Homage or Rip Off????

I really enjoy Chris Muir’s cartoon, Day By Day. Doonesbury remains my favorite political cartoon and Muir provides a helpful corrective from the right.

But having said that, he clearly ripped off this blog. (One character informs her husband in Iraq that she is having twins.)

40th Bash

The Taran household is now 2 for 2 in surprise parties for 2007. (See other one here).

Last Saturday, we threw a surprise 40th anniversary soiree for my parents. Months in the planning, we invited a few hundred people and came up with food, drinks, and music for a crowd.

The brides Kadie and Bonita did the lion's share of the work. Miguelito, Bartolo and I (spending our time tapping toes impatiently) were ill equipped to assist. In one feisty exchange, Bartolo called me to ask about the color of the table skirts. “Ummmm, that’s really not my area of responsibility, let me give the phone to Kadie” I replied. He then asked sarcastically “What exactly is your area of responsibility then?” Basically music and slides as it turned out. I got a local jazz group (with ties to our university) to play at the party and I also scanned in many pictures from their (secretly purloined) wedding album and from various family trips and over the course of our lives.

Family came in from across the state. Tommy arrived with his world famous chocolate fondue and the kids gathered around it looking just like goldfish at the water’s surface around feeding time.

The party was a complete surprise. Bonita proved to be an exceptional liar and came up with the idea of telling them we were going to have pictures made. So we all had an excuse to get dressed up and head out to the location in town. The kids also participated by telling granddaddy how much they wanted to go to the park (while it was 100 degrees) in order to keep him distracted. It is good when you involve your children in lies.

PT Girl graciously brought her camera and arranged several pictures with the various elements of our families. Everyone pitched in and helped a lot. I am still amazed that we kept the secret for so long.

Mom and Dad were shocked, but fell back immediately to their giftedness in the areas of hospitality and grace, they enjoyed themselves immensely as they got to spend three hours with old friends and family.

Growing up, my grandmother and mom both catered weddings throughout much of their lives. At the end of the gala Mom turned to me and said “I’m so glad that the next generation has taken over the organization of parties.”

Of such things, memories are made.

Once Upon a Time...

...there was a beautiful young Baylor co-ed and a handsome officer. A mutual friend set them up on a blind date. He thought that they might have something in common and hit it off. He proved to be very insightful.

They had a great first date, then a great second. They had the proverbial chemistry, covalent bonds that tied them together. Maybe it was because they’d each had rough childhoods. His parents split at a young age, and each of her parents had passed away by the time she went off to college. Maybe it was their common geography, growing up in tiny East Texas towns not two hours from one another.

But every love story has a threat, and this one is no different. He was in the Air Force and there was a war on. He would be shipping out in a few weeks. Starting off a dating relationship and then heading off to a war zone seemed a bit selfish and unfair. Could they bear to be apart for the one to two year tour of duty? She was 19 and he was 25, each far too young to assess clearly the situation as mature adults.

The rational thing was to wait until he returned and reconnect after a year apart. The irrational thing would be to get married to someone they had known for four weeks. It would be even more irrational to suggest that a marriage would survive with its two partners cleaved apart by the Pacific for an entire year.

But it is for moments like this that God placed our emotional center not in our head but deep in our hearts.

So they behaved rashly, some might say (some did say) foolishly. They put all their money on the roulette wheel and doubled down.

The ball just landed on 40.

Happy Fortieth Mom and Dad. You are both blessed and your three sons remain in awe of that reckless, crazy, irrational decision you made forty years ago today!!

Although we're obviously grateful.

Life Happens...

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Several things going on around here:

* Last Saturday night we had 7 (SEVEN!!!!!) girls between the ages of eight and twelve here in the house. Skeeter was celebrating her birthday and had three friends over while Scooter asked if she could have a friend or two over as well. We found a friend’s house to stash Squealer and his absence allowed the girls to roam free. We put them all to bed around twelve and Kadie woke up at 4 am to find the four younger girls (the 8 and 9 year olds) playing dress up. (One tyke, dressed as Wonder Woman, screamed in terror as an enraged Kadie flung open their door.)

* I’ve been trying to gather information about the last Pastor Search Committee at Lakeshore so I’ll have some idea of the church’s expectations. We should adopt a covenant tonight that I’ll post in the next week or so.

*Financial Peace University has begun and has exploded in popularity. I expected to have about seven or eight family units (a cumbersome term used to include singles) take the class but we have closer to twenty. So I’ve been having to track down additional materials for the class. Forty people out of an active membership of two hundred taking the class is impressive!

*I’ve been negotiating with Squealer’s guidance 7th grade counselor to rearrange her class schedule. She was stuck in choir but wants computer science and/or art. Unfortunately, I am vying for the counselor's attention with about 76,598 other parents.

*We’ve had some changes in our college that affect another department, but not mine. Despite this fact, I have some strong concerns about that department’s direction. I had to have a conversation with our Dean that outlined my concerns despite the fact that, at the end of the day, it is none of my business. I gave him unsolicited advice about what (I think) he should do and was concerned about how he would receive it.

*I received notice from the mother ship (the main branch of our university campus) that selected personnel files had been "compromised" at the main campus. Included in these files were faculty employed at my institution in the 2000-2001 academic year. That would be the year I started teaching, and mine were among those rifled through. Apparently opur main campus fire-wall is more akin to a soggy napkin.

*I’ve been working on another project that I’ll post about on Monday.

Oh yeah, classes start next week…

HSM2

The high point of the summer takes place in our home tonight. High School Musical 2 invades millions of homes this evening. Since we have both a Tween and a Tween wannabe, life in our household will stop between 7:00 and 9:00 CST.

Newsweek called the original High School Musical “The Grease of this generation.”

I think they meant that to be a favorable comparison.

So I have my earplugs in (because of my shrieking girls, not because of the quality of the music) and my own high school class of 1987 ring on.

Watching the movie will impute a coolness on me that will enable me to transcend the immense cultural gap between me and my kids.




Right?

The Unexpected

In a foolish turn of events, I have been elected chairman of our pastor’s search committee. We had not met as a committee for the last two weeks because a family tragedy kept one member of the committee away. Since first on our agenda was the election of a chairman, vice-chairman and a secretary, we decided not to meet again until we could each be present.

Last night we met and voted without taking any nominations. We simply filled out ballots for the three positions. It is not the role I would’ve selected for myself, but the members of the committee were very supportive.

In the days leading up to the meeting, I began thinking about the strengths of the various individuals in the group. I was going to give my thoughts to the new chairman, but will post them online instead. (I shared them with the committee after the vote took place and asked them to pray about them).

I designated a person to be a liaison with each of the following groups: deacons, stewardship and personnel committees, senior adults, and the church staff. I also designated one person to head up our devotional-prayer time and one person to be in charge of communication (both internal to the group and external with the church). I encouraged each member to pray about these positions of responsibility and I hope that they will use them to be a focus of communication with that particular group. I was especially concerned about designating someone to work with the senior adults and to make sure that they feel represented on our committee.

We also made a decision about the two alternates. The church by-laws state that the committee is comprised of 7 members and 2 alternates. There was some discussion about excluding the two alternates from the meetings unless one needs to be added to the committee. That seems to me to go against the rationale of having alternates because they would need to be brought up to speed if they were going to participate. Why not simply have the congregation vote on a new member in the event that the need arises?? So we concluded that the two alternates will participate in all of the meetings, but will not vote, nor will they travel to listen to any of the potential candidates.

Finally we decided to develop a covenant (sound familiar??) that will serve to guide us as a committee. It will address our commitment to unity, confidentiality and obedience. The Sunday after next we will share it with the church.

Any suggestions on what should be a part of a Pastor Search Committee covenant????

(Back to main Pastor Search Committee Menu)

It's Me, Baby!

I was always more of a Gary Trudeau and Bill Watterson guy than a Berkeley Breathed guy. But I think Breathed has always excelled at "Big Picture" ideas in the comics. As one example, here's a strip that seems very appropriate given the YouTube focus of today's generation. (you might need to click on it to read it). Or see the original post here.

The Lineup

Every member of our church had the opportunity to nominate someone for the Pastor's Search Committee. The only condition is that the person nominated had to consent to the nomination ahead of time. When the list of nominees came out, there were two surprising omissions. The only two members of the previous committee (from 15 years ago) still at the church declined to be nominated. Both would've been elected had they been nominated.

There were two concerns I had about whom the by-laws allowed to be nominated. First, two staff members were nominated. I think that staff members should not be allowed onto a search committee. It would be difficult to keep one’s own personal thoughts from getting entangled with what is best for the church. Second, there were two couples nominated. On a committee this size (7 members), I’m not sure it is wise to have so much influence concentrated in one family. Kadie was also nominated, but we didn’t think it was right for each of our names to be on the list, so she declined the nomination.

(As it turns out, neither staff member was elected to the committee. None of the individuals from the couples were elected either, so it turned out alright.)

So there were about twenty four people nominated for the committee. The following week, after much emphasis on prayer and fasting, the church voted. Each church member received a ballot and voted for seven candidates. The top seven recipients were elected to the committee and then the next two were designated alternates.

The committee is a good one, I think, though not quite as representative of the church as I would’ve liked. Particularly glaring is a lack of representation among the senior adults. The eldest member of the committee is in her early sixties. We have several large senior adult classes and I think we’re going to have to work hard to keep them included. Most of the rest of us are in our early thirties to mid-forties. Three of the members are in the young married class I teach. None of us are single and two of us are women. I’d like to see each of those groups represented more.

We’ve immediately been confronted with having to make a few decisions on procedure...

(Back to main Pastor Search Committee Menu)

A Few Days in Austin

Our clan descended on Austin, Texas this last weekend for four days of wonderful, relaxing fun with our family. During that time, in addition to the assortment of nephews and cousins, I got a chance to spend a lot of time with my brothers.

Bartolo (my older younger brother) is familiar to many readers of Coffeespoons. He and Bonita hold down the fort in Houston while he completes his dissertation and works for a university in another universe of prestige from my own (He works at the Boardwalk of higher education institutions while I spend my time on Baltic Ave.). Like his older brother (four years separate us) he’s following Dad into higher education (much to the regret of Dad by the way). Bartolo and Bonita raise the elegance level of any gathering they attend and are, as their pastor once said “two beautiful people.” I loved hearing on this trip how much Bonita is interested in evangelism—pretty much par for the course for Baptists, but they are both Presbyterian.

My other brother Miguelito is preparing for his third year of high school. His name has been oddly missing from this blog, due to his older brother’s oversight and the fact that we don’t spend as much time together as we should. I really want to work more on our relationship. He moved into the house (as a newborn) about the same time I moved out, an unusual dynamic that has worked against our relationship for awhile. But I suspect that will be changing.

We gathered at the home of my cousin Tommy. Tommy is four (or three, depending on who is counting) days older than I am, a fact he’s been reminding me of for the last thirty-eight years. We grew up twenty minutes away from one another and have shared birthdays and holidays for decades. We’ve (or at least I’ve) spilled blood with one another while hunting for scrap iron, been shot at while looking for rocks with my aunt, and have squished thousands of bagworms for homeowners (at 2 cents a piece) while in junior high. Tommy is the most giving person I’ve ever known, even sharing a kidney a few years back with his brother-in-law.

Tommy and his bride have been blessed with a tremendous gift of hospitality. We enjoyed the stay tremendously and left feeling extraordinarily relaxed. Much of our time in Austin was spent lazing around in their new pool, with gentle restfulness interspersed with frenetic moments of challenging, double-crossing, wrasslin’ as we battled to dunk one another in the pool. As I was struggling to "baptize" the recently turned 16 year old Miguelito, the thought crossed my mind for the first time: “My little brother is almost stronger then I am." Almost.

A wonderful time with family, the kind of setting where you can act more like yourself than anywhere else. Family can be a tremendous reflection of ourselves.