for God), some call it "the More." So, to all the spiritual but not deligious out there, may you continue your quest for Spirit, knowing that your quest is of value, is worthwhile, is beautiful.

Christ has no body

2011-11-09T13:47:00.000-05:00

I've come across this poem/song a number of times over the last few years, and each time it causes me to pause and ponder. Thought I'd share it.

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

-Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Born in Spain, Teresa entered a Carmelite convent when she was eighteen, and later earned a reputation as a mystic, reformer, and writer who experienced divine visions. She founded a convent, and wrote the book The Way of Perfection for her nuns. Other important books by her include her Autobiography and The Interior Castle.

It would be tragic to sit and contemplate the theology of the poem, to analyze, knit-pick, deconstruct and/or challenge St. Teresa with your own minute over-dramatized theological propositions. Instead, let the ideas proposed wash over you and imagine if your hands were Jesus' hands, your feet and mouth were Jesus,' how might that change you? How, then, might you approach the world?

Reflections on Reading and Writing

2011-11-07T14:38:00.001-05:00

"If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own." Fr. Richard Rohr

You may have, at some point, noticed the list of books on the right-hand side bar of this blog. Like most people, you may have paid it very little mind. And there's nothing wrong with that. My list of recently read books has always been mostly for my benefit. However, if you're reading this post, it's likely you've read others, which have often included my own take on books I've read.

For most of my life I have not been a reader. All through grade school I hated reading assignments. I was one of those kids who found all the loop holes in how not to do the required reading. Never finished a summer reading book. (Not something I'm proud of.) One summer, we were assigned The Grapes of Wrath. I never even considered reading it. I rented the movie, went to my friend Landry's house to watch it, and fell asleep during the movie. Like an idiot, I didn't re-watch it, I just returned it! How stupid can you get? (Also not something I'm proud of, but in hindsight, it's pretty funny.)

Not much changed for me in college; however, for one reason or another, I did read a few books independently during those years. Like a dolt, my junior year of college, I signed up for Introduction to American Fiction, only because I'd had the teacher before and liked her. Over the course of the semester we had to read like six novels. Again, what was I thinking?! I wasn't a reader. So, I did my usual, read as little as possible to get by in that class. I might have actually finished one of the Hemingway books (A Call to Arms)...might have.

As I was contemplating attending seminary, someone once said to me, "If you want to go to seminary, you'd better like reading and writing a lot, because you'll do a lot of both." My inner response to this comment was something of disgust, because, though I'd always received good grades on papers, I didn't particularly enjoy it. I went to seminary anyway.

In seminary, I was assigned more reading that I could have imagined. What had I gotten myself into? It was like our professors thought the only thing we did was go home and read for their classes. However, I was slowly maturing, and I managed to do a higher percentage of the reading that I would have in college. I even managed to finish the entire book a number of times (quite an accomplishment for me at the time). During the summers I actually began doing some self-chosen reading...Harry Potter (thanks to my brother lending me the books). It took me two summers to get through them all, but I did. I guess you could call Harry Potter the gateway drug to literature. I also made several strides with writing assignments. I wrote my first sermons, which I actually enjoyed. Then I wrote an exegesis (i.e. long Bible research paper), and was proud of what I produced.

Studying Greek and lots of Hebrew introduced me to the study of language, which I took to like a mosquito to my wife's fair skin. (Having her nearby, I don't have to wear bug repellant.) I learned so much about English from studying the Biblical languages, and this seemed to ignite my enjoyment of reading and writing. All the sudden I was able to spot all kinds of English words, take them apart and often trace the basic meaning back to their Greek or Latin roots. This also made reading theology easier, because high-folutent theologians like to use unnecessarily big words, which are usually just extended logisms on Greek or Latin roots.

I remember being assigned another 12-14 page exegesis for an upper level Old Testament class. I got so into the assignment, my teacher almost penalized me for writing over 20 pages. That was about the time I began this blog, which is an endeavor to explore and expand my capacity as a writer, find my own voice and test to see if I had anything worth saying that people actually wanted to hear. So far, I have developed as a writer, found my voice, and I'm still working on the "something people want to hear" part.

But, it wasn't until after seminary, during my first CPE residency that I discovered joy in reading. I began choosing books that I wanted to read. To my surprise, they weren't fiction or exciting tales, they were theology books; reading from which most people would vomit. I had some assigned reading, but I found myself enjoying it as well. And every time I finished a book, I experienced a rush of pride. This life-long non-reader just finished a book! Take that!

I decided to celebrate these achievements, and secretly boast about them, by blogging about the books I read. Thus, I have a list of book reviews on my blog. And I've just exposed a vulnerable secret with you, something I shared with Hannah while in Singapore: every book review I write serves a few different purposes, but one of them is to bolster my pride in finishing a book. But along with that, I write the reviews, because I like keeping a list of what I've read and when I've read it. I also like being able to go back and read what I thought about a book. It has already helped me in recommending books to others seeking some good reading.

Then, this morning I read a quote from Brian McLaren's book Naked Spirituality, "A secret to the spiritual life is desiring to actually be more spiritual that you appear to be...The secret to hypocrisy is desiring to appear more spiritual that you actually are" (p.87). And this quote, brings to mind my not-so-altruistic motives for writing book reviews: to brag to myself. Hardly a deadly sin, it still made me pause and think. This is exactly what I have been doing. Hypocritically, I was writing book reviews to appear more something (educated? spiritual? well-read? informed?) than I actually am.

But, so as not to wallow in self-pity or whatever, there's another quote in McLaren's book by Brother David Steindi-Rast that says, "Jokingly but with a great deal of seriousness, [Father Damascus would] say, 'Don't worry about purifying your motives. Simply know that they aren't pure, and proceed'" (p. 93). Ah, the sweet and heavy exhale of permission to be impure, it's very satisfying and right up my impure alley.

If you'll notice, the two most recently read books on my list are not hyper-linked. I have not written reviews on them. The Brown text was very enlightening: theology of the Third World, and how it differs from our own privileged theology. But, my sense is that theology book reviews on this blog are as uninteresting as blogs can get. The Martin book is a very gripping and popular fantasy novel, about which you can find far better reviews on the internets (that thing you're on right now). And if you surf the internets as well as I surfed the waves in Bali, you'll have no trouble at all!

So, while I'm still reading, and have many books that I still wish to get to, you'll probably see far fewer book reviews on this blog from now on. I will still keep the side-bar list current, and feel free to inquire about any of the books you see posted there; however, unless one of them is uniquely inspirational, I probably won't be blogging on them...unless I feel the need to brag.

Visiting Hannah and Greg, part 4: Back to Singapore

2011-11-01T01:51:00.001-04:00

A short plane ride, and we were in Singapore once again. First things first, that evening, Greg and I had some zombies over due for some slaying.

Our next fun adventure booked in Singapore was a Segway tour on Sentosa Island, which is like a big theme park, tourist trap/attraction, activity place, thingy-ma-jigga-wha.

All surprised we can balance without holding the handle bars

It took just a few minutes, after watching a safety video, to get used to riding these over-priced contraptions.

She-Heather and her Segway

The moment Greg mounted his Segway he turned into a two-year-old, dashing and swerving, going off course and getting out of line. At one point we raced, and I think I won by a hair.

Greg acting out his terrible 2s

Our tour lasted about 30 minutes, taking us by beautiful vegetation and a sandy beach.

Cruisin' and taking in the sights

After the tour we also got to do a "Fun-Run" thing on an off-road course. It was kinda neat.....Greg blazed through it!

A little about Singapore: Singapore is a southeast Asia city/state located off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula only 137 kilometers north of the equator. It is highly urbanized, though almost half of this small country is still covered with greenery.

I used to think that the US was the most developed, most urbanized, progressed country. No longer. SIngapore has us beat. Clean is the word. The streets were clean, the sidewalks, buildings. It seemed there were no potholes, no cruddy roads, no "wrong side of the tracks." Greg and Hannah can amend these statements if needed, but everything was well kept and in good shape.

The boat atop these three towers comprise a hotel, casino, restaurants and possibly more

Singapore is a very expensive city. I'm fairly sure it is far more expensive to rent there than in New York or LA. In the very crowded grocery store I noticed $10 boxes of cereal. The Singaporean government seems to have all the money it needs to do what needs to be done. There are all kinds of fines and taxes. For instance, just for the ability to have a car, one must purchase a Certificate of Entitlement (COE). Now, the exchange rate is about one US dollar = .8 Sing dollars. Now, a COE costs somewhere above 30k Sing dollars. You do the math.

I liked this building's look

By the river

From our first day there, Hannah and Greg told us about the chili crab at Jumbos. Our last night, we went for it! And oh my gosh! I could have gone swimming in that bowl of chili sauce the crab was served in.

Very happy with my noodles

The food was served family style. So we just ate and ate and 8.

It was my first time eating crab, but it surely won't be the last

Second best meal during the trip. And that's saying something. See part 2 for my favorite meal.

Our final event was to take a ride on the Singapore Flyer, the world's largest observation wheel. Much more than a ferris wheel, the flyer has large pods that can each hold about 28 people at a time.

Beautiful night views of the city

It takes 30 minutes to go around once. And some of the cars are dining cars, each times around starts a new course.

Beautiful views of Heather and Hannah

Our girls

Hannah and Greg, we had so much fun visiting you. Thanks so much for sharing your home and putting up with us. We love just hanging out and playing games with you. The best part was not any of the things we did or great places we went, the best part was simply spending time with you. Keep having fun and loving life. We can't wait to see you next time.

Visiting Hannah and Greg, part 3: Bali (days 3 and 4)

2011-10-28T13:13:00.001-04:00

Bali day 3: Snorkeling!

A car from Blue Season Bali picked us up at our Villa bright and early and brought us to their head quarters where they gear up to take people scuba diving and snorkeling. We got sized for wet suits and headed out to the beach to ride a little tin boat out to the larger boat for the day.

Waiting to board our transport boat

On our boat was a group of scuba divers along with the four of us snorkelers. Our first stop was Crystal Bay, so named for its crystal clear water. Snorkeling there was so fun. At first the water was cold, but really it wasn't bad, especially with a wet suit. Beneath the bay was a megalopolis of beautiful coral. Every color your eye can imagine was shining brightly up at us as we gazed through our snorkel masks and floated along back and forth with the waves and current.

They don't get sun like this in AK!

Crystal bay is in an island about a 45-minute ride off the Bali coast. We snorkeled two separate times in this location, each for about an hour (before and after lunch). Meanwhile, the divers went down deep where it was so cold one of the ladies lost the use of a hand while down there and had trouble getting warm back up top even back on the deck of the boat in the intense equator heat. One of the divers was training for her certification for deep adventurous diving, or something like that.

A nice Bali view

At our second location, later that afternoon, while the divers went down deep once more, we did a "drift snorkel." For this, the boat dropped us off, then we let the current take us gently along the coast line as we eyed more gorgeous coral cities, and the boat met us down the beach to pick us up.

This is also a nice view.....(wink*)

They tried to rent us a water proof camera so we could take pictures of the snorkeling, but $45 was just too steep a price, and they didn't want to haggle. Too bad for them, and too bad for you, since you don't get to see any underwater pictures.

Soaking up vitamin D on top deck of the boat

We were out for the bulk of the day, I think about 7 or 8 hours total.

This ship got stuck on the sand bar just a week earlier

This sand bar had two ships recently stuck. Our boat hand said they had to wait for the big tide to come back next season before they could get them free.

That night we decided to go out to dinner somewhere. Our first stop, recommended by our villa's info book, was a restaurant called Ku De Ta. It was probably the most "hip" most "sheik" most trendy and most "posh" place I've ever been. (Not really me scene.) It was all poorly lit, with loud obnoxious new-techno music and a modern look; but, it had a grassy area with cushions that looked out on the beach. We plopped down and watched the sunset while we enjoyed some over-priced drinks.

The sunset was awesome, and better yet, we paid almost $30 for two drinks. It doesn't get better than that.

Our sunset view from Ku De Ta

We ended up heading down the street to Ultimo Italian Restaurant and eating some good old Bali-made italian (and well priced) food. Heather's and my entire meal ended up cheaper than two drinks at Ku De Ta.

Day 4 in Bali: Surfing and departing

On our last day in Bali, we finally went to the beach (the beach at which, the very next day there was an earthquake). So, actually, Greg didn't make it to the beach, he had to stay behind to take care of some work stuff. (Those suckers with those jobs. I pity them.)

There were lots of chairs and big umbrellas. But if you wanted to use them you had to deal with one of the guys trying to sell them to you. So, we haggled with the first guy, but he was trying to get too much money out of us. We walked away and got a better price from the next one down the sand.

The girls enjoyed some ice cream while enjoying the beach

After settling in, I went back to my same little haggling friend and did something I'd been wanting to try for a long time....I rented a surf board! I talked him down to $3. Not bad. Of course, I don't actually know the first thing about how to surf other than what I've seen on TV. However, I can do quite a few sports that involve a board on your feet (snow skiing, water skiing, snow boarding, wake boarding, knee boarding and probably something I'm forgetting), so I figure I had a good chance at figuring out the surfing thing.

My big ol' beginner board

It took me a little while to figure out the board, and the waves, and timing and balance and all that, but after not too long, I was up...at least for a matter of seconds. My first several attempts to stand resulted in a quick and dirty splash back into the waves.

One of my early attempts, not looking to good for me

HOWEVER, I eventually did figure it out, and got in some long and really fun rides. Below is video evidence, that my previous foot/board experience paid off, as I surf for over 13 seconds all the way to shore with no wipe out!

Go, Nathan, go!

I was surprised out how much work surfing was. I was sore all over after only 1.5 hours of surfing, and I was beat. For the next several days my back and neck were sore sore sore.

Back at the villa, Greg fought the mosquitoes by smoking them out with the super smoker

But, we had to get back to the villa, pack up, and get to the airport to catch our flight back to Singapore. So, we said goodbye to our beautiful villa, the low Bali prices, and the Southern hemisphere and checked out. We had a few hours before having to be at the airport. So, Hannah and Greg went back to Body Works and got another massage each, while Heather and did shopping and haggling in the markets.

But finally, it was time to go...(sniff). Waiting for our plane, we took in one last great Bali sunset.

Back to Singapore for two more days with Hannah and Greg (and zombie killing!).

Visiting Hannah and Greg, part 2: Bali (1st two days)

2011-10-25T20:25:00.001-04:00

Bali is only a two and a half hour flight from Singapore. After two days in Singapore, we awoke the third morning and boarded a plane bound for Bali, Indonesia. Bali is on of over 1,000 islands in the country, and one of the more developed because of it's status as a popular tourist destination.

We stayed at Villa Coco, which is in Seminyak, an area of the island. The taxi ride from the airport was terrifying and fun at the same time. There are road lines, but that doesn't mean anyone abides by them. Driving in Bali is first come first serve. People cut you off, cars dart in and out, there's constant tailgating, and blinkers are seen as announcements rather than requests. Not to mention, they drive on the left side of the road, which just feels very awkward.

Our villa, view from the door

Finally, we made it safe to our villa. We had our own private pool, lounging chairs, a kitchenette and living room type area all outside. Our two bedrooms were separate buildings each with their own bathrooms. The bathrooms were technically "indoors," but not really. They had walls and ceilings, but the walls weren't connected to the ceiling everywhere. They also weren't air conditioned. So, going to the bathroom meant simply going through a door into another room, but it was also like going outside.

Kitchen and common area

Our first day, we went to get massages at a parlor called Body Works. In Bali, one US dollar is worth about 8,000 Rupiah. So, your money goes a long way. An hour long massage with (not 1 but) 2 people massaging me in synch only cost about $35.

Relaxed Hannah and Greg after some good Balinese massag'n

The rest of the evening we spent enjoying our awesome villa and room service.

Day 2 in Bali:
We were picked up early at our villa by our tour guide for the day. The plan: a bike tour through Bali's rural mountain area. It was a long drive north to the mountains. On the way we stopped at a coffee plantation for a quick little tour, and so that they could "farm some money from tourists" as Greg put it. (Heather and I proved very fertile in this regard.)

Me and my sweetie among the vegetation. They even had cinnamon trees

After showing us how different coffee beans are grown, harvested and processed, they sat us down for free samples.

Enjoying our many different assorted coffees and teas

We were sitting on the side of a cliff, our table was facing out toward a chasm full of jungle-y vegetation.

All hopped up on coffee!

For lunch (still haven't gotten to the biking yet) we stopped at this awesome restaurant at the top of a mountain with a killer view of a volcano and a lake.

The black soil is burned from the last eruption

Front of our mountain side eatery

Romance on the side of a mountain

After lunch, we finally made it to the bikes. We donned helmets and heard a quick "crash" corse on bike safety and pedaled. (I use the term "crash," because the first thing Greg did on his bike was to wreck it.)

Other than our group of 4, there were three others from China

Rice fields. For miles and miles, we rode past rice fields.

Add caption

Even though it was in a hilly part of the island, the rice patties were were flat and terraced. Our tour guide boasted that Bali has the best irrigation system in the world. And while, I wouldn't bet that it was the best in the world, considering the level of development for this country, it was very impressive. There were drainage ditches and pathways for the water everywhere. When it spilled out of one rice patty it was always routed toward another. They didn't waste a drop. I imagine this is essential during the dry season.

The terracing was beautiful

Though we biked for 2.5 hours, most of our ride was downhill. However, we did have a few uphill sections. One in was really long and steep. Afterwards we were all sweating profusely, and this picture showcases Greg's particular hurting after the hill.

Hoping he's not about to throw up

Our bike trip through rural non-touristy Bali took us through several villages and towns. Little kids yelled to us, excited to see rich Americans and gave us high 5s as we passed by. We kept going by the walled off compounds. I took picture after picture of them, until I found out that they were people's houses. In a highly Hindu culture, each compound was surrounded by a wall, had multiple structures and their own temple. Families live together, multiple generations in one compound.

After the biking concluded we stopped at our tour guides house as his wife had prepared an amazing Balinese spread of food for us. We all had a few reservations about eating completely authentic local food (fearing Montezuma's Revenge!), but it turned out to be the best meal we had. Oh my gosh, her food rocked my world. I went back for thirds! If I was the kind of Mormon that had multiple wives, I would marry this guy's wife, and Heather would have no objections.

We sat at a low table which was tough for non-limbre Greg and Nathan

Here's a video of walking into our tour guides compound and looking around. Hopefully it works.

Full bellies in front of one of the buildings in the compound

Our ride back to the villa was horribly long. It wouldn't have been if we hadn't gotten stuck in the worst traffic jam. We sat at on traffic light, waiting to go on a round-a-bout for an hour. Plenty of other lanes were moving, just not ours. There were traffic cops directing the traffic circle, but they never gave priority to our road. FOR AN HOUR we sat and watched them ignore us. It was soooo frustrating.

Scooters out numbered cars on the roads by at least 5 to 1

Finally back at the villa, we relaxed and went to bed, ready for another adventure the next day...the next blog. See you then.

Visiting Hannah and Greg, part 1: Singapore

2011-10-24T12:45:00.002-04:00

Just after midnight on Oct. 5th we boarded a plane and took off to visit our friends Hannah and Greg in Singapore. We've been looking forward to this trip for about a year for two reasons, 1) We've never been to Asia and know very little about that part of the world; and 2) since they moved there we rarely get to see Hannah and Greg whom we love.

Placed there by/for Greg's job, they've been in the city/country for two years now.

Our trip lasted about 30 hours, and after arriving at 11pm local time, we were spent. But after getting into their apartment, Heather and Hannah had lots of catching up to do. Meanwhile, Greg showed me his favorite new video game. On his XBox 360, we started playing the Zombie killer mode on Call of Duty Black Ops. Hours later, at around 4am, we finally went to bed. The Zombies mode is addicting. You start out in a house, a few zombies come after you hungry for your flesh, you kill them, the next stage begins, a few more zombies come only to taste a second death dealt by Nathan and Greg. More zombies come each time and they get stronger. What can I say? I'm a sucker for zombie killing!

View from their apt on 26th floor

After some much needed sleep, the next day we headed out to see some of the city. Our first stop was Arab street. Full of people and a big Mosque, Arab street provided us lunch at a quaint little Moroccan restaurant.

Busy street, not that many Arabs

Beautiful girls in front of a Singaporean Mosque

Next we took a cab to China town and toured a Buddhist Temple.

You might say, Heather and Hannah look...Buddhacious!

Heather and Hannah had to wear wraps around their legs so they didn't offend anyone with their hotness.

In the end, Heather chose a green one

There were all kinds of rooms with information about Buddhist history, tradition, faith system and culture. There were sacred spaces and Buddha statues all over, history or tradition was attached to everything we saw. It was really quite awe inspiring at times.

Top floor of the temple had an awesome garden

At one point, we were in what I call the holy of holies, a room with a sectioned off area where we couldn't go. In even the outer room, no pictures were allowed. It was like the shrine part or something. I'm really not sure, because as I was sitting in awe and reverence of this sacred Buddhist space, contemplating the Divine as Buddhists experience it, I started chuckling uncontrollably. Because, once I started thinking of it I couldn't stop. Like a little kid I was cracking up in the holy place. Very irreverent for this reverend. All I could picture were a bunch of flesh addict zombies tearing about the corner coming after us! And me having to thunder gun them all. That's the last time Greg keeps me up late playing zombies.

Hannah and I standing next to the main worship area

Outside the temple, we treated ourselves to an ice cream sandwich. Not like what you'd expect in the old US of A, this was a slab of ice cream and a regular piece of bread. Actually, it was weird rainbow flavored bread, but it was regular sliced bread. It was a little strange but still enjoyable.

To insure we'd be able to walk the next day, we called it quits and headed back to the apartment to learn how to play Settlers of Catan. I won!

We went out to the American Club to eat dinner, and as soon as we got back, jet lag set in. Heather and I went into our room just to put stuff down and take off shoes, etc., but ended up crashing hard and didn't move till the next morning. The 16-hour time difference was taking us down for the count.

Day 2 in Singapore:

After much needed sleep and a morning full of zombie slaying with Greg we ventured out to a place called Newton's in search of lunch. It's like an outdoor food mall. Dozen's of little food places lined the walls with all kinds of people jockeying to get us to eat from their establishment.

One of the strips at Newton's

Luckily, Greg and Hannah knew what to do, because only on our second day, we were still a bit lost.

Our hosts

We ordered drinks from one place and food from another. Greg ordered an assortment of all kinds of delicious yummies. Luckily on the prawns they saw the potential tourist price scam coming before too late.

Our spread of food

One of the highlights of this trip was eating. Sometimes it was as if we went on an eating trip we gave so much attention to the authentic Asian cuisine. (In best Homer voice) Mmmmm.....nathan love Chinese fooood....

I believe we're both having some Mi Goreng in this pic

That afternoon consisted of some more slaying of zombies and another game of Settlers, in which I think Heather took first. For dinner, it was kabobs grilled out by the pool.

At the pool side grill

Again, jet lag didn't let us stay up very late this evening either; however, none of us wanted to since we had to board a plane the next morning bound for Bali, Indonesia.

Pool area at night

Check back for pics of Bali, biking, snorkeling and Nathan catching his first wave on a surf board!

Soaking the dogs

Halibut Fishing in Homer

2011-10-23T20:19:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to posting some pictures of our halibut fishing trip from this summer.

We went to Homer, AK for a long weekend. The plan was to deep sea fish on Friday, then salmon fish on Saturday in Soldatna, AK on our way back to Anchorage.

Much like Seward, Homer is right on the water and is surrounded by gorgeous mountains. It's about a 4 hour drive.

View from the Homer Spit on Friday

Our back-of-the-truck campsite

When we showed up to board our fishing boat on Friday morning, we found out that the trip had been cancelled due to rough seas. No boats were going out. The earliest they could take us was in two days on Sunday. So, we spent the rest of the day sleeping, relaxing and checking out beautiful Homer.

You can see the Spit out in the bay in this pic

On Saturday, we drove north to Saldotna to fish for some salmon on the Kenai River.

Here's Heather, looking very Alaskan

Unfortunately, we only caught one fish that day. But it was a whopper! Not a salmon, but a cod.

Nathan's catch of the day!

Below is a better picture to get some scale.

Proud fisherman

Sunday finally came and we boarded our boat. It was a two hour ride out to open water where the fish were. There 16 people fishing on our boat plus 1 captain and 2 crew members.

Back of the boat where most the action happened

With so many people fishing all at once, at the beginning things were a little crazy--lines got tangled, people got twisted up, tripping over one another and two people once caught the same fish.

To get to the halibut, we had to let out line out all the way to the ocean floor, which was about 300 feet deep. This took about two minutes, maybe. Then we waited...but not long. On average, the wait time between getting your line to the bottom and feeling a fish nibbling at it was about 30 seconds. Then the hard work began. It took at least 10 minutes, or more to reel the fish back up, and our arms were aching.

We look just like Deadliest Catch! Sort of...

Current Alaska law allows each person to keep two halibut per day. You could keep which ever fish you wanted, but after you decided to keep the second, everything else you caught had to be thrown back.

Heather, with one of her catches that she threw back

Average fish size that day was around 12-15 lbs. The one in the above picture is more like 10-11 lbs. The deck hands would take these off the hook and throw them back without even asking you if you wanted to keep it. One lady almost smacked this guy, saying that was the biggest fish she ever caught, and it was hard work getting it up here. He just looked at her and laughed.

One of my catches

By the end, Heather had chosen to keep two fish of about average size. Arms tired, she went into the cabin to rest after keeping the second, though she did later come back out to catch a few just for fun.

I was stubborn and fished the entire time we had. The two I kept weighed 23lbs and 21lbs, the 2nd and 3rd biggest on the boat. One lucky guy reeled in a 50 pounder. It was a lot of fun to watch.

On the way back, the sorted and cleaned all the fish. The bigger ones they kept in tact for pictures back at the dock.

Below is a video of one of the deck hands cleaning a fish. Amazingly, he does the entire thing in about 45 seconds.

Our group and some of the fishies!

Our trophy catch

We ended up with 45 lbs of halibut meat in the end. Mailed some to NC and stocked our freezer with the rest. This something we're definitely doing again next year.

The Essential Book Of Useless Information, by Don Voorhees

2011-09-16T21:20:00.000-04:00

My mother-in-law gave me this book for Christmas last year, and I just recently finished it. The subtitle is: The Most Unimportant Things You'll Never Need To Know. And if you know me, you this book has my name written all over it. Great gift Momma T, this blog is for you.

The EBUI is one in a series of books all out to do the same thing: provide useless information. As far as I can tell, there are at least five other books just like this one such as The Ultimate Book of Useless Information, The Best Book of Useless Information Ever, The Amazing Book of Useless Information, etc. You get the point.

Personally, I wouldn't mind having more of these in my library.

There's not much to tell about the book. Each page contains random facts (and yes, the author had fact checkers), surrounding a number of different topics which provided the chapter headings.

I've been reading The EBUI ever since I got it last Christmas, but you can't read too much at one time. It's much like reading the Proverbs in the Bible, just read a few each day. Read too many at once and it's like drinking from a fire hose.

As I read, I made little marks next to notable pieces of useless information. Here, I will share some with you. Enjoy.

Florida gets one hundred times more UV light than Maine

Cape Hatteras, NC is the "city" most likely to be hit by a tropical storm or hurricane.

Las Vegas is the least humid city in the US. Forks, WA, is the most humid. (For the Twilight fans out there.)

Common-law marriage can be contracted in eleven states. There is no such thing as common-law divorce.

One Giovanni Vigliotto married 104 women between 1941 and 1981. He was sentenced to 28 years in jail for bigamy in 1983.

Brigham Young had 55 wives.

The Catholic Church did not require a priest to be at weddings until 1563.

Ship's captains have no special rights to marry people.

In studies, men find a woman much more sexually attractive when she is dressed in red, and will spend more money on a date with her. Red does not, however, affect a man's perceptions about her likeability, intelligence, or kindness.

During the 1200s, European noblemen openly displayed their genitals through a hole in the crotch of their tights. (*What?!*)

Prostitution is currently legal in Rhode Island, as long as it takes place in a private residence.

Cupid was a symbol of pedophile love in ancient Greece.

Helium makes your voice high-pitched because it is less dense than air. making the sounds waves travel faster. When these fast-moving waves hit the air outside your mouth, they slow down and get closer together, raising the high frequency (pitch). If you and the listener were both in a room filled with helium, your voice would sound normal, as there would be no change in frequency.

Only about 15 percent of the species in the world are believed to have been discovered so far.

Of the world's known species, 99% are smaller than a bumblebee.

The cholesterol pill Lipitor is far and away the best-selling drug in the world, followed by the blood thinner Plavix and heartburn drug Nexium.

Astronauts drink recycled urine, sweat, exhaled water vapor, and bathing water.

The tallest wave ever recorded was one of 1,740 feet in Lituya Bay, Alaska. A landslide launched into the baya by an earthquake in 1958 caused it.

Every so often large chunks of ice fall from the clear blue sky, some weighing as much as 200 lbs. No one is sure why.

Cairo has more particulate pollution than any other city.

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is a huge expanse of refuse, primarily plastics, two times the size of Texas, which is floating around in the Northern Pacific. (What in the world?!)

Jet fuel is not made up of any fancy chemicals, just kerosene.

Scientists can come within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero (-458.9 degrees F), the coldest possible temperature in the universe, in the lab, but quantum fluctuations in molecular motion make it impossible to reach that minimum.

The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, New Jersey, once produced the highest man-made temperature, of 510 million degrees C.

The first working fax machine preceded the telephone in 1861.

The typical male fart contains around half a cup of gas, a female fart a third of a cup. (And they say this information is useless!)

The record distance for projectile vomiting is 27 feet.

A humpback whale calf will drink up to 130 gallons of milk a day. While nursing her young, a humpback whale mother can go for eight months without eating. Humpback whales sing songs that last a half hour. Blue whales vocalizations can be detected more than 1,000 miles away underwater. Sperm whales will emit a sonar blast that can immobilize a squid. Bowhead whales can live to be 200 years old.

Below 37 miles per hour, most bugs tend to bounce off car windshields; above this speed they start to splatter.

Mosquitoes are more attracted to blondes than brunettes, and children more than to adults.

It has been calculated that if you were bitten by 1,120,000 mosquitoes simultaneously, you would be totally drained of your blood.

The African red-billed queleas are the most numerous birds in the world. A flock may take up to five hours to pass overhead.

"Mike the Wonder Chicken" was a bird who had his head chopped off (but not his brain stem), and still lived for almost two more years. He toured America and was fed with an eyedropper directly into his gullet. (Yaars, you should remember that one!)

Elephants are excellent swimmers.

Porcupine quills are naturally antiseptic.

The male porcupine urinates on the female to get her attention.

*There's so many great facts in this book, I don't know where to stop. So, here's a handful to serve as the grand fact finale!

Black-eyed peas, okra, peanuts, and watermelon all came to the New World with African slaves.

During a lifetime, a person will inadvertently eat several pounds of dirt.

Eighty-four people are in cryopreservation (frozen) at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.

In human history, probably about 100 billion people have died.

...and the last fact in the book will be the last on this blog...

In 2004, a woman in Georgia was arrested for trying to pay for a purchase at Wal-Mart with a million-dollar bill.

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

2011-09-16T19:32:00.001-04:00

With a subtitle that reads: How Little Thing Can Make a Big Difference, The Tipping Point is a look at social epidemics and what causes their spread.

What causes a fad to turn into a trend? Or a trend to turn into a style? Why does one great idea succeed in infiltrating and influencing our culture while another equally evocative idea fizzles? Gladwell tackles questions like these and others in this book.

One of Gladwell's keynote examples about the spread of information is Paul Revere and his famous nocturnal ride as he announced the impending British invasion. On the night of of April 18th 1775, Paul Revere set out to warn the areas north and south of Boston that the British were coming to seize a weapon's stash. Revere set the country side afire with his message, knocking on doors delivering his message with fervor that ignited the local militia to respond and meet the British soldiers, forever changing our country's history.

But what most people don't know is that at the same time that Paul Revere set out for his historical ride, another man, by the name of William Dawes, set out on the same urgent errand to warn the towns west of Boston. However, history does not well remember Dawes' name. His ride was far less successful. Why? This is one of the questions Malcolm Gladwell is out to wrestle with in this book.

Gladwell covers many other social epidemics, many of them far more current. The Tipping Point takes you through Mayor Giuliani's efforts to clean up New York and it's subway system, the teen suicide epidemic in Micronesia, the spread in popularity of Hush Puppies as a favored American shoe, the syphilis epidemic in Baltimore in the mid-90s, the growth and story of Sesame Street and later Blue's Clues, and many other examples through the book's 280 pages.

Gladwell's basic principles of social epidemics follow three rules,

1) The law of the few: there are certain people in our culture who excel as either salespeople, information gatherers/spreaders, and connectors (those who seem to know "everybody"). The law of the few suggests that all three of these types of people must be involved when a social epidemic is at hand;

2) The law of context: the idea that if one window on an abandoned building is broken out, more soon will be; but if that one window is repaired it is far less likely more breaks will occur;

3) The stickiness factor: in our world where we're inundated and overwhelmed with information, only ideas and information packaged in a way that has a stickiness about it will make it through to people.

Analyzing social epidemics with these three rules in mind sheds light on social changes and trends. Similarly, marketers employing and minding these rules tend to succeed in ways beyond their competition.

Gladwell's writing is very readable and smooth. The examples he uses kept me easily engaged, and some of his conclusions and explanations served as mind candy. It's easy to see why this book was a #1 national bestseller, and I would recommend it, I'm just not quite sure to whom I'd recommend it. It has helped me to see the world of fads, trends and social thinking in a different way. I wonder how that will translate to my world of Christian ministry?

In the end, if you've read any Gladwell and know what to expect, The Tipping Point won't let you down. If you haven't yet read him, this is as good as any of his books to start with. Though, personally, I think I like Blink a little better.

Alaska with Robert & Anna, part 2: Talkeetna, Flat Top and Coastal Trail

2011-09-06T20:59:00.002-04:00

On our way back from Denali National Park we stopped at a little po-dunk yet popular town known as Talkeetna. All the Alaska locals have told us that we need to visit Talkeetna at least once.

This is pretty much what all of Talkeetna looks like

One if Talkeetna's claims to fame is being the home of the West Rib Pub & Grill, because it was featured one Man vs. Food for it's monstrous burger named after the state of Alaska's first nick name, "Seward's Folly."

Robert and I throw rocks at Talkeetna river bank

William H. Seward, former Secretary of State under presidents A. Lincoln and A. Jackson, was the man most responsible for arranging the purchase of Alaska from Russia (under president Jackson), which at the time was seen as a huge mistake and was deemed Seward's Folly.

Talkeetna ended up being a neat little eclectic town so small you could walk anywhere from "the parking area." We had lunch at a recommended restaurant/bakery/B&B before leaving town.

Girls accompanied us to the parking lot overlook

Another day, while the girls were hanging together, Robert and I went hiking up Anchorage's most popular mountain, Flat Top. We first tried ascending the 'old Flat Top trail,' which was a mistake due to our lack of good footwear and the trail's steep gravel-y terrain.

Robert on side of mountain

But no matter, we went around and went up the main trail. It was a beautiful day for hiking and the guys had a fun time doing some good ol' fashion male-bonding.

Ready to hit the trail

The next day the four of us went biking on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail--an 11-mile serpentine trail following the western shore of Anchorage all the way into downtown.

View from Coastal Trail parking area

We parked at about the half-way point in the trail, rode to the north end (in downtown) and then back, totaling about 10 miles.

View of downtown from the trail at top of a cliff

And finally, on our way back we got a good view of this moose by the side of the road. This was Robert and Anna's second moose sighting, something we try to promise all our visitors.

Anna and Robert, we had so much fun with you guys, and we can't wait until you visit again!

As expected

2011-08-31T15:53:00.000-04:00

If you haven't read the previous post titled, "My way or the highway," then STOP here and go read it. This is an addendum.

For those of you touched by the story of a man choosing to time his own life to his dying wife's life, know that only two days afterher husband passed away, as expected our lady from the last post, Wilma, died peacefully this morning.

No doubt it will be very difficult on their children to lose both parents within a few days; however, I can totally understand their desire to "go" together. My wife and I have joked about, as well as talked seriously about, dying together knowing just how difficult it would be to go on living without the other in our lives.

This is a messy situation, to which all kinds of emotions are surely attached. I wonder how those of you reading this are responding. Care to share your thoughts?

My way or the high way

2011-08-30T17:53:00.001-04:00

A man died the other day. Peacefully, he lay in his bed, which was pulled up next to his wife’s bed in the assisted living facility (ALF) where they have both been patients for quite some time. Both are hospice patients. We’ll call them Fred and Wilma.

Wilma has not spoken a word in years because of severe dementia that has held her mind captive. Daily they puttered around the ALF, and Fred saw to her every need and acted as her voice since they’d been married longer than many people live. Fred was considerably healthier than Wilma.

Fred was a retired colonel in the military and has a gift for stubbornness and is used to getting things his own way. “My way or the highway,” was a frequent phrase used to describe him. Wilma had been nearing death for quite some time. In talking with Fred I learned just how afraid this formerly very powerful officer was. He was afraid of being alone when his bride passed away. So afraid, he expressed to me that if it weren’t for the insurance problems it was cause, he would “expedite his own process.” They had been living together most of their lives, Fred wanted to die together as well.

A few days after our conversation, Wilma took a down-turn and stopped eating or drinking. The next day, Fred decided not to eat or drink as well. He would accompany his wife in every way he was able. Like a race to the finish these two declined together and stubborn Fred seemed to be moving more quickly toward his last breaths.

On his third day without food or water Fred died. As he preferred, he died either before or alongside his now unresponsive wife. I have no way of knowing her level of awareness; however, I hold on to the romantic idea that when his body and spirit are removed from that room she will know something is missing.

I can’t imagine Wilma holding on much longer. I’ve heard numerous stories of people being so connected that when one dies, the other doesn’t last much longer. But this was the clearest case I’ve ever witnessed. It has served to change some of my assumptions about life and our innate instinct to stay alive. Fred went against that instinct by choosing to time his life to his wife’s.

In talking with one of their daughters at the time of death, she showed me the last birthday card all her siblings had gotten Fred that was taped up in the room. On it were two arrows pointing in diverging directions. Above one arrow was the caption “Dad’s way,” and above the other read, “Highway.” That sure was the case through his dying breath.

Alaska with Robert & Anna, part 1: Denali

2011-08-26T19:01:00.003-04:00

Sorry, Robert and Anna, for taking so incredibly long to blog about your visit.

Our best friends came to Alaska! They are our best friends, because they are our friends, and...well...they are the best.

In early-mid July they arrived for their first time in the wild state, Alaska. Our main adventure with them was to visit Denali National Park and Preserve, which is a 4.5 hour drive north.

If you don't know, Denali National Park is so named for it's tallest mountain also named Denali by Alaska's Natives, which in their language means, "the big one." In school, we learned about Denali as the tallest mountain in North America, only my teacher called it Mt. McKinley.

Denali National Park isn't all about the mountain, it's about wildlife and the wilderness too. Of course, we wanted to see the mountain, but there's so much else to see as well. But to see Mount McKinley, one must, after entering the park, pay to ride a bus far into the park. It's about a two-hour ride to the first spot where the mountain is visible. But there's plenty to see along the way.

For instance, check out the side of this mountain and crappy dirt road our large busses were driving on and passing each other.

We spotted this little fox guy trotting along the road. He went right past our bus like we weren't even there. Cutie.

Yogi the bear decided to show his face to us. He was the first of about four brown bear sightings during the day. This pic was taken from far away with Anna's stellar zoom lens.

According to our tour guide/bus driver, only about 30% of the visitors to the park get to see Mt. McKinley, because the mountain is so tall that it has it's own weather system in the higher altitudes that often hides the mountain. Plus, this area of the state is simply prone to cloudiness. The day we went into the park, it was grey, completely overcast and drizzly. We didn't get our hopes up to see the mountain.

However, As we drove further into the park, the clouds began to break up a little. Then a little more. Until, we came around a bed in the road and saw this...

Denali through the clouds

The mountain was peaking through the dark clouds. Almost as if Denali was creating a little elbow room, "Uh, 'xcuse me fellas, but could ya make some room?"

To give some perspective, the mountains we're driving through as well as the dark gray mountains in front of Denali in this picture are around 4,000 feet tall. Similar to the ones around Anchorage. They themselves are breathtaking and beautiful. Denali's highest peak is just over 20,000 feet tall. The effect was this: as we drove through the park, we were amazed at being surrounded by mountain views in all directions. But when Denali peaked through, suddenly these large gorgeous mountains were dwarfed. It was a cool effect.

Our trip down the park road continued. Eyeing what parts of the mountain we could make out through the clouds, we found more wildlife as well. We spotted another bear and this elk as well. His antlers were just growing back and were still furry.

We pressed on.

The heavens were smiling on our group that day, because the closer we drove toward the mountain, the more the clouds gave way to blue.

Only a few clouds around it now.

Eventually, there she was. A crystal clear view of the biggest mountain on our continent. Only on little lone cloud hover over the summit (again, it has it's own loyal weather). Remember, the mountains at the base are about 1/4 the height of Denali and taking this picture, we are closer to those mountains than they are to Denali.

Only one word could describe it: Massive.

Enormous.

Breathtaking.

Inspiring.

Humbling.

Okay, that was 5 words. And I know this is the most over-used word out there, but it was amazing!

Make that 6 words.

Getting of the bus, we walked to Reflection Pond and got several really neat pictures with the mountain reflecting off the water.

The mountain was in view for only about two hours before it got tired and decided to cover back up. In this last picture of the four of us, you can see the clouds creeping back in front of and around Denali.

Our timing was perfect!

Everyone we talk to who's lived here a while tells us how lucky we were and what a treat we got. One friend of mine grew up here and has been several times, but never gotten this good a view.

Needless to say, we had fun. We were, however, worn out after the bus trip. We were on the bus for about 12 hours that day. And about two hours before the end, I was done and wanted off. It was a long last two hours.

The whole day was majestic. I'm so glad to have shard it with Robert and Anna. We miss you guys already.

Next time: Part two, Talkeetna, Flat Top and The Coastal Trail. Can you guess what might happen? Will Anna get sick, will Robert fall off a mountain, and who's the fastest biker of us all...?

Indah

2011-08-26T15:02:00.001-04:00

Meet Indah.

She is an absolutely adorable 5-year old girl living in Indonesia. Heather and I have talked for quite some time about sponsoring a child overseas. Well, yesterday we began sponsoring Indah through Compassion International.

From all that I've heard, Compassion Int. is the most prominent and reputable of the companies out there offering relief to underprivileged children around the world. Meaning, more of the dollars you send through Compassion Int. actually make it to the child instead of in administrative costs.

Heather and I are blessed to be in a position to be able to afford sponsorship, but I think many people don't realize that they are also financially able to do this.

We received our water bill in the mail yesterday. Though it was a bit higher than usual, the monthly costs for sending Indah money to help her grow and learn was roughly half the cost of our water bill.

To put it another way, we pay each month almost three times as much for our cell phones each month. And we don't even have the smart phones with the Wi-fis that get on the internets.

Compassion Int. asks for $38 each month to sponsor one child. How many of us spend that much going out to eat on nights we don't feel like cooking? My guess would be, a lot.

I like Compassion Int. also because of their name. In my theology, God is compassion first and foremost before any other trait can be ascribed to God.

Indah's picture is now on our refrigerator, and we look forward to exchanging letters and communications with her in the future.

If you've ever thought about sponsoring a child, let me encourage you to do so. Click here to view children needing sponsorship right now.

Best.

Strength

2011-08-13T07:23:00.000-04:00

In my time as a chaplain, I don't know how many times I've heard someone say something like this, "I just have to be strong."

His wife is slipping away, death is near, a husband is in shambles and the words and outlook he chooses are, "I must be strong through this."

A woman sobs over the now lifeless body of her beloved cousin. After caring for her for so long, and after sitting quietly and frightened at her bedside as her cousin died, her response to me is that she must be strong through this.

Time and time again I've heard this. Be strong for momma. Be strong, don't cry. Strength, apparently, is how we're taught to manage our grief.

What I interpret these words to mean is, "I don't want to cry." Strength = no tears. "I'm afraid to cry." "I'm embarrassed to cry." That's the message. Tears = weakness.

This is regrettable.

Our society has given us these ideas that somehow, crying at the time of death or tragedy is negative, bad, weak, undesirable or something we can actually avoid. We learn this at an early age. I can recall attending the death of a woman in her mid-20s with two kids. The older one was about 8 years old and said something like, "I'm not going to cry, I'm going to be strong." I was shocked. What 8-year in the world could withhold tears at losing his mother? This one sure wasn't able to; however, he thought he needed to!

Here's the truth as I see it. It actually takes more strength, more fortitude and a more robust character to emote and do so publicly. This image of the Alpha-male who never cries and has the emotional capacity of a cinder block is completely unhealthy.

The old adage comes to mind: "It has to hurt to heal." The wisdom in this applies to emotional pain as well as physical. When we lose someone close, the American male way to move forward is typically to bottle things up. Tuck away our feelings, never discuss them, and at all cost remain tear-less. Sadly, this American male is the one who will be found in therapy ten or twenty or thirty years down the road still haunted by unresolved grief from losing someone close (parent, spouse, child, etc). The path toward healing for our American male is through those horrible feelings, not around them.

By moving toward, into, engaging and expressing those feelings, healing comes. By moving away, avoiding, dodging and covering them up, we only stunt our growth as humans. This is where that old adage comes into play. Moving into and through grief is painful. It hurts. One man said to me, "It's the worst feeling int he world." And he's probably right. But we must go this direction, through the path of pain, to find healing.

Here's two examples:

Number 1: Leroy Jethro Gibbs. If you've ever watched NCIS, the main character, Gibbs, has been grieving (or rather avoiding his grief) for eight seasons now. The character lost his wife and daughter tragically when they were gunned down by a Mexican drug lord. Afterwards, Gibbs, a Marine sniper, shot and killed the drug lord exacting his revenge. But Gibbs is still grieving. Sadly, he's an emotional ignoramous. It makes for good television, but bad practice. He is completely unwilling to discuss his family's death nor take a look at the feelings that acompany it. Gibbs is sadly very unhealthy. (Thankfully, he's a fictional character.)

Number 2: Joe's wife died earlier this summer while in hospice care. I've been working at a hospice office as one of the chaplains and spent some considerable time with Joe, both before and after his wife's death. Joe openly admitted that after his traumatic time in WWII as a field medic, he bottled up, avoided and hid his emotions from the war, never dealing with what he saw and experienced. He also admitted that he becomes emotional uncontrollably at times when certain war-related topics are brought up. He's never understood why. Joe and I discussed what things will be like for him when his wife dies. He expected to again bottle up the emotions, lock them away and throw away the mental key. But, it was already clear, from the tears on his face that he couldn't wipe away fast enough, that this method wasn't going to work this time. Since her death, Joe has requested more meetings with me. And Joe is learning to grieve. He openly states, "This is new to me." He's a hardened and successful businessman who is choosing to move toward his feelings rather than away. His progress is so visible that it's inspiring. When his tears come, he embraces them, as hard as it might be. And this takes far more strength than avoiding them.

It takes more strength to cry, than it does to hold it in. Of this, I am thoroughly convinced.

One more example, this time a biblical one. One of Jesus good friends named Lazarus died. When Jesus arrived at his tomb he did the manly thing. He saved the day by raising Lazarus from the tomb, avoiding his own emotions and fixing everybody else's sadness. Right? Itsn't that how the story goes?

No. Well, in the end, yes. But!...

I left out one simple, short and yet powerful verse. When Jesus arrived at the tomb of his friend, he wept (Luke 11:35). He didn't become misty-eyed. He didn't shed a single cinematic tear. Jesus wept, sobbed, broke down. He embraced the ful spectrum of emotion. He laughed when it was time to laugh, he was strong when strength was necessary, and he wept when his heart was broken.

What else can I say? It takes more strength to move toward your tears than way from them. So, how about it guys? All my sterotypicall American emotionally stunted men out there, the next time you feel sad, might we give real strength a try?

American Geography

2011-08-10T22:32:00.000-04:00

I totally stole this blog idea and picture from my sister's blog. I sat and laughed at it so long I couldn't deprive you of it. It's hilarious, but also scary because of it proximity to the truth.

Have a laugh, and enjoy.

Like a good neighbor...

2011-08-02T03:25:00.000-04:00

Here's a short break from all of the recent outdoor and awesomeness of Alaska blogging I've been doing (and not doing).

First of all, news. About 6 weeks ago, I bought a car, cheap. A 15 year old Chevy Blazer that has 140K miles, and after a few dollars paid to a friend mechanic I met, it runs pretty darn well all things considered. This car is very Dave Ramsey approved--paid cash, no loans, no liens, minimal insurance, runs fine, gets me from A to B. And the best part, Kelly Blue Book values it at just about twice what I paid.

In my apartment complex there are two types of parking spaces: covered and uncovered. Each apartment is assigned one covered parking spot as their very own In the above picture, the new car is in our spot. All of the uncovered spaces are up for grabs. Anyone can park in those. This was made very clear to us when we moved in. But this post is about the uncovered spaces.

The uncovered spaces are not very numerous. There are only four directly in front of our building. Other buildings have different amounts depending on the parking lot layout and what not. Straight out from my front door, across the street is the end of another building in the complex, and in front of the two doors/units on that end are two uncovered parking spaces.

Recently, I parked the Blazer in one of those two spaces for two days and two nights while we went to see Mt. McKinley (see next blog for pics!). When I came home, I found two very pleasant post-it notes on my car's driver's side window. See picture for what they said.

I won't write verbatim what the notes say if you can't make out every word. But one of my friendly neighbors seems quite upset that I've parked in what s/he has deemed his/her own parking spot. Accompanying the two post-it notes (which are clearly written by two different people) was a handful of mulch quaintly piled on my car's hood, a small piece of trash secured under the driver's side wiper and a wet glob of paper towel or toilet paper or something stuck to the passenger door.

The pile of mulch and trash under the wiper I found very juvenile, like something a 12-year old would think of and have the gall to do. The nasty wet paper here is also extremely immature, but also very gross.

The second post-it note says that the apartment management has been notified and that I'll be towed if I don't quit parking in these two spots. This was obviously a lie and a bluff. If the apartment office wanted to communicate with or threaten to tow me, they certainly wouldn't communicate via a sticky note with bad hand writing. Secondly, if the office was going to tow me, this person wouldn't have needed to threaten me with towing. It would serve them better to remain quiet about the towing and let it happen so that justice is done unto me. Regrettably, it doesn't seem I'm dealing with the sharpest minds humanity has to offer.

Well, wouldn't you know, after driving around my the new car, the very next day as I returned home, the only parking spot available (truly) was one of these two forbidden spots. So, like a good neighbor, I parked there. The next morning I had another gift left on the car door. A glob of mud.

What's funny to me is that someone took the effort to procure this mud and get their hand dirty to put it on my car. Because I'm not intimidated or even angry at the mud, this makes me laugh, and laugh at the person who did this. How is it that an adult, a supposedly matured person, can bring him or herself to doing something so childish and moronic. They must think it is bothering me, but in fact I'm rather enjoying watching the show. However, I need to handle the situation.

We stroll down to the apartment office on Monday morning with our friendly post-it notes and ask the manager about the parking spaces policy. She assures us that uncovered spaces are up for grabs. Before we could tell her our story, she asks, "Do you have the green blazer?" Apparently, the perpetrator left a heated message on the office's answering machine complaining about the car. However, the manager assured us we were not in the wrong, and she would send out a notice about parking space regulations.

It's nice to have the office's backing; however, my experience in relating to these types of people (cowardly bullies) tells me that we need to have a face to face. Knowing from which apartment the dissatisfaction came, I walked up to the door one day after work and knocked.

I'm sorry, I can't tell you that there is a climactic end to this story with edge-of-your-seat drama. However, when the door was answered I introduced myself and said that I'm looking for the person who left a note on my car. The response I got was, "Uh, yeah, I think I was one of them." What kind of crap response is that? You think? The conversation was brief, but I made it clear that these parking spots are for anyone, and I live very close and will continue to park here when needed. I didn't appreciate the crap left on the car. She blamed her neighbor for the crap, and didn't really say much else.

The conversation ended like that. My guess is nothing else shall befall my car even if I continue to park in those spaces when needed, which I am doing. Once you confront someone and make it known that you know the childish and stupid things they are doing, they will be afraid to do anything else.

Frankly, I'm glad the story ends here. There was minimal frustration on my part. A better story (from your point of view) would mean more frustration or heartache on my end. I'm glad I had the courage to simply confront a minor problem before it escalated into potentially a greater one. A lesson, hopefully, I'll take with me through life from here on out.

Alaska with Momma T, Part 2: Glacier and Wildlife Cruise

2011-07-23T22:50:00.003-04:00

Day two in Seward with the mother-in-law was spent on a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park. It was on this boat tour that I actually learned what a fjord is. Many years ago when there was much more ice in this area, enormous glaciers ran between mountain ranges. As they moved (yes glaciers move, some as much as three feet per day), they carved out huge crevasses in the mountains. The earth warmed and these monstrous glaciers melted back, and as that happened they are filled in with sea water. And that is what we call a fjord: a glacial out-carving filled in with ocean.

Our boat trip was for nine hours, giving us all day to see amazing stuff. Like our last similar boat trip, the weather was overcast and a little rainy. One of the first things we saw was a sea otter floating out in the water. Now, the picture below is not the same otter we saw that day, but from another day when I snapped a photo of this guy eating a fish. The point is, we saw an otter, and here's a good picture of one.

Just after, we spotted these two regal eagles perched and watching for food. Really cool. Factoid: bald eagles were once seen as a nuisance by early Alaskans.

Bald eagles are endangered in every state save Alaska

This day was humpback whale day. We probably had two-dozen humpback sightings. And if you look closely (or click to enlarge), you see this whale jumping partly out of the water. This is called a breach.

Humpback breach

Here's a group of sea lions slapped up on some rocks. They're so funny to watch, because they spend the majority of their time either trying to mate or just bothering the one next to them.

Sea lion haul-out

Here's two glaciers we floated past. I believe they are both stemming from the Harding Ice Field from the previous post/day. Notice the one on the right has arced bands of dirt and rock in it. Some glaciers rub the side of mountains and knock rock and dirt off and onto the glacier. These are known as "dirty glaciers." There's something about the different bands in them being like the rings in a tree trunk, because they help scientist track the age and speed of the glacier, but I don't remember all the details.

Two tide-water glaciers

Behind us in the below picture is Northwestern Glacier. It's name doesn't come at all from its geographical location in relation to anything, but rather it was named after the school which has done lots of research on glaciers in this area, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

My sunburn from hiking is showing nicely here

Glacial calving is when pieces fall of. This glacier had a huge calving event while we watched. Not so much of a chunk breaking off and plummeting to the water, this even was more like a waterfall of snow and ice that lasted for over a minute. It's difficult to get a size proportion from this picture, but the point at which the ice is pouring is about 100 feet high. And the sound that it produced was dauntingly loud.

Glacial calving

Here's an awesome video of some glacial calving. Hopefully it will give some perspective. (I hope this works on everyone's computer. But I must warn, sometimes the videos are screwy.)

As I said before, it was a humpback day. Above is a video of some humpbacks feeding. The end is especially nice.

Momma T and daughter in front of some pretty waterfalls we drove right up to. All three of them, pretty, pretty, pretty!

This picture gives you a sense of the weather conditions, and as well it shows that the scenery was still gorgeous.

General picture of Kenai Fjords National Park

It was another great boat trip into the Kenai Fjords. Afterwards we jumped in the truck and drove the 2.5 hours back to Anchorage, once again very tired.
______________________________________________

Other highlights on Momma T's visit to AK was a chance to see her cousin Kenny who lives in Anchorage.

Momma T and Kenny

We snapped this picture of a momma moose and her calf one night on the way back from dinner at Heather's and my favorite restaurant.

Moose family

Lastly, before she left for the airport, Tzena had to have some lovin' time with her two grand-dogs. If you don't know, Tzena is Dakota's most favoritest person in the whole world. When Tzena first got here and we took Dakota to see her outside, Dakota melted. She ran to her whimpering and wagging, and layed down belly up on the grass trying to absorb as much loving and Momma T as dogily possible. She loves her Ana (pronounced (on-uh, which is Eskimo for grandmother).

Alaska with Momma T, Part 1: Train, Hiking, Glaciers, on my!

2011-07-23T19:36:00.004-04:00

*Note: click on any picture to enlarge

Last month my mother-in-law came to visit. By no means was this her first trip to the last frontier; however, this was the first time her agenda was simply vacation, relaxation and pleasure purposes. Her other five or so trips have all been with church mission trips.

Momma T, on the train, awake for now

Tzena (pronounced Zane-uh) visiting makes our second visit from ole NC, after my parents came up in March for a few days of skiing. Somehow though, there was no blogged record of the visit (sorry mom and dad).

Front of train passing in front of a glacier. Taken from rear car

After fighting with missed flights, poor airline customer service and sleeping over night on a Detroit airport bench, she made it to Alaska...exhausted. But sleep was not on the agenda. The next morning Heather and her mom boarded the Alaska Railroad at 6:30am en route to Seward, AK.

Reflection on 26-mile long Kenai Lake

They rode the train standby (didn't by tix before hand) and ended up riding in a train car with only two other people. They were told that the tour guide commentary/narration would not, however, come through in their car. But it did. The result, Heather, Tzena and two others got a private car to themselves to run around on and get the best pictures possible. Fun.

This glacier can only be seen by hiking in or riding the train

While they were riding on the smooth chugging along train, I was busy running early morning errands in Anchorage (i.e. DMV). Afterwards, I jumped in Jayne and tore down the road toward Seward to meet them at the train station. This way, we would have a car in Seward for the two days we were there, and we could drive back, saving time and money.

Perfect reflection, more of Kenai Lake

Posing in front of their private car

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From the train station we made our way to Exit Glacier (see earlier post) to do some hiking. Exit Glacier runs down between two mountains coming from a massive expanse of ice settled like an enormous frozen lake within a range of mountains. The Harding Ice Field itself (elevation ~3,500 ft) is over 600 square miles in size, with dozens of glaciers proceeding from it. Include these glaciers in the size and this piece of ice is just over 900 square miles!

When you go to Exit Glacier, there is a short 1 mile trial that brings you to the edge or bottom of the glacier. It is quite a sight to see. There is also a longer 4 mile trail that brings you up the mountain parallel the glacier to the edge of the Harding Ice Field. And this was my goal: to look out across the field and feel small.

Thin plank "bridge" across a river

The plan was for all three of us to hike the beginning, but then Heather and her mom were going to turn around, descend and go enjoy Seward while I continued upward.

Rest break on a cliff

The trail was beautiful. Rivers, cliffs, sweat, vegetation, sunshine, dirt, views and lots of other people to keep away bears (or get eaten instead of me) made the lower trek awesome.

Came across a mtn goat and baby in front of the glacier. Picturesque!

After departing Heather and Tzena, I got to the top of the cliffs portion of the climb, encountered snow (mid-June mind you) and took in the view.

Upper Exit Glacier from top of cliffs, 2.1 miles traveled

The latter two miles of the hike was almost all through snow, a foot or more deep. There's something that kind of messes with you when you're walking through deep snow, in June, wearing shorts, feeling hot, and getting sun burned.

Looking down Exit Glacier into valley

Finally getting the edge of the ice field, the view was amazing! Pictures don't due it justice, but the small bumps you seen in the background are the peaks of other mountains barely above the ice. Word had it that a bear was spotted the day before out on the ice.

Harding Ice Field. Ice as far as my eyes could see.

Because of the sunny-ness and the reflecting off the snow and all, when I got indoors and settled, I had a sunburn worth mentioning. When I took off my shirt, because my arms and face were so red, it looked kind of like I was still wearing a shirt (one with chest hair). Luckily, the burn looked far worse than it was.

This hike was so much fun, I'd do it again in a heart beat. And after a 7-hour round trip, at the end of this day, I was just that...beat.

Unclean, by Richard Beck

2011-07-08T22:15:00.000-04:00

So, I have two options. 1) I can say I have taken a sabatical on reading lately, hence you haven't seen any book reviews on the blog for a while. Or, 2) I can say I started reading this book two months ago, didn't put much time into it, and only just now finished. Take your pick.

Which ever you choose, I have just finished reading Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, by Richard Beck.

Beck is an experimental psychologist and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University in Texas. I was first introduced by, I think, my sister who pointed me toward his blog. You can peruse his award winning blog titled Experimental Theology, by clicking here.

His first book, Unclean is written to and for the church as an admonition to become aware of and careful when dealing with disgust psychology. Disgust psychology is that innate part of us that feels revulsion toward any kind of waste, dirty food, people, actions, etc that grosses us out. Our natural disgust reaction serves to protect our human bodies from foreign and unclean substances.

For a quick example of the disgust reaction, consider this quick anecdote from the book. Imagine you take a clean paper cup from a pack of new ones and spit into it. Now, imagine drinking that spit. The sensation your probably feeling right now is called disgust. It's an uncontrollable psychological response.

(Notably, my dogs don't seem to have a disgust response as I have witnessed each of them ingest and digest...poop.)

Dr. Beck is certainly not the first to write about disgust psychology; however, he is aiming his conclusions toward the church and pointing out how disgust psychology affects where the church draws moral boundaries as well as the church's level of hospitality or lack thereof.

Honestly, because I read this book so slowly over two months, I'd be silly to try and summarize it. But, I'll do my best to say something worth while about it. The main theme I noticed in the book is how disgust, when applied to the church, tends to draw tension between remaining pure and remaining hospitable. A classic illustration is the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man was robbed and beaten, thrown into a ditch, dirty. Two religious leaders walk past the man keeping their distance so as not to be contaminated and made unclean. A third man, the Samaritan, helps the man offering him hospitality.

Let's pretend that the religious leaders who walked past actually wanted to help the man, but they couldn't for fear of being made unclean. Or, let's pretend that the Samaritan, while he helped him, was grossed out by the stench of the beaten man. The tension here is between hospitality and purity.

In today's society, imagine a person wants to help the poor by volunteering at a community soup kitchen. After volunteering only one time, the person never returns, because it was just so dirty and unpleasant in the homeless shelter. There's something antithetical between purity and hospitality. Or put another way, purity tends to draw lines of exclusion while hospitality draws lines of inclusion. This dynamic is very easy to see when looking at ancient Israel and examining their many purity laws. It's a little less clear in our society, yet it's alive and well.

In his book, Beck, provides a clear academic treatise of disgust psychology, and then addresses the church looking for places where the tension between purity and hospitality is off balance. His main conclusion, though a little tough to get in only reading this blog post, is that the ritual of the Eucharist (communion) can help to keep this tension in check. The Eucharist is a ritual that promotes what Miroslav Volf calls "the will to embrace," (hospitality) while at the same time engaging the disgust domains causing a natural reaction toward "the will to purity." The Eucharist stimulates disgust psychology in at least three ways, 1) it involves oral incorporation, which automatically triggers an examination for cleanliness; 2) it activates purity psychology as it echoes the Day of Atonement from ancient Israel; and, 3) it engages our animal nature when believers are encouraged to eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus.

In short, the Eucharist is pulling us in the direction of purity, because it activates our disgust reactions, and at the same time it is pulling us in the direction of hospitality because it is a gathering call for Christians to come together and welcome all others in.

As far as the writing goes, it is written like you'd expect a psychology professor to write. It's academic but accessible. Beck seems to be doing his best to strike a balance between writing for the academy and writing for the laity. I suppose he does a fine job. The writing is clear and concise, but not particularly captivating (after all, it did take me two months to read).

I would recommend this book to the pastor who has extra time on his hands. It has some good material for sermons regarding purity, ritual, psychological process and acceptance, especially in regards to Matthew 9 when Jesus states what seems to be the crux of Beck's thesis, "I desire mercy not sacrifice" (read hospitality not purity).

Hiking and Biking with John and Joy

2011-07-08T17:31:00.002-04:00

Meet John and Joy McCall. John is Heather's boss, and likely of the person most directly responsible for enabling our move to Alaska. Heather loves working for John saying he's a great boss who always has her back. John and I get along because of our mutual love for food. Joy is a native Alaskan (not to be confused with Alaska Native) who knows all about her home land and is the first person we consult with questions about what to do for fun in AK.

When we first rolled into Anchorage, John and Joy invited us to stay at their house for several days while we searched for an apartment. Sweet, sweet, sweet people, they are. Recently, over two different weekends we went out with them and their family.

Stopped at this river on they way to Hatcher's Pass

This first group of pictures is from hiking around Hatcher's Pass outside of Palmer, AK.

Mountain man

We were hiking above the tree line, so you could see for miles.

Where we stopped for lunch

The McCall's have two teenagers, Sam and Grace, and a dog named Sparrow. Also, a friend of theirs came along who has two dogs. Add in Heather and I and our two mutts, our party contained 7 people and 5 dogs. Lots of craziness, lots of fun!

Waterfall on side of a mountain

Our family portrait. Maybe a christmas card?!...

Believe it or not, it was like 60 degrees this day. Something about wearing shorts and walking by snow messes with you a bit. Lola of course, LOVED the snow!

Another sighting of She-Heather

The puptons are good little hikers. Off leash almost the whole time, they just hung near the group. But they were completely exhausted that night. After we got home, they went to bed and we didn't hear a peep from them till the next morning. It was hilarious.

Bubbies takin' in the sights from half way up a mountain

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Another weekend, we went bike riding with John, Joy and their son, Sam. We rode from a place called Bird Creek to Girdwood, AK and back. Otherwise known as Bird to Gird. Round trip was about 20 miles. The ride took us about 6 hours; however, we took a while eating dinner in Girdwood and stopping to take in the sights.

Heather's break by a waterfall

The views along the trail are amazing.

From a place called Bird Point

Heather's boss, his son and some scenery

This was our second big bike ride, and this time our butts were a little more prepared (plus we bought some of those gel pad seat covers for the bikes). We didn't get done till about 10:30pm that night.

Probably the best picture I took all day taken at about 10pm

Anniversary Weekend, day 3: Sea Life Center and Lowell

2011-06-29T02:28:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the 2.5 week delay in finishing this series on the adventure blast five-year anniversary.

View from outside Sea Life Center

On day three, Sunday, after another nice in-room breakfast we headed out to visit the Alaska Sea Life Center. Similar to an aquarium, the Sea Life Center has a number of various exhibits, fish tanks, a petting pond, swim tanks for sea lions, otters and birds, and many other sea creatures. However, being an aquarium is not the main purpose, rather income from touring visitors is to fund the mission which is as a research, rehabilitation and education.

FISHIES!

The Sea Life Center also maintains a set of cameras out on an island called Chiswell Island, which is a popular place for Sea Lions. Not much research has been done on sea lions; however, these cameras provide a 24-hour non-intrusive look into sea lion behavior. Some sea lions are tagged and traced to learn about the migratory or traveling patterns. In short, the Sea Life Center is leading the way in this area of research. Also, if you live in Seward, you can watch anytime on TV what's happing through the cameras on Chiswell Island.

Resident sea lion "Woody" taking a swim

Afterwards we went down to a place called Lowell Point. A mile or two south of Seward, I can only describe it as 'redneck Alaska.' I won't try to describe it. The point is that Lowell has a beach. Covered in black sand, it's the closest beach I know to Anchorage. We had to go see it, and the view was, of course, gorgeous!

View from Lowell Point

5-year anniversary at Lowell Point

Here's a video of a friendly little guy in one of the big tanks. Enjoy!

Anniversary Weekend, day 2: Kenai Fjords National Park

2011-06-10T03:06:00.001-04:00

All aboard!

The second day or our anniversary weekend we awoke and had a quiet and quaint breakfast at the B&B we stayed at. Not like a normal bed and breakfast where you have to show for a prepared hot breakfast at a certain time, we ate muffins, fruit, yogurt and juice which was already in our room and waiting. I didn't think I'd like it this way at first, but the convenience of eating when you're ready and together alone in the room was really nice. We'd definitely go back to this place.

We arrived at the port house of Kenai Fjords Tours just before 10am when our boat tour was scheduled to depart. This was to be an eight and a half hour tour through the national park all the way to view a huge tide-water glacier.

Our boat, the Tanina (pronounced Tuh-nine-ah), was about 100 feet long, two stories and held around 65 people. This tour was fantastic! We saw lots of wildlife, and the captain/tour guide, a former crab boat fisherman, was incredibly knowledgeable. It was cloudy all day and rained a little off and on, but the clouds were high enough that the views were still amazing! Mammoth mountains 360 degrees.

A family of Orca whales swam up to and then under our boat.

Orcas whales, which are actually a porpus, travel in family groups their entire lives. They have a very sofisticated language, and even though the males are the largest the females call the shots.

The tail fin of a Humpback whale.

Humpback whales, the 5th largest mamal, don't actually have humped backs. When they come up to take a breath before a deeper dive, they arch their back and body so much that from out of the water it just looks like one big hump. We watched this guy for quite a while while he was fishing. One of the Humpbacks we saw put on a good show jumping several times (not completely out of the water though) which is called a "spy-hop."

We also came accross a Fin whale, the 2nd largest mammal, which can grow as long as 60 feet long and weigh as much as 100 thousand pounds(!). Fin whale sightings are rare. These whales are not territorial or migratory, they travel their entire life to new place after new place. (Btw: Humbacks can weigh up to 90k pounds.)

Ialic Glacier: front face is 600 high at widest point.

The above picture is of Ialic glacier (pronounced eye-al-ick), which is a tide-water class glacier because it ends in the ocean. This picture is from about 1/2 mile away. Notice the tiny boat on the water near the bottom of the picture. For some perspective, that boat is not tiny at all, but actually a 60 footer.

There were thousands of ice chunks floating in the water. The large ones the captain maneuvered as he slowly drove through, the small ones he just nudged out of the way. But the scratching and rubbing sounds they made hitting the boat sure didn't sound small.

One of the coolest parts about the glacier was listening to it. There are always chucks falling off. This process is called "calving." The chunks we saw fall looked little from so far away, but several of them sounded like thunder (several seconds after you saw it) when splashing into the water. We got an idea of just how high they were when we saw a few pieces (the size of two-car garages) fall from half way up and they, as if in slow motion, took several seconds to reach the ocean. This was really an opportunity to marvel at and be awe struck by creation.

We came around a corner and were surprised by a "haul-out" of sea lions

We saw several different ~~packs~~ ~~groups~~ haul-outs of sea lions. The largest group hard probably 30. These were also fun to listen to, because they growl and bark and snort constantly. Kind of like the two hounds in my life.

The other wild life (not shown in pictures) that we saw was: a sea otter, sleeping in open ocean as we passed by, no cares in the world. He was literally sleeping and just floating along. Sea otters have the thickest furr of any mammal which is why they were hunted almost to extinction about 200 years ago. We saw Puffins, which are brown eight months out of year and only get colorful to attract mate. Several other types of birds, and we learned that there's no such thing as a "sea"gull. They're actually a type of bird, I just can't remember the name. We saw two regal bald eagles perched magnanimously in the harbor. Mountain goats with babies. Harbors seals which were real shy, and hanging out on ice chunks at the glacier. You might say they were...chillin'.

This guy just came from under our boat

Near the end, one of the coolest moments was when several Doll Porpus (like Flipper) came and swam with us in front of the boat. They were popping up out of the water over and over again, crossing back and forth as if just playing around. But actually, what they were doing was resting. The boat pushes ahead of it a pressure wave which, when the porpus swim into it, pushes them forward making the swimming easier for a moment.

Heather, looking cold and cute.

The entire day was a blast! It rained a little, but we didn't let that bother us. Though it lasted 8.5 hours, we didn't have much lag time. There was always a grandiose view to take in or new wildlife to spot. For those of you thining about visiting us up here in AK, this is definitely something you should do, and we're happy to do it again.

Anniversary Weekend, day 1: Exit Glacier

2011-06-08T02:56:00.001-04:00

On May 20th last month, Heather and I celebrated 5 years of marriage and 10.5 years and two days of a relationship!

To celebrate, we traveled the two and half hours beautiful road trip down to Seward, AK on Memorial Day weekend. Seward is a port town, population ~3,000 during the off season, which resides at the tip of Resurrection Bay next to the Kenai Fjords National Park.

We drove down Friday morning, and the weather was perfect. 65-70 degrees, sunny, no humidity, clear skies...this is why we moved to Alaska!

A view we took in on the drive to Seward

We had reserved a quaint little bed and breakfast to stay a few nights in. It was on Old Exit Glacier road, about 9 miles away from the famous Exit Glacier.

Our cozy little B&B

Our plan for that day had been to visit the Seward Sea Life Center for a tour; however, the weather was so beautiful we decided to change the plans. So, we strapped on our helmets and mounted our brand new bikes and started down the road toward Exit Glacier.

I must admit, it was a tough journey to the glacier. We're not big bike riders, so our butts were sore after only 2 or 3 miles, our legs were burning, but we loved every minute of it. The scenery along that road is gorgeous. It follows a river that's coming from the glacier and along a mountain range. Beautiful!

She-Heather riding next to the river.

There were all these little pull-offs to stop and snap a photo.

When we got to Exit Glacier park, it was still a mile walk/hike up to the glacier. Even though our legs were already tired we took the longer route (about a 1.5 miles) to take in the sites and enjoy the day and place.

Massive Glacier

At the top, Exit Glacier is connected to Harding Ice Field, a vast expanse of compacted ice over 600 square miles in area. Some time ago, a group of people decided to trek across Harding Ice Field and be the first to do so. Starting from near Homer, AK they hiked up a mounted and entered the frozen plains. After traveling on skis for 8 days, the group of journeymen reached the other side and exited the ice field on a glacier just north of a little town named Seward. That glacier has since been known as Exit Glacier.

At the monster's edge

After about an hour and a half walking around the area and viewing this silent creeping ice monster, tt was getting late in the day, and it was getting ~~dark~~ less light. We once again mounted our bikes for the return 9 mile journey.

View of the glacier over my shoulder from about a mile away

Come to find out, the road is very slightly inclined, making the return journey much easier as we were able to coast much more. But, somehow we hadn't really noticed this on the way there. We just struggled and pedaled and sweat lots.

It was a gorgeous, beautiful and perfect day. We exercised, we marveled at the awesomeness of nature, the struggled pedaling together and laughed together all day long.

Happy Anniversary to us!

Nicknames

2011-05-31T02:38:00.001-04:00

This blog post and idea are unabashedly stolen from my sister's recent blog, which you can read here. I thought her's was so cute, I just had to do one.

Our dogs are loved, that’s for sure. Recently, we came up with this list of all his various names that they have. They know them all, too.

Dakota
Dakota Bear
Bear-Bear
Coda
Coda-Bear: combination of the previous two
Daco-Taco: a name assigned by my my brother and his girlfriend
Bouder-bouders (pronounced "boo-ders")
Cocanut (head): a favorite of my father-in-law
Baders: (pronounced "bay-ders") Random derivaition from Bouders.
Butters: a mal-derivation of bouders (my brother never understood this one
Cocoa

Lola
Lola Bug
Buggy-Bug: Lola pushing a shopping cart
Bug
LOOooola (Big exaggerated "O" sound at beginning)
Lola-Cola: also from brother and girlfriend
Bone head
Buggie: an infantilization of the "bug" surname.
(Sometimes I call her "Vet Bill")

Things we call the pair of them:
The girls
Pup-pups
Babies
Bubbies: yet another degradation from the previous
Puptons: ~~stolen~~ adopted terminology from my sister, her boyfriend and their dog

Our dogs are loved and lovers. I can't, literally cannot, look at them without cracking at least the smallest smile. They make life better, and that's a fact. They're our own little four-legged therapists. And they are definitely man's (and woman's) best friends.

Dog Theology, part 11: Fear

2011-05-20T04:10:00.023-04:00

Dakota's sweet face

Here's the simple fact: Dakota, despite the fact that she's a 50lb hound, is a scaredee-cat.

She was a stray that found us at only ~8 weeks of age. She'd been food deprived, living out on her own for some time, and was likely abused by an adult man. We suspect the creulty from a man, because her entire life she's been averse to adult males taking significant time to warm up to them. With women and kids she's fine.

A bit of dog psychology: Because of Dakota's early 'dog-hood' her paradigm says the world is a fearful place. It's a place where food is scarce (she still eats every meal as if it were her last), and all manner of things are scary. She has always had a stronger sense of autonomy exuding an air that in the end, she will have to take care of herself. All these things I attribute to her early weeks of life.

Still today, despite the loving home she's spent the rest of her lush life, when faced with something new, her first reaction is fear. Whether it's a large box, a bike or a bunch of groceries, as I carry it into the apartment, Dakota is afraid, because the world is a scary place.

Fear is the dominant force in her life (well....fear and....food).

I'm reminded that perhaps the most often repeated bit of adivce in the Bible, perhaps the simplest and most central core implorment of the Bible, is this message: Do not fear. It's the single most repeated message throughout both Old and New Testaments.

Do not be afraid. It's the first thing the burning bush said to Moses, it's what angels always say when appearing to humans, it's what Jesus said when he appear after the crucifixion narratives. If the Bible could be reduced to a few simple statements, this would surely be one of them.

The Puptons Camping

The Bible was written over the course of hundreds of years by people from a number of different cultures. It would seem that these inspired prophets, these wise sages, these men and women full of life experience who know something about the human condition, all agree on one of the most needed messages for people across cultures and generations. And that message (or at least one of them) is: Do not fear!

I sense Dakota needing to hear this message as well.

In contrast to our 4-legged jet black beauty, our other Dog, Lola, has a quite different personality. Lola's unbringing was very different. When she was about 2 months old we picked her up from someone selling mutt puppies cheap on craig's list. From birth, Lola was surrounded by her dog siblings in a kennel, her parents, other older dogs and a caring human. She recieved regular food, love and all manner of nourishment. Of course, she's gotten nothing less living with us.

And, Lola isn't afraid of anything!

(Except when she's in trouble)

For Lola, the world is a loving place where she is loved by all and loves all in return. She is the most loving little thing you can imagine. She's kind of a lovin' hoe, because she'll give it to anybody. (Lola even likes my dad!, of whom Dakota is mysteriously terrified.)

When I brnig a new person or large strange thing into the apartment, Lola is front and center to check it out and recieve rubbin' if possible. She experiences the full range of pleasure available to a dog. She gives 110% to everything she does (sometimes this ends with a trip to the Vet ER) without reservation or hesitation. Lola is a lover of life, because from life she has received love.

As I go door to door to door through the hospital, visiting the sick, the dying, and those simply here for a minor procedure, I hear peoples' stories, problems, celebrations, problems, gripes, wishes, what's bugging people, their dreams, and did I mention...problems?

Lola dug a whole and then curled up in it

One thing I've noticed is that there are Dakotas all over the place. People living in fear. Might we admit that we all have a bit of Dakota's world view in us. To each of us, somehow, the world is a scary place. People are to be feared. Or certain actions are to be avoided. Or thoughts. Someone's going to hurt me, take my stuff. What I have is fragile. This meal may be my last. We all somehow, seem to be living in some kind of fear. And for most of us, we're experts at hiding our deepest fears, often even from ourselves.

Seeing this trend, the biblical voices urging, imploring, pleading with its readers and hearers sounds as a bugel horn loud and clear: DO NOT FEAR! Admittedly, this is something we could all benefit from hearing and heading.

Through my dogs, I hear God inviting me, inviting us, into a life away from needless fear. I see Jesus in the gospel stories inviting people into life as Lola sees it. With pointedness, Jesus is saying, "Live, love, give, relate, grow, learn, embrace, accept, forgive. And do it all without reservation, hesitation and with 110%." This is the way to life, the way out from fear. When Jesus claimed to be "the way" and "the life" he wasn't saying 'I'm the pathway to heaven. He was saying, "I am the way to life! I am the example."

Jesus was looking for followers, people to live life in the way he was living, a way that leads away from fear and into a brighter life, more full of love.

And...somehow...I got all this from my two puptons. May they keep teaching me how to live and how to love each day.

I'll end with the prayer of a dog owner: "God, make me the person my dog thinks I am."

Reflections on death, Bin Laden, human nature, and thanatology

2011-05-10T01:00:00.002-04:00

A week ago Osama Bin Laden, probably the most infamous and likely the most dangerous terrorists in the modern world, was killed during an assault/raid on his lush Pakistan compound.

Shock and unbelief were my first two reactions. Could this be for real? We hunted him for near a decade. I guess I just never expected he'd be found, caught and/or killed. Millions of people across this country and many others celebrated. Parties, drinking, music, all manner of craziness let loose.

President Obama was quoted saying, "Justice has been done." Not trying to nit-pick, but I believe the proper words would actually be, "Revenge has been done." I mean, don't we Americans believe that justice includes a trial, witnesses, a judge and all that mess? Of course, everybody and their mothers know that had Bin Laden been tried he would have been quickly convicted and swiftly killed by the death penalty (costing the state mucho dinero in the end, I might add).

I heard one report that Bin Laden was unarmed and shot in the face. Don't know what is true, though.

In my almost two years as a hospital chaplain I've seen a fair amount of death. Dead people, people about to die, actively dying, and some dying so slowly and subtly that you cannot pin-point the moment when they actually died. Some families are relieved, but most are grieved. Some reminisce on the good times, and some painfully admit that because of the person's addictions/character-flaws/etc there were few, if any, 'good times.' I've seen graceful death, horrific death, painful and peaceful deaths.

Never have I seen death celebrated.

And so, when I heard that Bin Laden was confirmed dead, and it was time to 'partay,' I hesitated. Yes, I felt a sense of relief to hear this terrorist was no longer a threat. I was glad. The revenge in me got a sense of satisfaction. I thought about all those families of the 9/11 attacks and what they must be feeling. I was sad that we lived in a world where we shoot one another in the face. I was sad that we celebrate such things. I was a bit shamed that I too wanted to celebrate. I wondered (and still wonder) what this might mean. A mix of emotions, and I don't know what to make of it all.

I wonder how God receives Osama bin Laden. There are those who believe that only Christians will experience God's grace after death. There are those who believe all people will be welcomed by God after death. I'm sure most Americans would balk at the thought, even the minute suggestion, that it is remotely possible that God might welcome Osama bin Laden (a deeply wounded and broken human) lovingly. I want to believe in a God who can do, who would do, who is capable of, this. Is Bin Laden in hell? Perhaps he lived in a form of hell? Is he now sentenced to endure unending conscious torment in a firey hell? I strongly question whether such a place actually exists. Whether God could tolerate such a place.

The opposite of judgment is compassion. Both judgment and compassion are natural human responses to differing situations. Is it possible to find any sense of compassion for bin Laden? I struggle to. Would Jesus have compassion for him? So many questions. And, we want answers to them all. So many feelings of joy over a persons death. Revenge, solemness and satisfaction wash over me. A mix of emotions and thoughts so tangled they'll never be unwound and understood. But, isn't that human nature?

I wonder what your reactions are to Bin Laden's death. To this blog post?

Love Wins, by Rob Bell

2011-05-05T04:00:00.002-04:00

As far as Christian pastors go, Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, MI, is a rock star. His third book, Love Wins, was highly anticipated for two reasons. 1) Because his first two, Sex God, and Velvet Elvis, were both very well received, provocative and inspiring. Read my review of Velvel Elvis here. 2) Because of the subtitle and what it might mean for evangelical Christianity. The subtitle is: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.

In my reading, the book's main aim is to challenge some widely held notions about God, the afterlife, heaven and hell. The notion he most challenges is the popular belief that when we die there are two final destinations, heaven or hell, and God will send you to one of them forever. The very fact that this belief is the central crux of many Christians' faith system has made this book quite volatile. Rob Bell was catching criticism for it before it even came out.

Rob Bell spends a good amount of page space raising questions about, unpacking, deconstructing and balking at the traditional idea of hell (a horrible place you might go after you die where you'll endure unending conscious torment). He points out just what kind of God it would take to sentence so many people (the majority of the human race that has ever lived) to spend forever in hell because of a finite amount of sins committed during a relatively brief life.

To make sure he's covered his bases, Bell acknowledges every single mention of hell in the Bible. Luckily, this isn't a difficult task, because it's not mentioned very much. The Old Testament often mentions a place called Sheol; however, whatever this word actually means (biblical scholars only have a vague idea) it is not synonymous with the modern notion of hell.

In the New Testament, the word most commonly translated as hell is the word "gahenna," which is the name of a valley just outside of Jerusalem where all the city's trash was dumped and burned. Animals often went there scavenging for food and fought over dead carcases gnashing their teeth at each other. The Valley of Henna, otherwise known as the town dump, was a place of perpetual burning fire and gnashing of teeth. I hope with this information it's a bit clearer from where some of the biblical imagery for hell comes.

But, Rob Bell isn't denying the existence of hell altogether. Citing the suffering and pain and torment so many people go through in life, Bell gives a fantastic discussion of the presence of hell on earth, just as Jesus prayed for and acknowledged the presence of heaven on earth.

The punch of Love Wins comes in the chapter titled "The Good News Is Better Than That." He points out how often our dominant ideas of hell often impair our hearing of the chorus of scripture passages that reference God's efforts to redeem all humankind. He points to Paul's statement in 2 Corinthians 5 that "God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them." Bell seems to be singing about the inclusivity of God of all people and all things even while noting the exclusive idea that it is all happening through Jesus.

He discusses and re-frames a popular verse in John 14, you know the one, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me." Too often this verse has been quoted as if it means that Jesus is in the way between us and God, like a linebacker, and the only way to get to God is to somehow get past Jesus. But Rob reinterprets this passage (more true to it's original intent, I think) by saying:

What [Jesus] doesn't say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn't even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him.

What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody! In spite of what's been done to us or what we've done, God has made peace with us.

Finishing his book with a thrust of foresight, Rob Bell tells us that the good news, the gospel that Jesus talk about, is about participating in the Kingdom of God, the party God is throwing right now, right here on earth. He continues,

So when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will "get into heaven," that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that.

When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity. Life has never been about just "getting in." It's about thriving in God's good world.

The book is well written, as is expected. Bell has a unique writing style making his material very readable. In only a few sittings I read the short 200 pages. It reads much like a sermon. But that sounds really boring. It's like a really really good sermon, a conversational one. My sister could probably read this book in 20 minutes.

I really like this message put forward by Bell and so many other pastors and writers today, that Christianity is not centered around getting into heaven, or getting "saved" for the afterlife; but rather, following Jesus is about the here, and now, and today, and the kingdom of God on earth. Or as Tony Campolo puts it, "The kingdom of God is a party!"

Rob Bell ends his book in the typical style that he ends his sermons. I will use it to end this blog post. "May you experience this vast, expansive infinite, indestructible love that has been yours all along. May you discover that this love is as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart no one else knows about. And may you know, deep in your bones, that love wins."

May you be blessed

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman

2011-05-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

One of the more interesting and informative books I've read lately (and a nice break from my contemporary theology kick) has been The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures, by Anne Fadiman.

Lia Lee is a Hmong (pronounced with a silent "H") girl born shortly after her parents immigrated to the US as refugees after all the warring and fighting that went on in Vietnam and Laos. As an infant, Lia began having seizures (known in the Hmong culture as "the spirit catches you and you fall down") which bought her regular visits to the local ER at the Merced Community Medical Center (MCMC) in Merced, CA, a town where thousands of Hmong refugees have settled since the war during which Hmong soldiers fought on the US's side by the way.

With these visits brought the clashing of modern western medicine with ancient Hmong spiritual and medical practices. Over the course of several years the staff at MCMC got to know Lia Lee and her case very well as well as the cultural barrier or rather world-view barrier between them. More than a simple language barrier, the Hmong people have an understanding of health care so different than our own that both sides can talk though an interpreter but neither is able to hear the other. The two sides talked past each other.

For instance, at one point the doctors feared they had to give the worst news to Lia's parents by saying there's nothing more to be done and Lia will die within a week. Lia's father, Nao Kao, grabbed Lia (still a toddler at the time) disconnected everything from her and ran out of the hospital! Code Pink! Why did he do this? Because, in Hmong culture, the doctor stating that Lia will die soon is communicating that he is planning on killing her soon. Because, who in their right mind could even begin to try and predict the future. Yet this is something doctors love doing. (And, isn't it a little silly when you think about it?)

Fadiman has sure done her homework. Though the backbone of the book is the story of Lia Lee and her medical journey, being admitted some 16 times into the hospital in her first 3 years of life, the book as a whole is a treatise of, or rather a window into, the Hmong culture. Packed with information, she artfully takes you through Hmong history, customs, war time troubles, immigration instances, their adaptation (or lack thereof) to American culture, and so much more. And after over 300 pages and information overload, I still felt like I had only scratched the surface.

The writing style is somewhere in the funky space between novel and documentary. Fadiman walks this thin line very well. Not only does the reader develop an attachment to the Lee family, but also to the Hmong culture. My heart went out to their struggle in refugee camps in Thailand and Cambodia, I learned to understand their resistance to conforming to American culture (one of the defining characteristics of Hmongs), and I chuckled at some of the stunts they pulled that are documented in this generous book.

A few Hmong men went fishing in a nearby pond marked with signs that read "No fishing." Even if they could've read the sign, the concept of a "no fishing" pond is untenable to them, because how else are you supposed to find food? A police officer approached them to ask them to stop, and they all dropped to their knees ready to be executed. This is very telling of the environment they left when coming to the US.

Police were once called on a Hmong apartment because at a birthday celebration they were slaughtering a live cow. This freaked out the nearby Americans, but really, where do you think the meat in the super Walmart comes from? It's also common place for Hmong to slaughter their own pigs, chickens and rabbits, oh my!

Fadiman wrote about driving into the parking lot of an apartment building full of Hmong and noticing that more of it was dedicated to growing vegetables, spices and fruits than to parking cars. They would fill shoe boxes, old buckets, shoes!, dish pans, anything they could put dirt into, and plant herbs in them out in the parking lot.

One American couple, who had a Hmong family living above them, noticed a drip in their apartment ceiling. They called maintenance who went upstairs to check things out. Entering the Hmong family's apartment, he found that they had covered the entire living room floor with a foot of dirt, planted crops, and watered them!

Is this crazy behavior? No. This is how you get food.

This is probably a book that every medical professional should read. Not because they necessarily need to understand Hmong culture, but as an example of the power of cultural barriers. Though she does not "die," the story of Lia Lee and her seizures is extremely tragic. Ultimately, a failure in communication on both cultures' parts.

There's so much more to say about this truly monumental work, but I cannot say it all here. There's a reason why this book won so many awards and is an international best seller. If you get a chance to pick it up, I promise you will be enlightened, informed and enriched.

Bailey

2011-05-02T22:54:00.000-04:00

My great-grand mother, Ethel Leona Clark Bailey, recently passed away on the morning of April 21st 2011. Born in 1907 she lived for 103 years, 9 months and 26 days if my calendar math is correct.

Since about 1990 she lived together with my grand mother, her daughter, just 5 minutes away from my parents in Asheville, NC. For the latter half of my childhood and thus far in my adulthood she's been around at all the family gatherings, celebrations and holidays. "Are the grandmas coming?" was a common question.

During her life, she moved some 60 times (yes, I said sixty moves), because her husband helped to build railroads. She later bought an old church and remodeled it into a hotel in Nebraska. She did so many other things which I couldn't possibly or adequately recount here.

Until just after her 103rd birthday she was a regular and avid volunteer at ABCCM, an Asheville based crisis ministry out to alleviate the effects of poverty in western NC.

You can view her obituary here.

Grandma Bailey spans the gap, for me, between today and the American Civil War, because her grand father (as I understand it) fought in the Civil War. And so, she was alive during his time and during our time. Amazing.

All the years she's lived in Asheville has been a blessing to me. I don't think many people have a chance to get to know their great grand parents. I think I got part of my sense of humor from her too, because even at 100+ years of age she was still cracking jokes that you wouldn't expect. One of my favorites was at lunch one day when we somehow got to talking about politics and government. Grandma Bailey chimed in saying something like, "I'll bet the government did expect me to last this long when they started writing social security checks."

I once got her a birthday card that read something like this, Front cover: So, how old are you now? 50? 60? 70?..." Inside cover: "Just start banging your cane when I get there." That card was a hoot that got reference for years down the road, mostly by grandma Bailey (who didn't have a cane, mind you).

What was truly amazing was her physical health. As I understand it, she only took one prescription medication and some vitamins. Though her hearing and vision were strongly impaired, she still listened and looked at you as if you were of utmost importance. She walked on her own up until her final few days in a nursing home and only needed aid with steps or getting out of big cushy chairs.

Crossword puzzles kept her mind sharp. For years, everyday she did the news paper crossword. When her eyes began straining too hard, the family bought her this viewer which blew up the image on a bigger screen just above the table top (like those viewers for archived news papers or something). She once got a daily calendar for Christmas with a crossword for each day. They were supposed to be tough New York crosswords too. And, I think it was March when she'd completed the entire year's worth of puzzles. That rascal.

About a month ago it began increasingly difficult for her to swallow, and she developed a bladder infection. She went to the hospital and a few days later to a nursing home as she needed just a little bit more attention than my grandma could give her. Two and a half weeks ago, I flew into Asheville in preparation to do a wedding (see previous post). I was so glad to have the opportunity to visit with Grandma Bailey one final time in the nursing home. Though the early stages of dementia were creeping around inside her mind, my wife and I caught her on a good day. Lucid and spunky, she knew who we were and wondered why she had to be there when she should have been home peeling potatoes for dinner.

During my work as a chaplain I've seen the pain of dementia and how it often manisfests as aggression toward those close to a person (e.g. family). And, I experienced this pain first hand after the first two times I told her "I love you." She responded with a slight bit of hostility. I understood this response, but I cannot say it still didn't hurt a little. We visited and talked about her room, about starving children around the world (a topic which she's very passionate about), and she talked briefly about the hotel in Nebraska. After a wonderful but difficult 30 minute visit it was time to go. I risked another, "I love you," to no avail. We slowly said goodbye and slowly rose from our chairs to slowly leave, knowing this would be our last chance to see her. But, as we walked out of the room and waived, the last words I heard her mutter in that 103 year old voice box were, "Bye, I love you I love you I love you."

Heart = warmed.

Goodbye grandma Bailey.
You will be always remembered,
Always missed.

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

"Holey" Matrimony

2011-05-02T18:22:00.001-04:00

I remember my first sermon, my first eulogy, my first time performing in front of a crowd and my first impromptu stand up routine when I unabashedly mimicked Rondell Sheridan. Now, to this list I can add my first wedding.

Lauren Milam (pronounced my-lum) grew up side by side with Lauren Keyes, my wife's younger sister. A close friend of my wife's family, when it came time to "git hitched" (that's how we say it in 'da South), the whole Keyes crew was signed up to attend and the minister who married into the family was asked to officiate. (Officiate is such a funny word for weddings. It makes me think of a refferree in a boxing match. Maybe we should give all brides and grooms boxing gloves!)

I was honored to be asked and accepted excited to put my own Nathan-flavored spice into the taste of a wedding. The groom was a good chap named Brandon Cameron, a blessed soul able to withstand, handle, or perhaps simply survive the strong, confident, vivacious, life-loving, head-strong, caring and driven personality of our lovely bride. (no wonder she fit in with the Keyes girls so well.)

It turns out that among the many public tasks that ministers are called upon to perform or facilitate, weddings are among the simplest. This is true for a few observable reasons. 1) Most of the material is pre-scripted. There's not a whole lot that I had to creatively come up with myself. 2) The focus is not on me. Everyone is watching the two love birds and waiting for me to finish so they can see a kiss and have a booty-dancing party afterwards. 3) Talking about love, harmony, peace and all that gooey good feeling stuff is my specialty. It wasn't difficult coming up with advice and admonishings for the couple, because ultimate, that is what my Christian faith is all about.

In the end, it all went great. Due to some mild inclimate weather (just a few tornadoes ripping apart central NC), the outside planned ceremony had to be moved inside into this horribly gorgeous ballroom. I was able to successfully stay out of the way, keep my pronouns straight, make some rather clever jokes and get the two married in just about 20 minutes.

After the ceremony, the father of the bride thanked me for keeping it up beat and not making everyone cry. "Oh," I thought, "should I have gone for more mooshy gooshey instead?" But that wouldn't have been as authentically me. Because, let's be honest. I'm always gonna go for the jokes before the tears. But did I leave anything out. Where there holes in these nuptuals? Would going for completely standard wedding stuff have been more holy matrimony than holey matrimony? Personally, I don't think so.

After all, who wouldn't want a wedding where the minister said these sorts of things:

It was Rita Rudner, actress and comedian, who said: I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

I read a story about a wise man whose son once asked him about marriage. The son said, “Is it true? Dad, I heard that in ancient China, a man doesn't know his wife until he marries.” The wise man answered, “That happens everywhere, son, everywhere!”

Lauren: Just remember, a husband is living proof that a wife can take a joke. Brandon, remember, the husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.

Brandon was too nervous to propose in person so he talked a dolphin into doing it for him.

I tried to include a video of the bride walking down the isle on her daddy's arm, but the blog uploader, or my internet connection didn't work well enough. Sorry for only a few pictures. My wife took mostly video of the "good moments," because the lighting wasn't great for our camera. But, you should know that while lauren walked down the isle, I was standing next to a nearly balling groom. Very sweet.

I really enjoyed the experience, and look forward to doing more weddings in the future. Thank you Brandon and Lauren (if you ever read this) for letting me take part in such an important day in both of your lives. I wish you the best.

Max on Life, by Max Lucado

2011-04-28T03:11:00.000-04:00

Not having read any of his 50 plus books, I'm probably not the best person to give a review on Max Lucado's latest book, Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions. But alas, I was given a copy of this book for free from Thomas Nelson publishers in exchange for an honest review, so here goes.

I know of Max Lucado only by the reputation I formulated from hearing his name repeatedly on Christian radio, occasionally on TV, seeing his books populating Christian bookstores and hearing others occasionally recommending one of his many books. He is one of America's most widely read Christian authors, and has been a pastor and author for quite a long time as I understand it.

With the territory of being such a highly respected teacher and leader comes the responsibility of receiving and replying to countless questions on tough life issues. I'm only a young minister and, I can vouch that when certain people see you as a minister they want to ask you for advice on all kinds of life issues. I can't imagine how many of these questions Mr. Lucado has received during his lifetime. This book is the result of those questions.

I was a little put off by the title, or really subtitle, of the book as it seemed a bit pretentious. One small book claiming to provide at least insights and at best answers to my most important questions. My guess is that Max himself is far more humble than this book's subtitle (probably a ploy by the publisher to boost sales).

The book is split up into seven chapters/sections alliterated (like a good southern preacher) all with the letter "H." The topics are: Hope, Hurt, Help, Him/Her, Home, Haves/Have-Nots, and Hereafter. These serve as broad categories into which the 171 different questions are sorted. Each page is headed by a question, presumably written to Max by a reader/parishioner/listener/fan/~~groupie~~, and the rest of the page is dedicated to his response. Most of the responses are finished within one page; however, about 10% spill over to the next.

The format makes the book very readable. I didn't read every single question, but my guess is the book is not intended for that. I browsed the chapters scanning for questions I'd be curious to ask, and then read those responses.

The questions themselves are not censored. Anything seems to be fair game in this book. Max addresses issues such as:

Why am I here? What's my purpose on earth? Where is God in doldrum days? Where is God in suffering? How do I respond to the death of a neighbor's child? Why do children die of cancer? How do I best handle conflict at work? Conflict with my spouse? Conflict with kids? Why should I go to church? What about sexual issues in marriage? What about sex outside of marriage? Teen sex? How do we heal a broken marriage? A broken heart? Is there any chance of a second chance? How should I handle my finances? What about different opinions on marriage finances? What about heaven? What about hell? Do people who've never heard of Christianity go to hell? Is there a hell for real? How do I handle my grief? Can get angry at God? Is God angry at me?

I found myself going back and fourth between screaming in disagreement and falling silent at his wise words that spoke right to me and my issues. From my perspective, on questions that typically dealt with intense grief, loss, shame or other deep emotional issues, I felt Max was not connecting with the asker's pain, and more often he seemed to be sticking a theological band-aid on their question sealed with a Bible verse. I also had some clear theological disagreements with him on topics of hell, salvation, God's judgement and homosexuality.

On issues that dealt with marriage, conflict, child rearing, family issues, spiritual formation, pride, reconciliation, God's love and self-critique, Max really shined. His years as a pastor and teacher serve him well on these questions as he's able to cut right to the heart of the matter, often pointing out less-than- obvious core problems, which later turn into symptoms or issues. One can easily tell that Max Lucado is a lover of people. He seems to write from a servant's heart and is convicted of what he believes.

I'd recommend this book to those who've read a lot of Max Lucado and wish to continue to follow him as an author. If you've been spiritually fed by him in the past and enjoy his words and insights, this book may be a fun one to read. The writing is clear and Max is chummy and anecdotal at times. Max on Life is a good addition to one's already healthy Lucado library.

Strokes of genius

2011-04-21T12:42:00.000-04:00

I have visited with countless patients who have suffered a stroke. Some were completely immobilized, some seemed still completely normal and able, and many were in between having lost some sort of mobility or means of communication.

Strokes are pretty horrible, generally speaking. A blood clot forms and get lodged somewhere in the brain cutting blood flow to our body's super-computer. Very often, results of strokes are loss or lessened use of the left side of the body, arm, leg, face. As I've said, I've ministered to countless stroke patients, but never have really understood what it is like to be a stroke victim.

Recently, I had the opportunity to learn just a little bit more as a stroke patient recounted his experience just after the stroke happened, and it was scary. We'll call him, Bob, and he lives alone.

Bob was sitting in his favorite chair one evening, resting before bed. Not unusually, he fell asleep. Eventually, Bob woke up and felt strange. Like he could see, but couldn't see right. He looked around the room, and though it was familiar, something was funny, off, different.

Not knowing really what was going on or what had happened, he thought it best to go to bed and sleep it off. He tried to get out of his chair, and all his body did was tremble a bit. He moved, but didn't move. Something was definitely wrong. Trying some more he discovered that he couldn't use his left arm or leg, and his right side was weak. He needed help.

But, how could he get it? No one could hear if he yelled. He thought of how else to get help. A phone! He looked around and spotted his cordless house phone in it's usual spot on the reciever atop the refrigerator. "Only a few steps away," he said to me, "It might as well have been miles away. I've never felt so lonely in my life."

What is normally a simple task of standing up, taking a few steps and picking up the phone whenever it rings was now a monumental, seemingly impossible task. He told me about sitting in isolation, trying, struggling, tearing at himself for what to do, "I must have sat there near an hour trying to figure this out." That may well have been the longest our of his life.

Finally, some determination welled up in him. He used his "good" arm (the weakened right one) and strained as hard as he could, "It's never been so hard to get out of a chair. It was like having to move dead weight, except you are the dead weight." Prying himself from his favorite chair, Bob tumbled onto the floor. Military style, as if with a wounded arm, he painstaking slow pulled himself with his right arm across the smooth luckily linoleum floor toward the refrigerator.

But how would he possibly get up high enough to get that phone. He recounted, "I probably laid there in the floor ten minutes before it hit me." Reaching his arm into the crack between the refrigerator and wall he grabbed and pulled on the cord to the receiver, and the phone came falling to the floor -- plumb out of reach, bouncing over underneath the dining table.

It's a wonder the phone didn't bust into pieces falling from that high, but luckily this one was made sturdy. Bob told me that he didn't have anymore energy to pull himself over the phone. He was able to roll himself to where he could grab a nearby chair leg. And using that chair leg like he was fishing, he tried to bump and knock the phone toward him with the chair leg diagonal from the one he was grasping. Like trying to play golf using the wrong end of the golf club, he was able to nudge that phone of salvation within reach of his exhausted, weakened but usable hand.

This story is like fighting on the battlefield, only the field is your own home. I'm terrified to think of ever having to be in a position like that. Especially, when I heard from Bob's own mouth just how alone he felt when he realized he couldn't move, and no one knew he needed help.

Though he'd had a stroke, I think is was quite a stroke of genius the way he was able to retrieve the phone. Pulling on the cord, using a chair like a fishing pole, the courage it took to drag himself out of his chair an over the floor is something I hope I have inside me if ever presented with such a simple yet daunting task as getting the phone.

A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren

2011-04-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

It was a bit of a dense read, but I finally finished Brian McLaren's 2004 book, a confession of sorts, or perhaps a manifesto of McLarenian theology, titled, A Generous Orthodoxy. Actually, I finished the book almost 3 weeks ago, so I should rather say, I finally got around to blogging about it.

His fastest selling book, the subtitle to the book is so long it deserves its own sentence, indeed its own paragraph. The subtitle is: WHY I AM A missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvanisti, anabaptist/anglican, methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopefull, emergent, unfinished Christian.

Overall, this is one of McLaren's many books in an attempt to nudge, or maybe shove, American Christendom into a new, more hopeful, more accepting direction. In the first chapter McLaren states that, "this book is an attempt to correct what I perceive to be some bad doctrine, including bad doctrine about doctrine." Instead of explaining why he is one thing and not another, instead of drawing further lines of distinction and divide like our numerous Christian denominations tend to do, McLaren is trying to draw lines of acceptance around the many camps and explain why he identifies in part with most or all of them.

In the introduction McLaren warns readers of the dangers in adopting this Generous Orthodoxy. He plainly states that this is not a position held by any recognized body of believers. In fact, it is only a position held by one, himself. And so, taking on anything he's writing is to be a dissenter in many ways. He also discusses the problems with his suggested title:

Many will agree: the choice of the word orthodoxy in the title is a terrible mistake. For most people, orthodoxy means right thinking or right opinions, or in other words, 'what we think.' In contrast, orthodoxy in this book may mean something more like 'what God knows, some of which we believe a little, some of which they believe a little, and about which we all have a whole lot to learn...Most people are too serious, knowledgeable, and busy for such an unorthodox definition of orthodoxy.

As McLaren moves through each chapter considering the many different topics and branches of Christianity, he describes his take on it and reason for espousing such a belief. For example, in his chapter Why I am Liberal/Conservative he writes this, "The best of liberal and conservative Christians were, then, truly heroic, but in different ways. Liberals were heroic for tackling tough issues often several decades before the conservatives...Conservatives have been heroic in other ways, especially related to individual conversion and basic discipleship. Millions of people are dedicated Christians at the beginning of the twenty-first century who wouldn't be if it weren't for the conservative missionary advances of the 19th and 20th centuries."

The three chapters on Why I am 1) Mysticism/Poeticism; 2) Biblical; and 3) Emergent are especially good. It is likely I will come back to this book just to read those chapters. In each of the many topics he covers I picked up a strong amount of energy from McLaren for each topic. This was energizing to me, but also exhausting in a way. How can I possibly feel strongly about so many different issues.

As a whole, this book is a confession from McLaren's deepest heart. And as one who has done some writing from the heart and knows how vulnerable it can be, I deeply respect his courage. No doubt he has received some staunch criticism on this book (regrettably mostly from conservatives), but I believe what he is saying needs to be said more and by more.

The writing is typical McLaren: smooth, educated and readable. Though he uses a lot of them, he rarely wastes words. He's less anecdotal than in his other books I've read. Of the five Brian McLaren books I've now read, I would say that if you were only going to read one of his books, this is the one.

His vision for a generous orthodoxy is not traditionally orthodox, but is very generous. And, as one just beginning to make my way into ministry in our post-modern world, I pray that many more will adopt a more generous orthodoxy.

By what are you saved?

2011-04-20T16:52:00.000-04:00

A colleague introduced me to this short poem by Lynn Unger, a Unitarian Universalist minister. And though I am not a member of the UU church myself, I believe we can all benefit from the resources of other faith traditions. I hope you enjoy, as I do, how Unger paints a simple and elegant picture of God's gently radical salvation.

Enjoy.

By what are you saved? And how?
Saved like a bit of string,
tucked away in a drawer?
Saved like a child rushed from
a burneing building, already
singed and coughing smoke?
Or are you salvaged
like a car part--the one good door
when the rest is wrecked?

Do you believe me when I say
you are neigher salvaged nor saved,
but salved, anointed by gentle hands
where you are most tender.
Haven't you seen the way the snow curls down
like a fresh sheet, how it
covers everything, makes everything
beautiful without exception.

Rev. Lynn Unger

Universal Grief

2011-04-19T15:43:00.000-04:00

I sat with an Alaska Native woman, whose common law husband was brought into the ER in critical condition. Since she was uncomfortable being right outside the patient room, we wound up sitting together in the waiting area, while she ate and drank with shaky hands, wondering if the staff would allow her the same rights as a legal spouse.

She eventually began telling me about life growing up in the village she lived in and later moving to Anchorage. She then shifted the conversation toward me and commented on the difficulty of being a chaplain. She thanked me for being a calm presence, and then she began to ‘read’ me, as a shaman might, telling me of my gifts, struggles, fears and motivations. Only, she wasn't looking at my palm, she was staring me straight in the eyes. Some of her statements were spot on, others were less accurate. But enough of what she was saying hit close enough to home to make me uncomfortable. She told me that one of her functions in the village was as a healer. She wasn’t the physical kind of healer, but another kind, a healer of the insides. She told me I have the same gift: to be a healer of the insides.

Despite my level of discomfort during this part of the conversation, I felt honored afterward feeling as if she put herself in a vulnerable place by sharing that part of her culture with me. I also felt a little bit humbled, as my usual response to such things is to relegate them to the category of tribal hocus-pocus. However, given this experience, my assumptions are now being re-ordered. One thing was certain, we came from very different cultural backgrounds.

After this ‘reading,’ I was able to redirect the conversation back toward her and the present situation with her live-in partner. And, in the following discussion she seemed to feel much safer, sharing with me her worries, grief and flowing tears. When she cried harder, she spoke a few words in a language I didn’t recognize, presumably the language of her native village. I was blessed to simply sit with her.

This snippet is one of many opportunities I’ve had this unit to minister to and be with people from a culture or cultures either mostly or completely unrepresented in the south. One of the lessons this visit, and others like it, taught me is that grief is universal. While expressions of grief vary between cultures, indeed they vary person to person; the pain of loss seems to remain a constant across humanity.

One social justice issue present in this visit was whether or not the medical staff would treat this woman with all the rights and privileges of a legal spouse or keep her at arms length, because she lacked a piece of paper from the court house with their names on it. In the end, aside from one comment by a nurse, she was treated as the spouse and spokes person for the patient who died soon after in the ER.

I am missing a leg...

2011-04-10T21:52:00.001-04:00

...and Lola is missing some fur.

Isn't this picture pitiful? Yesterday, we took the dogs to an off-leash dog park in town. It's at beautiful University Lake (which is more like a large pond). There is a large open space just for running, playing, romping, frisbee and of course Lola's favorite, fetch. For those of you who've seen Lola play fetch, you can vouch that, never has another dog bested her at getting to the ball first. There's also a great walking trail all the way around the lake.

So, there we are, playing fetch, meeting other dogs, chasing tails and sniffing butts (well, Heather didn't sniff any butts). After some hard running fetch we noticed a small bit of blood in the snow (yes we still have snow in April here; in fact, it snowed a little today!). Lola had a few paws bleeding. This is not good, but it's not new either. She runs so hard, giving 110%, that she sometimes tears up her little hound feet. We stopped fetching.

I rubbered on her for a moment and noticed blood on my hand when I pulled it away. She had a wound on her side, too! It isn't uncommon for small short-lived scuffles to happen at dog parks. One dog overwhelms another who then growls, barks or snaps briefly, and it's over. Lola was even involved in one just after arriving (our problem child).

But, there was this one dog, Basil. And, he kept antagonizing Lola, barking at her from close behind whenever she was waiting for me to throw the ball. She would get aggrivated, and then correct him by barking back and growling back in his direction. She even chased him away a time or two, but he persistently came back. It is more aggrivating in hind sight than it was at the time.

Upon, finding a puncture wound on her side, we called it quits and left. We decided to take her to the Vet ER only a block from out apartment. And, because it was a beautiful and warm day yesterday (in the low 40s), the ER was quite busy. So, we waited (and watched half of Wall-E in the waiting room) and waited more. The doc finally got to Lola, heard our story and hardly checked her over, "I'll have to shave and clean the wounded area before we can tell what we're dealing with, but I'll give her a little pain medicine in the mean time."

Because Lola wasn't an emergency, she got put down a ways in the ~~pecking~~ barking order. We reluctantly left her in their able care and with Dakota still in the truck went home, one family member short. They called an hour or so later after the doc had had a closer look.The bleeding feet were no big deal, just some rough play resulting in some minor cuts. A little ointment and a few days to heal. Her side wound, according to the doctor, was clearly from a bite. More than just a puncture, she said Lola had been bitten and the skin pulled away, separating it from the underlayer. She needed to cut the skin a little more in order to properly clean it and then suture it back up. We were warned that it would be expensive.

They had to keep her overnight, mostly because the minor surgery wouldn't be happening for a few hours. So, we went to bed, again one member short. It felt wierd at home last night without our little fountain of energy plunking around the apartment behind me.

We called in the morning, and the doc said Lola did great. Before both going to work, we went and picked her up. For payment, oddly enough, they didn't want any money. They said they'd be fine if I just cut off my leg and handed it over to them. I thought that was a deal, so I went for it. (What? You don't want an arm too?) The leg I've been walking around all day is actually a prosthetic one, made of metal from the space ship, like Lt. Dan.

Here's a little ethical(?) question. Before leaving her at the Vet, we had to sign a paper stating whether or not we would want them to do CPR on Lola should something happen. Honestly, there was no easy answer for us. The form said that it can cost $500 just to start CPR. This made me ponder how much a dog is worth. Now, don't get me wrong. If you know me, you know how much I love my dogs. And my other thought was, if we get to the point where CPR is required, let's just let nature take its course. In the end, we signed that yes they should do CPR, but mostly because there was virtually no chance of them needing to.

At work I go over Living Wills/Advance Directives with people on a regular basis. I'd never thought of needing one for my dog.

Anyway, Lola is back home, she's a little mopey, but she's got her own little pills of doggy pain killers. Maybe I could sell them to my father-in-law! Just kidding. (But really, Randy, we'll talk later!) So, send your good vibes Lola-ward, we're going to be leaving her later this week with a house sitter for a few days as we travel back to NC. Hopefully, as her fur grows in, my leg will grow back.

If Moses had Google

2011-04-08T13:11:00.001-04:00

Hey all, here's an entertaining video a friend showed me the other day. It answers the question, "What if Moses had had google?"

Enjoy.

(You may want to make if full screen if you can. Some of the writing is small.)

If you had trouble viewing it here, click here to watch on YouTube.

Adios!

Was Jesus Gay?

2011-04-06T22:00:00.000-04:00

Well, was he?

The Bible holds no record that Jesus was married. And, in the the book of John, one of the disciples (some think it was the author of the book, but this most like isn't the case) was always referred to as the one whom Jesus loved (for an example see John 13:23). Jesus also predominantly hung out with a group of dudes. So, the question: was Jesus gay?

Before some of you balk too drastically at the absurdity of this question (presumably you're angrily reacting: of course he was not gay!!!!), know that the title to this blog is more for the purpose of grabbing your attention. I personally don't think Jesus was gay, but in all historical honestly we must admit together: we'll never know.

I did run across a provocative quote recently (forgive me for forgetting the author and being too lazy to go find it) that says, "Why do so many Christians worry about gays but not poverty?" And, I thought this was a good question. The Christians who believe being gay is a sin and will send you to hell too often forget or neglect those people who are impoverished and are already going through hell on the streets each night.

A number of Biblical scholars have made concerted attempts to exegete the Bible to show/prove that the Bible doesn't address modern homosexuality (see John Shelby Spong's Living in Sin: The Bible and Homosexuality). And, there is something to this proposition. While men having sex with men (and the same for women) did happen in antiquity, the modern notion of two men or women having a long-term monogomous relationship was simply outside of the cultural realm of possibility. In that way, the Bible doesn't address modern homosexuality.

There's also something to the fact that Leviticus directly condemns man-on-man sex, as well Paul, in Romans, lists sex between two men as sinful (right before he tells his readers that they're just as sinful!). So, it's worth while to consider that at least some of the biblical authors likely thought homosexuality (or some form thereof) was bad, not preferred, sinful, not useful for procreation (this last one was probably their biggest concern).

When considering Paul's stance (since so many Christians seem to listen to Paul more than Jesus) on this issue, I would like to pose this question, "Is is possible that Paul was just wrong?" I mean, he was wrong when he wrote that Jesus would be returing in the flesh very soon. It's been 2,000 years and no Jesus. I think we've exhausted the extent of the word, soon.

200 years ago, virtually everyone in the United States thought that slavery was moral and that God looked favorably upon slavery as "the way things ought to be.' The Bible was often cited as one of the cheif proponents of slavery. Then around the middle of the 19th century, when the country was split on the issue, the Bible was used to defend both sides of the argument. But now, in 2011, virtually all of us agree that slavery is, in fact, bad, wrong, sinful, not preferred. And, we use the Bible to support this thought.

I think we are in the middle of a similar kind of progression. Not too long ago, the vast majority of Americans (especially Christians) held that homosexuality was wrong. Currently, there's a strong divide on the issue and the Bible is being cited to defend both sides. I personally look forward to the day when gay-bashing is a thing of the past at which we hang our shameful heads. And, I hope to live to see that day. I can't think of a worse way to spread "God's love" by telling someone he's going to hell (as some of my gay friends have been told).

I recently read an article/blog about this kind of cultural shift from shaming a thing to accepting it. It was very enlightening and spoke to this subject. Click here to read it.

Where do I stand on the issue? Though I grew up being told that it was wrong and sinful by family, culture and the Southern Baptist Convention, I personally feel very welcoming and affirming of people with non-hetersexual preference. I also don't think it's my business to know if or if not another person is gay/lesbian. Asking someone if she's gay is as invasive as me asking you what your favorite sexual position is (also something I don't want to know). If you are ever asked if someone else is gay, I recommend responding, "I don't know that person that well." (For the yaars.)

When I imagine Jesus encountering a modern gay person, I think back to all of the Bible stories of Jesus meeting other ostracized, marginalized and outcast members of society. And, how did Jesus respond? By welcoming them, hugging leppers, speaking to and respecting women, mingling with the poor and inviting children in. I can't imagine Jesus responding any differently to a modern person who happens to be homosexual. So, how could I, how could we, think of responding any differently?

I also realize that this is still a heated issue for many people. (If you're somone with lots of energy on this topic, know that your energy is coming from fear and not from theological righteousness.) And, this will liely be a heated issue for a while. Hence, I choose to respect your position on this issue if it is different than mine. In return I ask for the same respect, and I'm happy to dialogue on the issue with anyone interested. Comments are welcome, please keep them civil.

We Be Big, by Rick Burgess and Bill "Bubba" Bussey

2011-03-29T12:35:00.000-04:00

We Be Big is the autobiography of a radio show. The "Rick and Bubba show" is a talk radio show out of Alabama hosted by two fun loving, regular but gifted, funny, food devouring, proud-to-be-fat guys who talk about (in contrast to Seinfeld: a show about nothing) everything under the son.

Before coming across this book, I confess, I had never heard of The Rick and Bubba Show, and I have yet to actually hear the show. But now I am familiar with its origins. The book is about each host's upbringing and how they found their way into radio and became a duo, why their unorthodox and un-radio-like radio show became so popular, and the struggles they've had along the way.

The book was co-authored by Don Keith, an actual author by trade. The writing is fine. Meaning, it's readable, but has a bland quality to it, there's nothing special about it. So, there's no particular praise I might give the writing, but at the same time, no criticism either. It does its job, it tells the story.

At first, having no real idea of what this book was about, except that it had been publicized as comedic and hilarious, it took me a while to get into it. I didn't identify or bond with either of the characters or their story until late in the book. I must also say that, sadly, it wasn't very funny. Yes, there were a few jokes here in there in each chapter (mostly about being fat and loving food), but only one time did I actually laugh. And its advertisement as a "funny" book is why I chose it. So, in this manner, it was disappointing.

Had I been familiar with the radio show prior to reading the book, I would've been far more interested earlier on, and perhaps more entertained by the jokes. However, I committed to finishing it, and by the end I got into the story and wanted to know how it ended. Mostly, the content is happy-go-lucky. They chronicle their slow rise to fame, some difficult job stresses and station changes. But at the end they tell a very sad and touching story of when one of the hosts lost his youngest son who drowned in their family pool. A freak accident, it would bring tears to most peoples' eyes (unless they're a chaplain, then it takes more to make us cry, though my heart still goes out). They talked about their faith in God, a theme throughout the book, and what they learned from this tragic loss.

In the end, I found myself rooting for Rick and Bubba. I still don't know if I'll ever tune into their show, but if I do, I imagine I'll know who it is before they ever say who they are.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review from BookSneeze.com, an entity of Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Blessing

2011-03-24T03:30:00.000-04:00

Before I begin my weekly night shift, the chaplains there in the evening come together and update me on any need-to-know cases. "There's a trauma in the ER but family hasn't arrived yet. The patient in room 100 would like a prayer this evening if you have time. There's a man in surgery now whose wife is an RN here, she's very upset, please check in with her." Things like this and so many other situations get passed along usually giving me a check list to go through before settling in for the night.

Recently, at nightly report, I was told this, "You will probably be called to the Mother-Baby unit tonight. There's a pregnant mom who came in yesterday for her first ultra sound, and everything was fine. This morning she started bleeding, came to the ER, and found out that her baby has died en-utero. She's been induced for labor and says she wants her baby blessed after delivery."

I have to be honest, this is not the kind of referral I look forward to. Baby deaths in the past have been difficult for me. (Read one account here, and how I coped with it here.) However, I have grown as a professional chaplain and matured as a person to the point where, pregnant women and acute compounded grief over loss of a child don't scare me. I am now able to enter their space, sense their pain, and minister within it.

Sure enough, later that night the pager erupted. The baby blessing was requested. This is not my first blessing of an infant, alive or dead, and I haven't done many. But, I must say, as sad as they can be, I really love doing them. In preparation, I grabbed a small plastic heart shaped container that has a little lid (about the size of a 3-liter bottle cap), put in it a cotton ball and poured some anointing oil over it. I took with me a certificate of blessing and one of those crempy sealer things like notaries use to make the certificate feel official.

Entering the room I saw mom, holding her darling deceased baby that weighted about a pound. She was staring at his beautiful tiny wrinkled face as if she was looking into her entire universe. Her dad, grandpa, was quietly sitting nearby. We talked for a few moments but mostly gazed at the little guy who never had a fair shot at life. Mom had already cried so much she was temporarily out of tears and in a sacred and serene place of wonder as she imagined what might have been but now never will be.

She told me his name and why she chose it. Naming helps the grieving process for parents so much as a way to connect with and honor the life that was lost. She had taken pictures of him and dressed him, things parents do, and she would do it for her son, even if only once.

I brought with me a short "service" of blessing for a baby. We prayed together, I read a few words about how God loves this child who is a member of the family, and we heard a short passage from Matthew about Jesus and children. Making the sign of the cross on the little tyc's forehead with oil on my finger was so special. It was heartbreaking and endearing. It makes me sad to have to do one of these blessings, but I so enjoy being able to walk with parents through this process of caring for their deceased child and honoring his life with ritual.

The room that night was a sacred space. Her love for her son is what sanctified that sterile hospital room making it a sanctuary for God's love, expressed by a broken mother with dreams shattered who saw nothing but beauty in the tiny motionless eyes and translucent fingers of her son. I pray that in time her heart will mend.

Jesus said, "Leave the children alone, and don't try to keep them from coming to me, because the Kingdom of heaven is made up of people like this." After he put his hands on them, he went on from there. Matthew 19:45-15

Dog Theology, part 10: Temptation

2011-03-23T13:55:00.003-04:00

Here's how the scene goes down. I walk by the bathroom door and stop cold. Anger wells up in my chest as I look upon the various bits of toilet paper, Q-tips, clumps of hair and whatever else was strewn about from the bathroom trash can by my dog, Dakota. And who knows how much she's eaten? It's hard to remember to close the door everytime and all the time. But when we (mostly I) don't close it, this happens. The result, I know I'm not going to have a good night sleep.

Why?, you might ask.

Dogs vomit. And when Dakota vomits, it is almost always at 5am in the morning. Sound asleep, in the quiet of the early morning, when the birds are considering beginning their chirping, the air is chilled and crisp and all is calm in the Highlands Apartments where we live, when we hear....that noise. That deep gutteral, back-of-the-throat, short-of-breath, K9, heaving. I immediately leap out of bed, like a fire cracker went off under my butt, and zoom toward Dakota (in the dark, with no glasses on) trying to find her and rushingly drag her to the linolium floor where vomit is far easier to clean.

Do I make it? Sometimes. Her favorite place to throw up is in the corner behind the door. So, even if I get to her, then I have to open the door and get her out of the corner and around the door before we can actually go anywhere. This is very frustrating. And, this dance happens all because Dakota cannot withstand the temptation of the trash.

Two weeks ago we started the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday. Traditionally, one of the themes of Lent is a focus on our fleshy-ness, our humanness. And the lectionary (prescribed order of worship) starts off Lent with passages on temptation. Focusing on temptation reminds us of those things that make us human, that we are frail, that "we are dust and to dust we will return." Temptation is one of the chief marks of being human.

People often give up something during Lent as a way of engaging their humanness and recognizing the power of temptation. I typically do not participate in this Lenten fast of sorts, but perhaps you are somebody who does.

Whether or not you choose to give up something until Easter, may you use this season to look inward at yourself. Reflect on what makes you human, what makes you tick. Can you pinpoint your deepest motivations, and can you stare into the face of that part of yourself of which you may be ashamed and still say to yourself, "I love you." I pray that you can. I will do my best to do this during the remaining Lent season, and while I do so, I sure wish Dakota will also engage her spirituality during Lenten and give up eating trash so I can get some sleep.

Putting Away Childish Things, by Marcus J. Borg

2011-03-14T03:40:00.000-04:00

I finished this book about a week ago and am only now getting around to reviewing it. Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith, is Marcus Borg's first attempt at fiction. And I'd say, for a professor of religion and long-time nonfiction author, this was a good book.

It is a story of two women facing very different decisions and delimmas. Kate, a professor of New Testament at Wells college and one year away from earning tenure, is offered a one year visiting professorship at a nearby seminary. Kate is now stuck between her strong desire to teach seminarians in an environment where faith actually matters and her comfortable position as a well-liked professor tangibly close to tenure and thus a life time of job and financial security.

Erin, one of Kate's undergraduate students and a member of a two different Christian organizations on campus, is beginning to have a lot of questions about her understanding of Christian faith. One Christian group, The Way, is more conservative and has trouble hearing or honoring Erin's ernest questions, while she wonders if the othe group values the act of faith at all.

Borg uses the scenes in Kate's classes and a few other venues through other characters to insert a fair but not overwhelming amount of didactic material. Through these classes the reader is urged along with Erin to consider what kind of faith is going to be worth while. With an impressive amount of literary finess, Borg is able to inject a number of pertinent theological and social justice issues into the narrative as readers follow the story wondering what each character will do with their difficult decisions. The fact is you can't read Borg without learning something, period.

As always, Borg is a smooth writer with powers of description that made me want to eat the food he likes to describe. It's an easy and quick read. At about 250 pages I didn't even realize when I'd reached the end, and I was a little sad for the story and learning to be over.

If you're just looking for a good story, with intricate plot turns and charcter development, Putting Away Childish Things is probably not for you. However, if reading nonfictional theology causes you to vomit in your mouth a little, but you have an interest in growing and stretching your faith, this would be a good place to start.

I'd say Borg is far gentler in his critique of modern American Christianity than in his nonfiction works, making this book more accessible to most. For those who are practically struggling with theology and not simply struggling comprehensively or cerebrally, this will be among the fist books I recommend.

I Asked God...

2011-03-10T21:20:00.000-05:00

Here's a poem I came across just the other day, which I enjoyed. It contains a lot of life's practical wisdom. I'm a little weary of some of the theology from which it stems, but I very much like the point. I hope you enjoy it too.

I asked God to take away my habit.
God said, No.
It is not for me to take away,
but for you to give it up.

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.
God said, No.
His spirit is whole, his body is only temporary.

I asked God to grant me patience.
God said, No. Patience is a byproduct of tribulations;
it isn't granted, it is learned.

I asked God to give me happiness.
God said, No.
I give you blessings;
Happiness is up to you.

I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No.
Suffering draws you apart from
worldly cares
and brings you closer to me.

I asked God to make my spirit grow.
God said, No.
You must grow on your own,
but I will prune you to make you fruitful.

I asked God for all things
that I might enjoy life.
God said, No.
I will give you life,
so that you may enjoy all things.

I asked God to help me LOVE others, as much as He loves me.
God said... Ahhhh,
finally you have the idea.

Messin' with Scripture

2011-03-08T03:10:00.001-05:00

A favorite comedian of mine, Jim Gaffigan, has a great stand-up skit about bacon, "the most beautiful food on earth." You can watch it here.

During my first year of residency, two of the four residents were vegetarians. And all year long I evangelized them, trying to convert them to my carnivore ways with a relentless onslaught of bacon jokes. Because, let's be honest, if any meat is going to convert a vegetarian, it's bacon.

A friend and I were reflecting the other day that bacon is so great that you can simply equate bacon with love. Bacon is love. So, we started choosing a few passages of the Bible and replacing the word love with the word bacon. Here's what we came up with.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not bacon, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal...Bacon is patient, bacon is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast it is not proud. Bacon is not rude or self-seeking, bacon is not easily angered and keeps no record or wrongs. Bacon does not delight in evil but delights in ~~breakfast~~ truth....Bacon never fails. (1 Baconthians 13:1, 4-7 sort of).

I know bacon doesn't mix in with the Bible all that well, because of all the kosher Jewish dietary restrictions. But I wouldn't be surprised if Jesus ate bacon. He was always breaking the nonsense rules anyway: working on the sabbath, healing on the sabbath, why not enjoy God's gift to the food community. I think when Jesus told his disciples to love one another just as he as loved them, he was really telling them to give bacon to one another just as he had given them bacon. Because, let's be honest, love is bacon!

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Another little moment of fiddling with the Bible that I came across was while reading a book recently. There's this group of verses in John 14 that many Christians too often abuse and turn into a weapon. This is regrettable. Here is the actual passage:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Below is, I think, how many Christians actually interpret these verses. Brace yourself.

"You should be very troubled, because if you believe in God, but not me, you will be shut out of my Father's house in heaven, where there are a few small rooms for the few who have correct belief...." Then Thomas said to him, "Lord, what about people of other religions or no religion at all? Will they go to heaven after they die?" Jesus said to him, "I am the only way to heaven, and confessing the truth about me is the only truth that will get you to life after death. None will go to haven unless they a) personally understand and believe a clearly defined message about me, b) personally and consciously ask me to come into their heart, c) disavow any other religious affiliation, and d) affiliate with the new religion I'm starting and naming after myself. None can get come to God unless they get by me first." (not John 14: 1-6) -Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

I must admit, I chuckled when I first read this...rendition(?) And, I think this is a beautiful passage (the original one), but it simply is not saying what most people think. Jesus did not speak this verse while having an existential or doctrinal discussion with the disciples about himself as the door keeper to heaven. If that's how you've always heard this verse, sorry to burst your bubble, but it needed to be popped. It is part of a much longer discussion which begins in the previous chapter. Jesus had just lambasted Peter for stepping out of place and the disciples were feeling a bit low. They were troubled, because he had spoken about leaving them. This verse falls in string of verse of Jesus comforting and consoling his closest friends.

That's how I've been messin' with the Bible. How have you been playing with scripture lately? How has scripture been toying with you?