On Vampires and Make Up

Correctly drawing the line is our greatest challenge as a parent. Trying to carefully balance the two extremes of protection and independence is the most difficult task I’ve found. How do I decide what is too dangerous and what is acceptable? Working out the whole business of being as crafty as serpents and as innocent as doves is a pain in the neck. Certainly I pray for wisdom and seek counsel from others. Certainly I look back on my own parents’ child-raising techniques.

But then I wing it. Two examples.


Situation One:

The primary problem of course, is that my daughter Scooter is a lot like me. I grew up loving to read and throughout my childhood read fairly obsessively. Both of my parents (avowed readers themselves) adopted a pretty laissez faire approach and allowed me to read whatever I wanted to read. Kadie and I have been a little more tight reined in our approach, marking certain stories (mostly movies) off limits. But a situation arose a month ago that raised an issue for me.
Scooter told me she wanted to get a new book, the book Twilight. Many of her friends were reading it, a new movie was coming out about it, and it apparently was making quite a splash among the early teen world. I’m not sure why there was some familiarity with it, but I vaguely recalled hearing about it. After some checking around on the internet, I read up on the book.

It’s a fairly typical teen romance book, telling the story of a young girl who moves into a town and desperately wants to fit in to her new high school community. In the course of her arrival she identifies various social cliques and tries to decide the folks with whom she wants to build relationships. Then she meets a guy and they fall in love. The End. Pretty innocuous stuff, except for one problem.

He’s a vampire. Undead. Immortal and unliving.

So at what age should a kid start to read such fare? I had no idea. So, I read the book (a review will follow, at some point) and decided to let her read it. She’s in the middle of it now and we’ll have a conversation about it when she finishes.

Situation Two:

Unconnected (but not really) was the dreaded conversation about make-up. She’s entering the second semester of the eighth grade and high school is now for her more a reality than a distant dream. (It remains a nightmare for me, of course). So she’s gotten serious about wanting to try out make-up. This subject has come up a few times over the last few years and I’ve developed a pretty good line in response. I would always say “You look so beautiful without make-up, why would you want to cover your pretty face up?” But she’s no longer placated by that line and has now pushed me for a timeline. After some negotiation (she wanted to start wearing make-up today, I wanted her to start in her thirties) we decided that she would start this summer, to give her some time to experiment before high school begins.

I’m not too sure my exact motivations in each of these situations, but in each instance, to some degree, I recognized that I was the one with the greater problem. I don't want her to grow up. So each of these situations has challenged me in the area of letting go. I’ve seen the end result of holding on too long and it's not pretty. I have students in my classes at school whose parents never let them go and they end up at one of two unhealthy extremes. Either they go wild with their newfound freedom, or they bring their parents into my office when I advise them and try to speak with them about some of their life goals. It’s quickly apparent that they don’t distinguish themselves from their parents in any meaningful way.

Operating on the principle that we start with the end result in mind, then we have to cut the (insert metaphor of your choice: aprons strings or umbilical cord) at some point if we want to produce healthy, Godly adults.

On these two particular issues, the time is now.

Running the Race

In 490 BC, Pheidippides ran the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens to report the victory of the Greek army over King Darius' forces. After running the first Marathon and reporting the news, Pheidippides died.

Which explains why I feel half dead.

Kadie and I ran our first 1/2 marathon this morning, and lived to tell the tale. We ran the Chevron Aramco race in Houston, Texas. We've been doing some training for the 13.1 mile race, but Kadie's max run prior to this was 9 miles and mine was 5.

There's an entire running subculture that I really don't have a handle on. There are running clubs that ran together the whole way. Some people ran dressed as Winnie the Pooh (who could use a work out), Elvis, and even the Statue of Liberty. It was interesting. I saw several short shorts (on men, alas) that were in the design of the Texas flag. I couldn't decide if it was desecration or an homage.

The crowd of spectators was strange too. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of folks who come to the race and cheer the runners on. Surprisingly, one cannot underestimate the encouragement of perfect strangers. Our identification tags (referred to as "bibs") included our names. On numerous occasions strangers yelled "Great job, Taran!" as I went by. It felt a little like Norm walking into Cheers.

I've never been the biggest fan of Houston, but the 1/2 marathon was a great way to see a lot of neighborhoods. Many people came out on their porches and waved at us with their free hand while clutching mimosas (or beers?!) in their other. It was 7:30 in the morning. My brother Bartolo talked us into running this a few months ago and I'm glad he did. (Although he did leave us far behind him early on in the race.)

Looking Ahead

My childhood was blessed in many directions. One memorable area of blessing was in family vacations. A few stand out.

Around the age of six my parents took us to California to visit some cousins and to see Disneyland. A few years later we visited Colorado and traveled the mountains to Ouray and Durango. Lastly, my junior year in college we took a trip to Washington DC. In between these larger trips we traveled on more regional excursions to various places in Texas and Arkansas.
And so we try to pass that blessing on to our own kids, hoping that they will enjoy well the full range of God’s Creation…or at least the part we can affordably reach. We’ve taken them on large trips to Colorado, Virginia, and Turkey and look forward to future trips.

This year we decided on a ski trip to New Mexico and made a couple of decisions that affected the trip. First, we decided to extend the kids’ Christmas vacation and to cut into their return to school. So we planned to ski the Saturday, Sunday, Monday of the weekend preceding the beginning of school. Although this cut into their return a bit, it guarantees fewer skiers. Despite my affinity for education, school attendance isn’t sacrosanct. This also allowed us to take our time getting out there. Since none of our kids have ever seen snow in any accumulation, we wanted to give them a chance to enjoy it before they skied it.

Our second decision was to go with another couple from church. Like me, Rob works for the state (although not at my institution) and Laura is a nurse like Kadie. They also have a little boy who is a couple of months older than Squealer as well as a two year old daughter. Frankly, they are among the few couples who could identify with the typical normal state of chaos surrounding our family. Our decision to travel with them cut our costs substantially.

Rob is an organizer and handled the lodging logistics throughout our trip. I, to put it mildly, am not. I did cook all the meals ahead of time so we wouldn’t get gouged by the locals. We rented a 15 passenger van and stuffed the nine members of our families into it.

We threw Squealer into ski school for 2 days and the girls for one. And they all took to it well. Kadie and I skipped ski school, but spent a day anyway remembering how to ski. It took two of full days for us to regain our skiing “skills,” which had lain dormant for twenty winters.

The second day we took the girls out and were amazed at how quickly they picked it up. Scooter took a few more chances and thus bit the dust snow more often. Skeeter, normally the risk taker of the two, was slow and steady and rarely fell down.

The third day we took Squealer out and worked with him. They teach the kids to either keep their skis in a “pizza” (a wedge) to slow down or to keep them “French fries” (parallel) to speed up. (I’m unsure what this says about the contemporary dietary status of most Americans that five year olds understand this language universally). But the effect is humorous.

As Squealer scooted down the slope, I followed behind him and constantly yelled “Pizza!” or “French Fries!” depending on his rate of speed. To an outsider it must’ve seemed like I was threatening him with a high-carb diet. Squealer invariably accelerated beyond his capacity to control his direction and I would have to shout at him to “Sit Down!!”which resulted in several spectacular crashes.

Squealer rarely does things halfway. He took to skiing quickly, but when he crashed, he did so with gusto. In one particularly tremendous show, he disappeared into a cloud of snow and pinwheeling skis as he lay motionless for a moment. Then he looked up at me and shouted “That was AWESOME!!” to the delight of the assembled skiers.

On the third day all five of us skied some blue slopes, definitely Squealer’s favorite. But still, it’s a sobering vision to see your five year old scooting past you at breakneck speed.

But the most beautiful memory of the trip was on a long green slope where the five of us were skiing by ourselves. Soon after we started, there began a gentle, but substantial snowfall. Flakes as large as nickels danced around us as we skied along our solitary path, looking at gorgeous evergreens graced with snow.

After a few minutes taking in this breathless beauty, Scooter stopped us and said “Daddy, it’s just like we’re inside a snowglobe!”

Looking ahead, I hope we’ve burned some family memories into their childhood.

I have a few pictures to inflict on you.







There’s nothing quite so strong as the bond between a boy and his tumbleweed. (Squealer at a rest area in the Texas panhandle).















Dalhart, Texas takes great pride in a large tile encrusted bovine that stands guard over highway 87 in front of a Valero gas station. When our kids saw it, Scooter immediately christened it Starbutt.
(I wonder if it's visible on Google Maps? Yep!)





Scooter (left) took some incredible pictures .

Looking Back

January is named of course, for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces , always gazing in two directions. So maybe January is a good time to look back and look ahead.


Looking Back


My grandmother died the Sunday after Christmas. She was 93 and led a full and generous life. I was asked to share a eulogy, which follows:

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.


Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

I thank you for coming today as we share some memories of Sylvia McGeorge, or as I knew her, Grandmother.

Some of the happiest summers of my childhood were spent in her house. I think what made those summers so happy is that they were so distinct and separate from the rest of my life. Her house was a place where the normal childhood rules didn’t apply.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.

For example, bedtimes evaporated as soon as my parents left the driveway. My brother and I could stay up as late as we wished, with no consequences to our actions.

Medicine was very different. Whenever I acquired a sore throat, grandmother’s remedy of choice was brought a combination of brandy and honey, a far cry from my teetotaling home. “Well, what do you think is in cough syrup?” she would say when pressed. (Of course, the result was an increase in sore throats whenever I spent some time with her.)

Next to her home, a magnolia tree grew that was as high as any sequoia. Kid limbs scrambled over tree limbs as we raced each other to the sky.


One of her “jobs” was to prepare for Wednesday night meals at First Baptist Church. In a move that OSHA would no doubt denounce, she let me open the huge cans of tomatoes with a table mounted can opener. I still remember as a six year old, lifting it as high as I could and then slamming it down on top of the cans and then turning it slowly around.


Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.


She had a couple of rocking chairs with a swing on the front porch of the house. For the only times in my life, I would spend summer evenings just rocking and swinging.

She was the first person I knew who owned a large freezer, which she kept well stocked with Popsicles. We could go get one whenever we wanted, and didn’t even have to ask. She also had an old fashioned coke machine with coke bottles. It was too big for me to slide the bottles down and then pull them through the top, to get them out. But she never tired of helping me to retrieve an icy cold beverage, not matter how close it was to bed time.

Grandmother also loved music. 45 Records were in abundance. Lawrence Welk and big band music of days gone by always accompanied me as I walked from room to room at grandmother’s house. There was no Time-Life record offer she could resist.



Mornings followed a predictable pattern. Captain Kangaroo was on in the morning, followed by the PBS duo of Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Then we transitioned to adult fare as Bob Barker always showed us that the Price is Right. But then there was a large gap in the day. Grandmother would always say, "Now its time for my stories”by which she meant The Guiding Light and As the World Turns (Or, as one of my cousins called it, "As the stomach turns"). During the soaps, we would go out and play, knowing that grandmother wouldn’t come looking for us until late afternoon. By then, more interesting things would be on as we resumed control of the TV at 3:00 when Gilligan’s Island came on.

Grandmother loved dominoes. I was too young to follow the complicated math involved in adding up to five, but from my earliest age, I was mesmerized by her ability to shuffle them on the special domino table she owned. No dealer in Vegas could match her manual dexterity. Their rhythmic clicking together is a sound I still recall to this day. She could turn and talk to me while she shuffled them without even looking at the table. When she felt like showing off, she would point and send me on an errand while she continued to shuffle the dominoes with her other hand.
Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

It was a place without room for corporal punishment. Although she did threaten to “blister our bottoms” (whatever that meant) I don’t ever recall being spanked by her. Her punishment of choice was to make us hug and kiss when we couldn’t get along with one another.

Perhaps best of all, grandmother’s home was a place where you got to see your own father get scolded from time to time by his mother. What kid wouldn’t want to see that?!

Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

Although she lived on East Avenue, some wag added an “F” to the the street sign so it read "Feast Avenue." But that was still appropriate, as Grandmother's house was a place where food was abundant. By the time I came along, she had been a caterer for decades.

She was an artist, and cake was her most savory medium. As she prepared her wedding cakes, she would have to level them (for proper stacking I suppose). After they came out of the oven, she would take a bread knife, turn it sideways, and shave off the top, ever so gently. Cake slices, a big around and as thin as plates. I would gather in the kitchen as she would stack these perfectly formed, slivers of heaven. With eyes the size of saucers I awaited them and then I did eat them. And lo, they were good. Very good.

She had a long table with multiple folding chairs. I recall receptions that seemed to seat hundreds (but probably more like 40 or 50). The aroma of food, the clinking of glass, and the hurried elegance of the wait staff as they did her bidding are etched into my earliest consciousness.

She fashioned tiny roses made out of white icing that she pressed into molds and stuck on wedding cakes. She would make sheets of these on wax paper, hundreds of them, and put them in the freezer until she needed them. I could fit about five of these into each of my hot little hands and pop them into my mouth to consume them in a few bites. The ensuing sugar rush would be sufficient to get me through even the slowest of summer days.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

The Bible shares about a very special grandmother. Timothy had a grandmother who was so remarkable that Paul mentioned her in one of his letters.

"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also."

Paul succinctly identified the defining characteristic of good grandmothers: their influence on the generations to come. And like Lois, my grandmother passed on a legacy of faith to her children and her grandchildren.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

She didn’t have an easy life. She raised my father and aunt as a single mom during decades when that still carried with it the odor of scandal. But she picked through the difficult times and discussed them only when pressed.

My fondest memory of her is also one of the oldest. Grandmother purchased for me a sticker book, full of outdoor scenes. All the stickers were in the back and I had to search them out, lick the gluey side, and then stick them to their appropriate place in the book. I worked on it with all the focus a six year old could muster. On this particular day, grandmother was vacuuming the room while I busied myself.

One of the stickers was a bee. After carefully tearing it out from the back of the book, I accidentally dropped it on the shag carpet below. Having the attention span of a tsetse fly myself, I quickly went on to the next sticker. Several minutes later, my grandmother’s vacuum noisily inhaled my bee sticker while I continued to work. It was only a few minutes later that I realized what happened and I began to cry.

Really cry. In fact, I was in six year old, full liquid meltdown as I wept over my lost bee. Seeing my sorrow, she turned off the vacuum and then quickly learned the cause of my sadness. She assured me that it would be ok. Grandmother left the room and returned with the morning newspaper. She carefully spread out the pages, opened up the vacuum canister, and then dumped the contents of the vacuum onto the paper.

I can still see, with my six year old eyes, grandmother carefully working through the dust, dirt, and the hair as she sought the paper bee. After several minutes, she triumphantly held aloft the paper bee and returned it to me. Like the woman who searched for the lost coin, my grandmother's eyes twinkled as I stopped crying and joyously held my bee that had been lost.

And in this way, memory becomes metaphor.

Grandmother was always wading through the difficulties and the filth of this life to help and care for those she loved. I will miss her.

And now it’s her turn.

Now she is the one who has gone on to a different place, a better place.

Those of us who love her are impoverished by her absence, but were made far richer by her presence.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

Several years ago she shared a poem that she wanted read at her funeral. It follows.

After Glow

I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun
of happy memories that I leave when my life is done.


I will miss you, Grandmother.






(Grandmother and Squealer, August 2003)

Family Road Trip!

We’re on the road with the family, doing some skiing in Angel Fire, New Mexico--our first extended vacation in about four years. After several days on the road, we arrived this afternoon and checked into our condo. We’re sharing space with a couple from our church who has a son Squealer’s age and they’ve booth kept the trip hopping.

The kids have never been skiing before, indeed they’ve seen snow only a few times. So we arrived in northern New Mexico yesterday so that they could play in the snow. After a day of that, we were all ready to arrive this afternoon.

We’re throwing all three of our kids into ski school tomorrow while Kadie and I try to relearn skiing ourselves. The only skiing we’ve ever done was almost twenty years ago on a BSU trip while we were still courting.

It should be interesting.

Only Nuns Change Habits Overnight: A Review

Karen Scalf Linamen has written a fun and helpful book on how women should initiate positive changes in their lives.

She argues that every woman longs for change in some area of her life. Unfortunately, fear, fatigue, adversity, heartbreak, past failures, and even the choices of other people get in the way and make lasting change seem out of reach. Having been there herself, Karen Linamen knows exactly how to take readers from where they are to where they want to be.

In Only Nuns Change Habits Overnight, she examines 52 powerful readers can apply to any change they long to embrace. Her insights apply to career, finances, personal health and fitness, relationships, faith—in fact, every facet of a woman’s life.

Blending humor with sage advice, Linamen shows readers the link between dissatisfaction and transformation, how to remodel habits, the little-known truth about procrastination, how to generate the energy they need to pursue the life they desire, how to benefit from options and resources they never dreamed they had, and more!

Linamen combines humor and wisdom in an entertaining read that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I only have a couple of drawbacks about this book. First, it is completely aimed at the female population. Almost all of the examples pertain to women and, let’s be frank, it’s the only pink covered book on my bookshelf. Second, some of the information is rather trite. “Watch an uplifting movie” is among the more pedestrian pieces of advice. But despite those minor points, I recommend it.

Christmas 2008

This was probably our busiest Christmas season yet, though I’m certain we will go for the record next year. We had a flurry of Christmas parties (two work parties, one Sunday School party), two church musicals (Children and Adult), assorted school musicals (one for Skeeter, two for Scooter), two family get togethers, and a partridge in a pear tree.

We spent time with my brother Bartolo who is wrapping up his dissertation and looking for a job (in a stellar job market) and his bride Bonita, who continues to encourage him at every turn. We also got to see my other brother Miguelito who is eying college next Fall.

After the family party with them, I had a shocking return to the real world with our notice of budget cuts. These cuts kicked our department’s tail and led to the release of several adjuncts. The number would’ve been greater, but several of our full time faculty offered to teach an extra class (called an “overload”) without receiving additional compensation. We then had to reconstruct the Spring schedule based on all of these changes. I made my last call to an adjunct on Christmas Adam.

We then turned our attention to Christmas Day lunch. We had a house full for our Christmas meal. My parents and Kadie’s sister and her family were coming over, but somehow that didn’t seem enough. I hope that hospitality ranks among the treasure of traits they’ve passed on to myself and my brothers. Growing up, Mom and Dad always had an open house for the holidays, often including others who had no options. We decided to practice hospitality by inviting four families from our university who were from foreign countries and didn’t really have any family in our area.

So we had one couple from New Zealand, one from Canada, one from Taiwan and one from Hungary. The accents (including my brother-in-law’s rural drawl) were fascinating to hear. Factor in all of the kids and we had around 30 people under our roof. Fortunately, the weather cooperated, so we kicked most of the children outdoors to the trampoline and soccer field (a Christmas gift).

Not all of the families are Christians, so perhaps we can build some relationships that might bear fruit down the line. A different, but still an interesting, Christmas. I hope that you enjoyed Christmas with your family.

Book Review: Living Rich For Less (and a chance for free books!)

Readers will recall that personal finance greatly impacted our family a few years ago. Because of the financial peace of mind that came out of that experience, I remain interested in culling good ideas from other financial guides who may be out there. I’m reaching the conclusion that there are just a few excellent ideas of building and maintaining wealth. The only difference in many of these books is the packaging. Or to put it another way, we all know that we should save more and spend less, the question is how do we do it?

Recently I was asked to write a review of another personal finance book entitled Living Rich for Less: Create the Lifestyle you Want by Saving and Spending Smart by Ellie Kay. In this work, she shares a personal narrative of her and her family of seven going from $40,000 in debt to a surplus of savings in just a few years. She then offers you the reader the opportunity to do the same.

Kay’s work divides into three parts:

Part One: Giving Ten Percent

Part Two: Saving Ten Percent

Part Three: Spending Smart the Other 80 Percent (Yes, it should be smartly)

In Part One she addresses the concept of giving 10% of your income away. Giving is a tough sell in contemporary society. And although this book is from a Christian publisher, she (rightly I think) addresses the larger society as a whole. So while she mentions the tithe, she doesn’t end the discussion by simply saying “It’s in the Bible, so do it.” She takes a careful look at the value and benefits of giving away. She ends the section with a “Green” chapter in which she argues that green living (changing incandescent lights for CFL bulbs, recycling, etc)

In the second part of her work, Kay addresses the issue of saving 10% of your income. She looks at the various saving and investing options and includes chapters on debt, FICO score. She concludes this chapter with advice on how to put together a simple budget. There is some good advice here, but there is some tension I think between decrying debt and arguing that we should increase our FICO score.

In part three, Kay explores how we should spend 80% of the income. This is the strongest section of the book. In it, she offers practical guidance on how to save a great deal of money on insurance, shopping, vacations, and home ownership. Kay claims that if you follow her advice you could save $30,000.00 a year. (Which I suppose is technically true, though you'd have to be painfully clueless to be overspending in so many different ways).

Overall this is a helpful book. It hits the high notes of personal finance, but doesn’t offer much beyond the basic advice. For Kay (or anyone else) it is important to spend less than what you make, get out of debt, and save for emergencies, college, etc. Kay is a fun writer who includes in her advice numerous perconal anecdotes that flesh out her concepts.

The greatest strength is in its practical tips. She provides numerous websites, helpful hints on how to shave costs for gifts and many other examples of practical advice. This section alone makes the book well worth its cost. The college savings material is incredibly helpful. (Biggest hint: College savings starts in high school with good grades, AP classes, and dual enrollment).
If I could only buy one book on personal finance, I would still go with Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover . But Kay’s Living Rich for Less would be my number two purchase.

The biggest drawback for this book was the subtitle. It should be “create the lifestyle you want by giving, saving, and spending smartly”. There should be an adverb at the end. (Insert Kadie eyeroll right here.)

I tell you what. In these uncertain times, I would like to offer a couple of free copies of this book. The first person who posts to the comments the critical event that triggered our decision to begin Dave Ramsey’s plan will get a copy of this book. (I narrate our financial struggles here).

Then the next person who posts the last debt we paid off in our debt snowball will get the other book.

I’ll try to get it in the mail immediately and perhaps it will be at your doorstep by Christmas.

The Axe Falls

A tough few days all across our campus. In addition to the normal end of the semester shenanigans, we are operating under some pretty severe state imposed budget cuts. We have to implement these cuts mid-year and are in the process of prioritizing programs and (adjunct) faculty. Public universities are in a double bind when it comes to recessions. During most recessions, enrollment in state colleges and universities rises as parents can no longer afford to send little Johnny to more prestigious institutions. In addition, workers who have been laid off will return to college to gain additional skills as they retool for future employment. So at the time when enrollment swells, we have to cut back on the number of sections being offered. Irony abounds but money doesn’t.

Although our campus has been through difficulties like these before, it is my first time to experience them in a decision-making position. And it’s a much different perspective. I had to recommend a list of adjunct faculty to be cut for this semester. Part of the challenge is balancing needs. The needs of the students come first of course, but there are also the needs of some adjuncts to, you know, eat. And their regular income was supplemented by income from teaching that they were counting on. But we're not given any idea ahead of time how many positions we should cut. So, like Gideon sending men to the river, we will start whittling down until we are told to quit. We should find out over the next couple of days how this will pan out.

And apparently we have much company, including some colleagues in at least one of our Southern Baptist institutions.

It makes for a tough week before Christmas.

When Two Stories Collide

They had me at the headline:

Somali Pirates in Discussions to Acquire Citigroup


HT: Andy McCarthy

Kilkelly

Sorry for the delay. The end of the semester approaches with the force of an oncoming tide. Making time an even scarcer commodity is my foolish decision to take on a thespian role in this year’s children’s choir Christmas musical. So as is often the case, a lack of blogging is due not to the fact that too little is going on, but rather to the fact that too much is going on.

Longtime readers (both of you) will recall that I’m a sucker for good narrative. One of the better stories I’ve heard in awhile was in a recent song. While listening to the Irish and Celtic podcast a few months ago, I had to slow my run to a walk and listened transfixed to a song called Kilkelly, Ireland. The song was written by Peter Jones, an American who discovered a series of letters that belonged to his great grandfather, an immigrant from Kilkelly, Ireland. His ancestor had left his childhood home of Kilkelly to travel across to the United States. Peter wrote the lines directly from his great grandfather's letters and composed a tune for them.

It is a haunting song, one that reminds the listener of the tremendous sacrifices that emigrants form every generation must undergo. Of course, as Believers, the notion of the immigrant is one of the most common themes in all of Scripture, ranging from Moses’ description of himself as a stranger in a strange land to (a different) Peter’s description of the church as strangers and aliens. It reminds us that our faith has made us landless and looking ahead to the far country, to the one place we can truly call Home.

But it also makes you want to hug your family a little tighter at Christmas.

Here’s the requisite Youtube embed of the song. I suggest you minimize the video and just listen to the music. The song is grand and tender. The video is neither.

The Contract

This is week three of the Long March in our household; similar in many ways, to its historical antecedent (except, you know, without all the communism). A couple of times a year, Kadie takes out a contract at her hospital and commits to work more often than normal.* Normally she works for two shifts a week which allows us to meet most of our financial goals at this point. But there’s little $$ extra for things like major household and vacations. One of the frustrating elements of my own job is that I cannot really pick up any extra work. (Unless I moonlight at Chili's).

So during such times, Kadie bites the bullet and signs a contract in which she guarantees that she’ll work 40 hour weeks for the specified duration. Most of the time, these contracts are 6 weeks in length, but these are great days to be a Registered Nurse. Hospitals are desperate for their services and are grateful for any hourly scraps that nurses can provide. So Kadie has signed up for a four week stint.

So that explains the “Why?” but not the “How?” Whenever she signs one of these contracts, our household goes into lock down mode for the duration. Adding to the difficulty of these days is that fact that with this particular contract, she’s working the 11 pm to 7 am shift. So on a good day, she arrives just after the morning rush to get the kids off and goes straight to bed. She then sleeps until the kids start to get home at three, giving her a nice 7 hours of sleep.


Only it never works that way. First, in most instances, a busy night has pushed her morning arrival as late as 10:30 am. Then there are those mornings when there is street construction going on outside the house. We’ve also experienced multiple visits from assorted judges and representatives in the days leading up to the recent election who were out “courtin the electorit”. Lack of maternal sleep leads to increased tension for all.


But enough about her. These contracts are tough on the rest of the family. The kids (and the husband) have to be a little more self motivated than normal. Mornings are particularly eventful. Scooter wakes up Squealer at 6:00 and prepares him breakfast while I hit the shower. Then I fix his lunch while she fixes her own. At 6:40 we wake up Skeeter. Then we get dressed and three of us hit the door to get to Squealer and Scooter’s bus stops. I then return to make sure Skeeter is progressing well. At 7:30 she hops on her bike and I leave for work. I drive by her crosswalk to make sure the guard is there and then head for my own school.


The evenings are filled with homework and house cleaning. I try to pick up the slack because Kadie only has a limited amount of time with the kids. We’ll all be glad when the end of the week hits and her contract ends.

*I’m well aware that the phrase “taking out a contract” has a Mafioso connotation. I’m sure that this is intentional. In my experience, with both a hospital contract and a mobster contract there is a high probability that someone will die during its duration.

Cross Posting

No time for a full blown post at the moment. I do note two cross posts.

First, David Rogers continues to take a ball-ping hammer to my fragile views on ecclesiology in an excellent SBC Impact post.

In addition, a good friend of mine from seminary stole referenced the blog post “Deep Waters Ahead” in a sermon this last Sunday. He tells the story here.

True feelings

This morning, Squealer wandered through the house shouting my name. When he finally found me he said “Daddy, Scooter called me weird!” Now weird is one of those nebulous words that is highly discouraged, but not actually forbidden in our house. Still, it’s unusual for Scooter to use that term with her brother. But clearly it was a situation that I had to address.

When I went into the living room I found Scooter sitting on the couch reading a book. I said “Scooter, did you really call Squealer weird?”

Without raising an eye she shrugged and said “Somebody had to finally let him know.”

Guest Post

In the range of mountains that form the tectonic presence of the Southern Baptist Convention on the internet, the Mount Everest of publications is a site known as SBC Impact!. Judging from today’s lead article, their editorial screening process needs some serious revision.

Deep Waters Ahead

Over the last few weeks, I’ve shared some special moments with my kids. With the small perspective that being a parent for 13 years provides, I know that these moments are fleeting. The brevity of childhood hit me years ago, the first afternoon I arrived home from work and Scooter didn’t meet me at the door with a shrieking “Daddy’s Home!!!!”

What I’ve long known in the abstract I’ve now witnessed in the concrete: kids grow up. Even worse, my kids grow up. So over the course of the last month, I’ve had three experiences that I know won’t last much longer. I feel like I’m walking from the shallow end of my kid’s childhood to the deep end of the pool where teen years and adulthood lie in wait. My toes can still touch the bottom, but not for much longer.

We’ve recently wrapped up soccer for the second season and the kids all loved it. But unlike last year, Squealer seemed to finally get the point of the game this year. He scored his first goal in his first game. A writhing, amazing shot as he fell down under a heap of defenders. As he scored the goal, simultaneously falling face first to the ground, he laid on his stomach with one fist raised victoriously in the air. His eyes met mine and he scrambled up and sprinted toward me on the sideline and gave me an enormous hug. Thus it started a trend. Whenever he scored a goal this season (a not uncommon occurrence, given his mother’s athletic abilities) he sprinted toward the sidelines and hugged me. It made me hope for high scoring games.

Skeeter recently, out of the blue, asked me a question I hadn’t heard in years “Daddy, can you rock me tonight?” And so, for the first time in a good two or three years, she crawled up into my lap (much smaller now than it used to be) and we rocked, although her feet were practically touching the ground. He face was in the crook of my arm as we sang and talked and pretty soon I felt moisture on my arm. Realizing she was crying, I asked her what was wrong. She said “I don’t want to go away to college. I want to stay here with you and Mom.” So of course, not only was my arm wet, but soon her hair as well. I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to rock her, but such moments too are disappearing. And of course, when the day comes for her to leave for college, I’ll be the one wishing she could stay while she’ll be the one looking forward to new adventures.

Scooter is the biggest and the oldest, neither hugging Dad in public nor rocking with him in private. But she still gets happy when I’m able to stop by her school for lunch. She likes it when I sit with her and her friends at the lunch table and they explain to me again all of the intricacies of early teen life. She rolls her eyes at my corny jokes and turns beet red in front of her friends when I display my attempts at cool lingo “Between us, let’s keep it on the ‘LD” or “That new group is really on the chain!” But her face lights up whenever I get the chance to come by and she gives me a quick peck on the cheek goodbye when her friends are safely around the corner.

But I can see changes coming. Squealer will one day celebrate goals with high fives instead of hugs and Skeeter will ask me for gas money instead of time in the rocking chair. Scooter will beg me to take her off campus to lunch instead of eating around her friends. But I’ll treasure these moments and I’ll miss them at the same time.

My feet can still touch the bottom, but not for much longer.

A Pastor Search Committee Observed

I wanted to consolidate all of the PSC posts in one spot in order to impose order on my chaotic posting schedule. Here are the posts for the Pastor Search Committee experience at Lakeview Baptist Church. Once again, I’m certainly not indicating that this is the best way to conduct a search. My desire is simply to illustrate for other committees, or for pastors going through the process, what one search looked like. We dealt with a variety of problems and didn't always make the best of decisions. But it is my hope that others will find our experience valuable and will offer observations, suggestions, or rebukes to our conclusions.

1. Joining the Committee

2. Committee Composition

3. Chairing the Committee

4. Is Unanimity Necessary?

5. Determining the PSC Process

6. PSC as Ministry

7. Initial Contact Questions

8. PSC Covenant

9. PSC Etiquette?

10. War and wiring

11. Update

12. The Macro View

13. Gathering Resumes

14. Initial Contact

15. Checking References

16. Mealtime Interview

17. Meeting the Candidate

18. A Second Meeting and Shocking News

19. David’s Resignation

20. Resignation Aftermath

21. Visiting the Candidate’s Home Church

22. Visiting the Candidate’s Home Church (II)

23. Pastor Search Committee Interview Questions

24. The Theological Interview

25. The Theological Interview (II)

26. Background Checks and Insider Candidates

27. More on Credit Checks

28. The Announcement

29. The Phone Call

30. Phone Calls and Fire Fighting

31. Preparing for the Candidate’s First Sunday

32. In View of a Call

33. Setting a Pastor’s Salary

34. The Business Meeting

35. The Vote

36. The Installation Service

37. Loose Ends

38. Pastor Support Committee

How Would Jesus Vote?: A Review

Politics and religion tend to form a witches brew of toxic commentary, often bringing out the worst from both fields. But as a devoted Christian, you may wonder “How would Jesus vote on the issues in this year’s elections? I’m glad you asked.

The 2008 election is shaping up to be one of the most important political contests in American history. In fact, Dr. D. James Kennedy believes it will be a watershed moment that could impact our very survival as a nation under God.

Values voters—people whose political views and votes are based on their faith in God—are being targeted as never before. As the campaign season moves forward, the significant players will debate terrorism, radical Islam, nuclear threats, global warming, social issues, gay marriage, immigration, education, health care, and many other essential issues that can create sharp ideological divisions.

Into this overwhelmingly complex political situation, Dr. Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe bring an application of what God’s Word has to say on these critical matters. How Would Jesus Vote? isn’t intended to tell readers which candidates to support, in fact it mentions no specific political figures. But the way it evaluates issues let’s people know precisely where the author’s stand.
And so Kennedy offers straightforward views on a variety of issues and how Jesus would vote.

Briefly, Jesus would vote as follows:
Abortion: Jesus is Prolife
Death Penalty: Jesus supports the Death Penalty
Warfare: Jesus would (on occasion) support a Just War
Education: Jesus supports prayer in schools, and would oppose taxes on parents whose kids go to private schools.
Economics: Jesus supports private property, would be opposed to governmental welfare programs
Healthcare: Jesus would favor care for the uninsured, but would not support eh government mandating a universal health care policy.
Environment: Jesus loves the environment, but would spend money on sewage plants, increased sanitation, and clean water for the poor of the world, rather than cap and trade emissions policies
Immigration: Jesus would oppose racism in all forms, vote for enforcement of immigration laws, but also respect and care for the strangers among us
Marriage: Jesus favors heterosexual marriage. He would oppose same-sex marriage, pornography, and no-fault divorce
Judges: Kennedy doesn’t promise that Jesus opposes judicial activism, but does remind judges that they too will be judged by God for their actions.

There is a final section of a collection of thoughts on religious liberty and the dangers of political compromise.

Some thoughts:

Kennedy helpfully offers some biblical perspectives on these issues. None of his conclusions are without problems however. Which leads me to my concerns about this book.

The primary problem I have with Kennedy’s work is not only its self-confidence in declaring Jesus’ position on numerous political issues, but how unfailingly they fall along the traditional Republican perspective. Repackage this book and you could have the Republican platform in place. Putting the Divine imprimatur on our political perspectives cheapens our faith. When the kingdom of God conforms itself to the political instincts of Man, we trade silver and gold for straw and chaff.

Second, there is a tension in this work on the relationship between the church and state. Although he works hard to insist that church and state be separate, Kennedy admires such reformers as Calvin (p. 42) who as a magisterial reformer, operated in the context of a theocratic state in Geneva. But on the other hand (when arguing that the individual, not the government needs to be accommodating to immigrants) wrote “We should make sure that we distinguish between personal ethics and national policy.” (159) So which is it?

Finally, I would suspect that Jesus would have a perspective both more radical and more conservative than our own. I agree, for instance, that Jesus would be pro-life in his outlook. But I suspect he would travel with those who oppose abortion, but also those who oppose the death penalty and war. Jesus might vote for candidates who are radically egalitarian, to the point that they not only reach out to the poor, but move into low income neighborhoods and live incarnationally with the poor and downtrodden, instead of visiting them for a short term mission trip.

The church has much work to do.

The more election cycles I live through, the more I see that the government will continue to be ineffective. That is the main reason for my passion for the church. It is up to the church, not to the government, to reach the dispossessed who have fallen through the cracks of society. But the government makes for a poor tool in the hands of the church.

Kennedy offers little help in that direction.

W: A Review

W is an entertaining movie, but not a good one. It is entertaining in the same sense that a Will Ferrell DVD of SNL’s greatest Bush skits would be. Humorous, funny, and lacking any coherent plot.

The film is about the run up to the war in Iraq and the “debate” going on in the Bush White House. I put debate in quotation marks because it’s quite clear from the outset what the result will be. The president has already made up his mind. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al are each manipulating him toward a predetermined outcome. Only brave Powell opposes their plans, but his opposition is quickly overcome as he is portrayed as brave, if overly loyal footsoldier. Vice-President Cheney in particular is remarkable (Richard Dreyfus in an Oscar caliber performance). Cheney is the driving force behind the invasion plans and gives a powerful speech in favor of world domination to the assembled group of advisors. But his speech is so diabolical that it seemed more appropriate to a Bond (or Austin Powers) enemy. All he needed was, as one critic noted, a cat to stroke.

Throughout the film there are flashbacks (and at times flashbacks within flashbacks) about Bush’s life. The one recurring motivation for Bush in the film is that he is constantly trying to overcome his father (played by James Cromwell in an excellent performance) and to demonstrate his superiority. From his frat boy days at Yale to (literally) fighting with his father in the Oval Office, he’s constantly up against Bush 41. Poppa Bush opposes W at every turn. He dismisses Junior when he wants to run for governor of Texas, when he wants to run for president, and in one of the final scenes merely shakes his head at his son’s decisions in the Middle East.

But the central focus on the film is always Bush the Younger. Many of Bush’s infamous malapropisms (misunderestimated, “Fool me once, shame on you” etc) are here, though not in the context in which they were originally uttered. Although the common anti-Bush tropes are covered in “W” (Bush was motivated by competition with his father: check, God told Bush to run for president: check, the US invaded Iraq for oil: check), Stone eases up on the most left-leaning criticism of Bush. Some of his opponents have claimed that he deliberately used imaginary WMD weapons as the causus belli for the Iraq war (with the brief “Bush lied, people died” mantra). But Stone does not endorse this view and instead "credits" incompetence instead of malevolence. George Tenet (CIA director) summarizes the mistake by simply saying "We were wrong when we thought there were WMDs."

Ultimately, the problem with W is not that Stone aims too high, but too low. By portraying Bush as a self-confident dunce, he gives no insight into Bush the man. He provides no understanding on some basic questions that the narrative suggests: What did a demure wall flower like Laura see in him? Other than affecting his alcohol consumption, how did Bush’s religious conversion change him? And the ultimate question of course: How did someone so stupid end up as a President?

In the end, W is a failure as a narrative film. It is a disorganized mess with neither a coherent plot nor structure.

And yes, I recognize that that description is exactly what many critics apply to Bush’s eight years in office.

Pastor Support Committee

Some of the concerned comments to my last post indicate that I need to explain a bit more about the new role for the Pastor Search Committee. In the last few weeks before he came in view of a call, I mentioned to Brother Rick that the committee would be dissolving after his arrival unless he wanted to keep us around as a Pastor Support Committee. (In other churches I’ve seen this referred to as the “Barnabas Committee”). He indicated that he would like us to remain active for a period of time.

On two occasions in these least four months he has called us together for an hour or so and Brother Rick has bounced some ideas off of us. Both times we’ve met, we've gathered at his request. It’s been an opportunity for him to get some feedback on planned changes for the church. He’s listened to our feedback; has accepted it on some occasions and rejected it on others.

In return, it has allowed an open opportunity for getting our perspective on how things have been progressing. We’ve also taken the lead on such things as asking him hard questions such as how he’s balancing work and family. Another item we addressed (fearful it might get overlooked) was making sure that the appropriate ministry groups worked on plans for minister appreciation month.

What we do in the future depends on Brother Rick. I could see that over time he would call us together to meet less and less frequently. Or if we continue to meet, I could see some original committee members rotate off and other church leaders rotate on. But the focus of the committee is up to him, not initiated by the committee.

And I would have concerns about operating the committee any other way.

(Back to main Pastor Search Committee Menu)