I came across a rather interesting (and rather long) article from the Dallas Observer last night, about The Trinity Foundation. It's compelling reading if for no other reason than it's the first even remotely negative piece I've read about Trinity, and in this case the negativity isn't all that remote.
Several former members liken it to a cult, describing situations where Trinity members were put, one a time, into a hot seat where they were verbally abused and excorciated until they were broken. They also describe fairly demanding standards of submission to Ole Anthony's leadership, something that reminds me of the Shepherding movement I've heard about before in charismastic and evangelical circles, where believers are allowed to make no significant decisions without approval from a pastor or other anointed leader. And of course, members who leave the fold reportedly are regarded as anathema and are to be shunned.
My own impression, after reading it, is that there's probably some truth to the allegations, but I'm not sure it rises to the level of a cult, if you know what I mean. Trinity may be a toxic community in some ways, and it's quickly that if Ole is as charismatic as I've heard tell, then that probably lends to abuse, a personality cult (as opposed to a theological one) and so on.
On a personal note, as I read the article, I was struck by some parallels between what ex-Trinity members were describing and some of the stuff I remember from the Lafayette Christian Fellowship, back in college. It's no exaggeration that the Leadership Team and the Exec largely did what Mark wanted. I remember at one meeting that he said something about people shouldn't just pick dorms to live in on their own, but they should turn that over to God and figure out the "best place" to advance the kingdom.
That's true, I suppose, but what I remember it meaning, practically speaking, was that there was a meeting where LCF leaders decided where everyone on the leadership team should live. Much of the leadership development and selection was done in secret; i.e., each of the next year's leaders was hand-picked in a meeting run by Mark and usually resulted in Mark's people getting onto the team. I seem to recall one participant even saying something about Mark being annoyed when Jennifer Neeves was picked to be on Exec.
And of course I can tell you plenty of stories about being marginalized and being branded as unteachable because I didn't subscribe to Mark's eschatology, his views on predestination, biblical inspiration, and because I decided I preferred involvement in my church to involvement in the LCF by my senior year. (my best friend refers to this individualism as my gift of martyrdom.)
People who dropped out of the LCF generally weren't socialized with any more, despite the great protestations of friendship and love that had existed before they dropped out. I believe the standing consensus was that such drop-outs weren't really Christians.
But of course, I don't regard to the LCF as a cult. It was deeply, horribly flawed. For some people it was a coral reef that they steered away from or ran aground on and took years to recover from, if they ever did. I remember Block did some sort of research for a religion paper where he found strongly negative reactions to the LCF from many members of the college community, including some avowed Christians.
Some of the flaw existed in Mark, and his need to ensure that everything went the way it needed to; and some of the flaw existed in members like me, who either lacked the willingness to call something wrong or the wisdom to voice that criticism well, or committed the same exact sins as Mark in different ways.
Chances are that if you survey all the churches and parachurch organizations in North America, even if they meet all the tests for orthodoxy of doctrine, they'll still run afoul of other tests that mark cults. Every church I've been in has had vocal critics who, with sound reason, see monumental and un-Christlike failings in those churches. We're all alike in sin.
We all stand guilty, and God will judge.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
depression
The official word from the doctor is that I have not been depressed long enough to be depressed, since you need to be depressed for at least six weeks in order to really be depressed, and I have been depressed only for four weeks.
Apparently I can't do anything right, not even get depressed. How depressing.
In all seriousness, she said that depression is a possibility, given my family history, and since I've gone through these cycles before -- although everyone has mood swings and blue periods from time to time. But the clinical definition requires that the blue period last a minimum six weeks before it counts, so there would no meds. Also, since I'm getting 200 mcg daily of Synthroid, hypothyroidism (or even my lack of a thyroid) is unlikely to be a culprit.
That, as I told her, was fine, since I really don't want a pharmacological solution unless one proves necessary. If I can amend my problem through exercise, diet or lifestyle changes, I'd prefer to do that. So her suggestion was to get more exercise and make sure I do a few things that interest me, including seizing opportunities to spend time with other adults and exercise my mind.
That's all good. I need to lose the weight I've gained the last four weeks, and the weight I've gained the last several years as well. So more exercise and better eating habits would help. I'm now accepting suggestions for alternate lifestyles that I should consider.
Oh, and she suggested I find a mental health counselor on my insurance plan, to see if there are any emotional difficulties underlying the nondepression depression. So now I'm off to find a psycho therapist, probably ax-wielding, and find out in two more weeks if I'm actually, officially depressed.
It's a depressing outlook.
Apparently I can't do anything right, not even get depressed. How depressing.
That, as I told her, was fine, since I really don't want a pharmacological solution unless one proves necessary. If I can amend my problem through exercise, diet or lifestyle changes, I'd prefer to do that. So her suggestion was to get more exercise and make sure I do a few things that interest me, including seizing opportunities to spend time with other adults and exercise my mind.
That's all good. I need to lose the weight I've gained the last four weeks, and the weight I've gained the last several years as well. So more exercise and better eating habits would help. I'm now accepting suggestions for alternate lifestyles that I should consider.
Oh, and she suggested I find a mental health counselor on my insurance plan, to see if there are any emotional difficulties underlying the nondepression depression. So now I'm off to find a psycho therapist, probably ax-wielding, and find out in two more weeks if I'm actually, officially depressed.
It's a depressing outlook.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
The wardrobe malfunction was the point
I've always had my own style in clothing. This is particularly evident when one considers the example of the outfit I bought back in 1988, shortly before high school graduation.
As I recall, my mother had decided that I didn't have enough decent clothes. This is due primarily to an attitude I still possess, that not only do clothes not make the man, the truth is that they really never had anything meaningful or relevant to say about the man in the first place. My mom's attitude lies more along the lines of, "No son of mine is going out dressed like that."
In order to see that I was appareled correctly, my mother took me to the Monroeville Mall, to visit the clothing section of J.C. Penney. Her first mistake was taking me there against my will. The second is that she told me to pick the clothes out for myself.
I picked a pair of pink pants with a matching pinstriped shirt. My defense now, when pictures surface on the Internet or at family get-togethers is that it was the 1980s. Everyone who was alive then has something to be ashamed of, even if it's just listening to Rick Astley or buying a Tiffany album on 8-Track.
Still, as my friend Liadan puts it, "The 80s is perpetually its own excuse now, but what was your excuse during the 80s?"
To be fair, I've never much fashion sense. These days I've worked it out to "Everything goes with blue jeans" and "Honey, does this look OK?" The pink pants and pin-striped shirt were in the men's section of J.C. Penny. Surely that counts for something.
And as I told my mother, "I picked the most degroding pair I could find." That's not the best reason for picking an outfit, but when your mother is yelling at you for an hour or more at a stretch, at least once a day, every day, you're going to find ways to annoy her, and damn the consequences.
Those consequences were not substantial to me because she insisted that I had to have "nice clothes" to wear to church, and I never wore them anywhere else.
It must have been a very difficult time for mom.
As I recall, my mother had decided that I didn't have enough decent clothes. This is due primarily to an attitude I still possess, that not only do clothes not make the man, the truth is that they really never had anything meaningful or relevant to say about the man in the first place. My mom's attitude lies more along the lines of, "No son of mine is going out dressed like that."
In order to see that I was appareled correctly, my mother took me to the Monroeville Mall, to visit the clothing section of J.C. Penney. Her first mistake was taking me there against my will. The second is that she told me to pick the clothes out for myself.
I picked a pair of pink pants with a matching pinstriped shirt. My defense now, when pictures surface on the Internet or at family get-togethers is that it was the 1980s. Everyone who was alive then has something to be ashamed of, even if it's just listening to Rick Astley or buying a Tiffany album on 8-Track.
Still, as my friend Liadan puts it, "The 80s is perpetually its own excuse now, but what was your excuse during the 80s?"
To be fair, I've never much fashion sense. These days I've worked it out to "Everything goes with blue jeans" and "Honey, does this look OK?" The pink pants and pin-striped shirt were in the men's section of J.C. Penny. Surely that counts for something.
And as I told my mother, "I picked the most degroding pair I could find." That's not the best reason for picking an outfit, but when your mother is yelling at you for an hour or more at a stretch, at least once a day, every day, you're going to find ways to annoy her, and damn the consequences.
Those consequences were not substantial to me because she insisted that I had to have "nice clothes" to wear to church, and I never wore them anywhere else.
It must have been a very difficult time for mom.
Spelling reform? Not for me, thanks
Back when I was teaching Evangeline how to read, I was struck by how many written words you "just have to remember" how to pronounce.
No wonder spelling -- and reading -- can be tough. You have to memorize practically half the written language. So I guess it's not surprising that there are groups that push for spelling reform of written English on a massive scale, to boost literacy and to ease the torment of spelling.
It's a long and storied history. No less august a man than President Theodore Roosevelt, who reportedly had spelling problems himself, pushed Congress a hundred years ago to adopt some 300 simplified spellings, such as thru and program. Congress wouldn't budge, but a number of those simpler spellings became the accepted American spellings anyway, from curb and jail, to the words we dropped the British U from, such as honor, color, rancor and armor.
Sight words, which defy "standard" spelling rules, come by the truckload in written English. Some follow auxiliary rules of their own, like silent E, the -ight ending, and "I before E, except after C, or when sounded like A as in neighbor and weigh," but plenty don't.
Depending on the region, T can be pronounced like ch in tree or like D in kindergarten; the D in dress sounds like a J, making a phonetic "jress"; and almost no one ever pronounces the first R in February. (Let's not even touch Wednesday.) And regardless of region, come and home don't rhyme, and neither do bomb and comb.
Whatever the intent of these latter-day reformers, their goal of widespread reform is unattainable.
That's partly due to regional variations in pronunciation. In New England, the word aunt phonetically would be spelled ont. Elsewhere in North America, its homonymous with ant. Similarly, roof can be pronounced with the double-O sound in whoops, or with the long U sound in rude.
Those are picayune examples, but they illustrate what I'm talking about. Relying on phonetics to produce proper spelling either would create multiple spellings that would complicate written communication, or it would require establishing a uniform pronunciation as well.
Logistics aside, the best reason not to alter the spelling of English words lies in the threat such reform would pose to our linguistic heritage. Changing our written language, even if only a fraction of the scope outlined by advocates of simpler spelling, would sunder us from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson and other giants of the English language, except "in translation." Given that words derive their meaning from their use in literature, with such a loss, we might as well not even bother having the language anymore.
Also lost would be the history embedded in the words themselves. Candidate has the Latin root candida, white, because those seeking public office in ancient Rome wore white to announce their candidacy. That golden nugget of history would be buried with a spelling like kandidaet; in the case of Wensdae, the day's etymological roots in North myth would be wholly obliterated.
The English language still has literary roots as far back as "Beowulf," an Anglo-Saxon poem written about 1,500 years ago; within its vocabulary -- and yes, within its spelling -- it carries nuggets of history pertaining to trade, politics, religion and a vast panoply of culture and literature. Remove the spelling, and you eradicate that record for all but the most scholarly.
The measure of reform that American English saw a hundred years ago wasn't due to the advocacy of men like Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie, another advocate for simpler spelling. Rather, it was an organic process that grew out of the popular sentiments and attitudes of the American public. '
This is, after all, the same sort of unconscious force that produced the English language in all its richness and depth in the first place, by mingling Angles and Saxons. They in turn later fell to French Normans invaders in 1066. Over the years the speakers of the Middle English that grew out of that conquest have begged, borrowed and stolen phrases and words from all over the world, often adding new words and almost as often jettisoning an old word in favor of a new one.
The result? A thoroughly mongrelized modern English with roots everywhere.
And still it evolves. Feminine forms of many nouns are fading out of use, as the masculine forms become gender-inclusive. The Motion Picture Academy now refers to "male actors" and "female actors," and professional writers have stopped referring to women as comediennes. Similarly, even scientific writing increasingly doesn't use plurals like indices, appendices and formulae.
The spelling reform most likely to succeed already is underfoot by virtue of already being in use for effect. Words like tonite, nite, lite and brite -- all of which take advantage of the Silent E rule to replace the -ight -- have gained some limited acceptability, thanks to advertising and marketing gimmicks, along with other shortcuts like thruway.
I have to admit that my own sensibilities see the appeal to phasing out PH to make way for F (fotografy), replacing more C's with S's and K's (sirkle), and eliminating the soft G in favor of an old-fashioned J (jiraffe). And like playwright George Bernard Shaw, I can see the wisdom in eliminating apostrophes from contractions where its absence will not change the word's pronunciation.
But it's not going to happen that way.
If the goal is improved literacy, I'd suggest the would-be reformers find better means to that end than demonstrating at spelling bees and lobbying dictionary editors to list spellings like altho and hanus.
New spelling rules won't make half the difference that spending more time writing and reading will, particularly when done with children. That we do that less than ever is a far greater cruelty and a far worse tragedy than any of the spelling headaches written English has ever afflicted us with.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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No wonder spelling -- and reading -- can be tough. You have to memorize practically half the written language. So I guess it's not surprising that there are groups that push for spelling reform of written English on a massive scale, to boost literacy and to ease the torment of spelling.
It's a long and storied history. No less august a man than President Theodore Roosevelt, who reportedly had spelling problems himself, pushed Congress a hundred years ago to adopt some 300 simplified spellings, such as thru and program. Congress wouldn't budge, but a number of those simpler spellings became the accepted American spellings anyway, from curb and jail, to the words we dropped the British U from, such as honor, color, rancor and armor.
Sight words, which defy "standard" spelling rules, come by the truckload in written English. Some follow auxiliary rules of their own, like silent E, the -ight ending, and "I before E, except after C, or when sounded like A as in neighbor and weigh," but plenty don't.
Depending on the region, T can be pronounced like ch in tree or like D in kindergarten; the D in dress sounds like a J, making a phonetic "jress"; and almost no one ever pronounces the first R in February. (Let's not even touch Wednesday.) And regardless of region, come and home don't rhyme, and neither do bomb and comb.
Whatever the intent of these latter-day reformers, their goal of widespread reform is unattainable.
That's partly due to regional variations in pronunciation. In New England, the word aunt phonetically would be spelled ont. Elsewhere in North America, its homonymous with ant. Similarly, roof can be pronounced with the double-O sound in whoops, or with the long U sound in rude.
Those are picayune examples, but they illustrate what I'm talking about. Relying on phonetics to produce proper spelling either would create multiple spellings that would complicate written communication, or it would require establishing a uniform pronunciation as well.
Logistics aside, the best reason not to alter the spelling of English words lies in the threat such reform would pose to our linguistic heritage. Changing our written language, even if only a fraction of the scope outlined by advocates of simpler spelling, would sunder us from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson and other giants of the English language, except "in translation." Given that words derive their meaning from their use in literature, with such a loss, we might as well not even bother having the language anymore.
Also lost would be the history embedded in the words themselves. Candidate has the Latin root candida, white, because those seeking public office in ancient Rome wore white to announce their candidacy. That golden nugget of history would be buried with a spelling like kandidaet; in the case of Wensdae, the day's etymological roots in North myth would be wholly obliterated.
The English language still has literary roots as far back as "Beowulf," an Anglo-Saxon poem written about 1,500 years ago; within its vocabulary -- and yes, within its spelling -- it carries nuggets of history pertaining to trade, politics, religion and a vast panoply of culture and literature. Remove the spelling, and you eradicate that record for all but the most scholarly.
The measure of reform that American English saw a hundred years ago wasn't due to the advocacy of men like Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie, another advocate for simpler spelling. Rather, it was an organic process that grew out of the popular sentiments and attitudes of the American public. '
This is, after all, the same sort of unconscious force that produced the English language in all its richness and depth in the first place, by mingling Angles and Saxons. They in turn later fell to French Normans invaders in 1066. Over the years the speakers of the Middle English that grew out of that conquest have begged, borrowed and stolen phrases and words from all over the world, often adding new words and almost as often jettisoning an old word in favor of a new one.
The result? A thoroughly mongrelized modern English with roots everywhere.
And still it evolves. Feminine forms of many nouns are fading out of use, as the masculine forms become gender-inclusive. The Motion Picture Academy now refers to "male actors" and "female actors," and professional writers have stopped referring to women as comediennes. Similarly, even scientific writing increasingly doesn't use plurals like indices, appendices and formulae.
The spelling reform most likely to succeed already is underfoot by virtue of already being in use for effect. Words like tonite, nite, lite and brite -- all of which take advantage of the Silent E rule to replace the -ight -- have gained some limited acceptability, thanks to advertising and marketing gimmicks, along with other shortcuts like thruway.
I have to admit that my own sensibilities see the appeal to phasing out PH to make way for F (fotografy), replacing more C's with S's and K's (sirkle), and eliminating the soft G in favor of an old-fashioned J (jiraffe). And like playwright George Bernard Shaw, I can see the wisdom in eliminating apostrophes from contractions where its absence will not change the word's pronunciation.
But it's not going to happen that way.
If the goal is improved literacy, I'd suggest the would-be reformers find better means to that end than demonstrating at spelling bees and lobbying dictionary editors to list spellings like altho and hanus.
New spelling rules won't make half the difference that spending more time writing and reading will, particularly when done with children. That we do that less than ever is a far greater cruelty and a far worse tragedy than any of the spelling headaches written English has ever afflicted us with.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Monday, September 11, 2006
Living in the shadow of a 9-11 that's been co-opted
Today is the fifth anniversary of 9-11.
At its simplest, this is the anniversary of the date that terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center, and a third into the Pentagon. A fourth plane, intended for the U.S. Capitol, crashed near Shanksville, Pa., when the passengers on board rose up and tried to seize control of the plane. It is a date that affected America as profoundly as Dec. 7, 1941, did.
I was asleep when the towers fell, after a late night at the newspaper where I was a copy editor. It wasn't until almost 11 o'clock that I learned from a neighbor what had happened. At the time, stories were flying faster than facts, and my neighbor told me that there were still at least four planes airborne, and the Air Force had been ordered to shoot them down.
Some people say the earth moved for them. For me, it was as though the world had vanished, and I was plummeting into the void with everything and everyone around me. I remember sitting with my wife as we tried to digest what was happening. My older brother flew regularly for his job. Was he traveling, or was he safe at home? A friend of ours worked in the New York financial district. Was he alive?
Even learning that they were both accounted for wasn't enough to pull me out of free fall. I was still in a daze when I went to work that afternoon and plunged deeper into the chaos.
Our own television set had stopped receiving signals. At the news room, the television in the corner kept flashing the same nightmare in a repeating loop, as jet planes crashed into the World Trade Center time and time again.
Every time I checked the Associated Press wire, there were more updates, minute-by-minute reactions from around New York and the world, details of what had happened, and lists of the dead.
I cried like a baby. I felt the fear of passengers on the hijacked flights, heard the screams and tasted the despair and terror of people I had never met. I asked myself over and over again what kind of a world we had brought our daughter into.
Five years later, I remember that horror freshly, but I don’t know what I am supposed to feel anymore. 9-11 has become so politically charged that it no longer belongs to us, let alone to bereaved families. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, some of the pundits used it to blast U.S. foreign policy, trade and hegemony. Since then, it's been invoked as a cover for warrantless spying on Americans, the war in Iraq, and increased suspicion of Arabs and Muslims.
And of course, 9-11 has been invoked to call people traitors and cowards for challenging the Bush administration's policies, and it has been invoked to accuse Bush of dishonoring the memory of its victims.
The terror attack on 9-11 have fundamentally altered the way we view ourselves and one another. It has become the defining event of the Bush presidency. It has intensified the emotion and the rhetoric surrounding immigration, and it has radicalized the political voices in our nation.
Some of those killed were heroes by occupation. The firefighters and Port Authority officers rushed into darkness and danger to save others, not knowing if they would return. Others, like the passengers on Flight 93, became heroes when circumstance drove them to take the offensive against their attackers.
But I want the dead to be able to rest in peace rather than being dragged around as an excuse for someone’s current pet political project. I want the families to be able to carry on with their lives without constantly being seeped in misery.
A week ago, we barely thought of 9-11, and a week from today we will think about something else again..But for the space of this 24 hours, the United States and the rest of the world has what it needs to occupy its attention so that it is not forced to deal with its own existential meaningless. We do not have to grapple with our empty pursuit of success, with our obsession with entertainment and technology, with our lack of foundation as individuals and as a culture.
Instead, we can unite in a shared grief, and mourn the dead – both for what they lost and for what we have not yet gained.
In the meantime don’t know what to tell my children. I just want them to have something in life that they value. I want them find something worth believing in, something they themselves have chosen and committed to.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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At its simplest, this is the anniversary of the date that terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center, and a third into the Pentagon. A fourth plane, intended for the U.S. Capitol, crashed near Shanksville, Pa., when the passengers on board rose up and tried to seize control of the plane. It is a date that affected America as profoundly as Dec. 7, 1941, did.
I was asleep when the towers fell, after a late night at the newspaper where I was a copy editor. It wasn't until almost 11 o'clock that I learned from a neighbor what had happened. At the time, stories were flying faster than facts, and my neighbor told me that there were still at least four planes airborne, and the Air Force had been ordered to shoot them down.
Some people say the earth moved for them. For me, it was as though the world had vanished, and I was plummeting into the void with everything and everyone around me. I remember sitting with my wife as we tried to digest what was happening. My older brother flew regularly for his job. Was he traveling, or was he safe at home? A friend of ours worked in the New York financial district. Was he alive?
Even learning that they were both accounted for wasn't enough to pull me out of free fall. I was still in a daze when I went to work that afternoon and plunged deeper into the chaos.
Our own television set had stopped receiving signals. At the news room, the television in the corner kept flashing the same nightmare in a repeating loop, as jet planes crashed into the World Trade Center time and time again.
Every time I checked the Associated Press wire, there were more updates, minute-by-minute reactions from around New York and the world, details of what had happened, and lists of the dead.
I cried like a baby. I felt the fear of passengers on the hijacked flights, heard the screams and tasted the despair and terror of people I had never met. I asked myself over and over again what kind of a world we had brought our daughter into.
Five years later, I remember that horror freshly, but I don’t know what I am supposed to feel anymore. 9-11 has become so politically charged that it no longer belongs to us, let alone to bereaved families. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, some of the pundits used it to blast U.S. foreign policy, trade and hegemony. Since then, it's been invoked as a cover for warrantless spying on Americans, the war in Iraq, and increased suspicion of Arabs and Muslims.
And of course, 9-11 has been invoked to call people traitors and cowards for challenging the Bush administration's policies, and it has been invoked to accuse Bush of dishonoring the memory of its victims.
The terror attack on 9-11 have fundamentally altered the way we view ourselves and one another. It has become the defining event of the Bush presidency. It has intensified the emotion and the rhetoric surrounding immigration, and it has radicalized the political voices in our nation.
Some of those killed were heroes by occupation. The firefighters and Port Authority officers rushed into darkness and danger to save others, not knowing if they would return. Others, like the passengers on Flight 93, became heroes when circumstance drove them to take the offensive against their attackers.
But I want the dead to be able to rest in peace rather than being dragged around as an excuse for someone’s current pet political project. I want the families to be able to carry on with their lives without constantly being seeped in misery.
A week ago, we barely thought of 9-11, and a week from today we will think about something else again..But for the space of this 24 hours, the United States and the rest of the world has what it needs to occupy its attention so that it is not forced to deal with its own existential meaningless. We do not have to grapple with our empty pursuit of success, with our obsession with entertainment and technology, with our lack of foundation as individuals and as a culture.
Instead, we can unite in a shared grief, and mourn the dead – both for what they lost and for what we have not yet gained.
In the meantime don’t know what to tell my children. I just want them to have something in life that they value. I want them find something worth believing in, something they themselves have chosen and committed to.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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cancer
No, not mine. This time I'm writing about my mother-in-law.
Natasha got a call last night from her mother, who was at the hospital receiving a chemo treatment. She had noticed some odd lumps on her neck and wisely went to the doctor. To make a long story short, the diagnosis is that she has small-cell carcinoma in her lymph nodes.
You may remember that once I got over the initial impact of hearing the C-word in connection with my own health that I lost no time in cracking jokes about it. I'm not doing that here because, quite frankly, the prognosis is not good, judging by what Natasha's been able to find out about this particular kind of cancer. They caught it early, which is a definite advantage in treating it, but this is an agressive cancer. The two-year survival rate for women diagnosed at this stage is about 20 percent, from what Natasha can tell; in other words, there is about a one in five chance that her mom will be alive in three years.
Natasha is taking it about as well as you could expect, all things considered, but she is fairly upset. I spent a while this evening, just holding her. Her mother didn't provided much information beyond the diagnosis and that she was on chemo; Natasha has had to deduce from that the carcinoma has spread to her lymph nodes from her lungs. (Google the phrase "small cell carcinoma," and I think you'll agree that's a reasonable deduction.) In Natasha's words, "She doesn't have the guts to tell people that her cigarettes have finally killed her."
I suspect there's a lot of wisdom in that statement; i.e., that Natasha's mother is afraid. She's in her mid-50s, and while I don't think she expected to live into her 90s or even her 80s, I don't think she expected the real possibility that she might die before she turns 60.
Cancer sucks.
Natasha got a call last night from her mother, who was at the hospital receiving a chemo treatment. She had noticed some odd lumps on her neck and wisely went to the doctor. To make a long story short, the diagnosis is that she has small-cell carcinoma in her lymph nodes.
You may remember that once I got over the initial impact of hearing the C-word in connection with my own health that I lost no time in cracking jokes about it. I'm not doing that here because, quite frankly, the prognosis is not good, judging by what Natasha's been able to find out about this particular kind of cancer. They caught it early, which is a definite advantage in treating it, but this is an agressive cancer. The two-year survival rate for women diagnosed at this stage is about 20 percent, from what Natasha can tell; in other words, there is about a one in five chance that her mom will be alive in three years.
Natasha is taking it about as well as you could expect, all things considered, but she is fairly upset. I spent a while this evening, just holding her. Her mother didn't provided much information beyond the diagnosis and that she was on chemo; Natasha has had to deduce from that the carcinoma has spread to her lymph nodes from her lungs. (Google the phrase "small cell carcinoma," and I think you'll agree that's a reasonable deduction.) In Natasha's words, "She doesn't have the guts to tell people that her cigarettes have finally killed her."
I suspect there's a lot of wisdom in that statement; i.e., that Natasha's mother is afraid. She's in her mid-50s, and while I don't think she expected to live into her 90s or even her 80s, I don't think she expected the real possibility that she might die before she turns 60.
Cancer sucks.
spiritual journey
I'm on a spiritual quest, marked by increased dissatisfaction with the moralizing, comfortably wealthy Jesus who pounds the drums for our government, who treats immigrants with suspicion, views the Spanish language in America as a threat to our culture and the English language, and who defends the powerful, the middle-class and promises salvation when we die.
I'm wondering more and more what the real Jesus is like, how to view a Bible that seems to show God progressing from a tribal deity who orders the genocide of an indigenous people and whose prophet calls for the slaughter of prisoners who already surrendered, up to a transcendent God who desires all nations to come to him. I've never liked the gloss-overs I've heard in churches, and I'm no longer willing to push it to the side while I deal with other questions and purposes.
I'm also wondering what the proper response to war is, particularly the Iraq war.
Is war between nations in Christ's nature? Our government -- our nation -- we -- committed a horrible injustice when we invaded Iraq without provocation, in defiance of international law. How do we, as Christ's representatives on earth, respond to that?
The Kingdom of God -- when we beat our swords into plowshares, lay down our swords and shields by the riverside, and study war no longer -- isn't a far-off event. Jesus said it has come, it is here, it is in him as we are in him. If we believe that to be the case, then what response to war should we have?
Some can claim it's necessary but I think that's because war is easier than peace and we'd rather not expend the energy it'll take to find ways to wage peace wisely and intelligently, and no one's offered a proposal that seeks peace as much as a proposal that calls for more war, or for abandoning Iraq to the mess that we made.
If the Kingdom of God began in my life when I decided to follow Jesus, what does that mean for how I respond to the war? What does that mean for how I respond to poverty? To the guy on the street who asks me for fifty cents, or who asks for train fare, when I know all he really wants is beer, cigarettes or drugs?
Because the Kingdom of God has arrived, and what happens in eternity has echoes in what I do here in my life.
I'm wondering more and more what the real Jesus is like, how to view a Bible that seems to show God progressing from a tribal deity who orders the genocide of an indigenous people and whose prophet calls for the slaughter of prisoners who already surrendered, up to a transcendent God who desires all nations to come to him. I've never liked the gloss-overs I've heard in churches, and I'm no longer willing to push it to the side while I deal with other questions and purposes.
I'm also wondering what the proper response to war is, particularly the Iraq war.
Is war between nations in Christ's nature? Our government -- our nation -- we -- committed a horrible injustice when we invaded Iraq without provocation, in defiance of international law. How do we, as Christ's representatives on earth, respond to that?
The Kingdom of God -- when we beat our swords into plowshares, lay down our swords and shields by the riverside, and study war no longer -- isn't a far-off event. Jesus said it has come, it is here, it is in him as we are in him. If we believe that to be the case, then what response to war should we have?
Some can claim it's necessary but I think that's because war is easier than peace and we'd rather not expend the energy it'll take to find ways to wage peace wisely and intelligently, and no one's offered a proposal that seeks peace as much as a proposal that calls for more war, or for abandoning Iraq to the mess that we made.
If the Kingdom of God began in my life when I decided to follow Jesus, what does that mean for how I respond to the war? What does that mean for how I respond to poverty? To the guy on the street who asks me for fifty cents, or who asks for train fare, when I know all he really wants is beer, cigarettes or drugs?
Because the Kingdom of God has arrived, and what happens in eternity has echoes in what I do here in my life.
Praying for peace, not for victory
That's not exactly true. I am praying for our troops, just as I'm praying for Iraq, and for the members of the insurgency there. I'm not praying for coalition troops to visit a crushing defeat on the heads of their enemies, and I'm not praying that President Bush will bring our troops home tomorrow, nor that he'll announce a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq.
And I'm certainly not praying that the quagmire we've turned Iraq into will continue as it has been, sucking in more lives every day as neighbor turns upon neighbor and the holiest, most sacred and most mundane duties become life-endangering.
What am I praying for then? If you rule out a decisive victory, a sudden or gradual withdrawal, and the perpetuation of the mess we've made of Iraq, what is there left to pray for?
I've realized something over the last few days: War is outside the nature of Christ. Completely outside. Not just this abominable mess where people are raping young women and destroying families to cover it up, where suicide bombers are blowing up religious services, where one person cuts off another one's head and calls it a righteous act, but war itself -- where one member of the family of Man fires a weapon at another member in hopes of ending his life -- is a horrible abrogation of what God intended his creation to be. It is outside the nature of Christ. It is not what God desires for his creation.
The prophets, looking ahead to the Kingdom of God, saw a time when the nations would lay down their swords and shields, when we would beat our weapons into plowshares and study war no more. They saw it coming from far off, and they rejoiced to see it, if only at a distance. I realized today that I've been doing the same thing, waiting for a pie-in-the-sky time when the poor would receive the Kingdom of Heaven, when the meek would inherit the earth, and when peace would come.
There's no need to wait. The Kingdom is here. It's now. It's arrived.
Speaking to the stunned congregants of his hometown, Jesus declared, "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your presence."
If we believe that the Kingdom of God is incarnated in the person of Jesus, and if we also believe that Christ is in us and we are become the Body of Christ, then there is no need for there to be war, poverty, hunger, or other such afflictions among us. They are there because we allow them to be, because we accept that they are a part of life, and because we have failed to engage the world around us and address the root causes of these problems.
Peace — note that I did not say appeasement — is not easy. It is far harder to maintain the peace than it is to go to war. Peace requires understanding your foe, meeting his needs and making sacrifices yourself, something we are woefully unprepared or unwilling to do.
Peace, not war, is God's dream for the Middle East, just as it is his dream for every tribe, nation and language.
I'm not praying for victory in Iraq. I'm praying for peace.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Sunday, September 10, 2006
worship
"Worship is what church is all about." That's what the preacher said during church today. "Worship is what church is all about."
That's a wonderful aspiration. Just about every church would agree that worship is its core mission, but at least in my church it doesn't feel like that is the case. Worship is an active, dynamic encounter with God that can leave us euphoric, remorseful, contemplative or moved in some other way, but it should not leave us fundamentally unchanged. How often does any part of the church service affect us like that? It's a rarity, in my experience.
We generally equate worship with the musical component of church, and while some will quibble with that, since our entire lives are meant to be worship, I think that's a good place to start. It's when we sing in church that we begin to worship with our voices, our minds and even our bodies.
If that's the definition we're using, then in my experience at least, the focus at church is not on worship or on ritual but on teaching. In contrast to worship, which engages the spirit with God; teaching is a passive experience. We hear about God and what our response to him should be, but we don't actually engage with God in that way.
To the extent that anything is broken, I've no idea how to fix it. Should we make services longer? Church services in the United States are short. We schedule an hour of our mornings for God, no more, and resent if services run over. Maybe allotting more time from our Sundays would allow us to relax into God's presence more and to respond accordingly.
The misson that Jesus gave the church was to disciple the nations, and worship can support this, since music prompts meditation and reflection. Many's the time I've found myself or my children singing a song I learned at a past church, and many's the time those songs have started me thinking along new and unfamiliar lines of thought about God.
I've often complained that the songs we use at our church are shallow lyrically, and too focused on our experiences, what we've gained from God or what he's done for us, particularly through the Crucifixtion. Should we allow more time for musical component of the service? That would give worship leaders a greater opportunity to have a progression of themes and to incorporate more songs. Maybe they also could draw from other branches of worship music with new arrangements to make them feel fresh, contemporary and accessible in a new way.
I often feel like worship has become something like a component of a cheap Disney movie. When the talking has gone on long enough, it's time to throw in a song. The worship team may sing the song well, and it may even be popular with the congregation, but if it's the difference between "Be Prepared" and "Kiss the Girl," there's really no comparison. One of those is OK, but the other is excellent, and when it comes to worship, we only want the best.
Services in church these days are very much about the teaching. At least at the churches I've attended, the sermon runs for about half the service, and if anyone is talking about the service afterward, it's the sermon that they're discussing.
Even sermons would benefit from a stronger focus on worship. After all, worship contains a dynamic element absent from straight teaching, and songs used in worship will remain in our memory and on our lips long after the Sunday sermon has been forgotten.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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We generally equate worship with the musical component of church, and while some will quibble with that, since our entire lives are meant to be worship, I think that's a good place to start. It's when we sing in church that we begin to worship with our voices, our minds and even our bodies.
If that's the definition we're using, then in my experience at least, the focus at church is not on worship or on ritual but on teaching. In contrast to worship, which engages the spirit with God; teaching is a passive experience. We hear about God and what our response to him should be, but we don't actually engage with God in that way.
To the extent that anything is broken, I've no idea how to fix it. Should we make services longer? Church services in the United States are short. We schedule an hour of our mornings for God, no more, and resent if services run over. Maybe allotting more time from our Sundays would allow us to relax into God's presence more and to respond accordingly.
The misson that Jesus gave the church was to disciple the nations, and worship can support this, since music prompts meditation and reflection. Many's the time I've found myself or my children singing a song I learned at a past church, and many's the time those songs have started me thinking along new and unfamiliar lines of thought about God.
I've often complained that the songs we use at our church are shallow lyrically, and too focused on our experiences, what we've gained from God or what he's done for us, particularly through the Crucifixtion. Should we allow more time for musical component of the service? That would give worship leaders a greater opportunity to have a progression of themes and to incorporate more songs. Maybe they also could draw from other branches of worship music with new arrangements to make them feel fresh, contemporary and accessible in a new way.
I often feel like worship has become something like a component of a cheap Disney movie. When the talking has gone on long enough, it's time to throw in a song. The worship team may sing the song well, and it may even be popular with the congregation, but if it's the difference between "Be Prepared" and "Kiss the Girl," there's really no comparison. One of those is OK, but the other is excellent, and when it comes to worship, we only want the best.
Services in church these days are very much about the teaching. At least at the churches I've attended, the sermon runs for about half the service, and if anyone is talking about the service afterward, it's the sermon that they're discussing.
Even sermons would benefit from a stronger focus on worship. After all, worship contains a dynamic element absent from straight teaching, and songs used in worship will remain in our memory and on our lips long after the Sunday sermon has been forgotten.
Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Friday, September 08, 2006
bad father
I continue my war against all that is decent and joyful in my daughter with our most recent choice of bedtime stories, "Old Yeller."
"Old Yeller," for those who don't remember, is the classic story by Fred Gipson about a boy naed Travis and his dog, Old Yeller. Set in Texas in the mid-19th century, the story follows Travis' experiences the summer when he's fourteen and his father has left on a cattle drive. Soon after his father leaves, Old Yeller arrives. A thieving, one-eared dog who gets under Travis' skin something fierce, he soon becomes an indispensable part of the family, making it all the more painful when Travis has to shoot him because of rabies.
It's one of the books I remember most vividly from my childhood, which is why I wanted to share it with Evangeline. She's been enjoying it immensely, as I've been enjoying reading it with her. We've been reading a chapter a night; tonight, we're going to read two chapters, since I don't want to put her to bed on the note, "and then I shot my dog." That might be a little too hard for her.
Actually, I have to note that Gipson's given plenty of warning that Old Yeller's in for it. One of the first sentences of the book reveals that Travis had to shoot the dog; in the chapter we just read, where Ma and Lisbeth go off to burn the body of the rabid heifer Spot, Travis laments that he didn't stop them all from leaving after what happened afterward; and he's really been hammering home the hydrophobia scare and Old Yeller's weakened condition from the hog fight a couple chapters ago.
Still, I'm sure Evangeline is in for an upset tonight when we read about having to shoot the dog. Travis' father comes home in the next chapter and gives him some pretty sound advice on keeping the bad times of life in perspective, so I want to make sure we read that as well. She knows there's a movie version too, and wants to see it; I told her we'll see if she still wants to after we finish the book, with the caution that movies are almost never as good as the books they're based on.
And if "Old Yeller" doesn't get her down, we're going to start on Kafka and Soren Kirkegaard.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
back to school
Evangeline started her first day of second grade today at the charter school. I'm in one of those mixed-feeling moods about the whole thing. I'm happy to see her with her friends all that -- when I left, she was working happily next to one of the girls she had a few playdates with this summer and with whom she has a lot in common, interestwise -- but I still have some ambivalence anchored in the fact that I have little control over what the school teaches her, that her unique sense of humor and individual interests make her a target for bullying, and that she's one of the brightest stars in my sky, and she's not going to be around a good chunk of her waking hours now. I suppose I should just grow up about it, already.
I did establish today that I have been typecast as the helpful parent. Evangeline's teacher didn't tap me for anything today but on my way out I bumped into the principal. He told me about an upcoming landscaping project the school was going to undertake that would build on what the Girl Scout troop did in the spring, and asked me if I would be interested in volunteering for it.
And the lack of sustainable interest I have in pretty much everything that requires effort, combined with my inability to focus for substantial periods of time on things that I used to enjoy quite a lot, makes me wonder if I am suffering from some form of depression. I never did see a doctor about that way back when, so I probably should make an appointment. It'd help if I had an actual regular doctor and not a whole practice.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Dream a Little Dream of Me
I had a dream last night, that I was in Rotorua, New Zealand, for some sort of return visit to the former Edmund Rice College, the high school I attended while I was an afs exchange student. While I was there, I apparently decided to visit the church I had frequented.
For reasons I still can't fathom, my sister-in-law was there, along with Natasha and the girls. I remember looking at my sister-in-law while we were working in the church kitchen, and asking, "Wait a minute. You're here at St. Andrew's with me. This is a dream, isn't it?"
She agreed that it probably was, whereupon I shrugged my shoulders and simply kept cleaning the dishes I was working on. Nothing fazes me anymore, apparently -- not even realizing that I'm dreaming.
For reasons I still can't fathom, my sister-in-law was there, along with Natasha and the girls. I remember looking at my sister-in-law while we were working in the church kitchen, and asking, "Wait a minute. You're here at St. Andrew's with me. This is a dream, isn't it?"
She agreed that it probably was, whereupon I shrugged my shoulders and simply kept cleaning the dishes I was working on. Nothing fazes me anymore, apparently -- not even realizing that I'm dreaming.
Monday, August 28, 2006
on my bookshelf
Today I finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey," after recently watching Stanley Kubrik's movie of the same title.
I'm somewhat embarassed to admit that I've never read this particular novel of Clarke's, although I did read "2010: Odyssey Two" when it first was published. I blame that primarily on Mr. Robinson, the gifted instructor we had for a semester or two back in middle school. Like many other teachers, Mr. Robinson had the unenviable ability to ruin classic works of literature and film for younger viewers and make them inaccessible through his uncanny knack for making his students feel stupid. (Alas, I have little doubt that I accomplished this very thing myself, when I was a teacher.)
"2001," whether movie or novel, has its roots in an older Clarke short story called "The Sentinel," in which lunar explorers uncover an artifact from an ancient and extraterrestrial civilization, buried on the Moon. The artifact serves as an intelligence test set by those ancient explorers; to locate it and probe its mysteries, any intelligent race from the earth first must reach the moon, develop enough of a presence there to locate the artifact, and then harness the power of the atom peaceably, to open it.
The story as developed by Kubrik and Clarke -- the novel and film were developed concurrently, to minimize the differences between the two -- begins roughly three million years ago, when our postulated forbears first differentiated themselves from their apelike neighbors.
The picture in the movie, and in the book, is one of ape-men barely eking out an existence on the earth. Wild animals prey on the ape-men, they engage in noisy but meaningless fights with other tribes over the water, and so on. It's a bleak existence, and in terms of the book, the apemen are on the verge of extinction.
Enter the monolith, a clearly unnatural rock that appears one morning near the cave where the ape-men live. The movie treatment of this is accented by striking music; the book, through narrative, makes the daytime encounter with the monolith of no account, but stretches the night-time encounters over an extended period.
During this encounter, the monolith gives humanity intelligence. In the movie, this is accomplished through mere physical contact; in the book, it comes through the monolith training the ape-men in basic motor skills, and exposing them to new ideas, such as killing animals for food. Regardless of which tack you follow, the monolith triggers a significant evolutionary step by teaching the ape-men to use tools. In no time at all, the ape-men are using these tools not only to hunt but to make war on other ape-men and lay an indisputable claim to the limited resources available.
And at this point, both book and movie skip ahead three million years to 2001, when Heywood Floyd is taking a voyage to the moon base. I love this point of the movie because, incredibly, Floyd is sound asleep on his trip through space. Part of it probably is Kubrik indicating how familiarity turns the miraculous into the mundane, but I think he's also acknowledging that many of his viewers are finding his masterpiece boring and wishing they could fall asleep.
This is the point at which the monolith has been discovered. Its discovery triggers the next phase of the movie and the novel, as it emits a powerful radio signal into the outer reaches of the solar system, where a third monolith is awaiting, a further test of humanity's intelligence, endurance and determination. (Can you follow this signal? Will you endure the long trip?)
Natasha had a horrible time with the movie, which admittedly is not a piece for everyone. One of the chief reasons I hated it in middle school was that it's meant for older viewers who can read between the lines and follow the unspoken aspects of the plot. And you have to not mind that the spaceship moves slowly, that there is only about five minutes of dialogue in the entire movie, and that most of the developments are implied.
Personally, I found it fascinating in the extreme. The monolith, obviously, is meant to trigger humanity's evolution, first from ape-men to humans, and then from modern man to Star-Child in the person of David Bowman. The whole thing is about humanity increasing in intelligence and reaching its potential.
HAL is a bit more puzzling. When Bowman shuts him down, we find out that HAL has been aware of the true nature of the mission since the beginning. But in one of the earliest discussions we see between HAL and Bowman, Hal seems to be fishing for information from Bowman about the mission. Since HAL is so advanced -- and in some ways, more human than the people we see in the movie, who are particularly robotlike -- it could be he's looking for a way to share what he knows with Bowman.
During this conversation is actually when he claims to detect a fault in the communications relay, a fault that the two nonhibernating astronauts on the ship are unable to detect. The movie offers no explanation, although the book has it that the duplicity HAL has been ordered into has given him a guilty conscience and leading him to
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
(Whitney) Houston, we have a problem
Suddenly 9-11 and the last five years make sense in a whole new way.
According to a news story flying around the Internet, Osama bin Laden is a man in love. The purported object of his affections is none other than recording superstar Whitney Houston. That's according to Sudanese poet and novelist Kola Boof, who claims to have been bin Laden's sex slave about ten years ago, and whose new autobiography also reports that bin Laden had a thing for Playboy and Star magazine.
It all fits. What was 9-11 but a lonely man's desparate bid for attention from the woman he loves? It goes right in line with recent efforts by Hezbollah leaders to steal the attention of Britney Spears away from husband Kevin Federline by instigating a war with Israel, or the Iranian president's bid to woo Angelina for a "private meeting" away from Brad Pitt by showing how tough he is with U.N. inspectors and the American government. (And let's not even get started on Hugo Chavez and his dreams of a date with Jennifer Aniston now that she's quashed rumors that she's engaged.)
These poor, desparate guys. I doubt there's not a single person out there who doesn't know what it's like to linger, moonstruck, over a superstar's latest movie or album, knowing -- just knowing -- that the relationship could be a deepfully meaning, long-lasting one, if only the star would return their phone calls or answer their letters.
Heck, Osama. I can relate. Way back when, I had a thing for Wynona Ryder. A friend of mine still has one for Drew Barrymore.
My advice to bin Laden would be pretty straightforward: Stop moping around on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan and sending other people to die just because you're heartbroken. If you still want to marry Whitney, be a little more assertive and direct. Send a videotaped statement to al Jazeera, explaining how you feel about her. I'm sure her publicist will let her know about the broadcast.
Next, use some of that wealth you have -- the bin Ladens are a wealthy Saudi family, after all -- and find her number. Don't come on too strong -- the sort of women who are worth pursuing do get turned off by the degree of mass murder and hatred you've been connected with -- but explain how long you've been carrying the candle for her, and ask her out. Arabic is a very poetic language, and I'm sure you can persuade her without resorting to suicide bombers.
If she says no, don't be mad. Rejection happens to all of us; the trick is to move on and not dwell on it as though it has ended all your chances of happiness. I got turned down plenty of times for dates before I found the right woman, as have most men.
But if Whitney says yes, the real trouble is going to begin. You'll have to take her on a date, where it's best you not talk about how infidels are ruining the world, about the evils of music, or the glories of jihad and martyrdom. In fact, Osama, I'd wait until at least the second date before bringing up religion and politics at all.
It's a tough thing, loving someone who doesn't know you exist, but hang in there, Osama. We all understand.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
someone else gets it
I am not the only person to hate Elmo. Joel Stein, whose column appears on Jewish World Review, also gets it:
Stein argues, as I have, that Elmo represents the dumbing-down of Sesame Street, which used to teach actual, useful skills and to present knowledge in a format that children could appreciate. Now it's a show for preschool that barely makes a pretense of teaching them anything, except that they need to buy more Elmo toys.
When I spoke to a Sesame Workshop employee two years ago concerning Elmo, she couldn't fathom why anyone would hate him. News flash: Many adults with small children do. Maybe if more people take the tie to express their loathing for the little freak, they'll wake up and smell the show crashing and burning before it's too late.
Whereas Count Von Count markets math and Oscar markets the acceptability of negative emotions, Elmo, brilliantly, just markets Elmo, leading him to be the show's cash cow, or whatever misshapen animal he's supposed to be.
Stein argues, as I have, that Elmo represents the dumbing-down of Sesame Street, which used to teach actual, useful skills and to present knowledge in a format that children could appreciate. Now it's a show for preschool that barely makes a pretense of teaching them anything, except that they need to buy more Elmo toys.
When I spoke to a Sesame Workshop employee two years ago concerning Elmo, she couldn't fathom why anyone would hate him. News flash: Many adults with small children do. Maybe if more people take the tie to express their loathing for the little freak, they'll wake up and smell the show crashing and burning before it's too late.
nuclear holocaust
Just in case you're feeling really chipper and on top of the world this morning, here's an editorial from the Wall Street Journal about the prospects of nuclear conflagration in the Middle East, and why the threat of mutually assured destruction might not work.
Remember: Death comes from above. Have a nice day!
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
My newest interest: playing piano by ear
Piano is proving surprisingly easy to pick up by ear.
I'm under no illusions that I'm a great -- or even a merely good -- pianist, but I'm pretty pleased with my progress. Last night I figured out how to play the melody for "It is Well with my Soul" in about 20 minutes, adding it to a rapidly growing repertoire that also includes the recapitulation from the "Phantom of the Opera" and a handful of old folk tunes and classic hymnody.
At the moment I'm pretty much just playing the straight melody line of these songs, sans left hand, sans chords. I still hit the wrong key at times because my hands aren't familiar enough with the keyboard; and of course I'm rearranging almost all the songs to start with C natural because I'm playing by ear and haven't a clue how to read sheet music for the piano. I'm not even sure I can play it on the tuba anymore, and that's an instrument I played for six years.
More dexterous fingers will come with experience. Chords and a clue about what to do with my left hand should come with the next few lessons.
But considering I've been tinkering with it for only a couple months, I think it's pretty good that I can figure out a new song in about 20 minutes and still play it right the next morning. And I've done all this without spending six months of music lessons playing nothing but those frigging scales.
One thing I've started to notice that I don't think I ever picked up when I played tuba -- perhaps because the tuba almost never gets the melody -- is the relationship between a note and the notes that precede and follow it.
I don't know if I can explain it, but there's a definite flow to the music in one- and two-steps between the notes. The vast majority of the songs I've figured out how to play literally go up and down the scales one step at a time for several notes, stay in the same octave, and so on. It's almost mathematical,
The double irony here is that I took up the piano pretty much as a way of encouraging Evangeline, and she's lost most of her interest in it. She had been keyed up to learn piano, so I talked with a friend who agreed to teach her how to teach herself, and his first lesson was so simple and straightforward that I realized I probably could teach myself too. Now I'm playing it almost every day, and she's barely touching it.
Still, if I keep this up, it's may not only rekindle her interest but grab Rachel's as well. And isn't that how knowledge and skills are supposed to be passed on, from parent to child?
I'm under no illusions that I'm a great -- or even a merely good -- pianist, but I'm pretty pleased with my progress. Last night I figured out how to play the melody for "It is Well with my Soul" in about 20 minutes, adding it to a rapidly growing repertoire that also includes the recapitulation from the "Phantom of the Opera" and a handful of old folk tunes and classic hymnody.
At the moment I'm pretty much just playing the straight melody line of these songs, sans left hand, sans chords. I still hit the wrong key at times because my hands aren't familiar enough with the keyboard; and of course I'm rearranging almost all the songs to start with C natural because I'm playing by ear and haven't a clue how to read sheet music for the piano. I'm not even sure I can play it on the tuba anymore, and that's an instrument I played for six years.
More dexterous fingers will come with experience. Chords and a clue about what to do with my left hand should come with the next few lessons.
But considering I've been tinkering with it for only a couple months, I think it's pretty good that I can figure out a new song in about 20 minutes and still play it right the next morning. And I've done all this without spending six months of music lessons playing nothing but those frigging scales.
One thing I've started to notice that I don't think I ever picked up when I played tuba -- perhaps because the tuba almost never gets the melody -- is the relationship between a note and the notes that precede and follow it.
I don't know if I can explain it, but there's a definite flow to the music in one- and two-steps between the notes. The vast majority of the songs I've figured out how to play literally go up and down the scales one step at a time for several notes, stay in the same octave, and so on. It's almost mathematical,
The double irony here is that I took up the piano pretty much as a way of encouraging Evangeline, and she's lost most of her interest in it. She had been keyed up to learn piano, so I talked with a friend who agreed to teach her how to teach herself, and his first lesson was so simple and straightforward that I realized I probably could teach myself too. Now I'm playing it almost every day, and she's barely touching it.
Still, if I keep this up, it's may not only rekindle her interest but grab Rachel's as well. And isn't that how knowledge and skills are supposed to be passed on, from parent to child?
Monday, August 14, 2006
stupid statements from the pulpit
I guess we all have moments where someone says something so ridiculous we're unable to contain ourselves. Mine seem to come in church.
One time a couple years ago I was at a New Jersey megachurch where the preacher -- a venerable fellow, he was the head of the entire Pillar of Fire ministry, I believe -- said, without offering any support for his statement, that the book of Job refers to dinosaurs. I made such an audible noise of derision that several heads turned to look at me.
He was referring, one presumes, to Leviathan and Behemoth, but given the context it seems likely that Leviathan is an alligator and Behemoth a hippo. Creationists some time ago decided that Leviathan was diplodocus or something, and that Behemoth was a brontosaur (or apatosaur, as is now fashionable), but there's no contextual basis for such a claim, nor is there any accompanying illustration in the earliest MSS to support such a claim.
It's clear it's just some creationist wish-fulfillment at work; i.e., "We need dinosaurs in the Bible. Where can we find them?"
Another time, when I was attending the Assemblies of God, the pastor made some comment about the church providing all the community a believer could need. I didn't even realize I was doing it, but I snorted so loudly that the pastor himself stopped and looked at me.
home improvement
One of the downsides to owning a house is the constant procession of home repair and maintenance projects.
Two years ago we replaced the roof, an expensive but necessary repair, owing to the house's great age and the many spots in the attic roof that sunlight streamed through. Projects since then have been less weighty but still rather important, such as the bathroom floor my older brother helped me with extensively on a visit from New York.
We started that one on a Saturday morning and kept at it until about 10 p.m., before getting up and tackling it some more from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. We ripped up the cracked ceramic tile floor, pulled up the tongue-and-groove subfloor, and then removed the boards a previous homeowner had used to try to level the floor. In the last 160 years or so, the second floor has settled a fair amount, so we had variations in the floor from a half inch to more than an inch-and-a-half.
During our work time, we killed a colony of ants, nailed 1-by-4's into place, added shims here and there to make the floor a little more level, added a plywood subfloor, supported the toilet and installed a new wax ring, and finally laid some linoleum, our theory being that linoleum is more flexible and less likely to break than ceramic tile.
None of the walls is square with another, but at least the bathroom doesn't look as bad as it used to.
Since then Natasha and I have sealed the attic off from squirrels and are now engaged in a project to paint the facia and soffit in the front of the house. Our house also is being overrun by tiny water ants, which has been driving us crazy. I'm hoping I can find some beneficial nematodes at a garden store to think their ranks outside, which should help. Plus, we want to restucco the foundation on the outside.
Come September, finances allowing, I'd like to rip off the paper and repaint the downstairs bathroom. Upstairs too.
And then some day, we'll need to do something about the ugly wallpaper in the stairwell ...
ministry of children
It took until I was almost 18 years old before I had my first great spiritual awakening, and even older before I started to see my responsibilities not just to Christ but to the vast crowds of people around me.
The gospel Christ brings us is a message of reconciliation, not just between us and God, but between us and one another. His desire is for the restoration of all our relationships, so that all of us can have community as it was intended to be. I lost a lot of my life before I began to understand that; I don't want my girls to miss out too.
So this summer, the girls have been actively volunteering at my side. We spent a few hours this past week helping with our church's project of rehabilitating some housing in the Nova Bastille area for people who needed the help, and we've spent most Monday evenings at Elijah's Promise, a soup kitchen here in Nova Bastille, where the girls have helped me take food to the clients, hand out meal tickets as people come in, and bundle up silverware for people to use when they eat.
It's been a great experience. Every time we go, there's usually at least one volunteer who hasn't seen them there before and who's wondering what I'm thinking by bringing them there.
I'm sure I could get some things done more efficiently if it weren't for having the girls with me, and sometimes Evangeline in particular has got underfoot of other volunteers by dancing when she should be standing to one side. But every night we've gone, I've seen the weariness on people's faces give way to smiles, and I've seen them enjoy the simple pleasure of seeing two little girls take an interest in them. In many ways, that's the greatest ministry that they provide.
But they're also growing up with real faith, and I hope it sticks with them. This isn't just something we do on Sundays or at mealtimes. Christ is real, and he makes a difference in us when we make a difference for others.
That's probably one of the best lessons of faith that I can give them.
Keeping the kid's brain engaged during the summer shutdown
Evangeline last week received recognition from the Nova Bastille Free Public Library that she is a skilled writer.
As part of its summer program, the library solicited essays from city children on the subject of how to take their pets with them on a trip to colonize the moon. Essays had to show an understanding of a pet's needs, and ways that a zero-gravity environment would differ from the Earth.
I helped her engage her thought processes, but Evangeline on her own wrote how her dog Sandy could eat, drink, sleep, exercise and go to the bathroom in space. (She neglected to mention that Sandy died last year.)
Her innovations: a food dish with a small hole so the food gets out in small amounts only, a dog-size water bottle, a cage with heavy padding so Sandy doesn't get hurt when she floats during her sleep, magnetic shoes so she sticks to the floor, and a vacuum cleaner to clean up everything.
As a sci-fi sort, I was proud that she suggested saving Sandy's waste to terraform the lunar soil -- and even prouder as an organic gardener that she stipulated the waste was not for soil where crops are raised.
But as an award-winning writer, I was prouder still that she received recognition for her own writing. Just shy of second grade, she wrote a better essay than I was accustomed to getting from many of my seventh- and eighth-graders for much of the school year back when I was a teacher.
In other education and learning news, Evangeline also has been busy reading reams of poetry by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and a few others, including some poems from my Norton Anthology of English Literature, such as Lewis Carroll and even William Shakespeare. She's been learning folk songs and mastering the rest of the multiplication table.
She's also been learning to ride a bike (with training wheels), play baseball, and jump rope.
Her theology continues to develop, as she notices disparities between her own experiences with God and the way the Bible depicts other people's experiences.
On Saturday night she asked me if God speaks to people like he did in the Tanakh, and when I explained that the direct quotes in the Bible most likely are a literary device intended to represent the more standard prayer experience of hearing God speak to our hearts, she asked me how we can recognize when he's talking to us and when we're just imagining it. She also wanted to know if I had ever heard God speak out loud.
That was the night we read the chapter in 2 Samuel where David decides he wants to build God a Temple instead of leaving the Ark of the Covenant inside a tent all the time. I tried to explain, without getting into the priesthood of Melchizedek or anything deep like that, that the Temple system was a shadow of what was to come in Christ, when the Holy Spirit would live in our hearts. And that prompted her to ask when the Holy Spirit comes into people, if tongues of fire still appeared on their heads when he did and so on.
I think she's intrigued by the admittedly dramatic image of people with flames dancing on their heads, speaking in unknown tongues, and she wanted to know if I had ever seen that happen. (Nope. Not even in the Assemblies of God.)
So I had to explain not only about biblical inspiration, but about the Abramic covenant and Mosaic law being forerunners and types of the relationship we now have with God in Christ, the difference between the indwelling and baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then I had to note that the day of Pentecost was the only time in the Bible when tongues of fire appeared on people's heads as they began to speak in tongues. (And she amazed me with the amount of detail she remembered about that story, that the Christians were speaking all sorts of languages they didn't know but everyone else did, that people thought they were drunk or crazy, and that thousands of people became Christians as a result.)
I can only imagine how late we would have been up if I had started talking about Melchizedek. (And let me note that when we read that chapter of Genesis a few weeks ago, she noticed that Melchizedek and Abram ate the same stuff that we use to celebrate the Last Supper.)
I love it when she asks these questions, because it jolts me out of my own complacency, and forces me to rethink some of my own suppositions about God. How do we know when it's really God speaking to us, and we're not just imagining it? If God's quotes in the Bible are a literary device, what other things could be literary devices that I'm not recognizing as such? As is usual, she left me with weighty questions to ponder while I left her to consider my own inadequate answer to her question.
And lastly, Evangeline is asking for a little brother. She is not just asking us, I have heard her asking for one during bedtime prayers.
As part of its summer program, the library solicited essays from city children on the subject of how to take their pets with them on a trip to colonize the moon. Essays had to show an understanding of a pet's needs, and ways that a zero-gravity environment would differ from the Earth.
I helped her engage her thought processes, but Evangeline on her own wrote how her dog Sandy could eat, drink, sleep, exercise and go to the bathroom in space. (She neglected to mention that Sandy died last year.)
Her innovations: a food dish with a small hole so the food gets out in small amounts only, a dog-size water bottle, a cage with heavy padding so Sandy doesn't get hurt when she floats during her sleep, magnetic shoes so she sticks to the floor, and a vacuum cleaner to clean up everything.
As a sci-fi sort, I was proud that she suggested saving Sandy's waste to terraform the lunar soil -- and even prouder as an organic gardener that she stipulated the waste was not for soil where crops are raised.
But as an award-winning writer, I was prouder still that she received recognition for her own writing. Just shy of second grade, she wrote a better essay than I was accustomed to getting from many of my seventh- and eighth-graders for much of the school year back when I was a teacher.
In other education and learning news, Evangeline also has been busy reading reams of poetry by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and a few others, including some poems from my Norton Anthology of English Literature, such as Lewis Carroll and even William Shakespeare. She's been learning folk songs and mastering the rest of the multiplication table.
She's also been learning to ride a bike (with training wheels), play baseball, and jump rope.
Her theology continues to develop, as she notices disparities between her own experiences with God and the way the Bible depicts other people's experiences.
On Saturday night she asked me if God speaks to people like he did in the Tanakh, and when I explained that the direct quotes in the Bible most likely are a literary device intended to represent the more standard prayer experience of hearing God speak to our hearts, she asked me how we can recognize when he's talking to us and when we're just imagining it. She also wanted to know if I had ever heard God speak out loud.
That was the night we read the chapter in 2 Samuel where David decides he wants to build God a Temple instead of leaving the Ark of the Covenant inside a tent all the time. I tried to explain, without getting into the priesthood of Melchizedek or anything deep like that, that the Temple system was a shadow of what was to come in Christ, when the Holy Spirit would live in our hearts. And that prompted her to ask when the Holy Spirit comes into people, if tongues of fire still appeared on their heads when he did and so on.
I think she's intrigued by the admittedly dramatic image of people with flames dancing on their heads, speaking in unknown tongues, and she wanted to know if I had ever seen that happen. (Nope. Not even in the Assemblies of God.)
So I had to explain not only about biblical inspiration, but about the Abramic covenant and Mosaic law being forerunners and types of the relationship we now have with God in Christ, the difference between the indwelling and baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then I had to note that the day of Pentecost was the only time in the Bible when tongues of fire appeared on people's heads as they began to speak in tongues. (And she amazed me with the amount of detail she remembered about that story, that the Christians were speaking all sorts of languages they didn't know but everyone else did, that people thought they were drunk or crazy, and that thousands of people became Christians as a result.)
I can only imagine how late we would have been up if I had started talking about Melchizedek. (And let me note that when we read that chapter of Genesis a few weeks ago, she noticed that Melchizedek and Abram ate the same stuff that we use to celebrate the Last Supper.)
I love it when she asks these questions, because it jolts me out of my own complacency, and forces me to rethink some of my own suppositions about God. How do we know when it's really God speaking to us, and we're not just imagining it? If God's quotes in the Bible are a literary device, what other things could be literary devices that I'm not recognizing as such? As is usual, she left me with weighty questions to ponder while I left her to consider my own inadequate answer to her question.
And lastly, Evangeline is asking for a little brother. She is not just asking us, I have heard her asking for one during bedtime prayers.
mystery virus
It started late Saturday afternoon.
Natasha and I were working on sanding the fascia and soffit in front of the house, in preparation for a paint job it desparately needs. More specifically, she was working on it while I held the ladder for her, since (as previously noted) I can't handle heights. Even holding the ladder, I was worn out. Finally when she got down, I went inside, climbed upstairs and fell asleep on the bed for about two hours.
I got up after dinner, and when I went back to bed, I tossed and turned and had difficulty sleeping, but eventually I drifted off until it was time to get up and start getting ready for church. We walked to church, owing to the high gas prices, and at one point I had to leave the service to go throw up in the bathroom.
Back home, I slept another four or five hours, right through lunch and up to the point I had to start the grill to get ready for dinner. Now it's almost 4 a.m., and I think I'm ready to try going to sleep again. Hopefully my sleep schedule will get back to normal soon.
I'm not really sure what started this. Rachel was sick earlier this week with a virus, so it hardly would be surprising if I caught what she had. On the other hand, she had a temperature of 103.3 degrees and needed a bath to bring her fever down. I haven't had a fever at all, although there's nothing that says viruses have to affect adults the same way they affect kids.
thyroid: the motion picture
It's been several months since my last update, so here is the latest news on my thyroid: I don't have one.
If I lived in the Marvel Universe, my thyroid and I probably would have been reunited by now, in a cataclysmic battle the likes of which has never been seen before, at least if you don't count the summer crossovers that Marvel has foisted upon its readers every one of the last seventeen years. This all would have started after my thyroid started to absorb nutrients and chemicals after hospital employees failed to dispose of it properly, until it assumed a hideous mockery of life. I can imagine it, even now, crawling across Iowa, eager to destroy me in retaliation for sundering it from the rest of my body.
Conversely, I just as easily can see myself having been driven to a life of crime by my thyroidectomy. Imagine a supervillain with a name like "Thyroid Man" or (better yet) "Doctor Thyroid," waylaying unsuspecting people in the alleys and streets of New York, pulling their thyroids from their necks and putting them into his own, in an attempt to replace his. It's not much of a life, admittedly, but it'd be a great way to meet either Daredevil or Spider-man, and get his autograph. Of course, with my luck I'd get taken out by some low-budget superhero like "D-Man," the Captain America sidekick-wannabe with a B.O. problem
Could have been fun either way, as long as D-Man kept away. Instead, I'm pretty sure the thyroid has decayed by now, in whatever landfill or dump they toss medical waste like cancerous organs.
In a more serious vein, my next checkup is slated for October, when I expect to be declared cancer-free.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for my next supply of thyroid medication to arrive in the mail. I ordered the stuff from a mail-order pharmacy not based in Canada about two weeks ago, but I haven't received anything yet. Given that the supply of thyroid hormone I have in the house ran out Sunday, I'd really like to get this today. It's nice to save the money by mail ordering medication, but as I explained to their customer service people when I hadn't received my medication by the expected time, I need this stuff to stay alive over the long haul.
I can renew the old prescription one more time, but since my doctor raised my dosage from 150 mcg of levothyroxin to 200 mcg, I'd prefer to get the newer prescription. It'll boost my energy levels, aid my efforts to lose weight, and since there's supposed to be a six-month supply of the little pills in the bottle, it'll make a better weapon to throw at my marauding thyroid once it finally arrives.
If I lived in the Marvel Universe, my thyroid and I probably would have been reunited by now, in a cataclysmic battle the likes of which has never been seen before, at least if you don't count the summer crossovers that Marvel has foisted upon its readers every one of the last seventeen years. This all would have started after my thyroid started to absorb nutrients and chemicals after hospital employees failed to dispose of it properly, until it assumed a hideous mockery of life. I can imagine it, even now, crawling across Iowa, eager to destroy me in retaliation for sundering it from the rest of my body.
Conversely, I just as easily can see myself having been driven to a life of crime by my thyroidectomy. Imagine a supervillain with a name like "Thyroid Man" or (better yet) "Doctor Thyroid," waylaying unsuspecting people in the alleys and streets of New York, pulling their thyroids from their necks and putting them into his own, in an attempt to replace his. It's not much of a life, admittedly, but it'd be a great way to meet either Daredevil or Spider-man, and get his autograph. Of course, with my luck I'd get taken out by some low-budget superhero like "D-Man," the Captain America sidekick-wannabe with a B.O. problem
Could have been fun either way, as long as D-Man kept away. Instead, I'm pretty sure the thyroid has decayed by now, in whatever landfill or dump they toss medical waste like cancerous organs.
In a more serious vein, my next checkup is slated for October, when I expect to be declared cancer-free.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for my next supply of thyroid medication to arrive in the mail. I ordered the stuff from a mail-order pharmacy not based in Canada about two weeks ago, but I haven't received anything yet. Given that the supply of thyroid hormone I have in the house ran out Sunday, I'd really like to get this today. It's nice to save the money by mail ordering medication, but as I explained to their customer service people when I hadn't received my medication by the expected time, I need this stuff to stay alive over the long haul.
I can renew the old prescription one more time, but since my doctor raised my dosage from 150 mcg of levothyroxin to 200 mcg, I'd prefer to get the newer prescription. It'll boost my energy levels, aid my efforts to lose weight, and since there's supposed to be a six-month supply of the little pills in the bottle, it'll make a better weapon to throw at my marauding thyroid once it finally arrives.
off in her own world
I listened to you today.
You were off in your own world,
Singing in the library.
You were in your own little world,
And you seemed so happy there.
Can I go with you next time? I'd like to.
My world is frightening, terrible, loud.
Fanatics fly planes into buildings
And bomb others in mid-air,
Blaspheming the very Name they claim to serve.
Yours is a world of Superman,
Wallace and Gromit, a dog named Blue,
And a constitutionally mandated bowl of ice cream
Every night before bedtime.
It seems so happy and free.
It's nice to see, and fun to visit.
Next time you go, please tell me first,
So I can go there with you.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
The Shining: That's one creepy movie, yo
On Friday night, I had a rendezvous with a piece of cinematic history that was long overdue. On Friday night, I watched "The Shining."
Released in 1980 with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in starring roles and Stanley Kubrik at the helm, "The Shining" has to be one of the finest movies I have seen in ages. In the movie, Jack Torrance (Nicholson) is hired as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the hotel's five-month closure. The hotel has a bit of a past; ten years earlier, another caretaker went insane and killed his wife and two daughters when the prolonged isolation presumably got to him. Over the winter, Torrance experiences a mental breakdown and tries to kill his wife and child.
I'm not generally into horror movies -- either they're so schlocky that they're not believable, or they just substitute vulgar gross-outs for actual horror -- but this was a movie I found absolutely haunting.
The horror starts out with the opening credits, actually. As the credits roll, we hear disconcerting, ethereal music and follow Torrance's Volkswagen as it goes up the long road to the Overlook Hotel. There's not a scene in the movie that doesn't in some way add to this creeped-out feeling of being watched, followed, or just of encroaching doom.
As the movie goes on, Kubrik repeats the following motif: the camera follows Danny around the Overlook Hotel, uncomfortably close, as he rides his Big Wheel about; in the Overlook Maze, we follow him uncomfortably closely as he runs for shelter. In many ways, the entire movie is a labyrinth, as we work our way into the dark corners of Torrance's unraveling mind.
Kubrik's use of the ghosts is also brilliant -- they appear, setting the characters and the movie-goers on edge, then disappear. For the most part, they're not characters as much as they are props, meant to establish the setting and feel of the psychoscape: the murdered girls of the previous caretaker, the woman drowned in the bathtub, and ultimately the entire crew at the ballroom.
And tell me that doesn't creep you out when Torrance, at an empty bar in a ballroom by himself, offers to sell his soul for a beer, only to lower his hands from his eyes and find the bartender ready to give him a drink. Talk about Faustian bargains -- and this is where he really starts to go nuts.
The odd thing about the movie, from the point of realism, is the ending. As the camera pans in, it eventually settles on a picture of the July 4, 1920, ball, where Jack Torrance is featured prominently. At an earlier scene in the bar, the quintessentially British waiter -- whom Torrance recognizes as Delberton Grady, the 1970 caretaker who killed his family -- assures Torrance that he, Torrance, has always been the caretaker at the hotel. And Torrance himself said earlier in the movie that when he first went to the hotel, he felt as though he knew it intimately, as though he had been there before.
Realistically, this is impossible, and I spent a few days trying to figure out the significance of the ending, since it's obviously a key to understanding the movie. If it can't be taken literally, it has to be taken figuratively. The Overlook Hotel is a metaphor for something larger -- some commentators I've read suggest it's America itself, and the genocide we not only committed against the American Indians but are content to overlook, while others suggest it's the dark side of human nature.
The first viewpoint has some credibility -- the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground, for instance, and there is a fair amount of Indian iconography incorporated into the movie -- but even if that was a specific point Kubrik wished to make with the movie, the broader application still works. As the main character, Torrance is someone we're meant to identify with, even though he ends badly, frozen to death in the maze, and we have to believe that his dark side is something we know ourselves. Just as he denies any guilt in injuring his son two years earlier, in a drunken rage, we like to deny our own guilt over our crimes ... and we deny our guilt or responsibility for crimes our ancestors have committed, whether it be the legacy of genocide against the American Indians, the oppression of blacks, or years of other bigotries and small-minded prejudices.
This movie is a winner in every sense of the word. The score is brilliant, Nicholson and Duvall give stand-out performances the whole way through the movie, and Kubrik shines unfalteringly as the director and co-writer of the script.
The movie was based on a novel by Stephen King. I hope to watch the movie again, but all the same, I don't think I'll be reading King's book any time soon. His books usually don't do much for me.
Released in 1980 with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in starring roles and Stanley Kubrik at the helm, "The Shining" has to be one of the finest movies I have seen in ages. In the movie, Jack Torrance (Nicholson) is hired as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the hotel's five-month closure. The hotel has a bit of a past; ten years earlier, another caretaker went insane and killed his wife and two daughters when the prolonged isolation presumably got to him. Over the winter, Torrance experiences a mental breakdown and tries to kill his wife and child.
I'm not generally into horror movies -- either they're so schlocky that they're not believable, or they just substitute vulgar gross-outs for actual horror -- but this was a movie I found absolutely haunting.
The horror starts out with the opening credits, actually. As the credits roll, we hear disconcerting, ethereal music and follow Torrance's Volkswagen as it goes up the long road to the Overlook Hotel. There's not a scene in the movie that doesn't in some way add to this creeped-out feeling of being watched, followed, or just of encroaching doom.
As the movie goes on, Kubrik repeats the following motif: the camera follows Danny around the Overlook Hotel, uncomfortably close, as he rides his Big Wheel about; in the Overlook Maze, we follow him uncomfortably closely as he runs for shelter. In many ways, the entire movie is a labyrinth, as we work our way into the dark corners of Torrance's unraveling mind.
Kubrik's use of the ghosts is also brilliant -- they appear, setting the characters and the movie-goers on edge, then disappear. For the most part, they're not characters as much as they are props, meant to establish the setting and feel of the psychoscape: the murdered girls of the previous caretaker, the woman drowned in the bathtub, and ultimately the entire crew at the ballroom.
And tell me that doesn't creep you out when Torrance, at an empty bar in a ballroom by himself, offers to sell his soul for a beer, only to lower his hands from his eyes and find the bartender ready to give him a drink. Talk about Faustian bargains -- and this is where he really starts to go nuts.
The odd thing about the movie, from the point of realism, is the ending. As the camera pans in, it eventually settles on a picture of the July 4, 1920, ball, where Jack Torrance is featured prominently. At an earlier scene in the bar, the quintessentially British waiter -- whom Torrance recognizes as Delberton Grady, the 1970 caretaker who killed his family -- assures Torrance that he, Torrance, has always been the caretaker at the hotel. And Torrance himself said earlier in the movie that when he first went to the hotel, he felt as though he knew it intimately, as though he had been there before.
Realistically, this is impossible, and I spent a few days trying to figure out the significance of the ending, since it's obviously a key to understanding the movie. If it can't be taken literally, it has to be taken figuratively. The Overlook Hotel is a metaphor for something larger -- some commentators I've read suggest it's America itself, and the genocide we not only committed against the American Indians but are content to overlook, while others suggest it's the dark side of human nature.
The first viewpoint has some credibility -- the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground, for instance, and there is a fair amount of Indian iconography incorporated into the movie -- but even if that was a specific point Kubrik wished to make with the movie, the broader application still works. As the main character, Torrance is someone we're meant to identify with, even though he ends badly, frozen to death in the maze, and we have to believe that his dark side is something we know ourselves. Just as he denies any guilt in injuring his son two years earlier, in a drunken rage, we like to deny our own guilt over our crimes ... and we deny our guilt or responsibility for crimes our ancestors have committed, whether it be the legacy of genocide against the American Indians, the oppression of blacks, or years of other bigotries and small-minded prejudices.
This movie is a winner in every sense of the word. The score is brilliant, Nicholson and Duvall give stand-out performances the whole way through the movie, and Kubrik shines unfalteringly as the director and co-writer of the script.
The movie was based on a novel by Stephen King. I hope to watch the movie again, but all the same, I don't think I'll be reading King's book any time soon. His books usually don't do much for me.
changes of life
As you may recall, up until last December I had rather long hair. Owing to my impending cancer surgery, I had my hair cut off and donated it to Locks of Love. Prior to the haircut, my hair was fairly straight. Now that it is shorter, it is extremely curly.
I've heard of people's hair undergoing such changes, but usually in connection with something like becoming pregnant or having a baby. I have done neither, and since I've been taking thyroid hormone since last November, I don't think it's likely that that's a factor.
Does anyone have an explanation, or is menopause going to be the presumed culprit?
Does anyone have an explanation, or is menopause going to be the presumed culprit?
Monday, July 31, 2006
the importance of second opinions
Recently I went to see the dentist and was told I would need a root canal.
All things considered, this is not the sort of thing I love to hear. Very few people -- I should imagine the number is less than ten thousand -- go to the dentist for a six-month checkup saying to themselves, "I hope I can get a root canal. I've always wondered what they feel like." Those few that do have some serious issues when it comes to getting their pleasure and pain signals mixed up.
This root canal had its roots in a cavity that had struck my lower left rear molar, or rather, that had restruck. An earlier filling had fallen out after years of hitting the Coca-Cola bottle too many times a day had taken their toll. The cavity was back, bigger and uglier than ever, and it was right along the gumline.
Two things happened as a result of this dental pronouncement. First was that I not only kicked the Coke habit, I kicked it hard and right out the door. I have had a few bottles since then, but it's been nowhere near the levels I had reached before, where I could sometimes go through a twelve-pack in two days. (As a result of this change, the Coca Cola bottling plant near us has announced layoffs, and our savings account has been reaching new heights.) The second is that I went for a second opinion.
Back when we first moved to Nova Bastille and we were on my insurance plan, I started seeing a dentist in the downtown. It was a small practice, and parking is an issue, but the dentist we saw when I was a child had his own practice, and I just plain like the experience of establishing a rapport with the fellow who's going to be sticking sharp instruments into my mouth and poking around every six months.
About two years ago, we switched over to the insurance policy provided by my wife's employer, and at my insistence, the whole family got on the dental wagon. (A good thing too, since Evangeline somehow had managed to develop three cavities by the age of 5, although she's been clean since.)
Remember how I said I grew up seeing a dentist with his own practice and preferred that? Well, I guess each of us likes what we grew up with. Natasha grew up attending one of those large corporate dental offices where you never know whom you're going to get because the staff roster is larger than the population of some Central American nations, and she insisted that we take our business to such an establishment -- and to her credit, parking is easier, and the office doesn't close when one dentist is on vacation.
Still, I can't help it. When a dentist I've never seen before is telling me I need a root canal and offers to give me a prescription in the meantime to control the pain she assumes my tooth is causing me -- when it doesn't hurt at all -- I can't help but feel wistful for a more personal touch.
I'm kind of crazy that way. It's kind of like wanting to get a person when I call a company's customer service hot line, instead of having to wade through a soulless computer program that connects me with an illiterate bean farmer in Rhode Island when all I want to know is whether my pants make me look fat.
So I went and got a second opinion, at my old dentist. His opinion? A root canal would be nuts. Based on the X-ray the other practice sent, and what he could see by looking into the old lion's jaws, I just had a cavity that was low to the gum.
So I called the insurance company, and after being connected to three different bean farmers in Rhode Island, most of them illiterate, I finally changed my dentist back to the guy it should have been all along and made my appointment.
A little Novacaine, a little drilling, and then some filling, and whammo! No more cavity.
And no more root canal.
Friday, July 28, 2006
idle thoughts
Two years ago, when my older daughter was in kindergarten, I hooked into her enthusiasm for Disney's Princess stories and exposed her to fairy tales from around the world.
We started out with Cinderella, one of the most ubiquitous of the classic fairy tales. Just about every culture in the world has some version of the story, and in no time at all we had read versions of the story from Cambodia, the Philippines, Appalachia, Germany, Ireland and the West Indies. In addition to learning about other cultures and building her geography skills, Evangeline started to recognize variations on certain motifs. She spotted the shoe test when it was a boot, recognized the part of the fairy godmother even when it was played by a bull or a fish, and after a while started to recognize the story even when she wasn't told.
Once she even made the connection between Danae in the myth of Perseus, and the dilemma of Rapunzel, but that's off the subject.
I actually was pretty happy to see her making these connections and enjoying the changes in the story, because that's something I've always enjoyed doing, too. I love to read different treatments of the same basic story, which is why I have versions of the King Arthur legend from Geoffrey of Monmouth and The Mabinogion, up through Mallory, Tennyson, T.H. White, John Steinbeck and beyond. No matter how many things the stories have in common, it's never really the same story. Tennyson brings the story nobility, elegance and divinity; White brings Arthur humanity; and Steinbeck, socialism. Usually Arthur is a hero; sometimes he's a villain. (One church in Europe has a frieze of Arthur riding a goat in hell.)
I love the way stories change and mutate and stay the same over time and across cultures, and not just stories, but words, languages and ideas as well. And one of the things I love about the Internet is finding the ways stories and ideas get passed around and rewritten at lightning speed.
Often the things that change are glurge, sentimental claptrap that's high on warm fuzzies but low on intelligence and sensibility. I've written my share of parodies of these things, but I've also come across some that have been rewritten and actually improved in terms of storytelling -- the drama has been heightened, the moral is driven home better, and the writing is tighter and cleaner.
But it's not just stories that get passed around. I've seen a few of my essays get reposted elsewhere -- sometimes by someone else taking credit for them -- and I'm sure some of the essays that get passed around also undergo revisions and changes. It happens to urban legends on the Internet all the time, it probably happens to more serious pieces of writing too.
I can't help it. I'm wondering what sort of game it would be to take something off someone's blog, and rewrite it -- not just edit, but rewrite it, to make the thoughts and entire entry one's own possession in concept -- and then pass it on to another writer, and then another, and another, for five or six people, like an advanced form of the telephone game.
I already recycle my own writing some times, when I need to revisit a theme, when I'm not satisfied with something I've written previously, or when reading it inspires a new line of thought.
What would it be like to do that deliberately with someone else's?
on sanctification
I'm aware of two different doctrines of sanctification. The first, found in some Pentecostal and Holiness denominations like the Nazarenes, holds that Sanctification is a moment when the Holy Spirit removes a Christian's sinful nature. From that point on you are in lockstep with God, and anything he wants is your desire also. (And with that comes the flipside: Anything you want is God's desire also, so that anyone who opposes is resisting the will of God.)
Aside from being merely dangerous, I would tag this doctrine unbiblical, considering Paul's words on the subject of sin nature: "So I find this law at work in me: WHat I want to do, I do not do; and the things that I do not want to do, I find myself doing" and "Here is a trustworthy saying: Of all sinners, I am the worst."
The other doctrine of sanctification I know is one that holds that over time we become more and more like Christ, that as we grow closer to him and serve him longer, our desires gradually become more like his, and we become more like Christ in character and holiness.
I don't really hold with this one either, for much of the same reasons as above. I can't find any evidence that we "get better" in terms of sin. The psalmists regularly lament the sinfulness of the assembly; the Apostles kept quarreling with one another long after the Ascension; and so on.
What I have found myself is that I become more aware of my own sin as time goes on, and I return to the Cross for forgiveness for the same old sins time and time again, and for other sins that had never even crossed my mind before, even though I'd been guilty of them. Generally I think we become more aware of the sin in our lives as time goes on, rather than seeing a triumph over it; with the result that we seek forgiveness more, and pray for grace increasingly just for that day, that hour, that moment.
But of course, it doesn't provide as great a sound bite to say, "I'm still gay, and every day I ask God to give me peace with being homosexual, to help me stay celibate, not to get too rough on myself when I fall, and to forgive the people who just want to lecture me" as it does to say "Jesus healed me of being gay!"
Aside from being merely dangerous, I would tag this doctrine unbiblical, considering Paul's words on the subject of sin nature: "So I find this law at work in me: WHat I want to do, I do not do; and the things that I do not want to do, I find myself doing" and "Here is a trustworthy saying: Of all sinners, I am the worst."
The other doctrine of sanctification I know is one that holds that over time we become more and more like Christ, that as we grow closer to him and serve him longer, our desires gradually become more like his, and we become more like Christ in character and holiness.
I don't really hold with this one either, for much of the same reasons as above. I can't find any evidence that we "get better" in terms of sin. The psalmists regularly lament the sinfulness of the assembly; the Apostles kept quarreling with one another long after the Ascension; and so on.
What I have found myself is that I become more aware of my own sin as time goes on, and I return to the Cross for forgiveness for the same old sins time and time again, and for other sins that had never even crossed my mind before, even though I'd been guilty of them. Generally I think we become more aware of the sin in our lives as time goes on, rather than seeing a triumph over it; with the result that we seek forgiveness more, and pray for grace increasingly just for that day, that hour, that moment.
But of course, it doesn't provide as great a sound bite to say, "I'm still gay, and every day I ask God to give me peace with being homosexual, to help me stay celibate, not to get too rough on myself when I fall, and to forgive the people who just want to lecture me" as it does to say "Jesus healed me of being gay!"
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
if you smell a chicken ...
... it's probably me.
This weekend we finally took action to plug up the holes on the underside of our roof. The holes, which measure about six inches across, have been there for about two years and this spring began providing neighborhood squirrels with access to our third-story attic.
Originally the holes served as openings for the downspouts on an ancient pair of gutters that ran along the underside of our slate roof. When we had the roof replaced in 2004, we had the gutters replaced as well, so that we would have something that works and is more or less modern in its design. The downside, of course, was those holes.
The squirrels discovered the holes one fine spring morning this year, when Natasha awoke to the sound of one frantically scurrying about in the attic as it tried to find the way back out. We hemmed and hawed on the subject, and I finally suggested stuffing the holes with steel wool and spackling over it. The spackle alone should keep the squirrels out, but the steel wool would be lethal to any squirrel trying to chew its way back in.
Days passed, then weeks, and finally even three or four months, during which time the squirrels got into a fight with a bird who, feeling in a motherly way, built its nest in one of the holes and defended its home and its eggs with vim and vigor.
This past weekend I borrowed a forty-foot extension ladder so we could settle the squirrels' and birds' fight once and for all.
So why am I a chicken? Because I get dizzy at the mall when I get too close to those cut-away sections of the second floor, where all that stops you from plunging to your death thirty feet below is a glass partition. Because I take the first two or three steps of a ladder very quickly and then my speed decreases along a logarithmic decay curve.
Because I can't stand heights, and I defintely can't stand the idea of standing atop a ladder twenty-five feet in the air and letting go with one hand so I can stuff steel wool into a hole and then spackle over it.
I sent Natasha, and therefore I am a chicken.
Ba-rawk!
This weekend we finally took action to plug up the holes on the underside of our roof. The holes, which measure about six inches across, have been there for about two years and this spring began providing neighborhood squirrels with access to our third-story attic.
Originally the holes served as openings for the downspouts on an ancient pair of gutters that ran along the underside of our slate roof. When we had the roof replaced in 2004, we had the gutters replaced as well, so that we would have something that works and is more or less modern in its design. The downside, of course, was those holes.
The squirrels discovered the holes one fine spring morning this year, when Natasha awoke to the sound of one frantically scurrying about in the attic as it tried to find the way back out. We hemmed and hawed on the subject, and I finally suggested stuffing the holes with steel wool and spackling over it. The spackle alone should keep the squirrels out, but the steel wool would be lethal to any squirrel trying to chew its way back in.
Days passed, then weeks, and finally even three or four months, during which time the squirrels got into a fight with a bird who, feeling in a motherly way, built its nest in one of the holes and defended its home and its eggs with vim and vigor.
This past weekend I borrowed a forty-foot extension ladder so we could settle the squirrels' and birds' fight once and for all.
So why am I a chicken? Because I get dizzy at the mall when I get too close to those cut-away sections of the second floor, where all that stops you from plunging to your death thirty feet below is a glass partition. Because I take the first two or three steps of a ladder very quickly and then my speed decreases along a logarithmic decay curve.
Because I can't stand heights, and I defintely can't stand the idea of standing atop a ladder twenty-five feet in the air and letting go with one hand so I can stuff steel wool into a hole and then spackle over it.
I sent Natasha, and therefore I am a chicken.
Ba-rawk!
Monday, July 24, 2006
redemption: the journey
I do not have to feel "whole" or "complete" or "healed" to be where God wants me, or to experience him and reveal him to others.
Isn't this what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians? To keep him from becoming conceited because of the surpassingly great visions he had, he was given over to an angel of Satan, a thorn in the flesh, and when he asked to be delivered from it, Jesus told him, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness." If God heals us, we no longer need to depend on him for our daily bread and no longer need to lean on him for strength. But when we have a lifelong and unhealable wound like the Fisher King's, communion with him is essential.
I have spent so much of my life expecting to experience some sort of wholeness or easing of my pain as I got "closer" to God. And isn't that what the church often promises? That although the road is long and hard sometimes, God eventually fills in the chinks and you have a wondrous peace and joy for the rest of your life?
And isn't that a bunch of crap?
It's drilled into you in the testimonies you hear and are encouraged to share as a new believer. You talk about how messed up you were and now how everything's sunshine and roses. It would be unthinkable to share in church that you have a lot of anger and unforgiveness in you heart, that you still feel lonely, that you enjoy S&M or wearing women's clothing,* that doubt runs deep, or even that you face depression on a daily basis.
Following Christ does keep us out of a lot of life-ruining stuff that we would otherwise get ourselves into -- sexual immorality, drugs, a life of crime -- but the decision to follow doesn't suddenly make us suddenly Christlike in anything except our standing before God. And while I've known a lot of people who have found peace, learned humility, and become tireless advocates for the poor and the needy, even the best of them will admit that they have miles to go.
Redemption is not a decision as much as it is a journey, and the healing of our world-wounded selves is never-ending on this side of heaven.
And perhaps not even there.
* Well, OK. Those might be bad examples. And I'm sure a woman could share in church without risking judgment or rejection that she enjoys wearing women's clothing, although it surely would puzzle a few people why it was worth mentioning and why she "enjoys" it.
Friday, July 21, 2006
showing my age
Behold, I shew you a mystery:
squick
w00t
shipper
Okay, that's three mysteries. But what the heck do they mean? What are the etymologies? Sometimes, you know, I feel really old.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
My absent child: news, updates and gained perspective
Got an update on Isaac and his situation Monday night, courtesy of our friends who adopted his younger sister.
Although he legally remains in the custody of his father — his mother having moved to Florida with a boyfriend and having brought at least one other child into the world — Isaac has been living with his paternal grandmother, his aunt and her two children for the past two years. His father, I am told, does not live there and has virtually nothing to do with him.
Isaac also officially has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and was removed from his kindergarten last year because of his behavior problems. He is now attending a special school in Old Bridge, where he can get specialized care for learning and behavioral difficulties.
From what I'm told, he talks fairly well — when he came to stay with us, he was at least a year behind developmentally — and is more or less happy.
So that's good, I suppose.
The ADHD diagnosis doesn't come as a surprise to me. Whether because he lacked any sort of active parenting or mental stimulation his first two years, Isaac was prone to wandering from one activity to another if someone wasn't there to anchor him to it. It was especially bad in rooms where there were lots of toys on the floor, as is often the case when young children have lots of toys to choose from.
I thought he was making progress while he was with us — though I confess I don't have the professional credentials to say that authoritatively — but there was no denying the thing he sat for the most willingly and eagerly was the TV set.
Still, I remember the discipline and focus that we did see as time went on, and I can't help but wonder if he would have made more progress if he hadn't returned to his parents so soon. The visits became especially disruptive to his behavior, particularly toward the end. Still, what's done is done and the water passed under that bridge years ago and long since has wandered out to sea.
I have to admit that I feel a little empty when I consider the situation our friends have with Isaac's sister. They got to adopt her. Every morning they get to wake her up and spend the day with her, and every night they get to put her to bed. She has a little sister and a baby brother who are growing up with her as a natural part of their family.
Meanwhile, I have pictures hanging on the wall and lying in shoeboxes, I have a heartache that remains as raw today as it was three years and seven months ago, and I have a 6½-year-old who misses him just as much as I do.
Part of me keeps whispering "It could have worked out differently," and damn it, that voice is nearly right. It almost could have worked out so that we'd be in the same situation with Isaac as our friends are with his sister.
The courts returned Isaac to his parents in October 2002. Within three months, his mother had left him and moved in with her new boyfriend. After a lot of deliberation and talking with Natasha, I called Isaac's father in January 2003 and said that if he needed any help with things, we'd be available.
And we did help out. I don't remember many weekends we did it, but we watched Isaac for his father, in our own homes, because of his father's work schedule. We didn't ask him to pay us for the food Isaac ate, we didn't ask him to pay for the diapers he used, and we didn't ask him to pay us for our trouble. We had two children of own at that point, and we could have used the money, but we never even asked him to pay Isaac's way when we went some place during the weekend.
At one point Isaac's dad was going to tell his daycare center that we were authorized to pick him up and drop him off. If we had kept taking him on weekends, in time we probably would have reached the same point that our friends did, with Isaac living virtually all the time with us, calling us mommy and daddy, being in our legal custody, and finally being our legally adopted son.
I'd be whole right now instead of crying fresh tears while I write this.
So what happened?
It's like this. We were trying to help Isaac's dad in a tough situation, and ended up enabling him. The last weekend Isaac stayed with us, it was going to be for Friday night only. His father had adjusted his work schedule so he could pick Isaac up Saturday afternoon and spend the rest of the weekend with him. At the last minute, he decided he'd rather have Isaac stay with us until Sunday afternoon so he could celebrate his birthday with friends. It looked to us like Isaac's father was trying to pass his responsibilities as a father off onto us, and we couldn't be party to that.
It's like this. We wanted to help Isaac, but we had different expectations for his behavior from what his father had. We expected him to stay at the table during meals, to sleep when it was bedtime, to listen to directions and to do things for himself when he could. Whatever he was expected to do at home didn't match what we expected, and it was making him frustrated and us.
It's like this. I already had had my heart ripped out of me that October morning when he left, and so did Evangeline. At first it seemed like the weekend visits were a godsend; instead, they were becoming increasingly stressful, difficult and painful for us as we said goodbye each time, and as the challenges of his behavior were compounded with the needs of Rachel, who was only a few months old.
And it's like this. As bad as it was for me, it was far worse for my wife. God gave me a tremendous measure of grace for dealing with Isaac and his problems, but for whatever reason, it was too stressful for her to deal with, especially added to the stress of dealing with difficult child welfare workers, Isaac's parents, and the pain of seeing what all this was doing to me and to Evangeline. The last few months that Isaac was with us were an iron cage around her spirit. She was trapped in the dark and the cold, and felt utterly alone.
What kind of a husband would I be if I asked her to put herself through that again, with no idea of when or if it would end? She already had done more than anyone had the right to ask or expect of her. So our relationship with Isaac's father ended quietly and unceremoniously, and for the past three years I've had to comfort myself and Evangeline with tears, memories and the hope of a happy reunion some day, years from now.
I don't know what I should say at this point. I could say that life is unfair, and it is. If life were just, either Isaac would be with us and we would be happy; or better yet, his parents would have been the parents he needed from the start so that he never would have needed to live with us in the first place.
I suppose I should say that God is good, because he is. The pain I have had these past few years is real and it runs deep. Nothing else has ever cut me as deeply. Through it all I see the hand of a Father whose tears are deeper and more bitter than mine, and I see the wounds of a Lord who knows this grief and has borne it more fully than I could ever bear, not just for my sake but for Isaac's as well.
But let me also say this: In our hearts, Isaac is my son, and he is Evangeline's brother. There was never a chance that he would live with us, but we will never forget him. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
Although he legally remains in the custody of his father — his mother having moved to Florida with a boyfriend and having brought at least one other child into the world — Isaac has been living with his paternal grandmother, his aunt and her two children for the past two years. His father, I am told, does not live there and has virtually nothing to do with him.
Isaac also officially has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and was removed from his kindergarten last year because of his behavior problems. He is now attending a special school in Old Bridge, where he can get specialized care for learning and behavioral difficulties.
From what I'm told, he talks fairly well — when he came to stay with us, he was at least a year behind developmentally — and is more or less happy.
So that's good, I suppose.
The ADHD diagnosis doesn't come as a surprise to me. Whether because he lacked any sort of active parenting or mental stimulation his first two years, Isaac was prone to wandering from one activity to another if someone wasn't there to anchor him to it. It was especially bad in rooms where there were lots of toys on the floor, as is often the case when young children have lots of toys to choose from.
I thought he was making progress while he was with us — though I confess I don't have the professional credentials to say that authoritatively — but there was no denying the thing he sat for the most willingly and eagerly was the TV set.
Still, I remember the discipline and focus that we did see as time went on, and I can't help but wonder if he would have made more progress if he hadn't returned to his parents so soon. The visits became especially disruptive to his behavior, particularly toward the end. Still, what's done is done and the water passed under that bridge years ago and long since has wandered out to sea.
I have to admit that I feel a little empty when I consider the situation our friends have with Isaac's sister. They got to adopt her. Every morning they get to wake her up and spend the day with her, and every night they get to put her to bed. She has a little sister and a baby brother who are growing up with her as a natural part of their family.
Meanwhile, I have pictures hanging on the wall and lying in shoeboxes, I have a heartache that remains as raw today as it was three years and seven months ago, and I have a 6½-year-old who misses him just as much as I do.
Part of me keeps whispering "It could have worked out differently," and damn it, that voice is nearly right. It almost could have worked out so that we'd be in the same situation with Isaac as our friends are with his sister.
The courts returned Isaac to his parents in October 2002. Within three months, his mother had left him and moved in with her new boyfriend. After a lot of deliberation and talking with Natasha, I called Isaac's father in January 2003 and said that if he needed any help with things, we'd be available.
And we did help out. I don't remember many weekends we did it, but we watched Isaac for his father, in our own homes, because of his father's work schedule. We didn't ask him to pay us for the food Isaac ate, we didn't ask him to pay for the diapers he used, and we didn't ask him to pay us for our trouble. We had two children of own at that point, and we could have used the money, but we never even asked him to pay Isaac's way when we went some place during the weekend.
At one point Isaac's dad was going to tell his daycare center that we were authorized to pick him up and drop him off. If we had kept taking him on weekends, in time we probably would have reached the same point that our friends did, with Isaac living virtually all the time with us, calling us mommy and daddy, being in our legal custody, and finally being our legally adopted son.
I'd be whole right now instead of crying fresh tears while I write this.
So what happened?
It's like this. We were trying to help Isaac's dad in a tough situation, and ended up enabling him. The last weekend Isaac stayed with us, it was going to be for Friday night only. His father had adjusted his work schedule so he could pick Isaac up Saturday afternoon and spend the rest of the weekend with him. At the last minute, he decided he'd rather have Isaac stay with us until Sunday afternoon so he could celebrate his birthday with friends. It looked to us like Isaac's father was trying to pass his responsibilities as a father off onto us, and we couldn't be party to that.
It's like this. We wanted to help Isaac, but we had different expectations for his behavior from what his father had. We expected him to stay at the table during meals, to sleep when it was bedtime, to listen to directions and to do things for himself when he could. Whatever he was expected to do at home didn't match what we expected, and it was making him frustrated and us.
It's like this. I already had had my heart ripped out of me that October morning when he left, and so did Evangeline. At first it seemed like the weekend visits were a godsend; instead, they were becoming increasingly stressful, difficult and painful for us as we said goodbye each time, and as the challenges of his behavior were compounded with the needs of Rachel, who was only a few months old.
And it's like this. As bad as it was for me, it was far worse for my wife. God gave me a tremendous measure of grace for dealing with Isaac and his problems, but for whatever reason, it was too stressful for her to deal with, especially added to the stress of dealing with difficult child welfare workers, Isaac's parents, and the pain of seeing what all this was doing to me and to Evangeline. The last few months that Isaac was with us were an iron cage around her spirit. She was trapped in the dark and the cold, and felt utterly alone.
What kind of a husband would I be if I asked her to put herself through that again, with no idea of when or if it would end? She already had done more than anyone had the right to ask or expect of her. So our relationship with Isaac's father ended quietly and unceremoniously, and for the past three years I've had to comfort myself and Evangeline with tears, memories and the hope of a happy reunion some day, years from now.
I don't know what I should say at this point. I could say that life is unfair, and it is. If life were just, either Isaac would be with us and we would be happy; or better yet, his parents would have been the parents he needed from the start so that he never would have needed to live with us in the first place.
I suppose I should say that God is good, because he is. The pain I have had these past few years is real and it runs deep. Nothing else has ever cut me as deeply. Through it all I see the hand of a Father whose tears are deeper and more bitter than mine, and I see the wounds of a Lord who knows this grief and has borne it more fully than I could ever bear, not just for my sake but for Isaac's as well.
But let me also say this: In our hearts, Isaac is my son, and he is Evangeline's brother. There was never a chance that he would live with us, but we will never forget him. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
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