Back in the Office

29 December, 2003 at 4:14 pm (General)
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christmas is over and i’m back in the office. the company is good enough to give us extra time off at the holiday’s. half of us got christmas week; the other half get new year’s week. not a bad deal at all.

that being said, i have been out of touch. when i’m not in the office, i’m pretty much off-line (and no i didn’t get a powerbook for christmas. i’ll just have to keep saving my pennies.) last week there was no friday five, just a hint of e-mail, and no posts made or read. such is life.

christmas was christmas. a low key service @ hcf on the eve. grandma spoiled samantha beyond imagination. got to play some indoor soccer filling in for vacationing regulars.

so far my wish is coming true. while it wasn’t exactly a white christmas, be did have a dusting of snow that morning. and today it’s nearly fifty degrees. i know winter is still coming in earnest, but let me have this moment for now.

some of the best news revolves around the new year. two members of our hcf band (guitarist/vocalist/leader and his pianist/vocalist wife) have been called away to another church. good feelings all around. we’re all excited for them in this new opportunity. the reality, however, is that we are forced into some creativity at our sunday gatherings. cool!

pathmakers has been up and running again in anticipation of the new year. i’m excited. i’ll start to blog some details of our efforts soon.

no changes at my in-laws. rob is still with us. the stress among those caring for him continues to build. i think some frank (and dicey) conversations are in order.

hope all had a merry christmas.

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Friday Five

19 December, 2003 at 10:40 am (General)
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1. List your five favorite beverages.

milk, mountain dew, coke squishees, cranberry juice, newcastle brown ale

2. List your five favorite websites.

all for fun: popcap games, miniclip, nodwick, pvp, mac rumors

3. List your five favorite snack foods.

little debbie swiss cake rolls, grandma’s homestyle chocolate chip cookies, doritos, brownies, peanut butter blossoms (peanut butter cookies rolled in sugar and topped with a hershey’s kiss)

4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.

trivial pursuit, therapy, euchre, poker, warcry

5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.

last christmas, snowfight 3D, seven seas, diamond mine/bejeweled, & dynomite,

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Follow Thru

17 December, 2003 at 10:02 am (General)
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followthru.jpgat our pathmaker meeting last night we spent a while discussing the notion of “follow thru.” since there were three athletic guys discussing this, all of our metaphors were sports related: following thru on a golf swing, a baseball pitch, a kick, etc. follow thru is important for a power, accuracy, safety.

question for the blogging world (or at least the few who drop by here): do any non-sports related ideas/images/metaphors related to follow thru come to mind? our best non-sports effort had to do with following thru when swiping the mastercard, so the magnetic reader accepts the charge. the card readers at meijer are notoriously picky.

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Friday Five

12 December, 2003 at 11:00 am (General)
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1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?

absolutely. growing up in the south making sandmen on the beach is pretty cool, but christmas should have snow. but that’s it. spring would start january 1 if i had a say.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?

the ideal celebration is with family. we’d spend christmas eve at my parents, christmas morning at home, noon at kerri’s parents, dinner with everyone, games that evening at the landes’ home.

…that or snowed in all day with just the immediate family.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?

tree goes up thanksgiving weekend; bake cookies the next. growing up presents got opened on christmas eve. now we’re still sorting out what we want to do. every day samantha moves the snowman to the next number in the advent calendar.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?

not expressly associated with the holiday season. we sponsor a child thru both world vision and tijuana christian mission.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?

apple powerbook

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Whose Life Is It?

10 December, 2003 at 2:32 pm (General)
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our family situation has led me to ask a first question, one of those prior, foundational questions that affect everything built upon its answer.  we - and i say we not in a royal sense, but to include all of us affected - have been faced with grim decisions over these past months, decisions of life and death.  before making these decisions, one must first ask and answer this question:

whose life is it?

i had two knee-jerk answers.  the first was, "not mine!  i’m just the son-in-law, thank you very much.  i’m not the person to bear this responsibility. the buck stops elsewhere."  ok, so this was fear-motivated.  big deal; we’re dealing with scary stuff.

my second answer was, "why, rob’s, of course. isn’t it obvious?"  isn’t this what most of us would say?  isn’t this part and parcel of being autonomous, an individual?  i make my own decisions with regard to my own life.  if i am not able, then we move down the chain-of-command, like presidential succession.

and then i started to think…. perhaps the answer isn’t that obvious.  perhaps we aren’t as individual and autonomous as we’d like to think (or even as we wish to be) in this regard.  perhaps we’re not dealing with a heirarchy, but something else.

a man and woman are married.  the two become one flesh.  his body is no longer his, but hers; and vice versa. who, then, holds the authority in life and death decisions over the man, for we are talking only about the life of the body, not the soul which lives eternally.  the man, the individual; and then his wife in the event he is unable to make his own decisions?  or is the authority shared without regard to the man’s capacity?  if the two are one flesh, the latter seems more consistant.

let’s throw kids into the mix.  what authority might they have?  my children are my own "flesh and blood."  wouldn’t they then bear some of the responsibility for decisions regarding my literal flesh and blood?  how will this change when my children leave to be married, to become one flesh with another?

what about the larger community?  we who belong to Christ have been joined to his body.  he gave up his flesh and blood in order to adopt us as his children, as his "flesh and blood."  we are no longer individuals, but a part of a family, a community.  our individual lives are cannot be separated from the life of the community.  we belong to one another.  who, then, holds the authority in life and death decisions?  the individual, or the community to which the individual is a member?

perhaps this question is not as easy as it first appears.

any thoughts?

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So I Got That Going For Me

9 December, 2003 at 3:40 pm (General)
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gabe & i met this morning for the first time in a long time. between starting a new state farm agency (him) and family (me), we had to put our weekly breakfasts on hold for a few months. it was clear that both of us had been missing the friendship, the sharpening, the conversation.

after catching-up, we squoze (or should that be squeezed?) in some seriousness amongst the jokes. mostly we talked about sundays vs. wednesdays. (or large gathering vs. small group, or whatever other terms one might use.) one reality of being a small church is limited human capital. there are only so many people/hours to go around. our conversation focused on how to best allocate our capital as the communities primary teachers. for me, i am excited to be moving back into ministry, getting back into the things we began last year with pathmakers. my summer hiatus dragged on as i waited for family situations to resolve (jeez, that is a crappy euphamism, but i just can’t bring myself to say it straight). well, it’s time to get back in the saddle.

church is missional community. it’s great to be a part of it!

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Update on Rob

4 December, 2003 at 12:04 pm (General)

thought i’d give an update on my father-in-law. an mri performed just before thanksgiving gave only further confirmation of what we knew. the swelling in his brain has decreased, with the result that he has been more alert, more communacative. the cancer cells, however, continue to multiply and gather.

something kerri and i never thought we’d have to consider this year: what do we get him for christmas? we have the answer - kerri is knitting a scarf in the colours of his beloved worverines - but getting to the answer posed real problems. what could he actually use? how long will he be around to use it? how much do you spend (a legitimate question when on a tight budget) knowing he won’t be around long to use what little he can use? dare i say it: do you just not get him anything?

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Image Is Everything

3 December, 2003 at 2:13 pm (General)
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james of the northwest, one of the orthodox bloggers i read, shares this quote from leonid.ouspensky’s Theology of the Icon:

[the Icon] belongs to the very nature of Christianity, since it is not only the revelation of the Word of God, but also of the Image of God, manifested by the God-Man. The Church teaches that the image is based on the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. This is not a break with nor even a contradiction of the Old Testament, as the Protestants understand it; but on the contrary, it clearly fulfills it, for the existence of the image in the New Testament is implied by its prohibition in the Old…the sacred image for the Church proceeds precisely from the absence of the image in the Old Testament.

while ouspensky’s comments are probably correct for traditional protestant theology, it seems post-reformation protestant theology is recapturing a fuller understanding of Christ as the image of God, something never lost by our orthodox brothers.  the pendelum of image is swinging back.  old fears of image-sans-meaning are waning.  an appreciation of the power of image in a post-literate culture is driving protestants to a new-old understanding of image.

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