Bottled Water

Does anyone else remember the first time that they heard of bottled water? As a kid, water was like air. It was free. Actually, it is more fundamental than that. You don’t think of air being free, or costing money. It just…is. It is like a presupposition. You don’t question it. And water was like that to me. Of course, as a 7 year old asking for a cup of water at a restaurant, I didn’t think about the overhead costs of the cup, lid, straw, electricity to power the lights so I could see the cup, cost of plumbing to carry the water, cost of the sink…I just wanted a little water.I was incredulous when I first started seeing bottled water in restaurants and gas stations. “Dad, are they really charging money for water?” 

“Yes, but it is only if you get it in a bottle. If you ask for it in a cup, they don’t charge you for that." 

“Really? That is so weird.” 

That was too much for my young mind to grasp, so I asked for my water, “In a cup, please.” 

A few weeks ago, Gracie and I took a trip to Texas to move a friend to Huntsville. While we were their, we stopped by Dallas to visit some old friends of mine. We went to a place called Central Market, which is similar to a “Whole Foods” store (a chain of health food mega-stores.) Walking into the store, I stared in awe at shelf after shelf of bottled water. Bottled in interesting shaped, brightly colored containers, they came from all corners of the world. Some sparkling, some “still” (which I guess means, “not sparkling”) 

HILDON natural spring water from Broughton, Hampshire, England: AN ENGLISH NATURAL MINERAL WATER OF EXCEPTIONAL TASTE, DELIGHTFULLY STILL. 

SOLARES still natural mineral water. Producto de Espana. El agua que solo sabe a agua, tan pura como mana de la Naturaleza. (Which I will attempt to translate: “The water that only knows to water, so pure like the manner of the Nature.” Which might mean something really cool to people in Spain.) 

TyNant from Bethania, Wales. This one was cool because “Bethania” is kind of like the middle name of my niece and the name of my sister-in-law, Bethany. Also, the bottle was shaped like an irregular rock with a plastic cap screwed onto the end. 

MANIVA natural mineral water from the Italian Alps, which went so far as to list the temperature of the water at the source, and the electrical conductivity at 20 degrees Celsius. 

I started wondering. Is there really an ounce of noticeable difference in the taste of all these fascinatingly shaped waters? So I bought 6 of the most interesting ones, and conducted a taste test over the course of the next week or so. I carefully selecting a bottle, twisted off the cap, tipped the water to my mouth, and savored the liquid as I swished it meditatively around my mouth, trying to distinguish the subtly nuanced flavors of that particular water. What I found each time, not really very surprisingly, was that it tasted just like water. Actually what it tasted like was “money.” Because each of these water-flavored beverages cost well over $1.00 a bottle! 

None of these waters tasted any better than the water that could be found next to our Maple sugar house in northern New York State. After splitting wood for an hour, there was nothing, nothing! so refreshing as crawling down the bank, lifting the lid off the covered artesian well, and watching the crystal clear water bubble up through the sand about a foot and a half under the surface. I loved to stick my hand down into the skin-numbing coldness, and down into the bubbling sand. The water, when dipped into a cup, and raised to the lips, could not be chugged down, it had to be sipped because the water was intensely cold. It was delightfully refreshing, tasting just precisely like water should taste. 

And it was free.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Christian Smith was the Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor  and associate chair in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when he conducted a study on the religious and spiritual lives of American Teenagers together with Melinda Lundquist Denton.

They were trying to discover what the bigger picture of the religious and spiritual lives of U.S. teenagers looked like when we stand back and try to put it all together.

What they discovered was sobering.  Among most American teens, from a variety of denominations within Christianity and also across faith boundaries to other faiths, there was a consistent belief system, which was not even Christian!  It was this:

“A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life and earth.

God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions

The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.

Good people go to heaven when they die.”

This religion is so out of sync with the truth of the Gospel in so many ways it is staggering, but Smith emphasizes that this is the tacit, de facto religion of the majority of American teens regardless of religious affiliation.  Somehow I think that Thomas Jefferson would be quite pleased with the results.

The sobering thing is that as my wife and I inspected our own core of beliefs and practices, we discovered this same trend running strongly though our own assumptions and it has forced us to reassess what God was saying to us through the Canon, and realign our understanding with the truth found in His Word.

So I am thanking God for Christian Smith for helping me recognize myself as a closet deist, and turn to the one true Trinity for truth and help.

Citation: Smith, Christian. “On “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” as U.S. Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith”, a version of “Summary Interpretation: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” from Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith and Melinda Lunquist Denton, copyright 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. 

The Gene Particle?

"In a recent interview on his Mars Hill Audio Journal, Ken Myers talked to Craig Holdrege, co-author of Beyond Biotechnology. One of Holdrege’s key points is that scientists have moved well beyond the early idea that the gene is the “unmoved mover” that determines everything about an organism, and they now recognize that genes, too, have a history and are interdependent on other factors in the organism.

Thus falls yet another form of that enduring quest to find some point of changelessness that can account for al change. Thus falls, too, the entire technical effort to manipulate genes to undo human frailty.

Not that the quest will cease. Its motives are ultimately religious. Like every idolatry, it is restless, as it forges ever onward, hoping to discover, down some unexplored path, an Archimedean point other than the eternal Word in whom all things subsist."

Citation: Leithart, Peter J. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. January/February 2011. Page 5.

Common Criminal

This is an excerpt from an essay by Fleming Rutledge that puts me in my place:

“Sally…told some of her friends about an experience she’d had in a department store.  In order to appreciate this, you have to picture the department store and you have to picture Sally.  The store in question is fashionable and elegant.  Sally herself is fashionable and elegant, the epitome of aristocratic dignity.  She bought an expensive blouse at the store and took it with her in a shopping bag.  Unfortunately, the saleswoman had forgotten to remove the white plastic device that was attached to the blouse.  When Sally tried to go through the door, the alarms went off and the security forces pounced upon her. “Oh, my dear, how horrible for you!” cried her friends, listening to the story, “It must have been so distressing! Did you call your husband? Did you have your identification? Did you call your lawyer? Did you ask to see the president of the store?

“Oh,” said Sally, “that wasn’t a problem.  I didn’t have any trouble establishing who I was. That wasn’t the bad part. The really bad part was the feeling of being treated like a common criminal!”

Those were her exact words. Like a common criminal.  This is the woman who won’t go to the church in her neighborhood because it has a figure of Jesus on the cross and she doesn’t want to look at it.

Sally was able to tell the department store who she was; and yet the truth is that she does not know who she is. I tried to explain to Sally that the feeling of shame she had felt was a clue to the meaning of the death of Jesus, who was arrested like a common criminal, exhibited to the public like a common criminal, executed like a common criminal.  I was unable to put this across. She does not believe herself to be guilty of anything.  Wronged, yes; misunderstood, yes; undervalued, yes; imperfect, perhaps; but not guilty, certainly not sinful.  Because she believes herself to be one of the “good” people, because she could never, never commit a small sin like shoplifting, she cannot see the connection between Jesus’ death as a common criminal and herself.

Sally could not hear the message of Good Friday…but perhaps you can hear it today, on their behalf as well as your own.  When you reflect upon Jesus Christ hanging on the cross in shame, you understand the depth and weight of human sin.  How do we measure the size of a fire?  By the number of firefighters and fire engines sent to fight against it.  How do we measure the seriousness of a medical condition? By the amount of risk the doctors take in prescribing dangerous antibiotics or surgical procedures.  How do we measure the gravity of sin and the incomparable vastness of God’s love for us? By looking at the magnitude of what God has done for us in Jesus, who became like a common criminal for our sake and in our place.

When you really come to know the unconditional love and forgiveness of Jesus, then you will also come to know the depth of your own participation in sin. And at the very same moment (this is the glory of Good Friday) you will come to know the true reality, the true joy and gladness, of the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Rutledge, Fleming.  “The Common Criminal” in Bread and Wine – Readings for Lent and Easter.  Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY. 2003. Page 79-81

Samuel Johnson knows how to lay the smack down!

To the Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield

7 February 1755

My Lord

I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your Lordship.   To be so distinguished, is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, Upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address; and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre; - that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it.  What I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess.  I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour.  Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before.

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?  The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.  I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for my self.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord,

your Lordship’s most humble,

most obedient servant

SAM: JOHNSON

Citation: Johnson, Samuel. In Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings. Edited by Patrick Cruttwell. Penguin Books, 1968. Page 252-253.

The Future of the Book

The Future of the Book _ IDEO from uxd on Vimeo.

He's got me thinking...

In a recent blog post, the pastor at the church we are currently "investigating" says this:

"There is NOTHING, nada, not one-single-thing, not one-single-action, no intention, no inclination or smallest glimmer of our most minute desire that recommends us to God.  I’ll even up the ante one further: I actually believe that the very BEST things we’ve ever done – the most pious, most religious, most holy, most selfless act of obedience, with the purest motives we could possibly muster on the best days, if rightly accounted for, would be in the debit column of our lives, NOT the credit column." 

Citation: Jean Larroux III, from KNOTS, his blog on the Southwood website

Childhood on a Farm in Northern NY

I was raised on a farm. 

We had a large garden, a barn stuffed with cows, goats, chickens and cats.  A refrigerator and freezer filled with milk, cream, butter and meat from the cows, eggs and meat from the chickens.  Horses to ride, and pigs to have for breakfast. 

In the fields and woods that surrounded us were vast berry patches...blackberries and wild strawberries, blackcaps, blueberries and a cultivated patch of raspberries. Wild and domestic apple trees were carefully pruned by Dad in hopes of crisp apples for pies and cider. Deer ranged over our land.  A stream ran only feet from our house, with huge rainbow trout, and a constant supply of fresh water. There were numerous, vastly numerous springs all over our land, as well as the Salmon River that flowed, by turns lazily and swiftly, a boyhood playground of fishing, swimming and tubing. 

In our kitchen, partially for decoration, mostly for heat, and partly for cooking, we had an old fashioned wood cook stove in addition to our gas stove. A huge chest freezer filled with frozen meat and vegetables.  A pantry lined with canned vegetables and fruit.  A cellar with bins of apples and potatoes and carrots and onions, and a basement stocked with a winter’s supply of firewood.  

 My dad kept two beehives, providing enough honey for our family for the year. There were maple trees, where we collected sap to bring to the maple sugar house.  There we would boil it and make gallons and gallons of maple syrup, tubs of maple sugar, and have wonderful family times sitting and reading by the lantern light, which glowed cozily through the humid, sweet-smelling mist rising from the maple syrup pans. 

Add to all of that my dad and mom's unerring ability to "make do",  with what God provided, and you have a picture of the perfect childhood.  Not overburdened with money, but stuffed full of good times, and childhood security.

Thanks, Dad and Mom. 


Citation: David's memories.

Deliberate Living Recommended

Ken Myers, one of the most influential people in my life (via, primarily, his Mars Hill Audio Journal) says this about the focus of his work with the Journal:

"My work is really about producing thoughtful Christian faithfulness. If you start to think carefully about how you eat, how you spend time, how you think about place, all those things some people may think you’re trying to achieve salvation by works.  So my sense is that people with that kind of tendency, not just in the PCA, accept conventional ways of living from secular culture because they regard the effort to think thoughtfully and live deliberately as a kind of semi-Pelagianism.  And the idea that living deliberately is semi-Pelagian just baffles me.  Because when you don’t, you end up living in accordance with a very post-Christian, and in significant ways, anti-Christian culture."

Citation: Ken Myers, in interview with Walter Henegar

Relationship Wreck

Peter Leithart makes these insightful (as usual) comments on the tweeks in what we mean by relationships:

"British sociologist Anthony Giddens has commented on the rise of what he calls “pure relationships.” A “pure relationship” is one in which “the relationship exists solely for whatever rewards that relationship as such can deliver.” A pure relationship has no external anchors or supports, but depends entirely on the commitment of the two who enter the relationship. 

Today, for example, we distinguish friendships from working relationships and family relations, thinking of a friend “specifically as someone with whom one has a relationship unprompted by anything other than the rewards that the relationship provides." 

In recent decades, marriage has increasingly come to be seen as a pure relationship, one that is “initiated for, and kept going for as long as it delivers emotional satisfaction." This is not, of course, how marriage was understood in earlier centuries: “Marriage was a contract, often initiate by parents or relatives rather than by the marital partners themselves,"  and in the Church, marriage was seen as having a “sacramental” character, even when it was not technically understood as a sacrament. 

The dangers go even deeper, however, since American Christians often regard their relationship with God on the model of “pure relationship.” When an Evangelical speaks of a “personal relationship with Jesus,” he’s not talking about a liturgically and catechetically formed relationship, surrounded by the supports of fellow believers, rituals, signs, and texts.  He’s talking about self-standing, free-floating, pure relationship, one made all the more unstable by the fact that one of the parties is not visible."

Citation: Leithart, Peter J. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. June 2009. Page 5.

Reorganizing the bookshelf

My Espresso Trail

My first espresso maker (Kitchenaid) was pretty darn cool looking, but was the espresso-machine equivalent of an EasyBake.  Just wouldn't do what it needed to, and the grinder particle size adjustment was in huge jumps that wouldn't let you adjust the grind to pull a good shot.





My current set up is more than adequate!  I am not complaining at all.  Pulls great shots, the grinder is top-shelf, and can the boiler can turn the shots over as fast as I can make the drinks.

Nuova Simonelli Mac2000s machine with a caf and decaf grinder

So, my dad used to tell me that if I wasn't happy with what I had, then I would never be happy with what I wanted.  He was teaching me about being content.  So, I am happy with what I have.  I'm just saying that this is a nice espresso machine:

Victoria Arduino Athena double brew group with spring-loaded levers

Where am I going?

I like this quote that I found in a book of questions that Gracie and I have.  I, too, am comforted.

"There are parts of a ship which taken by themselves would sink.  The engine would sink.  The propeller would sink.  But when the parts of a ship are built together, they float.  So with the events of my life.  Some have been tragic.  Some have been happy.  But when they are built together, they form a craft that floats and is going someplace.  And I am comforted."

Sockman. Ralph W. We’re Finally Alone – Now What Do We Do?: More than 500 Thought-Provoking Questions to Energize Your Marriage. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton, Illinois. 1996. Page 96.

The Need for Jealousy

"Jealousy has a bad reputation, and so it is surprising that the Bible so often uses it as a positive quality.  The Lord’s name is “Jealous,” we’re told, and one of his key attributes is jealousy.  For contemporary readers, few things are more off-putting about the character of God than this.

For the Biblical writers, however, jealousy is not tyranny or sefl-centered, insecure possessiveness.  It is relentless, exclusive passion and commitment.  For Solomon in the Song of Songs, it is hard as the grave.  Once someone goes into the grave the grave doesn’t let him back up.  Jealous love is like that.  IT is “That aspect of love in which  love also does not give up what it claims” (Robert Jenson).

As an adjective or name, “jealous” is used in Scripture only of the Lord, because he is the only one whose love is undistrated by the possibility of more attractive lovers.  He alone reufses to let go of what he embraces. Our loves will be healthy only if we participate in and imitate the jealous love of God. In an age of sexual confusions, serial romance, and rampant divorce, we need more jealousy, not less."

Citation: Leithart, Peter J. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. July/August 2010. Page 6.

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

I'll give this guy the award for moxie, though misdirected.  Talks big, but I doubt he can back it up when the chips are down, as they eventually will be...well, he's dead, so they already are.  I wonder what he is saying now...

Out of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

Henley, William Ernest. “Invictus” from One Hundred and One Famous Poems, compiled by Roy J. Cook. Contemporary Books, Chicago.1958 Page 95.

Nothing more needs to be said

Flight Control

A bumper sticker frequently seen on the cars of people who think they are being good witnesses for the Lord proclaim, “God is my copilot.” These well-meaning folk must be totally ignorant of the actual chain of command on commercial or military aircraft.  The copilot is second in command! 

At least, I hope they are merely ignorant of what a blasphemous sentiment they are broadcasting, and not just being more honest than the average professing Christian today.  For the whole tendency of our sinful nature, reinforced by every influence of our contemporary culture, is to resume command. We want to keep Christ as Savior; we want his help in our daily problems; but we want to fly the ship.  This demotion of Christ from captain to second officer happens subtly.  It is not always visible to other (at least if we don’t advertise it on our bumpers). But its effects are disastrously real. 

One of my greatest fears for American Christianity in our day as it flies along with God as its copilot is not that it won’t continue to grow in numbers, resources, and influence, but, but that it will-and God will look at us and say, “So what?” we had better turn the controls over to the Lord Jesus and become the copilots ourselves; otherwise, we may spend a lot of time congratulating ourselves on the comfort of the seats in the cabin and the speed at which we are able to move, only to discover at the Day of Judgment that we’ve just been flying around in circles.

Citation: Williams, Donald T. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. September/October 2010. Page 4.

Dad’s Study

          My dad’s study was a small low-ceilinged room filled with shelves, a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet.  I don’t know why this seemed like such a mysterious, awe-inspiring room to me.  I do remember that for some reason we weren’t allowed to go in there by ourselves, again an opportunity for young lads to reveal their depravity. 

I remember going in there to ask dad a question, or bring him a mug of coffee from my mother, and furtively glancing around at the interesting looking shelves, or glancing into an opened drawer.  There were things that now seem normal, but to my young eyes looked like treasures.  An old SLR camera with a strange, Japanese name on it.  A pair of binoculars.  Marbles.  A kaleidoscope.  Books with unfamiliar titles.

The desk drawers were similarly enchanting.  Little cubbies for push pins and paperclips.  Many pens: fountain, ball and calligraphy.  Nibs and erasers.  The smell of those erasers, the type that are the consistency of rubbery chewing gum that you could stretch and pull apart, and then mash back together…smelling of graphite and rubber. 

That smell.  It almost magically pulls me back through time.  If I close my eyes and tune out the sounds of my own children, one making sweet sounds on the couch while she endures a full-body cast following hip surgery…the other downstairs shouting at the top of his lungs, pretending something.  If I could just close my eyes, and focus on the smell of the eraser that I have in my hand, I could once again be the little boy whose parents are outside in the garden with my brother.  I came in to “go to the bathroom” and while in the quite, cool house, I casually walked through the junk room and quietly pushed aside the green accordion door until I could slip into Dad’s office.  The quiet sliding of the desk drawer.  The clink of small metal objects as I sifted my fingers through my Dad’s possessions.  The smooth friction of the binocular focus knob as I looked through them out the small window toward the barn.  The bright circus of the kaleidoscope pointed out the window toward the bright sunlight.  The furtive putting back of everything, hopeful that Dad wouldn’t notice, and then breathlessly slipping out through the green accordion door and shutting it, having no idea I was creating an intense memory to be forgotten for 30 years, and then recaptured by the man I was to become, now with a growing volume of grey hairs myself, looking down at the twisted grey eraser on my desk, wishing I could become half the man, half the husband and father that my Dad was and is.

I look up and, hearing again the sounds of my own house, remember the 30 years that have come and gone and with a half-sad smile let the little boy that I was walk out of the quiet, cool house, into the bright sun and across the stream to help my family tend the garden.

Alternative French Press technique

I have been using a French press as my primary coffee brewing method for years.  I saw this video by coffeegeek.com, and thought that it was ludicrous...why go to all the trouble?  But, I decided to try it, and really liked the result: a stronger flavored, but cleaner tasting coffee.  I've been using it since I tried it.  

Anything's possible

And this proves it...

Historical Amnesia

"After a decade of college teaching, I've concluded that one of the key differences between good and mediocre liberal arts students is a sense of history.  This is something more, and more subtle, than a knowledge of events and dates.  It is the realization that the past had a past, and that the past of the past is different from our past.Some students get all the facts right, but for them history remains flat.  Alexander defeated the Persians at Issus in 333 B.C., and that’s that.  What they miss is the fraught background of earlier clashes between Greece and Persia; the miss Alexander’s passion for Hellenizing the world, fired by Homer and Aristotle.  They forget that issus, too, had a past.We are reminded that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. But “remembering” history by remember dates and names is another form of amnesia.  We learn the lessons history has to offer only if we nurture a pluperfect imagination."

Citation: Leithart, Peter J. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. July/August 2010. Page 7.

The Children’s Hour

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight,

When the light is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations

That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence;

Yet I know by their merry eyes,

They are plotting and planning together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret,

O’er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine.

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled my wall,

Such an old mustache as I am

Is not a match for you all?

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,

Till the wall shall crumble in ruin,

And moulder in dust away.

Citation:

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Children’s Hour” from One Hundred and One Famous Poems, compiled by Roy J. Cook. Contemporary Books, Chicago.1958 Page 94.

2005 Mens basketball championship

6 years ago today, UNC-Chapel Hill won the Men's Basketball Championship.  By a very strange confluence of events, ending in my son's 9 week NICU hospital stay, we ended up living in Chapel Hill during March Madness.  It was an eye-opening experience.  Previously, I had been almost completely unaware of college basketball, but during our stay in the NICU, we couldn't miss the fact that most people wore light blue and white, and were constantly talking about "the game" from the night before.

My wife and I got caught up in it.  Watching the games was a way to momentarily escape from the dreadful realities of what was happening to our little tiny son.

As it happened, I didn't watch the final game.  Andrew had died only hours before, and I wasn't up to it, to put it mildly.

But, over the last four years, the Tarheels basketball team has been a delightful way of remembering our time in Chapel Hill, and remembering our son.

I was hoping for a repeat of their win with Sean May, and later, Tyler Hansborough, but sadly their March Madness 2011 career only carried them to the Elite Eight.

So here is a short video playing the highlights of the 2005 game, from that memorable day of days in my life:

Grandpa Joe

When my Grandpa Joe died, I put an Estwing hammer in his casket. 

I remember standing there, looking at Grandpa’s body. I knew that he wasn’t there, and yet I wanted to tell him how much I loved him.  So I self-consciously laid that hammer next to his hand on the silky casket-lining material.  I was eighteen years old, and just graduated from high school.  Eighteen, and really much too cool to do something so childlike as putting a hammer in his casket. 

I look back now at that act of memorial, and am so glad that I mustered the nerve to do it despite the awkwardness.  That physical act materially anchored my acceptance of his death to my love and memories of my hard-working Grandpa. 

I remember his massive forearms and rough red hands engulfing a hammer handle. He swung his hammer with quick repetitive rhythm that I tried to imitate. It never seemed to work as well for me as it did for him.  Too many bent nails.

He never seemed to react to the cuts and scrapes that are the constant companion of a carpenter.  The blood that would often trickle from his hands secretly impressed me.  I tried to imitate his stoic manner to pain, but never seemed to manage it without a yelp. 

Grandpa was in his seventies, and could out-work my eighteen-year-old body to the aching point.  I was always impatient for 10 o’clock, when Grandpa took his morning break.  We had either coffee made in an old, tan-stained Mr. Coffee pot, or sometimes (my mind boggles at the thought) Sanka instant “coffee”.  Grandma set the coffee out on the red-checked tablecloth in white ceramic mugs.  Sometimes we had fresh fried cake doughnuts, or Ginger Snap cookies.  Sometimes long, rectangular, strawberry-cream wafer cookies.  I guess we ate whatever they happened to have on hand.  But no matter what, we always had saltine crackers with butter on them.  I remember Grandpa manhandling those fragile, square crackers, furiously buttering a stack of them.  Then one at a time, he crunched a cracker in half, chewing briefly.  Shoving the other half in his mouth, he washed each down with a gulp of coffee until only small white crumbs were left on the tablecloth.  He upended the coffee mug, draining the last swallow.

Standing up, he shoved his Estwing hammer in his pocket. “Let’s get back to work, lad.” 

Since our son Andrew died (six years ago today), Gracie and I have enjoyed hearing about little ways people have remembered Drewbaby.  One family planted a tree in memory of him.  A friend remembered him through an original piano composition.  Poems and free verse, and emails sharing how Drewbaby has affected lives.  I want to tell you in the middle of grief, these memorials of Drewbaby have been sweet and priceless to his Mommy and Daddy.  Thank you for remembering our little lad.

I expect that wherever Drewbaby is, Grandpa Joe is there, teaching him how to swing a hammer just right.

The model human

Edited by James K.A. Smith, After Modernity? is a collections of essays written by philosophers, geographers, theologians, and economists, each bringing their different types of expertise to bear on the phenomenon of globalization, each from the perspective of Christianity.  Here is a quote found in that book, in an article called "The Gift of Ruling" by John Milbank.

"Liberalism is peculiar and unlikely because it proceeds by inventing a wholly artificial human being who has never really existed, and then pretending that we are all instances of such a species.”

This is a sobering thought, not less so because it seems accurate.  What kind of society will be created when it is being created for creatures that never existed?  Any why are we heading there so fast, and without comment? 

Citation:

Milbank, John. “The Gift of Ruling” in After Modernity. Edited by James K. A. Smith. Baylor University Press, 2008.

Nietzschean view of "truth"

This is going to sound vaguely Wiki, and that is because it is.  I was looking up when Nietzsche lived to add to my timeline that I keep in my Circa (more on my timeline later, I am quite sure!) While there (on Wikipedia) I scanned down through the information and stumbled across this:

"Perspectivism rejects objective metaphysics as impossible, and claims that there are no objective evaluations which transcend cultural formations or subjective designations. This means that there are no objective facts, and that there can be no knowledge of a thing in itself. This separates truth from a particular (or single) vantage point, and means that there are no ethical or epistemological absolutes. This leads to constant reassessment of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual perspectives. 

“Truth” is thus formalized as a whole that is created by integrating different vantage points together."

Nietzsche and I would never be good conversation partners at all.  We could really only discuss what truth actually is, because our definitions are so different.  What I understand the abstract definition of truth to be is "That which corresponds to that which is as perceived by God."  I am one of those darn absolutists...there is "a thing in itself" and truth is not simply a bunch of perspectives on a topic.  The perspectives either correspond in actuality to that object, or they don't.  If they don't then they are not true.


You can see that Nietzsche and I might stumble over that point. But it might be fun, especially if we both had a bunch of coffee and were really riled up.


And, to be quite frank, I admire his mustache!





Citation:
Photo URL: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Nietzsche187a.jpg/220px-Nietzsche187a.jpg> Accessed 24 March, 2011.
Quotation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism> Accessed 24 March, 2011.