(The bedroom of apartment #205 Providence Mission Homes, Pasadena. Evening.)
WIFE
That's just not a satisfying answer.
HUSBAND
What?
WIFE
What you said last night about football.
HUSBAND
Huh?
WIFE
That it 'encapsulates life.' All the highs and lows and drama... That's not a satisfying answer to me.
HUSBAND
Oh.
WIFE
So help me understand.
HUSBAND
What?
WIFE
Why it's worth the risk! Why a 14 year old boy is willing to take the risk that he'll walk with a limp for the rest of his life just for the fun of it?!? Isn't life full of enough tragedy and danger and pain at the arbitrary - I mean permissive -- i mean loving will of God? Why are you willing to take the risks? I mean, I can see if you're saving people from a sinking ship, or rescuing children from flames, or stopping a rapist, or fighting a terrorist--but just for the fun of it? HELP ME HERE! I want to be supportive. I don't want to be hating you or shaking my fists at God if Tyler ends up in Emergency on a Friday night this fall!
HUSBAND
Honey.
He sits beside her.
HUSBAND
You are a woman. You will never understand.
WIFE
Try.
HUSBAND
You see we men want to kill people. We want to conquer things violently. We want to rape and pillage. We do. Sports just gives us a civilized way to get it out of our systems.
WIFE
...Oh.
9/19/2007
Autumn
A grey fog hangs a low shroud on the looming san gabriel mountains.
The signs of drizzle has left a moist covering on everything outside.
Gone is the dry heat of summer and the spectacular morning light and shadows
along the mountain range.
For the past 2 months the sight has daily taken my breath away.
my son Tyler, full of vitamin C, listerine and a box of tissues handy
has regretfully stayed home from school today.
he's not the only one.
i've noticed sniffles and hacking coughs in every public space.
but not me...yet.
i grab a cozy sweater, celebrating these seasons i've missed living on the equator
and head out the door on a new day.
The signs of drizzle has left a moist covering on everything outside.
Gone is the dry heat of summer and the spectacular morning light and shadows
along the mountain range.
For the past 2 months the sight has daily taken my breath away.
my son Tyler, full of vitamin C, listerine and a box of tissues handy
has regretfully stayed home from school today.
he's not the only one.
i've noticed sniffles and hacking coughs in every public space.
but not me...yet.
i grab a cozy sweater, celebrating these seasons i've missed living on the equator
and head out the door on a new day.
9/16/2007
A Sunday Morning Prayer for a Withered Garden
It's Sunday morning again in America and I wake early to thoughts of individuals I've met at the church we've made home for the year.
Almost to a person, I've met my peers in American church, and they seem to have withered souls. Burned out and resigned. Am I reading too much into it or is this discernment?
They all speak of having once been 'really involved,' but now they're not. As if it were a club. No one talks in language that has any hint of a Spiritual pulse that the living God indwells them. They seem resigned to live on the surface of their spiritual life while You, the depths of You, is calling to what is deep in them...and their children.
I wonder how much of our Spiritual lives are mirrored in our marriages. We are, as a church, the Bride of Christ, and these peers I'm sure were once passionate and full of hope in their walks with You. But now, down the road a dozen or more years, the experiences of life, and the affairs of the world, and the responsibilities of raising the children have all but killed our libido and turned our date nights into a chance to synch our planners.
And this leads me to wonder, how Lord are they able to impart the idea of walking intimately with you to their children? Praying with my children in the evenings as they go to bed is such a sweet time in our family's spiritual life, but I know that most others don't have this ritual past pre-school, and then church is something we go to on Sunday out of duty, or ritual, or habit. It's an "ought to." That's not going to win the children to a life of following you.
Lord, what am I to do about it?
I need fellowship. I need encouragement. I need You. I need them.
I refuse to give up and give in to middle aged spiritual languishing. I've come back to USA thinking this was a place to be fertilized and nurtured and now I'm grieving to find such a sorry state of what's passed off for fellowship and worship among Christians. With all our websites, and magazines, and infrastructure for communication, people don't really seem intimate with one another, or intimate with You. You've placed in me pastoral gifts that grieve for them but I'm not sure what to do about it except come to you...and type this prayer. For me writing always gets it off my chest. You take it and lead me in what I should do with this sadness, and this yearning to help, this conviction that it shouldn't be this way.
Lord, their souls are languishing.
Almost to a person, I've met my peers in American church, and they seem to have withered souls. Burned out and resigned. Am I reading too much into it or is this discernment?
They all speak of having once been 'really involved,' but now they're not. As if it were a club. No one talks in language that has any hint of a Spiritual pulse that the living God indwells them. They seem resigned to live on the surface of their spiritual life while You, the depths of You, is calling to what is deep in them...and their children.
I wonder how much of our Spiritual lives are mirrored in our marriages. We are, as a church, the Bride of Christ, and these peers I'm sure were once passionate and full of hope in their walks with You. But now, down the road a dozen or more years, the experiences of life, and the affairs of the world, and the responsibilities of raising the children have all but killed our libido and turned our date nights into a chance to synch our planners.
And this leads me to wonder, how Lord are they able to impart the idea of walking intimately with you to their children? Praying with my children in the evenings as they go to bed is such a sweet time in our family's spiritual life, but I know that most others don't have this ritual past pre-school, and then church is something we go to on Sunday out of duty, or ritual, or habit. It's an "ought to." That's not going to win the children to a life of following you.
Lord, what am I to do about it?
I need fellowship. I need encouragement. I need You. I need them.
I refuse to give up and give in to middle aged spiritual languishing. I've come back to USA thinking this was a place to be fertilized and nurtured and now I'm grieving to find such a sorry state of what's passed off for fellowship and worship among Christians. With all our websites, and magazines, and infrastructure for communication, people don't really seem intimate with one another, or intimate with You. You've placed in me pastoral gifts that grieve for them but I'm not sure what to do about it except come to you...and type this prayer. For me writing always gets it off my chest. You take it and lead me in what I should do with this sadness, and this yearning to help, this conviction that it shouldn't be this way.
Maranatha JV Sidelines - PreSeason
This was a rough weekend of football. Though we won our game today, there's still a lot of learning going on. Plus, as the news spread through the bus on the way to the game, and into the stands as the game got going, we were all a bit sobered by the news of last night's varsity game on the same field: 2 tragic injuries very early in the game to 1st & 2nd string Quarterbacks. They both went from the field to the hospital. Having recently met the parents of one of the boys, We're just heartbroken for them. (Lord, draw them to you, comfort them, help them process what has to be a devastating disappointment in a way that will make them stronger and more faith-filled and not bitter over it). Then, to cap off the day, ucla had an embarassing defeat in Utah.
9/04/2007
Fiction to Cook By
I'm loving my new iphone.For what it lacks in some features I frequently used on my Nokia,
(no sms 'groups' to send multiple people the same message, no lyrics, 'to do' notes in ical don't sync, no zoom on camera, being able to add a person's photo that's already in my phone as a thumbnail in my contacts, or assign a special ring tone to my special friends or groups, or sync family info - like kid's names or birthdays with the contact list...okay, okay, I know, I'm a geek)
this beautiful little tool makes up for what it lacks in being simply snazzy, delightful fun.
(ie. MAPS: it's really fun to be able to look up places when I'm lost -- like where's the closest In-N-Out Burger? -- and then get driving directions. Bored in a long line or while on hold. Stress no more! I can now watch the best on YouTube, and surf the web with a BIG GIANT screen that really does that 'expand thingy' when you need to zoom in on a detail you'd like to read)
But, most of all, I'm loving it mostly for having ready tunes piped into my brain again.
(Momentary whining: my former ipod crashed right in the middle of memorizing music for a concert the month after it's extended warranty wore out.)
The many uses of my ipod in Pasadena:
- I drop Tyler at school and explore another workout venue: the 4 miles around the Rose Bowl and adjacent golf course. All the while listening to the mind (and hopefully heart) altering book of Philippians.
- Tonight while cooking dinner, I had Meryl Streep in my head reading a John Cheever short story.
- The other day, while watering the plants outside, I listened to a new(ish) broadway musical BOMBAY DREAMS.
- I listen while driving to school to the gorgeous voice of Marcus Buckingham as he tells me the One Thing I Need To Know
- I have to stop in the hardware aisle of Target to have a laugh at the lyrics of the song GASTON from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
I set up a new gmail account and use it exclusively to email myself the lyrics to songs I'm learning. I refuse to have the onslaught of unread emails enter my iphone's domain. I don't want to be reminded at every glance that I have 574 new unread emails. So I'm now using the email function to be my 'music lyric library.'
(did i already write that I know I'm a geek?
Yes. A gorgeous geek is finding fun ways to add spice to life!)
there's no more.
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